VOL.LXXI • NO.6 JUNE 35 CENTS SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE Special Articles New Alpine Highroads . . . . CHARLES LINCOLN FREESTON 643 A Journey Over Nearly Fifty Passes The Prison Special LOUISINE W. HAVEMEYER 661 1Memories of a Militant A New Power in University Affairs . . . . WILFRED SHAW 677 The Social Influence of the Automobile . . . ALLEN D. ALBERT 685 The Depths of the Universe GEORGE ELLERY HALE 689 Some Spanish Gardens ERNEST PEIXOTTO 720 Life and the Librarian ELIZABETH T. KIRKWOOD 737 Stories and Poems For the Benefit of the Belgians REBECCA N. PORTER 705 Angela ' • • • EDWARD C. VENABLE 714 Diving the Bridge GRANT HYDE CODE 731 The Candor of Augusta Claire CAMILLA KENYON 741 Continuity CHRISTOPHER MORLEY 753 Country-Bred. Poem WILLIAM HERVEY WOODS 676 Departments The Point of View 75 9 The Dangers of Goodness — In Defense of Spinsters On Public Statues The Field of Art RICHARD F. BACH 763 Museums and the Factory. Illustrated The Financial Situation ALEXANDER DANA NOYES 769 The Changing Economic Scene CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS NEW YORK CHARLES SCR1BNER Tres,dent ARTHUR H SCRIBNER Treasurer CHARLES SCRIBNER JR Secretary 597 '599 FIFTH AVE NEW YORK • 7 BEAK STREET. LONDON. W. I. ivory pyralin (JTl /TOST loved of all are the Q_/ YJ. g^t s which live for years. With intimate daily use, the Pyralin toiletware she received on her wedding day will serve as a pleasant and constant reminder of the giver. As all patterns are standard, a gift of a few articles can be added to from time to time until the set is complete. E. I. Du PONT DE NEMOURS&CO., INC. Pyralin Department ARLINGTON, N. J. Look for the name "Pyraltn " stamped on every article.
HE La Belle Pattern ts illustrated, gracefully modeled in delicately grained Ivory Pyraltn. This pattern with its distinctive transverse handle, ts a universal favorite. La Belle and Du Barry Patterns are made in Shell Pyraltn and Amber Pyraltn as well as Ivory Pyraltn, plain or decorated. Sold at the leading stores everywhere.
VOL. LXXI. NO. 6 JUNE 1922 SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE Contentsfor JUNE LQLL
A VIEW OF THE AMPEZZO ROAD, BELOW CORTINA . .
NEW ALPINE HIGHROADS—A summary of RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE DOLOMITES AND ELSEWHERE, BASED ON A JOURNEY OYER NEARLY FIFTY PASSES .. . ILLUSTRATIONS (FRONTISPIECE) FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR.
THE PRISON SPECIAL —MEMORIES OF A MILITANT, (second paper) . ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS.
COUNTRY-BRED. POEM
A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS
THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE AUTOMOBILE
THE DEPTHS OF THE UNIVERSE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BELGIANS—A STORY ....... ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESTER RALPH.
ANGELA—A STORY
SOME SPANISH GARDENS ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR.
DIVING THE BRIDGE —A STORY
I ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE WRIGHT. LIFE AND THE LIBRARIAN
\R SR
THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE A STORY ILLUSTRATIONS BY EVERETT SHINN.
CONTINUITY A STORY . . . . Frontispiece CHARLES LINCOLN FREESTON 643 LOUISINE W . HAVEMEYER 661 WILLIAM HERVEY WOODS 676 WILFRED SHAW . 677 ALLEN D . ALBERT 6S5 GEORGE ELLERY HALE 689 DIRECTOR OF THE MOUNT WILSON OBSERVATORY. REBECCA N. PORTER 7°S EDWARD C . VENABLE . 714 ERNEST PEIXOTTO 72 0 GRANT HYDE CODE 73I ELIZABETH T . KIRKWOOD 737 CAMILLA KENYON 74I CHRISTOPHER MORLEY . 7S3 A I A A THEILLUSTRATION BY W . J. ENRIGHT. TH E POIN T O F VIEW—TH E DANGERS OF GOODNESS—IN DEFENSE OF SPINSTERS—ON PUBLIC STATUES . . . THE FIELD OF ART •MUSEUMSFACTORY ILLUSTRATED. FINANCIAL SITUATION—THEECONOMIC SCENE . . . . . . . . . . . 759 AND THE RICHARD F . BAC H 7» 3 CHANGING . . ALEXANDER DAN A NOYES 769 PUBLISHED MONTHLY. PRICE, 35 CENTS A NUMBER; $4-.00 A YEAR Copyrighted in 1922 in United States, Canada, and Great Britain, by Charles Scribncr's Sons. Printed in New York. All rightsreserved. Entered as Second-Class Matter December 2, 1886, at the Post-office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1S70. Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Post-Office Department, Ottawa, Canada. ^3
52 shur on glasses A VIEW OX THE AilPEZZO ROAD, BELOW CORTINA.
S CRIBNER'S M AGAZINE VOL. LXXI JUNE, 1922 NO. 6 New Alpine Highroads A SUMMARY OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE DOLOMITES AND ELSEWHERE, BASED ON A JOURNEY OVER NEARLY FIFTY PASSES BY CHARLES LINCOLN FREESTON Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and author of "The Highroads of the Alps." ILLUSTRATIONS (FRONTISPIECE) FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR ]LPIN E HIGHWAYS CONTINUE TO MULTIPLY APACE. THEY REPRESENT, IN FACT, ONE OF THE VERY FEW THINGS IN WHICH THE WORLD IS RICHER SINCE THE EUROPEAN WAR; LOR NEW ROADS WERE BUILT IN TYROL FROM 1915 ONWARD, OVER PASSES THAT WERE FORMERLY BUT FOOTPATHS; WHILE ONE IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT, AT LEAST, WAS FRUCTIFIED ONLY A FEW MONTHS AGO. AND WHERE FREEDOM OF LOCOMOTION IS CONCERNED THE CONDITIONS ARE AMPLER IN OTHER WAYS THAN WAS THE CASE IN 1914. SINCE ITALY ACQUIRED THE MAJOR PORTION OF TYROL, VARIOUS ALPINE ROADS THAT WERE PREVIOUSLY CLOSED TO AUTOMOBILES HAVE BEEN WIDENED AND MADE FREE TO ALL; AND BE IT MENTIONED THAT THE NEW PROVINCE OF VENEZIA TRIDENTINA INCLUDES THE WHOLE AREA OF THE DOLOMITES. THEN, TOO, THE FACT MAY BE CHRONICLED THAT SWITZERLAND AT LAST IS FALLING INTO LINE WITH OTHER ALPINE COUNTRIES. THE TRIUMPHANT WAY IN WHICH MOTOR-TRUCKS AND STAFF CARS RAN UP AND DOWN THE LOFTY MOUNTAIN ROADS OF FRANCE, ITALY, AND AUSTRIA DURING THE WAR SERVED AS AN OBJECTLESSON WHICH COULD NOT BE IGNORED, AND NOW WE SEE MOTOR DILIGENCES ON THE FURKA, THE GRIMSEL, AND OTHER SWISS PASSES ON WHICH ONLY SLOW AND CUMBROUS HORSEDRAWN VEHICLES WERE ERSTWHILE ALLOWED. ESPECIALLY INTERESTING IS IT TO NOTE THAT THE FARCE OF AUTOMOBILES TRAVELLING UP AND DOWN THE ITALIAN SIDE OF THE GRAND ST. BERNARD, BUT BEING BARRED ALTOGETHER FROM THE SWISS SIDE, IS NOW A THING OF THE PAST, AND ONE MAY DRIVE RIGHT THROUGH FROM AOSTA TO MARTIGNY, OR vice versa, WITHOUT LET OR HINDRANCE. NOT MERELY IN AMERICA, HOWEVER, BUT IN ENGLAND ITSELF THE IDEA PREVAILED DURING THE TOURING SEASON OF 1921, THAT TRAVELLING ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE WAS STILL UNDESIRABLE, IF NOT IMPRACTICABLE, EVEN AFTER A LONG PERIOD OF PEACE. WITH THE DOUBLE OBJECT, THEREFORE, OF STUDYING POST-WAR CONDITIONS IN ALPINE REGIONS, AND ALSO EXPLORING ON THE SPOT SUCH NEW DEVELOPMENTS AS HAD BEEN RUMORED FROM AFAR, I PLANNED A JOURNEY ON AS COMPREHENSIVE LINES AS POSSIBLE, TO INCLUDE ALL THE NEWLY MADE OR NEWLY LIBERATED PASSES, TOGETHER WITH A NUMBER OF OLD FAVORITES ON WHICH THE WAR MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT HAVE LEFT DESTRUCTIVE IMPRINTS. THE LIST WAS ADDED TO en route, AS THE RESULT OF ONE OR TWO UNEXPECTED DISCOVERIES, AND IN ITS FINAL FORM IS PRINTED ON PAGE 660. T O THOSE WHO KNEW AUGHT OF THE ALPS BEFORE THE WAR, THE FIRST POINT TO ARREST ATTENTION IN THE APPENDED LIST WILL BE THE PREPONDERANCE OF ITALIAN PASSES. OF THESE, HOWEVER, THE FOLLOWING WERE AUSTRIAN UP TO 1918—NAMELY THE PORDOI, FALZAREGO, JAUFEN, ROLLE, TONALE, CAMPOLONGB, CAMPIGLIO, BROCCONE, AMPEZZO, RESCHEN-SCHEIDECK, BRENNER, MENDEL, TOBLACH, SAN LUGANO, AND GOBERA. SEV-Copyrighted in 1922 in United States, Canada, and Great Britain, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Printed in New York. Ail rights reserved. °43
PRE-WAR ROUTES Kotthcrn routes. Southern routes. Sketch maps showing new routes north and south of the Dolomites Road.
AT THE SUMMIT OF THE GRAND SI. UERNARD PASS (S,NO FEET). This FAMOUS ROAD NOW OPEN [<> AULOMOBILCS. ERAL OTHER ITALIAN PASSES THAT ARE NOWAVAILABLE, EITHER AS NEW CREATIONS OR AS ROUTES WIDENED AND THROWN OPEN TO CARS, ARE ON EX-AUSTRIAN TERRITORY—NAMELY, THE SELLA, GRODNER, TRE CROCI, FORCELLA STAULANZA, AND COSTALUNGA. THE STELVIO, MOREOVER, FORMERLY HALF ITALIAN AND HALF AUSTRIAN, IS NOW WHOLLY ITALIAN, AND THE BRENNER, ONCE WHOLLY AUSTRIAN, IS NOW HALF ITALIAN. BEFORE DESCENDING FROM THE GENERAL TO THE PARTICULAR I MAY STATE THAT I DID NOT ENCOUNTER ONE SOLITARY FACTOR WHICH PRECLUDED SAFE AND COMFORTABLE TOURING, IN PRE-WAR FASHION, THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE JOURNEY, SAVE, PERHAPS, FOR THE PRESENCE OF MORE TIMBER WAGONS THAN WAS NORMAL. AN EXCEPTIONAL AMOUNT OF TREE-FELLING WAS CARRIED ON DURING THE WAR AND FOR SOME TIME AFTERWARD, AND, THOUGH THE CUTTING ITSELF HAS BEEN STOPPED ON ITALIAN TERRITORY, THERE WAS A SURPLUS AMOUNT OF WOOD STILL TO BE CARTED DURING THE WHOLE OF 1921. THAT EVEN PASS-CLIMBING, HOWEVER, APART FROM ORDINARY TOURING, IS NOW PERFECTLY FEASIBLE, AND EVEN SIMPLE, IS PLAINLY MANIFESTED BY THE FACT THAT, THOUGH THE JOURNEY ABOVE INDICATED EXTENDED TO 3,150 MILES, IF WAS EASILY ACCOMPLISHED IN "45 A communication trench on the Falzarego Pass. four weeks, and the tale of the passes themselves was completed in three. No daily journey was begun or finished at an unusual hour, nor did the party fail to utilize the countless opportunities which the good weather vouchsafed for photography. On three cccasions, moreover, we rested for half a day, and furthermore we enjoyed a whole day's motor-boating on the Lake of Como—all within the three weeks devoted to the passes. Nowhere was there any lack of food, and hotel accommodation was plentiful. The only difference, indeed, between 1921 and 1914 —apart from the painful lack of British 646 and American tourists—was the fact that the Dolomites area everywhere displayed the evidences of artillery warfare among the mountains. But though sundry villages had been battered, the work of reparation was all but complete; trenches and dugouts were nearly all filled in and, with scarcely an exception, the roads themselves were in their pre-war state of superexcellence. Above all the glorious mountains towered in superb and unimpaired grandeur, and, as I may proceed to show, are now more than ever accessible to tourists, owing to the provision of new roads. On the new Forcella Staulanza road. One of the most familiar features of Alpine territory is the prevalence of the culde-sac road as a type. It runs up a valley for a few or many miles, but comes to a stop at a point where only skilled engineering and the expenditure of much money could carry it across a mountain barrier. Often enough there is a kindred local road on the other side of the range, but no means of bridging the gap. When a government or canton can be brought to see the desirability of making a through route, the engineers are set to work, a fine highroad with suitable gradients is built across the pass, and a new artery for locomotion is added, of which the highest portion is better graded and better surfaced than the original local roads. Now it may happen that the bridging of a gap in this way may open up quite a large tract of country which was formerly a terra incognita to the road tourist who had not time for diyagations up and down by-roads of the cul-dc-sac variety. Striking illustrations to the point may be found in the region of the Dolomites, where scores of miles of road may now be covered in a continuous journey, not a yard ol which was known to the average tourist before the war, and simply as 647 Corvara, on the Campolongo 1'ass; a new through route in the Dolomites. the result of building a few miles of new-road. No motorist, for example, ever saw the village of Caprile before the war, unless he approached it from the south, although it only lies a short distance south of the famous Dolomitenstrasse, or Dolomites Road. There was a narrow track from Andraz, on the Falzarego Pass, to Caprile, but it was hardly fit even for rustic carts, and in any case was barred to cars. During the war, however, a fine highroad, similar in width and quality to the Dolomitenstrasse, was built between the two points above named, and by the bridging of this gap there is now available an unin64S terrupted and exceptionally beautiful route from Andraz lo the Lake of Alleghe and the Agordo Valley, and thence down lo Belluno through the impressive defile known as the Canal dAgordo. This route opens up Dolomite views of a character entirely unsuspected by those who had known only the Dolomitenstrasse and other famous passes. But this is not the only new development of importance in the highly picturesque area that lies between the Via Ampezzo and the Rolle Pass. From Caprile there was a local road to Pescul, with another further south from Fusine lo Longarone, but there was no carriage The summit of the Grbdner Pass (6,070 feet).road over the forcella staulanza (5,817 feet) between fusine and pescul. inasmuch, however, as an excellent highway has been built over the staulanza pass, another through route is now available, from andraz to longarone. it further provides the means of a charming circular tour from cortina as follows: over the falzarego pass to andraz; thence to caprile, pescul, fusine, forno di zoldo, longarone, belluno, canal d'agordo, agordo, alleghe, and caprile, whence the falzarego pass may be rejoined for the homeward run to cortina. the new road over the forcella staulanza, it ma)- be (The newest mountain road in the Alps.) added, passes right under the foot of monte pelmo, which towers impressively above a well-wooded scene, and the journey throughout confers an even more intimate idea of the picturesque resources of the dolomites than does the dolomitenstrasse itself. save for the portion above caprile, all this new circuit is on territory that was italian even before the year 1914; but during and since the great war important developments have been effected on the north side of the dolomites road, in the region that was once tyrol but is now venezia tridentina. new roads have 649 The- !<ical ro:nl leading Id the Grodner Pass. been built over two lofty passes, while a third route that was barred to motor vehicles has been widened and rendered free to all. The last named begins with the Campolongo Pass (6,165 feet), from Arabba, on the Pordoi Pass, to Corvara, a distance of ten miles. From there it was not permitted until last year to continue northward to Bruneck in the Pusterthal, and consequently few tourists took the trouble to go over the Campolongo to Corvara and retrace their wheel-tracks. 1 may mention, however, that the road over the pass is excellent, while the removal of the embargo on the Corvara-Bruneck road provides an alternative way of entering or leaving the Dolomites 650 region, in lieu of the route through Toblach and Cortina. The two passes over which new roads have been built are the Grodner and the Sella, at altitudes of 6,970 feet and 7,277 feet, respectively. For several reasons they represent a development of high importance. The Grodner is another illustration of the difference effected in one's •travelling opportunities by the bridging of a lacuna between two cul-de-sac roads. There was a local road from Corvara to Colfusch on the one side of the great barrier of the Grodnerjoch, and on the other a road ran from Plan to St. Ulrich and Waidbruck, on the Brenner route. St. Ulrich was the centre of the toy-making Nearing the summit of the Sella Pass (7,277 feet). A road built by Russian prisoners in 1915. industry of Tyrol, and was often visited as such by those who had time for a horsed carriage journey from Waidbruck; but the motorist, who naturally prefers through journeys, owing to the great distances he has to cover in a comprehensive tour, may henceforth take St. Ulrich in passing from the Brenner to the Dolomitenstrasse, and at the same time be under no necessity to go round by Bolzano (Bozen). Of the new road over the Grodner, it may be said that it is engineered on modern lines, and though the surface has not yet settled down it will eventually rank as a fine road. Unfortunately, however, the previously existing local road between Colfusch and Corvara has not as yet been built up in keeping with the character of the new pass; not only is it rough and extremely narrow, but it is intersected by several five-barred gates at intervals. At the same time, it is quite practicable for those who do not mind driving a short distance over somewhat undesirable ground as a means to an end. And the road over the Grodner affords striking views not only in retrospect but in prospect, and one sees the Langkofel at closer and more impressive quarters than from the Pordoi side. NEW ALPINE HIGHROADS Similarly the Sella group appears an altogether different entity as seen from the Sella Pass. It is massive enough, one would have thought, from the Pordoi road, but on the Sella Pass one winds right round it at its very base, and finds it to be one of the most majestic massifs in the Dolomites. The genesis of the new Sella road is tinued to roll down and had rendered the road all but impassable by July of last year (1021), and on the north side of the summit I crossed one patch of boulders, some fifty yards long, at considerable risk. A few weeks later the road had become impassable; in fact, I have since met a leading Italian official who walked over it in September, and who refused to believe Summit of the Jaufen Pass (6,860 feet) different from anything else in this region. It was built for the Austrians by Russian prisoners of war, in order to provide a direct means, of transit to the Dolomitenstrasse from the Brenner. Its gradients and corners are properly engineered, but there is not a full complement of channels for the automatic carrying off of stone-falls. During the war these would be cleared away as soon as they were formed, but after the armistice it was a moot point as to whether the new road would be allowed to fall into decay or would be taken over and maintained by its new owner, Italy. Meanwhile, the stones con-that I had crossed it on a car until I showed him a series of photographs which I had taken at various points en route. I hear, however, that the Italian Government has decided not to abandon the road—and nothing could well be more foolish than to sacrifice so useful and picturesque a highway; consequently one may hope that the road will be in practicable condition by the time the next touring season comes about. In any case the tourist in the Dolomites should go up the Sella Pass from Canazei, even if he can get no farther, to enjoy the magnificent view of the Mar
Karneid Castle, on the Karer Pass.
NEW ALPINE HIGHROADS molata from the summit. It is one of the finest prospects in the Dolomites, and should on no account be missed. But if the road is put in order over its whole length the summit will be best approached from the Grodner side, for then the Marmolata bursts dramatically into view just as the summit of the Sella is attained. A barred road which is improved and Monte Cristallo, up which the Italians dragged six-inch guns and then held the position for two years. If the tourist has previously crossed the Ampezzo Pass on the way from Toblach to Cortina, there is no particular reason why he should go beyond the Lake of Misurina on the Tre Croci journey. The descent to Schluderbach is stony, The Mont Blanc range from the Petit St. Bernard (7,178 feet). thrown open to cars is of the same practical effect as a new highway in adding to the sum of touring convenience, and of the former class two noteworthy examples must be mentioned. The motorist is now free to make a round trip from Cortina over the Tre Croci Pass to the Lake of of Misurina, descending thence to Schluderbach, and then returning to Cortina over the Ampezzo Pass. The Tre Croci road has not only been widened and made quite suitable for motor vehicles, but is also highly picturesque. It runs, by the way, close up to the base of the rugged and it is preferable to turn the car around by the lake and return to Cortina. Another road which was closed to cars while under the Austrian regime, but has been thrown open by the Italians, is the Karer or Costalunga Pass. This, it may be remembered, was part of the Dolomites Road itself, but motorists had perforce to make a detour by the San Lugano Pass when proceeding to or from Bozen, and only knew the Pordoi and Falzarego sections of the Dolomitenstrasse. The Karer Pass is not particularly interesting on the east side, nor at the sumNEW ALPINE HIGHROADS mit, but is very attractive between the latter and Bolzano. There is first the Karer Lake to be inspected, nestling in a wood below the level of the highway. It is only a pond in size, but its coloring is wonderful, reflecting every shade from emerald-green to lapis lazuli blue. Then comes the Latemar mountain group, seen to remarkable advantage through the acted on the Jaufen and the Campiglio Passes, as well as on the Karer and in the town of Bolzano itself. In every case, however, where the tolls exist the road surface is less satisfactory than on the toll-free roads. I can only assume that national assistance is accorded to certain roads and that the maintenance of others devolves upon the locality; and, as the A scene immediately below the summit of the Stelvio Pass (9,041 feet). trees at one point on the descent; and lower down, in the Eggenthal defile, there is a memorable picture of the castle of Karneid standing high upon a rock. For the future the San Lugano route, which is not essentially picturesque, may be discarded in favor of the Karer Pass. The road itself, it may be added, is good on the west side, but more stony than is desirable between the summit and Vigo, although tolls are levied twice between Vigo and Bolzano. Mention of tolls leads me to slate that these have been abandoned on the Pordoi and the Falzarego, but are still ex-Dolomite district suffered heavily during the war, administrative funds are none too plentiful. There is another road, by the way, on which a toll is charged— namely, from Lavis, above Trento, to Cembra and Cavalese, and I found it verv bad, but it would probably have been even worse, or closed altogether to motor-cars, if no toll had been imposed. The fact remains, however, that the post-war condition of the Alpine roads is for the most part vastly better than might have been expected. Only the Jaufen Pass displayed a lower quality of surface than on previous visits. The Stelvio was For taking a photo at this spot on the Tonale Pass in iooo the author was detained in a fortress. as wonderful as ever, the surface of the road throughout being splendid, albeit one could see, as on all the ex-Austrian passes, adjoining trenches, dugouts, and the remains of barbed-wire entanglements, while the custom-house at the actual summit was in ruins. A notice-board warned the wayfarer not to approach too near by reason of the presence of asphyxiating gas shells. Other Italian roads which had surfaces like billiard-tables were the Broccone, the Gobera, the Mendel, the Brenner, the Reschen-Scheideck, the Ampezzo, the 656 Campolongo, the Pordoi, the Col de Sestrieres, and the Tonale. I shall never forget the glorious romp up the first-named—one of the last and best engineered roads built by the Austrians before the war—although the ascent was prefaced by a momentary qualm, when one found the central arches of the great bridge at the foot blown entirely away, presumably by a retreating force. A temporary structure and a temporary road, however, were discovered lower down the river, and the pass was gained after a short, if somewhat awkward, deThis is all that is left of the fortress in which the author was interned in 1909 by the Austrians. tour. On the south side of the pass, again, it seemed as if one had reached an impasse, for reparation work was being carried on to such an extent that the main street of a village was all but blocked with masonry. However, it was possible to wriggle through the obstructions, and I doubt not but that here and everywhere else in the Dolomite area the destructive effects of artillery warfare will have disappeared completely before the coming summer. Especially gratifying was the state'of things on the Tonale Pass. I had expected to find it in poor condition, if open VOL. LXXL— 42 to traffic at all, as part of this fine highway had been shot away during the war. Artillery fighting on this route was serious, and no fewer than 6,000 Italian soldiers were blinded by the effects of shell-fire among the rocks. The town of Ponte di Legno, moreover, was badly battered. It has nearly all been rebuilt, however, while the surface of the road is perfect. At 4,000 feet on the way up the pass I saw the remnants of the fort of Strino, in which I had a temporarily disconcerting but amusing experience in 1909. Two or three hundred yards before it is reached 657 NEW ALPINE HIGHROADS there is a glorious view of the Presanella peaks and glaciers, which I duly photographed, not knowing that there was a fort around the corner. A sentry had seen me wield the camera, and falsely reported that I had photographed the fort itself—a physical impossibility from where I stood. When I had reached the less. Twelve years later I photographed the mountains and the dismantled fort with melancholy satisfaction. Touring, I may mention in passing, is now vastly more pleasurable in the region of the Dolomites and the approaches to Tyrol 1 ly reason of the fact that they are all under one government, and there are. The Pont <lu Bcrard 10,040 feet) 011 the Col du Parpaillon (8,671 feet). A rickety bridge and a 15 per cent gradient. top of the pass, where the Austrian custom-house formerly stood—it is now in ruins—a telephone order had been received from the fort to send the car back. The descent was somewhat comic, as a couple of infantrymen boarded the vehicle a short way down, and stood precariously on the springs at the back like a couple of footmen. On reaching the fort, moreover, I found a squad of soldiers across the road, presenting fixed bayonets at the tires of the car. Nothing more unpleasant happened, however, than the compulsory development of my negatives to prove that they were harm-therefore, no customs barriers to be crossed. Until Venezia Tridentina was created as a new Italian province, the Austro-Italian frontier ran through the very heart of the Dolomites. One had to pass two custom-houses if approaching Cortina from the south, or leaving the Via Ampezzo by the Delia Mauria, and again on the Tre Croci Pass, and though there was no motoring road to Caprile, any one who entered it on foot from the north had a frontier to cross. Then there was the Tonale to be reckoned with, while the Stelvio had also a frontier line at its summit. In the old days it was even NEW ALPINE HIGHROADS 659 worse, for until the road over the Broccone Pass was built one had to cross two frontiers to reach the Rolle Pass. Now, however, every pass in what was once Tyrol is entirely Italian save for the northern half of the Brenner, and one may journey over all the most beautiful mountain roads east of France and Switzerland berg Pass. Now that the Dolomites are Italian the simple course is to confine one's journey to France and Italy in the main, and merely cross Switzerland byway of the Rhone Valley and the Simplon Pass. Still, if one wishes to see more of Switzerland by road than has aforetimes been The third stonefall on the Col du Parpaillon, about 8,000 feet up. without having to consider custom-houses at all, once Italy has been entered from the west. Nor is this all that has to be said concerning the enhanced resources of the motoring mountaineer. The fact that the long-standing embargo on certain Swiss passes has at last been removed has increased materially the tourist's opportunities of varying his routes. The gain is not so great, perhaps, as it would have been if effected earlier, for Tyrol was formerly one's chief objective, and as one had perforce an Austrian triptych it was natural to enter or leave Austria by the Arlfeasible, there is a considerable tract of new country to be visited. Instead of turning off the Rhone Valley at Brigue, for the Simplon Pass, one may continue in a straight fine to the Rhone Glacier and cross the Furka and the Grimsel The Klausen Pass, moreover, which would have been highly useful to any one proceeding to the Arlberg, is now open to automobiles under certain conditions, but will not be extensively used by the average tourist from the west. As for the Grand St. Bernard, the fact that it is now free is a noteworthy concession, though the route is much less picturesque than NEW ALPINE HIGHROADS the Petit St. Bernard, and the surface is somewhat rough. Of automobile locomotion in Switzerland generally, I may say that it is still subject in parts to total or partial embargoes, too numerous to DEtail, but every tourist who enters the country with a car is handed a manual, for which a charge of three francs is made, and which sets forth in full all the regulations as to Sunday travelling and barred roads throughout the whole country. As for France, the Alpine roads are more numerous than ever, and mostly in grand condition. Nothing could be-better than the route from Grenoble to Turin by way of the Col du Lautaret, Mont Gene\TE and the Col de Sestrieres. The new road over the Col de la Cayolle is now available, though I like it less than the alternative route over the Col d'Allos. The north side of the Col du Gabbier was not in good condition in 1921, but is magnificently picturesque at all times and worth a somewhat adventurous journey. One road there is, however, which should be definitely avoided, and that is the strategical route over the Col du Parpaillon, the highest road in France. It has been allowed to lapse into a terrible state of disrepair, being of little or no military importance, and though I crossed it in a sporting spirit last year I found it blocked, in four places, with avalanche falls which had to be severally cleared away by gangs of laborers before I could proceed. In many places, moreover, the "road" was barely as wide as the car, and had unfenced and crumbling edges throughout. Inasmuch, however, as the Parpaillon road is not conspicuously beautiful, and inasmuch as it is a mere side road which is in no way essential to a through journey, the fact that it is undesirable as a climb is of no particular consequence. It serves, indeed, by force of contrast, to emphasize the excellence of the majority of the Alpine highroads. Their charms are as great as ever, and even intensified after years of enforced absence owing to the war; incidentally, I may mention that I have never seen wild flowers by the roadside in such prodigal array as during 1921. The available routes are more numerous, as we have seen, than in 1914, and frontier formalities are much less frequently encountered. Gasolene is everywhere obtainable, and garages are to be found in plenty. Everything, in fact, points to a great revival in Alpine motoring, unquestionably thetouring. ALPINE PASSES—LOCALITY AND ALTITUDE PASS LOCALITYStelvio, Italian,Col du Parpaillon, French,Col du Galibier, French,Grand St. Bernard, Swiss-Italian,Col d'Izouard, French,Col de la Cayolle, French,Pordoi, Italian,Col d'Allos, French,Sella, Italian,Petit St. Bernard, French-Italian,Grodner, Italian,Col de Yars, French,Falzarego, Italian,Jaufen, Italian.Col du Lautaret, French,Col de Sestrieres, Italian,Simplon, Swiss-Italian,Rolle, Italian.Tonale, Italian.Campolongo, Italian.Mont Genevre, I'rench-Italian,Tre Croci, Italian,Forcella Staulanza, Italian,Costalunga, Italian,ALTITUDE IN FEET 0.041 8,671 8,530 S,no 7,903 7,716 7.382 7,382 7,277 7.178 6,970 6,939 6,913 6,869 6,790 6,660 6,594 6,424 6,181 6,165 6,100 5,030 5,817 5,75i PASSCampiglio,Broccone,Col de Viste,Ampezzo,Col des Aravis,Rescnen-Scheideck,Brenner.Mendel,Col de Porte,Col de la Faueille,Col de St. Cergues,Toblach,Aprica,Col du Cucheron,Col de Plainpalais,Col du Frene,San Lugano,Gobera,Col de Savine,Col de Leschaux,Col du Mont Sion,Col de Yence,Col du Chat, finest of all forms of ALTITUDE LOCALITY IN FEET Italian, 5,413 Italian, 5,3°5 French, 5,266 Italian, 5,065 French, 4,915 Italian, 4,9°t Italian-Austrian, 4,495 Italian, 4,475 French, 4,429 French, 4,33i Swiss, 4,051 Italian, . 3,965 Italian, 3,875 French, 3,871 French, 3,871 French, 3,818 Italian, 3,599 Italian, 3,339 French, 3,248 French, 2,966 French, 2,592 French, 2,461 French, 2,100 From a photograph copyright by Harris F.iinitfr. HEADQUARTERS OF THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S TARTY, FACING THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON, D. C. The Prison Special MEMORIES OF A MILITANT BY LOUISINE W. HAVEMEYER ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS - [SECOND PAPER ] HE ship llashed out its lights up to the very night before our defeat in 1914. It had been a great campaign and had developed our poitical instincts, it had ' toughened our sinews and summoned up our blood" for the greater campaign to come when we had become a National Woman's Party, with Susan B. Anthony's federal amendment as our only platform; when a little band of women had to fight an administration and a political organization armed cap-apie against them. Now, every one knows that it needs a great deal of money to carry on a political campaign. Publicity is the great active agency, always publicity, publicity ! You must keep your cause always before the public, and in some way or another you must get the public interested in your cause. The Congressional Woman's Party (which started in 1013 and became in iQi6.the National Woman's Party) was headed by Alice Paul, a remarkable young woman of Quaker descent, inheriting the valiant, stern determination of her sect and gifted with a wonderfully keen political instinct. When she assumed the head of the National Woman's Party, she had worked for some time with the Militant Party in England, but her efforts here were unflinchingly directed to the passage of the Susan 15. Anthony amendment, which 661 THE PRISON SPECIAL said: "The rights of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged in the United States, or in any State, on account of sex." Her intimate knowledge of the President's attitude toward us convinced her that only drastic measures would avail. She felt that women would have to make a supreme sacrifice—would have to conquer in a hard battle—or go under. Through the entire campaign Alice Paul uncompromisingly held the party in power responsible for the fate of the amendment. In order to make you understand the situation, I must, as concisely as possible, speak of the President and his attitude toward us during our struggle. The President dominated in Washington; he had a Democratic Congress supinely yielding to his will. We were opposed by a President who felt himself absolute, and to whom the thought of mobilized woman-power was as a red rag to an infuriated bull. His education and commitment to suffrage was a long and difficult task. When the President was asked to help suffrage in 1913 he answered that "suffrage was a question to which he had given no thought." Immediately work was begun and carried on so vigorously that in 1915, when the four Eastern States, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, made an effort to acquire suffrage through a referendum to the voters of each State, the President, at the last moment, decided he would cast his vote for the referendum in New Jersey himself. I well remember that campaign ! It illustrates how little we had to hope from our President. The last mass-meeting had been called for New Jersey, "the antis" had even called off their workers, knowing our cause was lost; but we valiantly kept on; the round-up was in Hackensack, where we gave a big luncheon and held a huge mass-meeting in the evening. Doctor Anna Shaw and I were to be the speakers. At the luncheon it was announced, for the first time, and as a great bit of news, that the President had said he would come out for suffrage and vote for it upon Election Day. I recall saying at the mass-meeting that for once I could wish the incumbent in the White House had been a woman, for she would not have been able to have kept her secret so long. Well, the President voted, but whom it helped most you can better judge for yourself when I tell you that only one other man voted for us in his precinct; but the next autumn, in his presidential campaign, one of the slogans was: "Vote for Wilson ! He is for suffrage ! He voted for it in New Jersey." Alice Paul made appeal after appeal to the President, but she brought back to us nothing but hopeless disappointments. In 1916 she sent the "Suffrage Special" to the Western States begging the enfranchised women of the West to help us with their votes. This "Special," after a successful trip, with receptions, demonstrations, and publicity of all kinds, ended in June, 1916, in Chicago, where the Republican convention was held. Then and there the National Woman's Party was formed; as I have said, it was a step which politicians called an astute political move, and in truth it seemed so, for each political party, almost at once, adopted a suffrage plank in its platforms. The end, however, was not in sight; the amendment was not passed until three years later. There was a strong feeling in many of the States against the amendment, and a desire for each State to settle the matter for itself through a referendum. There were strong advocacates both for and against the amendment, but the opposition to it in Washington was intensely bitter on account of the administration's attitude. My intention is not to give you a history of suffrage. Others will do that far better than I can; they will tell you "of the underlying strategy" which often influenced Miss Paul's plans, often caused her to put on more pressure; they will describe to you that renowned room in the "Little White House," as our headquarters were called, where every one who could affect suffrage had his record kept of his words and attitude, of his actions for or against our cause; and the testimony of those little slips of paper sometimes made it a dangerous thing for the offender to be a candidate for re-election. Naturally the scene of action was transferred to Washington. The National Woman's Party, after difficulties which were deliberately thrown in its way and which would have discouraged any less THE PRESON SPECIAL 663 valiant body of women, secured a building for headquarters on Lafayette Square, a small park directly in front of the White House. From these headquarters issued the women who were to carry the banners with Wilson's contradictory words upon them, and to picket the President; the women who were to make demonstrations Nevertheless, when Miss Paul called me up from Washington and asked me to take part in a demonstration, and to bring my "grip" in case we should have to go to prison, I did just as she requested, for how could I do less with such examples before me! I asked the family if they needed me, and told them I was going to A group of suffragists who were imprisoned for picketing in the park at Lafayette's statue; those who were to burn the President's empty words without facts spoken in Paris; and lastly those who were to take part in that demonstration on the Sunday afternoon before our last defeat in a Democratic Congress and which led to The Prison Special, that entering wedge which helped to pass the amendment a few months later when the new Republican Congress had assembled in Washington. That last demonstration was the one I took part in—the only one—for I had always laughingly said to Miss Paul: "N o picketing and no prison for me. I don't like the thought of either one." Washington for a few days. Our list of requirements was simple, a warm wrapper and a bottle of disinfectants. As I made my way toward headquarters, I noticed THERE was much activity on Lafayette Square, where groups of men and women were talking excitedly; other groups had assembled by the watch-fires which were always kept alive before the Little White House, to burn the President's faithless words. A great crowd had lined up on Pennsylvania Avenue. Something was to happen ! There was too much preparation and expectancy to doubt that. Mallear! began to beat, for I had no more taste for my job than Ancient Pistol had 664 THE PRISON SPECIAL for his leek. "Oh, there is Mrs. Havemeyer now !" I heard several exclaim as I entered the Little White House. " Mrs. Havemeyer, Miss Paul is looking for you!" I put down my "grip," which hurt my arm, and stiffened up a bit, for there was a call-to-arms look about the women, and no one likes to be a slacker! Alice Paul took me into her office and explained that while there was still hope that the Senate might pass the amendment on the morrow, the chances were against us. The President had sent no help from Paris; she said she deemed it best to make the demonstration. If the amendment were to go through, the probability was they would not arrest us, and no harm would be done. If not, they would arrest us, the country would be inflamed through publicity, and we would start as soon as we were released on the Prison Special, and seek supporters of the suffrage amendment from coast to coast to come to our aid. As Miss Paul finished she said: "W e need you, Mrs. Havemeyer, for our speaker on the Prison Special. If you remain in prison only a short time, you are qualified; of course, all the members of the Special must have been in prison/ Now, will you carry the American flag and lead the procession ? I think the crowd will be friendly, although it is known we are going to burn the President in effigy. We have to do something drastic, or they—the administration, who are beginning to feel uneasy under criticism of their treatment of American women— won't fight us." Alice Paul looked at me with her great dark, earnest eyes and the little ninety-pound figure was erect and expectant. "Yes," I answered. "What am I to do?" "Lucy Burns has charge of the demonstrations. Do as she says, and leave your bag where we can send it to vou." Well, there I was—can you imagine how I felt?—heading the demonstration, when fifteen minutes before the very thought of it had sent my heart beating as I saw the crowd assembling in the square. There were many of us there; I cannot venture to say how many; I think a hundred went out. All were greeting me and I was trying to look unconcerned, but I assure you I don't think I ever had such a struggle for poise in my life. Fortunately, it did not last long, for suddenly Lucy Burns put a flag in my hand and said: "Mrs. Havemeyer, start right on. Go to the end of the square, cross the trolley and go down Pennsydvania Avenue and stop directly in front of the White House; say what you have already said about women demanding their freedom. It doesn't matter much what you say. We have your written speech here for the press. Sue White will take charge of burning the effigy and leave the rest to me." Sue White, a bright mischievous chairman from Tennessee, gave me a peep at the effigy, which was nothing more than a small cartoon of the President, making some unkept promise as usual. Then the word to start was given. I stepped out and I instantly felt as placid and calm as if I were going out to play croquet on a summer afternoon. I crossed the trolley and turned down Pennsydvania Avenue. The crowd was dense, but I felt the middle of the Avenue was the only place for this demonstration, and I headed right at the crowd. They fell back on each side and it was fine, I can assure you. I lifted my head high and my flag higher, and looked about. I even began to think, which reassured me, for at first it seemed as if my brain just would not function. I saw a fine of policemen so long that in the perspective it made them appear small. Also there were many of the military police, but they remained at a distance. My attention was attracted by something bright shining upon the pavement and I observed rows upon rows of fire-extinguishers. Those fire-extinguishers, to my astonishment, saved the day for me! What could they be there for, what part were they going to play in the demonstration ? Was this to be a game between the bluecoats and the petticoats? I was so interested, I almost forgot my part. It was Lucy Burns who "put me on the game" again: "Here we are, Mrs. Havemeyer ! Now your speech," she said. I stopped suddenly. I planted my feet firmly, held up my flag, and very deliberately repeated our message to the President and people, THK PRISON SPECIAL while a great round, red-faced police captain with the brightest of gold braid and buttons stared at me, without opening his mouth. It was a jolly, good-natured captain of the administration who remained my faithful "serviteur" and well-wisher as long as he lived—poor fellow, he died the following year. The game began. I withdrew to the railing to protect my flag and await developments. An urn about as big as a twelve-inch flower-pot was produced and placed upon the ground, and dragged their resisting leaders across Pennsylvania Avenue to the curb, when quickly another row began and my attention was drawn to the curb. The military captain was taking a hand in the game, and in our favor, too. He tackled " old Flathers," the chief of police, and let him know jolly well he had fumbled. His patrol, the military patrol! It was not, there to be used by Flathers to take women to jail. Let him get his own patrol-wagon, he said. It was not his job to The arrest of suffragists. Thirty-nine of us were arrested that afternoon and taken to the station-house.—Page 666. and a fire started in it; then the bluecoats rushed upon it, but the petticoats were too much for them. The fire brindled and kindled and crackled as if Logi the fire-god himself were on our side. The blue-coats became rough and the extinguishers were called into service, and played not only upon the fire but upon the women. I saw Sue White at the urn—the flames flashed. She gave me a nod; I knew the deed was done. The bluecoats were grabbing at everything in sight, hoping, I presume, to salvage the effigy, but what could you expect with those active little fire-extinguishers shooting in all directions, and so many brass buttons, so many yards of gold braid to be protected ! The insignia, the great insignia, all that was left of manhood and the dignity of their rank, was to be guarded; and, not getting the effigy, they grabbed at the women arrest women, nor his men's either, and he wouldn't do it. And, bowing politely to the ladies, he helped them out of the patrol-wagon. The women remained long enough to give him a salvo of applause, and then in a brilliant dash were back at the game in an instant. Lucy Burns came to where I stood watching it all and said: "Now, Mrs. Havemeyer, I think it is time for you. Will vou take this bundle and strike a match to it?" "Of course I will," I said. "Shallthrow it on the urn?" "Yes," she answered. "You can push those bits of lighted wood up with your foot, too." I tried to light the match; it broke, and Flathers caught sight of me. In an instant he was by our side. "Please, Miss Burns," he pleaded, "don't let her THE PRISON SPECIAL do it! You know we don't want to take her. Please don't. . . ." "Go on, Mrs. Havemeyer," said Lucy Burns, absolutely ignoring Flathers. " Don't pay any attention to him. Here, take this," for another bundle appeared a human being.—Page 070 . from nowhere and another, an endless, .ever-ready supply coming to us as if by magic. Poor old Flathers! He almost wrung his hands, and implored Lucy Burns to call me off, but I, knowing I had to qualify for speaker for the Prison Special, kept on throwing bundle after bundle toward the urn. I whispered to Lucy Burns: " I believe I will have to kick him, to keep in the game." Then Flathers said with a groan: " Well, if you will have it, here, take her," and he laid his hand upon my shoulder and I was led to his Tho District of Columbia Workhouse in which the suffragist plot began to were imprisoned. thicken and we began to They put US in a jail discarded ten years before as unfit to 1 old scare the authorities by our patrol-wagon, which by this time had come up from the station and was full of prisoners. Thirty-nine of us were arrested that afternoon and taken to the station-house. How can I describe all that happened in the next two or three days! As soon as we entered the station-house, one of .our members, an athletic young woman, took "French leave." Her excuse to us was she was "needed at headquarters." Political prisoners we never failed to consider ourselves, although subjected to infamous treatment as common criminals. As we waited in the entrance-hall of the police station the captain disappeared, and one of our party followed him up and reported he was talking with the White House. Of course, only Tumulty was there, as the President was in Paris. A woman reported she had heard Flathers reply to a question over the phone, presumably from the White House. "Oh, indeed, sir, it is hard to tell, but a great many. They won't stand still long enough for us to count them. I guess there are a hundred." The police wanted instructions. Thenumber. What should, would, or could they do with us? Thirty-nine women! The greater part having had experience and knowing and intending to exact their rights as to lodging and food. It was Sunday, every place was tilled, and the house of detention was overflowing with the Saturday's crowd. The country was pretty well aroused at the treatment and the abuse of their women at Occoquan, and the great club of publicity was in our hands and we were only waiting for an opportunity to brandish it. After an hour or two of consultations A huge room, long and high, with dirty, impenetrable windows .. . a steel box like another black Maria, with stairs at one end leading to many rows of galleries giving entrance to the cells.—Page 070. by telephone and parleys, during which time the officers would come in to look at us and endeavor to identify us, so as to be able to make a charge in court against us the next morning, Captain Flathers finally announced to us that we were to occupy the police dormitory on the second floor of the station-house and that it would soon be ready for us. "And," he added, "ladies, I want you to come and see the beds made yourselves. Don't say they are not clean. I will hold my flashlight on them while you look." "Very well, captain, but how about our supper?" asked Lucy Burns. "Oh, we don't feed you," he said despairingly. "Oh, yes, you do," answered Lucy Burns; "milk and sandwiches to-night and poached eggs and coffee for breakfast." The captain capitulated and sent for milk and sandwiches. After the inspection of the beds one member said facetiously to Captain Flathers: "Yo u make us so comfortable, captain, I think we will want to spend thirty days with you." He clapped his hands to his head and fled without a word. After supper, reinforced by good things from the kitchen at headquarters—for Alice Paul was too good a general not to look after the welfare of her fighting forces (and here let me say that the hilarity and the simple jokes and remarks were in reality proof of the strain we were under, for prison and a hunger strike are still formidable to the oldest and most hardened campaigner)—we were taken to our quarters by the matron who was detailed to guard us, a suffragist herself, with nine children. It was not bad at all—beds and lockers, that was all, and a clean—fairly clean—lavatory just outside. I was given the choice of beds. I could close my eyes and choose, as there was no choice. They all seemed to think I should mind it, but they didn't know how tired I was. "If I had about twenty more feathers in my pillow I should sleep like a farmer all night," I said. "Oh, Mrs. Ha\remeyer, take my pillow. I never use one," and a dear little slip of a factory worker passed hers over to me. Two years later, when I was speaking in Pennsylvania, she timidly came up to me and asked me if I remembered her. As if I could ever forget her, the dear child fighting for woman's freedom ! The windows were flung wide open; the matron turned out the lights, and I had not time enough to connect up my thoughts from Fifth Avenue to jail before I fell asleep. "Ladies ! Arise !" It was the voice of 667 66S THE PRISON SPECIAL the matron, and some one called out sleepily: "Is it seven o'clock already? Oh, dear!" I was soon dressed, for I knew I would have first call on the lavatory, and it would take a long time to do thirty-nine "hack hairs." When ready I sat down upon the steps, wishing the poached eggs and coffee would soon come. I noticed a I think, before I proceed to tell you what happened to us, that I should state that the Court of Appeals, the highest court in the District of Columbia, decided: "That we had a constitutional right to picket and that it was illegal to arrest us, illegal to take us to jail, illegal to sentence us, and illegal to imprison us." We, of course, brought large damage suits, but in quick succession two commissioners, the Arrival of the Prison Special in Charleston, South Carolina, 1910. row of chairs had been piled up to bar the entrance to our dormitory and a huge sign had been placed on them. I looked at it. Some wag, I suppose, had put it there. It read: "No man's land ! Keep off!" One tardy officer tore up the stairs to get at his locker. He looked at me as I pointed to the sign, threw up his arms, and fled. We were soon in the jail attached to the court-house, and from the moment we entered the doors our hunger strike began. We were quite sure we should receive short sentences, for public opinion had to be respected—days only, not weeks nor months—such as hundreds of others of our party had received during the past year. chief of police, Captain Flathers, and Zinckham, the warden of the jail—he who could not remember who planned the night of terror, although admitting that some one did—died or had been removed. A higher court was to settle our wrongs and we dropped this case, as we could gain nothing, and it would be an expense to carry it on. The administration must assume the responsibility of these unlawful acts committed in the very heart of our capital, the city dedicated to law and justice. To return to the jail, we were none of us hungry. We were crowded into a small, ill-ventilated room already well filled with negro women, the culls of a night in the slums, with one or two inTHE PRISON SPECIAL 669 teresting cases which the ladies began investigating, hoping for future reforms. There we waited until two o'clock, when Mrs. Lawrence Lewis came in from headquarters, telling us there wasn't a chance of the amendment going through, although, she added with professional enthusiasm, "the new senator from South Carolina had spoken for us as if he had been rocked in a suffrage cradle." We I stood quietly and answered his questions only by a movement of my head and received my sentence. As I passed out I felt some one catch hold of my coat and pronounce my name. I turned; it was Captain Flathers. "Mrs. Havemeyer," he said; "remember if ever you want a friend, send for Captain Flathers!" There was a laugh, I thanked him, and joined the group outside. As the The Prison Special arriving at Chicago, had expected this and knew the judge was only waiting for news from the capitol to send for us. We were called into court one by one and sentenced to "five dollars fine, or five days in jail." Of course, no one thought of paying the fine. When it came to my turn, a young patrolman took off his cap and answered the judge, who asked what the charge was, "She struck a match," looking toward me. Even the judge had to smile, and those in court told me that he said, after I left the courtroom, that he was in sympathy with us and thought we should have suffrage. I always said afterward in my speeches that I supposed, if the match I struck had lighted, I should have received a life sentence. door opened to let me in with the other prisoners, a red-haired man exclaimed hotly: "I wouldn't blame you women if you blew up the capitol! " "You are from Jersey?" I asked. "How did you know?" he questioned. "Oh," I answered, thinking of my experience at the referendum; "there are men and men in New Jersey. You are one of the men." The next step was to file out into the prison van—the black Maria—a huge tin box on its side with slits—just a few on top for gasping air only—and narrow seats that you slipped off of. We did not, for they crowded us in so tightly thai there was one row on the seat and another THE PRISON SPECIAL row on that row's knees. Perhaps that was a good precaution, for when we started we went lickety-slip, bouncing around corners, bumping into the curb, almost tipping over; we should have been black and blue—if not injured—if we had had room to move. It was a long ride, but we finally stopped and some one who had been in prison before said: "Oh, I hope they let us out here! I don't think they would dare to put us in that old jail where we were so ill last summer." But they did—that is just what the authorities did. They put us in a jail discarded ten years before as unfit to hold a human being, and when they knew that several of our members had almost lost their lives there from poisonous gases on a former occasion. Let those who are responsible for it read these lines, and may posterity judge them as they deserve ! After a few minutes' wait we started on again, and the black Maria was backed up to the door of that pestilential jail. I entered with the other prisoners, and as the great double doors rolled with a rusty, clanking sound and closed behind me, there came over me a feeling which made me plant my feet together and stiffen up as if it were not I but the reincarnation of those heroic women who could rise to sublime heights of sacrifice and daring. I would have dared anything. My very heart stood still for an instant, and then bounded beneath my ribs and crackled as the sparks of indignation snapped within. Where was my Uncle Sam? Where was the liberty my fathers fought for? Where the democracy our boys were fighting for? I understood what nerved the hand of Judith, what enabled Jael calmly to drive a nail through Sisera's wretched head, or the courage of Corday to spill the blood of the cruel French tyrant. I was fairly lost in admiration of the possibilities that I knew were within me. I felt I must "come back," and I softly said to myself: "And our flag flies over every building in this great city ! A flag a woman made! Is it possible that only men shall be allowed to wave it? " Some one spoke to me and I was glad, for my very soul was out of joint. " Mrs. Havemeyer, you must choose 'your suite.' Come this way. Here are the stairs to the first floor." I looked about and saw a huge room, long and high, with immense dirty, impenetrable windows. From end to end, from floor to roof, was a steel box like another black Maria, with stairs at one end leading to many rows of galleries giving entrance to the cells which were back to back, one sheet of steel serving for walls to both rows, to divide them. The cells had running water, a disgusting closet, an iron support for a straw bed, one chair, and no light. I tried to collect myself and fall in with my companions' cheerful mood. "I won't take the ground floor," I said; "it is too damp and cold, and those great doors might slip and close us all in. Those cells are for 'solitaries' and work automatically. Let me go up one flight," and I chose No. 7 on the first tier. The numbers were the only distinguishing difference. An Irishman might say: "As there was nothing to settle, we had soon done it." As no other prisoner was bad enough for the administration to put there, that entire jail was to be ours. The warden, with a greasy, moth-eaten coat and a head to match it, had said that we were to be quite alone there—and he would not lock the cells—as a great concession! The truth was that there was no room for us in the other jail and they put us in this one, and probably not a cell door would lock if he had tried to lock them. The floor of the jail was many feet below ground level, and the cells were only about half the width of the building. This left a long, damp, dark space on each side where there was a long table with benches. Your feet would become so cold it was impossible to sit there long, and as there was no question of touching the bread or the tins of soup that were placed upon the table, we huddled about the cells, trying to make the best of it. Although some good voices sang quartets, it was a dreary outlook. Two miserable little gas-jets flickered up from below, and the windows were black, as night set in. In describing it later for the benefit of the Prison Special, I always said: "Everything escaped but the prisoners." The gas vapors from the sewers escaped; the fumes from the furnace escaped; the THF. PRISON SPECIAL 671 water escaped; and the gas escaped. The guards paced up and down, opening the great door as some prisoners came in, to throw another bucket of coal on a fire that might have been composed of atoms. Still the bucketful was enough to set us all coughing, and I had a suspicion that that was what it was done for. I was glad to cover the dirty straw of my bed with a sheet and lie down, and democracy abroad like a belated edition of an evening paper, and giving it to any little nation that would stand still long enough to receive it. Even those pretty, languorous, long-eyed Hejazians had it. Any "cutie" on the other side of the Atlantic could have it, but it was denied the stout-hearted American women whose self-sacrificing mobilization for the great cause was the admiration of all and Senator Harding listened attentively while Mrs. Havemeyer made her appeal for a solid Republican vote in Tennessee. as a dear member came in to say " Goodnight" she slipped a real little pillow she had smuggled in, under my head, and I was alone in a prison and in a cell, and for what? Because I demanded for my sisters in America the democracy our boys—yes, our boys, for many of our members had husbands and sons in the trenches—were fighting for. "Fighting to make the world safe for democracy," said our President. Whose democracy? And who got it ? The enemy, of course ! Many German women were actually sitting in legislative bodies, and every nation in Europe had suffrage but Spain and France. The women of America were to languish in a dirty, discarded prison, because they dared to ask for their democracy-, while our President was hawking one of the wonders of the war. I thought of my work for the hospitals, of the thousands and thousands of pounds of jam and other contributions to be sent abroad; of my work for the Liberty Loan, for food conservation, for the land army; of my taking my pictures down from my walls and sending them to the Metropolitan Museum so they might have a Courbet Centennial Exhibition as requested by the French Government; and I almost laughed as I said aloud: "And here I am, lying on an armful of dirty straw." "Are you all right, Mrs. Havemeyer?" called out my neighbor in the adjoining cell. "Yes, line," I called back. "But isn't it too funny ? " 672 THE PRISON SPECIAL If you intend doing anything out of in the headlines on the front page, and I the ordinary, you better take a look at do admit it was hard for my children to the " family tree" first. If you have not read in the morning papers that their any family tree, why, go ahead; but if you little mother was in prison. But those have one'of those wide-spreading, inter- telegrams, oh, those telegrams! From locking branching affairs with shallow, them I gleaned I had stripped the family "Not on your life, captain," I exclaimed. "We are not going to be photographed like that. They might think you were arresting me. We will be taken shaking hands."—Pages 675-6. wabbly roots, look out; it may give you a lot of trouble. Mine gave me trouble. The next morning telegrams began to arrive. I blushed as I read them, for I knew that Zinkham, the greasy warden of the prison, must have read them too, or he would never let me get them. Telegrams from everywhere and every one. I suppose the Woman's Party, with professional instinct, had done the publicity feature of the demonstration in New York. I was tree, I had broken its branches, I had torn up its roots and laid it prostrate in the sorrowing dust. What had the whole treeful of innocents ever done thatshould treat them thus? Did I realize I had lost my citizenship? That telegram forgot that citizenship (real citizenship) was what I was fighting for—and theirs as well as riiine! Did I know I could never sign a legal check again? I didn't and I haven't learned it since. Did I THE PRISON SPECIAL know I could never, never escape being on an oyster-shell in society? Sacred Mammon ! the curse was crushing ! But there were other telegrams which did hurt—tore at my heart and made me decide to return home at once. Also there were comforting telegrams: Was I safe? Could they do anything for me? Don't mind us, although we are heart-broken, if you think you should stay. And my little grandson went sobbing to bed because his grandma was in prison, and he loved her so because she was "a real sport." That gave me great pleasure. Then another about my sister: "Aunty is very ill, if you could only come to her," etc., etc. Alice Paul was perfectly satisfied that I should pay for the remaining days and leave. I had done the trick and was qualified for the Prison Special. I promised, if I could prop up the family tree and put a little life into it, I should be ready to go the following Sunday, and then I returned to New York. I remember I was very anxious to be off, and waited and waited for a taxi. When the great door was rolled open for me, I found outside a miserable little taxi and as miserable a chauffeur, a small colored boy. I was quite cross and roundly took him to task for being so long in answering my call. He began to excuse himself and he stuttered badly: "You see, ma'm," he said; "I-I drove up a-a-and d-d-down, but-but I c-c-couldna find your hotel!" I followed his glance, for I had not seen the outside of my "hotel" myself. It took but a minute to see where they incarcerated American women—that ugly red-brick pile. I jumped into the taxi and made for home as quickly as possible. When I arrived, as my chauffeur took my grip and led me to the car, I saw my daughter and my little grandson had come to meet me. I also noticed that instead of standing by the door and waving to me as usual, the little fellow was peeping from the farthest window at me as if he feared I might look different or be changed in some dreadful way. I took care to be quite "as usual," and made no reference at all to prison and he was soon on my knee and we were chatting merrily together. I went at once to my sister, who was really ill, and as she held me in VOL. LXXI.—43 her trembling arms, as if I had come back from the grave, I cursed our Congress and the administration, and the family tree, and my mind made a dash to think of some reassuring words. From the chaos of my brain cells I drew forth the following: "But sister mine, don't you know John Bunyan went to prison?" That broke the ice, and I tried to explain why I went into the demonstration. I walked all about that prodigiously important family tree, and I didn't touch a twig nor a leaf, nor harm it by any remark, and my sister even laughed when I told her about the darky chauffeur who "couldn't find my hotel." After having been welcomed back to the "main" part of the family, naturally there were just a few who thought I could cast a prison shadow still which might darken their escutcheon. I returned to my home and my own fireside, feeling a greater sense of fatigue than I had known, even in my hard campaigning days. I was glad to be alone and think it over in the comfortable glow of the fire. But I fear my brain was restless, and suddenly I thought of John Bunyan. "Certainly," said I; "John Bunyan went to prison and what a good thing it was he did ! Without it we should never have had that good man's manual and the bad man's guide, 'The Pilgrim's Progress.'" At least, there is one instance where prison helped the things of this world. " How about others ? " I queried to myself. Galileo seemed to rise from the fire and passed before my mental vision. "Ah, there's another," I said, "who feared not prison, who was willing, like the genial old soul he was, to let his knees crack as he recanted old theories, determining all the time that the world should move on, and the pendulum should swing. Bravo, old Galileo, the world is much the better for you and your prison experience. Who next, I wonder?" I gave the logs a sharp rap, and who appeared but Martin Luther himself, his great books under his arm, his inkstand in his hand. "Oho," said I; "the Samson of the Middle Ages. He who feared neither Pope nor devil. If all Protestant people from his day to this can take their prayer-books in their hands and worship God as they see fit, without regard to creed or THE PRISON SPECIAL sect, they owe it to Martin Luther, the man who cared naught for prison nor all its bars." "But these are men," thought I. "Is there no woman who was not afraid of prison to help her cause ? " I glanced at the flames. They leaped up brightly, crackling as they broke and burned. I saw a figure rising from them, a figure sitting firmly upon her horse, holding aloft her blue banner, and her dark hair framing her innocent peasant face. "La Pucelle, Joan ! Joan of Arc !" I exclaimed. "You are indeed she, the brave girl who feared not prison, the leader of armies in the mighty assaults and attacks that level all obstacles and make you victorious over your foes; the tender woman nurse, as darkness finds you on the still bleeding battle-field; the woman of her banner and of her vision ! Ah, she knew no fear of prison! She knew her cause only. You, dear child, who could cry when spoken to harshly b}^ rough soldiers, you could draw your sword and refuse to sheath it until you had crowned your King and France was free! To-day, in this great war, it is not to their kings nor to their generals that the French soldiers cry. 'Joan of Arc, we're calling for you,' they sing as they move into the trenches, or go over the top. Their woman, their guardian, their saint. Oh, Joan ! Dear little martyr, the world to-day is better, much better and nobler, because there was a peasant girl in Domremy who was not afraid of prison." The next week with only the qualified consent of the "family tree," which by this time had stiffened up a little from its storm-and-stress experiences, I again took my grip and started for Washington. I had just time to board the Prison Special, which was about to start for its transcontinental trip. The car accommodated twenty-nine and there were twenty-nine of us on board. (The judge, after sentencing twenty-nine, asked how many more remained, and when told the number dismissed the cases. It was all in the day's work. He was tired and was it possible justice had given out?) Each one was assigned a specific duty to perform; for the organization, of that trip—the planning of our schedule, the custodianship of the car, the arrangements for each day—was a little masterpiece, and as far as I know, there was not a hitch from start to finish. Mrs. Helen Hill Weed made our schedule, and she showed how admirably she could do it. As I used to say in my speeches: "Here are the militants, and nothing broken. We haven't even broken down. But we have broken the record, for General Sherman on his great march marched only to one sea. We have marched to both seas and everywhere, like him, we have conquered." The time-table was so perfectly arranged that my family could reach me at any hour by letter, telegraph, or telephone. The special was certainly a marvelous bit of publicity, and I don't wonder it attracted the admiration of old political campaigners, who told us we had accomplished with that Prison Special what they could not accomplish with all their millions. Imagine a gaily decked car with its busy crew—our press chairman dictating to her stenographers in one stateroom; the treasurer and banker combined clicking her coins taken from collections, etc., in another; the news committee selling Suffragists; the speakers for factories or designated parts of a city preparing their speeches or writing their reports. Oh, and the "home" was not forgotten. We could not forget that woman's place was in the home. We had a housekeeper, good Edith Ainge, a co-campaigner with me in the lost referendum days in New York in 1915. She shared my stateroom. Administering hot-water bags, pills of all dimensions, headache powders, bandages, and simple remedies of all sorts, it was her mission also to call us down on neatness and order. She was a marvel at dress-hooking, a good hairpin contributor and custodian of lost articles. She was also the presiding judge of fair play when we had but one room in a hotel, and that for a few hours only, and there were applicants for twenty-nine baths with one tub, and twenty-nine naps with one bed; we could afford no more. I can see her smoothing up pillows and tidying up the bath. Lucky for her, we were all too busy to quarrel and no matter what "private opinion" might be, there was very little or none of it expressed aloud. THE PRISON SPECIAL 675 Our "stops" were a clever bit of political strategy, planned in headquarters. We threw out anchor in any State where senators or representatives could be won, or where it was necessary to win over constituents to instruct their senators or representatives in Washington. I won't tire you with too many details. I was to speak whenever Lucy Burns told me to speak and I did. I was usually placed on the programme as the first speaker, probably, as I told my audience, on account of my size—I would make a difficult target in case our audience were disposed to be hostile. You must remember we were in the enemy's country—in the South—and our itinerary carried us directly to South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, etc., and on to San Francisco, returning by Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and disbanding in New York City. I can honestly say I never experienced any trouble of any kind—no catcalls nor hisses; my audiences were invariably quiet and respectful, interested, and often enthusiastic. Chattanooga, under the very shadow of Lookout Mountain, where the great Battle in the Clouds was fought in the Civil War, was I think the least sympathetic of all the places we visited. We heard there " might be trouble," but if true it missed fire. We marched into a hall not packed but well filled, and as usual I had to speak first. I began by noticing that the hall was not packed, but I said I thought there were as many present as there were when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and I hoped they would sign ours, etc. They seemed to like the idea—they warmed up to us and to our cause. Of the sentiment in that State against us you may form some idea when I tell you that at the large luncheon arranged for us I sat by the leading and one of the wealthiest ladies in the city. Asked to contribute, she told me under her breath she would give us five dollars, but that her husband would turn her out of the house if he heard of it! Don't you think she needed the vote ? While we were on our trip the deplorable Boston Common affair occurred— an affair which awakened the indignation of the country. I must briefly relate the circumstances, in order that you may understand the little incident which happened to me in Michigan. Alice Paul desired to have the women make a protest to the President upon his hurried visit to America in IQIQ . The President for some reason decided to land in Boston. Therefore, a delegation of Boston women, carrying banners which as usual had his words inscribed upon them, lined up in front of the State House, where he was to make his speech. For a long time they were allowed to stand there. Then suddenly they were told to leave. Knowing they were well within their Constitutional rights, they refused to move. The police fairly fell upon them, handling them brutally. They were thrown into jail and later thrown out again, some even without their clothing, which was flung out after them upon the street. Never, since the days of witchcraft, did any incident to women cause so much feeling, and no doubt the sympathy it gained for our cause led to Massachusetts being one of the first States to ratify the suffrage amendment. When I spoke in Boston a short time after this disgraceful scene, one of the ladies who took part in it sat in the theatre where I spoke and I could see how badly she had been hurt. Her eyes had been blackened, her forehead had been jammed and scraped, and she had an ugly bruise upon her cheek. As for publicity, it had aroused the country, possibly as much as the Prison Special itself. After that the sentiment among the police force, wherever one went, seemed to be strongly in our favor. When we reached Detroit the traffic force asked permission to be our escort during our sojourn in the city. As I stepped out of the car in the Detroit station, I was told that the captain of the traffic police was there and would like to meet me. The welcoming committee begged me to make an exception and for the sake of publicity to be photographed. "Just this once, Mrs. Havemeyer," they pleaded, "and do be photographed with the captain. It will make such a good cut for the papers." I consented, and the captain stood straight and severe beside me. As I looked at him a thought flashed through my mind and I saw a way to help publicity. "Not on your life, COUNTRY-BRED Captain," I exclaimed. "We are not going to be photographed like that. They might think you were arresting me. We will be taken shaking hands." We shook hands, and of course the photographer snapped us in while we were still laughing. The cut was in all the papers, and I received a great salvo of applause when I told of the incident in Carnegie Hall, for in New York also the police had handled the women brutally and shown themselves to be little better than, thugs disgracing their uniform. Miss Paul had prepared the way for us, and everywhere we were received by the mayor or his representative who, whether a svmpathizer or not, recognized better than our President did the futility of opposing us and the great voting force which wras gathering impetus every day. From our opening night in Charleston, South Carolina, when the opera-house wras packed from floor to dome, and the overflow blocked traffic at two street corners, and the committee beckoned to me to leave the stage in order to go out and address them, to our great final mass-meeting in Carnegie Hall, we had immense audiences who evinced for us large sympathy and keen interest. In New Orleans, the very heart of the anti feeling, the mayor had ordered a platform built in the city park and from two in the afternoon until six o'clock we held a crowd so dense and packed that as I rose to address them it seemed to me it was a mass of heads as solid as the ground beneath me. After an hour the crowd grew beyond the possibility of hearing us, and again, as in Charleston, we went from the main platform to speak to the newly formed crowds in other parts of the park. The crowds did not disperse until we had to desert the platform and go prepare for the "big dinner" and the evening meeting. Twenty-nine days were consumed in the trip, and we pulled into the terminal in New York City having acquired nation-wide publicity, having won many friends—sometimes as many as a hundred telegrams would be paid for and handed to us to be sent to a senator or representative or to the President in Paris, to ask him to work for the amendment. I think I may truly add we accomplished our task without an unpleasant incident. The typewriters were still clicking, and the coins still chinking, and the busy workers were "finishing up," as I hurriedly left the car to go speak at Carnegie Hall.
Country-Bred BY WILLIAM HERVEY WOODS HIGH in the canon walls men call the street, He reigns in sleek seclusion, potentate O'er half the earth, cocooned in gilded state And silken ease that once a monarch's suite Alone endowed; and at his bidding meet Trade's commandeerers, on whose bluff debate Not only marts, but kings and councils wait To know if hungry nations yet may eat. But now he sits, head bent and eyes a-dream, A lonely man there in his lofty room, And wonders if along the old home hill Dogwood's in snow, and o'er the purring stream A haunted wind breathes of the wdld-grape bloom While all the dusk mourns with the whip-poor-will.
A New Power in University Affairs BY WILFRED SHAW General Secretary the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan UR American universities are changing these days; changing so rapidly that we have hardly had time as yet to realize just what is taking place. Not only have they doubled—even tripled—in size, almost overnight, as we reckon historical periods, but they have appropriated, as coming within their proper field, almost every phase of knowledge necessary to our complicated up-to-date civilization. In a general way, of course, we have been aware of this development, but we have been slow, not to say reluctant, to acknowledge the new points of view it has set for us. Nor do we recognize just how and why these changes have come about. That little group of older colleges on our eastern seaboard, the direct heirs of the traditions and curricula of the mediaeval universities of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, have so fixed their traditions upon our conception of university life that we find it very difficult to see how different things really are nowadays. Yet it will not be hard to prove that our modern universities are farther from the little institutions our grandfathers knew than they in their turn were from the porticos where Abelard taught in Paris. This implies, of course, many new and puzzling elements in our whole scheme of higher education. Some of them, such as the expansion of the general field of knowledge, the growth of popular education, coeducation, the interrelation of the university and our national life, and the ever-present necessity for increasing resources, are well recognized. But other factors, such as the developing organization of undergraduate life, " student activities," the unavoidable complications of university administration, and, above all, the influences which have underwritten, so to speak, these developments, are not so generally apparent. It all means that we are still in an era of transition, with all the maladjustments of such a period aggravating the difficulties facing the university executive. It is the aim of this article to discuss one of these factors, a new element everywhere at work in our university system, but one that nowhere has been recognized for the force it really is. First of all, however, it may prove profitable to suggest, very briefly, some of the changes of the last few decades in which this new element already has had its profound influence. In the first place the average college man nowadays finds Iris field immeasurably broader than did his grandfather— or even his father. We do not include the college woman because she herself is one of the evidences of the new dispensation. The classics, mathematics, rhetoric, philosophy, and a modicum of specialized theology satisfied our forebears. Science as we now regard it never bothered them. A few lectures upon ''natural philosophy," botany, zoology, and geology might be heard in the more progressive institutions, but laboratories, experimental apparatus, applied mathematics, and physical and chemical formulas were almost unknown. Modern languages were in disfavor, and historical studies were confined to the Greek and Roman world. Of the thousand and one subjects that fill a modern university catalogue this was all that came within their ken. Still they were satisfied that they knew what education was, and, moreover, they were able to make sure, apparently, that the educational bolus was really swallowed and digested. We of to-day cannot be so certain in these matters. It is also significant of this new era that our university students are increasing at a rate, proportionally, far in excess of the 677 A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS growth of our population. This is in harmony with what Doctor James B. Angell, so long the dean of American college executives, used to call our "American passion for education." This was, with him, no flimsy theory; for even in 1871 , when he came to the University of Michigan, one person out of every two thousand three hundred inhabitants of the State was a student at the State university. Now, after a lapse of fifty years, and in spite of an enormous increase in population, the proportion has almost quadrupled, one in six hundred and thirty-six. This record, of course, is far from unique, it is only one specific example of the extraordinary increase in the enrolment in our universities, which runs, in the larger institutions, from five to twenty thousand students. Some wdll doubt whether it is a "passion for education" that is inspiring these student throngs; it may be merely training, or perhaps social advantage—just because it is "the thing to do"—that is the impelling force. But whatever their aim, their very presence is an inspiring justification of our credo of popular education and a challenge to our ability to prepare them adequately for life in our complicated modern civilization. This profound change in the educational bill of fare, and the eagerness of young America for the feasts spread in the halls of learning, which we may at least infer from our ever-mounting attendance figures, suggests inevitably another element in the situation. This is the extraordinary physical growth of our universities which has answered these new conditions. It implies, necessarily, an enormous increase in their actual and potential resources. How have our educational institutions managed to keep up, even measurably, as they have, with the demand for the new libraries, laboratories, recitation halls, and dormitories necessitated by our all-inclusive educational programme ? And, even more, how have they done it, when the students demanding these facilities have been increasing at such a constantly accelerating ratio ? The answer is rather obvious—through the support of their former students. Gifts, of course, have come from other sources, particularly in the case of the endowed institutions; but, either directly or indirectly, it is from the graduates for the most part that the money is coming. With the state universities this support, at present, may be less evident; but it will be forthcoming to-morrow. Meanwhile, their alumni are active in securing the legislative appropriations that support the institutions, appropriations which, if capitalized, would in many cases far surpass the resources of even the wealthiest of the endowed universities. This means that the alumni are now a part of the university body. Not so many y^ears ago, when we used this phrase, we implied the trustees, and possibly the faculty, in a rather close and self-satisfied corporation. Sometimes a very literal interpretation included the students as a third element in the academic fellowship; though their position was ill-defined and uncertain. But of late years, the alumni are insisting, and insisting effectively, that they, too, are a part of the university. Not content with words, for such a statement of his relationship to his alma mater probably would not occur to the average graduate, they are acting, and acting so effectively, and with such ample cash reserves, that their new status cannot be denied them. However, we may feel about it, the alumni are in university affairs as they have never been before—and they are there to stay. II THE great drives which have been made for funds to support many of our leading colleges and universities furnish a concrete illustration of the power that lies to-day within our great bodies of college graduates. At a meeting of alumni officers in American universities, held at Cornell University, May, 1921, an effort was made to ascertain roughly the total amount of gifts made since the close of the war to American universities through alumni efforts. As far as was ascertainable from those present the total was something over one hundred million dollars. It should be understood that this sum did not represent by any means all the colleges and universities in the country, nor were individual gifts, whether from friends or from alumni, included. It A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS involved only the actual cash result from general alumni "drives." It might be added, too, that before some of these efforts are completed the total will probably reach fifty million dollars more.* Here we have a result of alumni support expressed in its simplest and most tangible terms. But what are we to say of the intangible element which is a corollary of this effort—the personal interest and intelligent support of the graduates, as individuals, which this vast sum represents ? One of our leaders in the university world—he was a college president—was once asked what he thought of a proposed effort toward the organization of the alumni of his institution. "What is the good of it?" he replied; "besides I have all I can do to manage the faculty and students." This was formerly the usual attitude. Even now there are those— especially within our universities—who still profess to believe that the less the alumni have to do with the institution that fostered them, except to furnish funds for an occasional building, sit on the bleachers at the big games or gather once a year to sentimentalize at commencement, the better all around. We are fast coming to see things differently, however, though here we are not concerned particularly with the correctness or falsity of this view. The truth is that it is a delightful example of what is usually called an "academic question." The alumni of our American universities, not only in the persons of occasional able and influential graduates in their councils, but as organized bodies, are beginning to know what they want, and are going after it systematically. Almost every university has had some taste of the power of this new element. Instances might be given where the alumni have risen in opposition to faculty or administrative policies, and have won their point. Sometimes the issue has arisen over a gift with certain conditions attached; sometimes it has been the maintenance of various "good old traditions"; while not infrequently student affairs, particularly athletic policies, form the basis for the argument. * Some of these facts were stated by the author in an address published in The Oberlin Alumni Magazine, July, r02i. It is fortunate that these divisions in our academic families are infrequent, comparatively; though every university man who understands anything about the problems of his alma mater must recognize that such struggles are possible at any time. They are, essentially, the logical complement of the support our universities are accepting from their graduates. With some sort of a financial interest, no matter how small, in the affairs of his institution, an increasing personal interest on the part of the graduate is not strange; rather it must be accepted as inevitable. In fact, it is not only welcomed, for the most part, but it is even stimulated, and it is coming to be exerted in places where it is not a question merely of financial support. Thus, for some time we have had alumni representation— sometimes exclusive representation—on boards of trustees, alumni committees of investigation, and separate alumni bodies, as well as the organization of the whole alumni body into associations, with subsidiary class organizations and local alumni clubs. In fact it is safe to say that there is no avenue open to alumni participation in university affairs that is not followed somewhere; but it is equally true that nowhere, at present, shall we find graduate support carried to its fullest logical development. It is a force that, as yet, is only finding itself. What it will become and what it will mean to our universities in the future, time only can tell. All we can say is that the alumni have already become active partners in the affairs of the universities, and they promise to be more active in the future. ILL IT is not too much to say that this relationship of the graduate to his alma mater is an expression of the two sides of the American genius—its idealism, sentiment, if you will, and its ability for organization. Were our whole educational system maintained by the State, as is the case in France and Germany, perhaps we, too, might have less of this enthusiastic and sympathetic support and co-operation. True, many of our largest and strongest universities are State institutions, but they came into the field at a comparative680 A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS ly recent date, and the essential relationship between graduate and university had already been established in the older endowed universities. For the graduate of a continental university, the word alumnus has little meaning. Practically no ties of sentiment bind him to his alma mater. It is the outstanding teacher, or course, that attracts the student, who passes easily from one university to another. In Germany, whatever university sentiment the graduate has is reserved for his "corps," the equivalent of our fraternities, or for the partly academic, partly convivial, verein which centres about the branch in which he is specializing. Even these slender ties are lacking for the French university man. Save as a citizen, he has no voice in the management of his university, nor does it ordinarily even seek to keep in touch with former students. In the English universities it is somewhat different; particularly at Oxford and Cambridge, where the different colleges, with their time-mellowed quadrangles and ripe traditions, form the basis for ties in some respects even stronger than we find in many American institutions. Yet with all his love for his alma mater, the English graduate finds few opportunities for its practical expression; though the convocations of the different colleges, composed of the faculties, fellows, Masters of Arts, and A.B. men who have retained their membership in the college, can exert certain legislative powers in college affairs. This, in effect, produces a limited body of loyal and interested graduates who prove their vital concern in many a well-attended session where warm debates are held upon college policies. An annual gathering is also held, which corresponds in many ways to our alumni reunions in American universities at commencement time. Certain of the English colleges also publish some sort of a journal, which appears annually or semiannually. Systematic organization of classes and local alumni clubs, however, or the solicitation of funds, for the most part is unknown. Our scheme of organization is more nearly paralleled in England by the former students of the great public schools, whose graduates, known as "old boys," meet annually for dinner, publish journals, and, in general, set great store by their status as old "Etonians" or old "Paulines." With the Scotch universities and with English municipal universities such as London, Manchester, and Liverpool, all of more recent organization, the case is somewhat different. There the alumni have a practical share in the control of the university. In the Scotch universities, which may be taken as representative, the graduate body, known as the "General Council," in addition to certain advisory functions has the prerogative of electing four representatives upon the governing body of the university, the lord chancellor of the university, and a member of Parliament. This last privilege results in the careful maintenance of lists of graduates. But here, again, the alumni organization goes little farther. There is none of the appeal for funds to which we are accustomed, and such things as a class reunion or a local alumni association are almost unknown. Few alumni journals are published, and as for the great gifts which the American alumnus lavishes upon his alma mater, it simply "isn't done." Not unnaturally, therefore, the first steps toward alumni organization in America were very modest. In fact, it is difficult to find any reference to alumni activities in any except the most recent of college histories. We know that the graduates of some of the older universities made their influence felt in various ways even before the Revolution, but conscious co-operation did not begin for many years. Probably the first effort that has survived was the system organization at Yale, where the class has always had a greater relative importance. Practically every Yale class has been organized with a secretary as executive officer since 1792, and the published records, the first of which appeared in 1821, now amount to over seven hundred volumes, not including small pamphlets and address lists. It was not until as late as 1854, however, that the Yale alumni began to organize local associations. The purpose of this organization, in its early days, was probably more or less social, simply an effort on the part of the members of the different classes to keep A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AEFAIRS track of one another, though doubtless there was also some effort on the part of individuals to keep in touch with university affairs. Similar organizations existed in a few other early American colleges, but nowhere, apparently, did this system grow as rapidly or as consistently as at Yale. Far more common was the usual form of organization we are familiar with to-day, the "societies of alumni" or "alumni associations," which gradually began to appear during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is interesting to trace the genesis of a sense of responsibility toward the institutions which gradually developed in these bodies. In only a few cases, apparently, was it a desire on the part of the graduates to have a voice in directing the policies of the college—it was before the day of universities. Ordinarily it was simply an effort to revive old ties. One of the very earliest of these associations was founded at Williams College in 1821, "that the influence and patronage of those it has educated may be united for its support, protection, and improvement." That there was some conception of a constructive relationship between the college and the graduates may be gathered from a statement as to the purpose of the proposed organization in the formal summons for the meeting called "at the request of a number of gentlemen educated at the institution who are desirous that the true state of the college be known to the alumni." When we turn to the South we find that the society of alumni organized at the University of Virginia in 1838 was less specific and possibly more convivial in its aims, for the committee was instructed " to notify the alumni to form a permanent society to offer to graduates an inducement to revisit the seat of their youthful studies and to give new life to disinterested friendships founded in student days." We may take this as the beginning. Other organizations slowly followed. An alumni association was organized at Princeton in 1826; Harvard's came in 1840; those at Amherst and Brown in 1842. Columbia did not follow until 1854. In the Middle West the colleges of western Pennsylvania and Ohio were the first to develop, and in some of them at least, alumni organization followed closely upon their establishment. Thus there was an alumni organization as early as 1832 at Miami and in 1839 came associations at Oberlin and Denison. The State universities naturally came later, though Michigan organized an alumni association as early as i860—only sixteen years after the first class was graduated. An Alumnorum Catalogus, however, with the names given in the Latin form as far as possible, had been published for some years. The value of the movement was quickly appreciated elsewhere, and in the case of practically every institution founded within the last fifty years the alumni organization has followed quickly upon the graduation of the first class. It is, therefore, fair to conclude that by the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century the essential features of our present system of alumni organization were well established throughout the country, though even then there was little to suggest the extraordinary momentum this movement has acquired more recently. IV OCCASIONAL graduates of outstanding personal, or financial, ability had a certain share undoubtedly in the very early growth of some of our universities. Owing to the fact that practically all of the Eastern institutions were privately endowed, and their alumni older and more influential, it was only natural that with them graduate opinion became really effective at a much earlier period than elsewhere. Their first constructive effort in many cases was to insure to the graduates a share in the determination of university policies. After a long struggle Harvard's alumni were successful, in 1865, in securing the privilege of electing the members of the board of overseers; at Princeton, however, the alumni were not represented on the board of trustees until 1900. At Oberlin, as far back as 1870, three alumni sat with the board of trustees, and in 1879 a provision became effective for the election of one-fourth of the trustees by the alumni. These efforts were duplicated at Cornell, Dartmouth, 682 A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS and many other of the endowed institutions. With the State universities, the problem of alumni participation in university policies is more difficult. Ordinarily in these institutions the graduates may exert only an advisory and indirect influence, though on occasion it can .be remarkably effective. As a matter of fact, particularly among the older institutions, a quasi-representation of alumni interests is secured through the fact that a good proportion, sometimes a majority, of the trustees or regents are former students. While the possibilities of support by individual graduates were fairly well recognized in some universities many years ago, the difference in status of those graduates who are appointed by the university authorities and those who are elected by the alumni to represent the body of graduates, as is now the practice in many institutions, is not so well understood. It is the general alumni organizations that best represent the new era. While in most places they have come into effective existence only recently, and as yet command only qualified recognition in the general scheme of university affairs, they have existed long enough to demonstrate the power that lies within them. A brief survey, therefore, of what they are accomplishing should be worth while. The first thing to be noted is the wide variety of the interests in which graduate enthusiasm has found expression. Wherever there is a striking need, there the alumni are apt to concentrate their efforts. In a composite picture of alumni activities, few academic preserves can be found where the graduates have not dared to tread. Thus we have those aggressive campaigns for endowments, for buildings, for salaries, which have been so spectacular and successful; the maintenance of alumni address lists, no small task in the larger and older universities; the publication of alumni journals, as semiofficial organs; the election of trustees; exhaustive surveys of existing conditions in various institutions; the interesting of prospective students; the correlation of the facilities of the institution with the needs of the community; the securing of gifts or funds for special purposes, a general task that covers a host of enterprises; and, finally and invariably, the support of athletics. The peculiar problems of every college and university vary necessarily with the emphasis placed upon different curricula, as well as with the size of the institution, its geographical situation, its type of students, and its plan of organization. It is obvious that a State college of agricultural and mechanic arts in the Middle West finds itself in a very different situation from an endowed college of the same size in the East, where a century or more of traditions and a strong body of alumni have given it a certain stability and individuality. Yet both are eager, nowadays, to receive and encourage support from their former students. In most institutions, therefore, there has developed a general and flexible scheme of organization which has been widely adopted. Almost every college and university now boasts a general alumni association, or, sometimes, an alumni council, to which every graduate is eligible. This organization furnishes through its many- activities some outlet at least for the expression of the average graduate's desire to "do something" for his university, though the responsibility for constructive action rests naturally upon the officers, who are chosen to represent the alumni point of view. In other words, these bodies ordinarily maintain themselves apart from the institution in order to be free, on occasion, to assert themselves in whatever way may seem desirable. In many colleges and universities alumni advisory bodies have also been created to supplement the work of the association and to co-operate, as far as it is practicable, with the university administration. In some places these have come to be a most important and powerful vehicle for the expression of graduate interest. The board of overseers at Harvard, one of the most powerful alumni bodies in any American institution, is an outstanding and most successful example of this form of graduate participation in university affairs. The method of selection of these officers varies widely; in some schools they are elected by means of a ballot sent by mail, though more commonly they are elected A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS at the annual meeting. In some institutions they are elected, or appointed, as the representatives of the different schools or colleges which comprise the university. In practically all the larger universities, too, the development of these associations has brought into existence a new type of university executive officer, the alumni secretary, as he is generally known, who devotes his whole time to furthering the interrelated interests of the institution and the graduates, as well as the maintenance of friendly co-operation and sympathetic relations. Though the possibilities for service which confront the alumni organization and its agent, the alumni secretary, are almost innumerable and vary widely, there are certain particular fields in which graduate effort almost everywhere has concentrated its efforts. Probably the most important single task is the publication of an alumni magazine—sometimes a quarterly, more often a monthly or a weekly—which gives university news, comments on university affairs and, most important, personal items regarding individual alumni. Usually such a paper is published as an official journal of the alumni organization and is edited by the alumni secretary. As such it becomes a valuable semiofficial university organ, which reaches a wide and discriminating constituency, though in some of the older universities it remains in the hands of a group of alumni, who maintain it for the good of the cause and seek no personal profit from the enterprise. There are at present nearly one hundred of these alumni*publications,.some with more than eight or nine thousand subscribers. Of these the Yale Alumni Weekly, established in 1891, was the first to appear, followed by the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, a quarterly, a year later. The next alumni journal to appear was the Michigan Alumnus, established in 1894 as a monthly, which became a weekly in 1921. Alumni organization by classes and by local groups forms another phase of activity—the one based upon an emphasis of old associations and sentimental ties, the other, more practical in its outlook, stressing the relation of the university to the world in general. The class organization, ordinarily centred in the class secretary, is focussed upon the class reunion, held usually every five years at the commencement season. So far as advancing years make it humanly possible, the restraints which time imposes are thrown aside at this season and the older graduate seeks, sometimes almost pathetically, to recall the atmosphere of a halcyon period long past, while the younger classes express their exuberant spirits in picturesque costumes, parades, and general hilarity. Underneath all the gaiety, however, is a real appreciation of a certain responsibility toward the institution that often results in constructive efforts for its advancement. In case of local associations, the horizon is apt to be somewhat wider, including national and civic affairs as well as the broader university interests. Originally, these bodies foregathered annually and semiannually, in more or less convivial sessions with reminiscences and the latest developments in athletics as the topics of interest. But now there are many alumni groups everywhere, holding weekly or monthly luncheons, at which, along with university affairs, questions of outstanding public interest are discussed by specially invited speakers. Here w'e have a significant evidence of the realization on the part of our college graduates that, as a select body of citizens, they have a responsibility to their communities as well as to the university. Another undertaking which usually falls to the alumni organization, particularly in its earlier years, is the maintenance of the addresses of the graduates. This is an important task that increases in difficulty with the passing of time and the growth of the institution; so much so, in fact, that the list arrives almost invariably at a certain place where, owing to the expense, the institution itself finds it desirable and necessary to assume this important work. Almost everywhere, however, this was originally undertaken by the alumni, and is still maintained with graduate support in all but the largest of our universities. So much for the past and present of graduate influence in our colleges and universities. What of the future? That does not lie within the scope of this dis684 A NEW POWER IN UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS cussion. The writer has attempted merely to suggest that we have here a new element in our university world, an organized and aggressive element, that must henceforth be considered as an integral part of the general development of our system of higher education. Without it we should not have arrived at the place where we find ourselves to-day, but in accepting its support so generously extended we must recognize the conditions that go with it. This implies in the future an even closer participation, on the part of the alumni, in college and university affairs. Our graduates are not only acquiring a new power, a power which they hardly realize themselves, but they are assuming a great responsibility. The problem of how they can best use this power is, as yet, hardly settled satisfactorily. There arc those who insist, and with reason, that this force may not always prove beneficent. The views of the graduate may not march with the highest ideals of the academic fraternity. The assumption is easy on the part of the average graduate, that any movement is for the good of the university, if the alumni body is behind it. The charm of the ivy-covered quadrangles of the older English universities never fails to strike a responsive note in the heart of the American visitor. They are the visible embodiment of our ideal of the academic life; yet they breathe a conservatism only recently touched by the modern spirit. This reverence for the traditional and time-honored thing has not been, perhaps, the defect many critics of Oxford and Cambridge have believed it to be, but undoubtedly the heavy hand of conservative alumni long kept them in the old ways, from which nothing short of such a cataclysm as the World War was able to waken them to modern progress. In America, too, we sometimes see the same spirit; the buildings, studies, and traditions that were good enough for our fathers often seem good enough for us. But not seldom we have the other spirit, progress, up-to-date ideas, business methods, efficiency, call it what you may, that imposes false standards in purely academic affairs. New ideas are launched, upon alumni initiative, sometimes to the great benefit of the institution, and sometimes to the serious impairment of its effectiveness as a centre of culture and the highest educational ideals. And when the effort sponsored by the alumni fails, it is not the alumni body, but the university, that suffers. That is a sobering thought, that once understood should limit the active participation of the alumnus in university affairs. After all, university education is a highly specialized business, and the average graduate must insist that his organization is so ordered that it shall insure the selection of men of the highest qualifications to represent him. Likewise the university must take thought for the future. The student of to-day by a wave of the presidential hand becomes the alumnus of to-morrow. Does the university consciously prepare him for his new relationship ? Very rarely, we fear. And yet it should not be difficult to infuse into a certain portion, at least, of the recipients of the annual grist of diplomas something of that broader, finer, "university" spirit which views the institution as a living and sentient force within the souls of its students and alumni. Drop but once this high standard, make too many concessions to the immediate and obvious—athletics, prestige, "popular" subjects,and "practical" courses—and the birthright is gone. The ideals which sustained the fathers will be lost forever to the children, when it becomes their turn to sit as graduates in the university councils. But that is for the future. For the most part, as wre view it to-day, the alumni support of our universities has been not only progressive but intelligent. It has brought new currents into many a university backwater. In return we know that the campus, with its idealism, and devotion to truth, wherever it may be found, has not been without its wholesome stimulus to those who, having passed its portals, have returned once more for renewed inspiration. The Social Influence of the Automobile BY ALLEN D. ALBERT JP|N Oklahoma, at a country club outside the city of Ardmore, not long ago, a score of us were celebrating a wedding anniversary with a supper. Moving through long windows to the balcony, we came upon a scene of such quiet, warm beauty, there in the late spring, as made many of us draw in our breath. Organdie dresses here and there, in pink, or lavender, or cream, wrere bright with the soft color of flowers. The air was fragrant with sweetbrier. In the early evening, while we watched three cowboys whooping after a tractor on the country road, we had heard the singing of mocking-birds through the grove. Host and hostess called me to the railing to look into the deepening shadow of the rim-rock, miles away, at the horizon. Above it they pointed out the gleam of a double star, and as we looked the star moved, steadily, in and out among the shadows, down, down, to the plain beneath us, growing larger, and coming toward our feet. Other double stars appeared at the same notch, or at notches to the right or left, and converged upon us through three or four channels. Twenty minutes later automobiles were whirling one after another into parking spaces beside the house. The supper had become a dance, the evening had darkened into night, and the slow-moving shooting stars of a purple landscape had developed into twentieth-century chariots bearing friends. I do not know that ever before had the social significance of the automobile been so dramatically presented to me. It has come to us all. Of course. We look along a perspective of lights dazzling in their intensity and realize wearily, any hot evening, that the procession along the boulevard will not cease till bedtime. Or we jerk ahead and wait, jerk ahead again and wait again, in a choke of purring cars after a football game. Or we look up from a hardware counter and see a farmer who has driven five miles from the harvest-field to get a ball of twine. Or we hunt for a parking space outside a Chautauqua tent. A dozen times a year, in as many situations, the newness and far reach of the motor-driven vehicle catch up our thought as does the airplane which lands in the field near our house. "It is so wonderfully new," we say to ourselves time and again. Still we do not appreciate how new it really is! I was in high school in the earl)' '90's. The automobile was then unknown. Less than twenty years ago, in Washington, D. C , I attended a dinner given to manufacturers licensed under the Selden patents. There had come to be, at that time, some seventy-five thousand cars in the United States, and we were all amazed at the growth of the industry. As evidence of its progress, the president of the company manufacturing the highest-priced American car told me at that table—with the smile of a man confessing to some exaggeration—that he thought he might use that year some two tons of steel. Less than ten years ago, that is to say in 1915 , there were in the land some three million three hundred thousand cars. By 1925 there will be fully fifteen millions. No one of us can measure such a development in transportation. Perhaps you recall Macaulay's saying: "Of all inventions, the alphabet and printing-press alone excepted, those that have shortened distance have done the most for humanity." Are you still shocked by reading "Auto Bandits" in the head-lines? Have you 68 S 686 THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE AUTOMOBILE passed at the side of a country road a car with no lights and two young figures shoulder against shoulder in a corner of the rear seat? Do you know that banks are still refusing to make loans for the buying of cars? Have you observed the bootlegger in the automobile, the doctor in his little coupe, the rural carrier in his Ford, the children in the school bus? We have in 1021 about nine million motor-cars in the United States, hardly a third as many as our horses. Yet I think there can be no serious question that the motor-car has come to be more important to us socially than the horse. The most comprehensive change it has wrought for us has been the general widening of the circle of our life. City folk feel this in the evening and at the week-end. Farmer folk feel it from early morning till bedtime every day. Our mail comes to our R. F. D. box usually not later than eleven in the morning, and ours is the last delivery but one on our route. Some who work, in every town, now have year-round houses in the country. There is, in fact, a tangible and powerful movement directly opposite to that of the retired farmer. He came to town to rest; city folk are going to the country to rest, and in the era of the automobile they do not lose the diversions that appealed so strongly to the retired farmer. We may expect these new country homes to affect the quality of American farm life positively and fundamentally. It is the younger generation of business men who are building country houses outside our smaller cities, and wherever they build they are enlivening the countryside with visiting, and landscape-gardening, and the giving of parties. They are the spark-plugs that start the rest of us to the band concerts every Thursday. Being started, we ourselves have fallen into the habit of sitting comfortably in our cars through the programme?—which is a growing habit, once formed. You can find us, two rows deep, around the Chautauqua tent, often fairly cool while those under the canvas are melting the starch out of their clothes. Likewise you can find us outside the store being served at the mercy of the clerk. There are absorbing stories in the rusty little cars parked these days before the high school in the county-seat. This one brings two brothers eleven miles from a farm where neither parent had more than four months of schooling in any year or passed beyond the sixth grade. This one bears the daughter of a dairyman, who tells you with a steady look into your eyes that she has never learned to milk and never intends to learn. This one picks up the high-school students of three families from Wintergreen Bottoms, a community hopelessly sullen and lawless unless its children save it. Farm men race to town to meetings of the farm bureau; farm women to meetings of the domestic-science clubs; all of them to the circus or the movies or the winter concert season. In our youth such expeditions would have required half a day in travel. In our motoring middle life they require less than half an hour each way. We have the doctor within easy call. We can patronize the steam laundry. Our butter and poultry customers do their own delivering. In some of the older farming sections now, as in most of the new, some of us whose children have absorbed high-school standards find ourselves joining the country club and playing golf in hours when our fathers would have been chopping feed or mending fence. Whether in the midst of many houses or few, we have accepted as commonplaces a dozen important changes worked in our every day by this new conveyance. We have seen our architecture develop the garage in lieu of the old carriage-house and livery-barn. We have heard our speech enlivened with automobile terms, as when our children describe a teacher of undistinguished personality as a "flat tire." We have noted the entire disappearance of the victoria before the "chummy car" or the "roadster," and some of us have sighed for an aristocracy that is never more to be. Strange-looking driveways called "filling stations," with glowing lamps at night, long railroad-trains of tank-cars, streets painted with white lines to mark THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE AUTOMOBILEzones of safety for pedestrians and parking spaces for cars—how almost without a pause in our thinking have we adjusted our lives to these factors new since yesterday ! I wish I could believe that our new ease of transportation had strengthened the church by widening the radius of its service. Some of our farmer families do in fact drive eight or ten miles to worship, but not many of them. And as an offset to these few, any town clergyman can cite the loss of leading families of city members who automobile away most of their Sunday mornings excepting Easter. Combined with golf, the automobile is frequently denounced from the pulpit as one of the deadliest enemies of the church. I have heard the two assailed as though cloven hoof, forked tail, and horns had been supplanted by golf-bag, pneumatic tire, and wind-shield. In good motoring weather I have attended Sunday-morning service from Waycross, Ga., to Manistee, Mich., and it would be hard to find any pews any emptier anywhere. We of the motor era do not bow to each other in passing on the highway as once we did. The car makes that impracticable. Sometimes we recognize the approaching machine and sometimes we make out the person who is driving. Before there can be any exchange of recognition, however, we have flown past each other. Once it was the custom to slow down and offer help to a car stalled by the road. Then we read of hold-ups from automobiles, and now the old, leisurely clap-clap along the highway with a slow and kindly nod alike to acquaintance and stranger has given way to a fear of stopping even for such as need our aid. Something corresponding to this has happened in the cities. Two of us were lately guests in a great town, and had a limousine at our command. We actually ended our stay without once rubbing elbows humanly with any of the people in the streets, shut away from our fellows in a glass box, lifted out of the very life we had come to live, as though we had been looking on at a movie. Workmen nod to the street-car conductor. Walkers have a word for the man who is cutting the grass or shovelling the snow. The motorist is too busy with his driving—and too high up in the air. Let us be careful not to distort the social values involved in all this. Without the automobile or some similar new agent of transport, probably we could never have had any advance in co-operation so worth while as the farm bureau, the woman's club, and the parent-teacher association. The motor-carriage isolates us as it transports us but it gives us more of fellowship at the end of the journey. The point is that the cost of such a gain should be paid knowingly and kept as low as possible. Our car-owners who take no part in community movements are making the community poorer by paying the cost without any compensating gain. And I, for one, do not expect it ever to be established that the welfare of any such community movement necessarily involves the weakening of the church. Automobile outlawry and lawlessness are now more serious, I believe, than they are to be hereafter. It is absurd to expect a great new social agency to come into use without abuse. Almost invariably abuse is the concomitant of use. The same machine that hurries the surgeon to the bedside of the child with a broken foot will hurry the yeggman in. his getaway from a hold-up. The boy who acts the pig in his home will not suddenly become considerate of others when given absolute control of a vehicle swifter and heavier than the others on the street, Traffic squads are already making his control far from absolute in the more travelled thoroughfares. Within such, limits it is to be expected that he and his highwayman associates will shortly be checked by some device that will stop all vehicular movement within a fixed limit on the sounding of an alarm. The car that persists in shooting ahead will thus be brought into clear view, while if the joy-rider or the thief stopped with the others ordinarily, he would only await capture. In the country the control must come by other methods. State constabulary is the means most often urged. What the "Mounted" do in Canada and the State police in New York and Pennsylvania, it is argued, can be done on a larger scale 688 THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE AUTOMOBILE for the making safe of our country roads. Present systems, headed by sheriffs and manned by constables, are for practical uses of patrol, non-existent. The plain truth is that on this continent there are only small areas in which the rural highways are not totally undefended against wrong-doers. When the new defense is provided, as surely it will be, perhaps it may modify one of the new problems of education produced by the automobile. In an older day it was feasible for the college authorities to keep some sort of watch over their students. Now a boy at school in Connecticut can motor to New York City and back between his last lecture of one day and his first class of the next. What are campus regulations to students who have the range of an extra-campus radius of one hundred miles ? Assuredly the best answer will be the development of a motive in the life of the student that will keep him safe wherever he is. But while we wait for that approach to undergraduate perfection, there will be a value no male parent will question in the student's realization that the automobile thoroughfares around the campus are patrolled sensibly and sufficiently. Longer motor journeys will hasten the day of such control. Bus lines arc reporting to our village squares with little or no preliminary announcement. They make about the same time as accommodation trains, they travel more direct routes, they traverse a landscape unspoiled by cuts and fills and tracks, and they deliver us if not at our exact destinations into the very heart of town rather than at railway-stations away from the heart of town. Electric interurbans are holding their own against the new competition somewhat better than the steam roads; but not invariably, and not on many routes with success to warrant hope of any imminent extensions. General touring by motor-car has, of course, only begun. It must be expected to double and quadruple within a few seasons. Its increase will include a series of social changes of the greatest interest to those who love the picturesque. Most of our municipalities will have auto camps by to-morrow. The wayside inn is even now being restored to its prominence of stage-coach days. Those who have seen the blackboards in front of farmhouses may share my expectation of an important if not a radical short-circuiting of present methods in marketing farm produce. Best of all and most important of all, we shall steady down as a people more and more out of our rushing from place to place and come inevitably nearer, I think, to an appreciation of the beauty of the countryside. The really good roads for the present are only the more heavily travelled arterial thoroughfares, largely paved, and so filled with cars that driving from Boston to New York, or Cleveland to Chicago, is almost a citified experience. Even so, there are thrills of beauty long to remember in each of those journeys, thrills not to be found in my abundant acquaintance with the railroad routes between the same points. Roads are improving farther from those busy streets. Touring-cars are improving likewise. One need not move around like a farm-hand on a load of hay, almost swamped by bulgy equipment. Compact outfits, touring vehicles as ingeniously designed as yachts, hotels cleanly kept and courteously managed, all promise a freer movement of the people to every interesting section of the country. In that freer movement the automobile will justify itself most of all, I believe, as an agent of wholesome sociability in our modern life. The Depths of the Universe BY GEORGE ELLERY HALE Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; Author of " The New Heavens," etc. I llustrations from photographs ' Below lay stretched the boundless universe! There, far as the remotest line That limits swift imagination's flight, Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion, Immutably fulfilling Eternal Nature's law. Above, below, around. The circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony— Each with undeviating aim In eloquent silence through the depths of space Pursued its wondrous way." —Shelley, "The Daemon of the World."
N the night of the 7TH of January, in the year 1610, Galileo first direveal the successive steps of his great discovery are among the chief documents that mark the turning-point from mediaeval to modern thought. Jupiter was shown by the telescope to be accompanied by three unknown stars, two to the east and one to the west. The mere detection of unfamiliar fixed stars no longer surprised Galileo, as his telescopes had multiplied such objects a hundredfold. But their arrangement in a nearly straight line, parallel to the ecliptic. struck his attention. The next evening, rected his telescope toward Jupiter. In doing so he literally took his life in his hands. Ten years earlier Giordano Bruno, disciple and public expositor of Copernicus, had been burned at the stake in Rome. The agents of the Inquisition, with unrelaxed vigilance, still watched eagerly for new victims among those who ventured to question their doctrines. Galileo had already taught the Copernican theory ; he was now about to demonstrate it beyond room for doubt. The pages from his note-book which Vol. LXXI-chancing to look at Jupiter again, he was astonished to find that the three stars, still in a straight line, were all to the west of the planet. This impress e d him deeply, as the motion of Jupiter, at that time retrograde instead of direct, should have prodttced an apparent displacement of fixed objects in the opposite direction. The next night, much to his disgust, the heavens were covered by clouds. On January 10 only two stars were seen, both to the east of the planet. I'he third, he suspected, might be concealed by its 689 Fig. 1 Two of Galileo's telescopes, preserved i the Tribuna di Galileo at Florence. A broken object-glass, with which the four satellites of Jupiter were discovered, is mounted in the centre of the ivory frame. 44 tig. rage from Galileo's note-book, recording his first observations of the satellites of Jupiter. disk. Then the truth, of which some glimmerings had perhaps reached him before, slowly began to dawn. Jupiter's own motion could not account for such displacements of his companions. These must be smaller planets circulating about him ! Thus, Jupiter would resemble the sun of Copernicus, set in the centre of a miniature solar system. Here was a new and splendid conception, but observation alone must decide. Thus for sixty-six nights, as the original manuscript pages still show, Galileo pursued his study of the system of Jupiter. On the 13th of January, he saw four companion stars, visible again the next night. The true significance of his observations then appeared: "It is now," he says in conclusion, "not simply a case of one body (the moon) revolving around another bodv (the earth), while the two together make a revolution around the sun, as the Coperni690 can doctrine teaches; but we have the case of four bodies or moons revolving round the planet Jupiter, as the moon does round the earth, while they all with Jupiter perform a grand revolution round the sun in a dozen years." "The striking appearance of this miniature solar system, soon supported by Galileo's discover}- of the changing phases of Venus, broke down the opponents of Copernicus and gradually led to the acceptance of his theorv. Thinking men were forced to admit that the sun, not the earth, lies at the centre of our system. But the church, stiffened in its opposition, condemned and placed on the Index "this false Pythagorean doctrine, contrary to holv Scripture, of the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun, taught by Nicolas Copernicus"— and in 1633, under threat of torture, Galileo, old and broken, was forced to retract his teachings. THE DEPTHS OE THE UNIVERSE 691 Fortunately for human progress, no law of man can overthrow the truths of nature, though the history of the Middle Ages shows that their acceptance can be retarded for centuries. The contribution of Galileo was not merely an intellectual feat, a delight to the cognoscenti: it was literally a revolution in human thought. read Aristotle's writings from end to end many times, and I can assure you I have nowhere found anything similar to what you describe. Go, my son, and tranquillize yourself; be assured that what you take for spots on the sun are the faults of your glasses or of vour eyes." Writing to Prince Cesi in 1612, Galileo said: "1 Fig. 3. Milton visiting the Blind Galileo. Painted by Tito-Lessi. MEDIEVAL MINDS When Copernicus, years before Galileo's discovery, presented his arguments against the geocentric system, they were received with universal scorn. Church and school men were wedded to the past, and Oxford had decreed that "Masters and Bachelors who did not follow Aristotle faithfully were liable to a fine of five shillings for every point of divergence, and for every fault committed against the logic of the Organon." When Scheiner, the rival of Galileo, informed the,provincial of his order of his observation of sunspots, this worthy remarked: "I have suspect that this new discovery (of sunspots) will be the signal for the funeral, or rather for the last judgment of the pseudo-philosophy—the funereal signals having already been shown in the moon, the Medicean stars (Jupiter's satellites), Saturn, and Venus. And I expect now to see the peripatetics put forth some grand effort to maintain the immutability of the heavens!"* True to his words, he was bitterly attacked on all sides, and soon afterward denounced by the Holy Inquisition. * For the above and other pertinent illustrations of mediteval methods see Fahie's interesting "Galileo, His Life and and Work." 692 THE DEPTHS OE THE UNIVERSE It would be interesting and profitable to recall the extraordinary characteristics of the mediaeval mind, which tested everything new by a comparison of ancient texts, and refused to appeal to the simple and direct proof of observation or experiment. In rescuing the world from this deplorable state Galileo initiated the fact, he required the entire stellar universe to revolve around the earth—a demand which even to the cardinals of the Inquisition might have seemed preposterous if viewed in the light of a little knowledge and a little reason. But their minds were closed, and no conclusions of science could penetrate them. Fig. 4. Sir William HerschcTs iS-inch telescope, with which he made his studies of the structure of the universe. Shown at the Cape of Good Hope, where Sir John Herschel extended his father's work to the southern heavens. He estimated that this telescope would show about five and one-half million stars in tin entire sky. development of modern science and stimulated the discoveries of the explorers and investigators of the Renaissance. Once more, as in the early Greek period and again in the Alexandrian School, astronomy led the wax-, and by its great discoveries encouraged research in all other branches of science. Copernicus was not the first to assert the heliocentric hypothesis. Aristarchus of Samos, about 250 B. C , maintained the central position of the sun and, like Galileo, was therefore accused of impiety. Thus man has insisted on personal supremacy from the earliest times. To enforce the central and controlling position of the earth, he did not hesitate to make the sun and planets subsidiary to it. In THE DISTANCE OF THE STARS Up to this time, indeed until the closing years of the eighteenth century, the problem of the stellar universe had never been attacked. Howexer, as we have shown elsewhere,* the telescope had steadily grown in aperture and powet, until Herschel, with his 18-inch reflector, could count in both hemispheres some five or six million stars. By his method of star gauging he endeavored to determine the structure of the sidereal system, and actually succeeded in reaching a fair conception of its flattened or watch-shaped form. But try as he might, he was utterly unable to measure the distance of even the nearest of the stars. *"The New Heavens," Charles Scribner's Sons, 1023OF THF UNIVERSE 603 The one obvious method of measuring stellar distances, when tested with inadequate instruments, had invariably failed. Indeed, if the annual parallax of the stars could have been detected at the time of Ptolemy, the fiction of an immovable earth, with sun, planets, and stars rex'ohdng around it, might not ha\-e dominated human thought for more than two thousand years. Sit before a window, fix your attention on some speck on the glass, and mark its position against a building on the opposite side of the street. Then move your head to the right or left, parallel to the glass, and note the displacement of the speck on the opposite building. Step farther away from the window, and repeat the process. The displacement of the speck becomes smaller. Thus at a sufficient distance from the window the speck would appear fixed, even when seen from two points a considerable distance apart. Substitute a star for the speck on the glass, and imagine it viewed against a background of very distant stars from two points 186,000,000 miles apart—the diameter of the earth's orbit. It is plain that the star must be very remote if it shows no shift when obser\-ed from the ends of such an enormous base-line. But up to the time of Bessel, e\'en with the aid of the most powerful telescopes and the best devices for measurement, no shift of any star's position could be thus detected. Herschel himself used his utmost efforts to apply this method. In his sweeps of the heavens he had catalogued many very close pairs of stars, in some of which one member appeared much brighter than the other. Assuming the faintness of the lesser star to be caused by its much greater distance, he tried to detect the parallax of the brighter one by careful rrricrometric measures, made six months apart, of its distance from its faint companion. No evidence of a semiannual shift was delected, but an important advance nevertheless resulted. For Herschel found that in Fig. 6. Barnard's photograph of great star clouds in the constellation of the shield (Scutum). The cluster Messier n is just above the middle of the picture. many of these pairs one star was apparently revolving about the other. Thus wrere discovered those extraordinary systems, in wdiich two stars, comparable with the sun in diameter and sometimes surpassing it, revolve about their common centre of gravity. Millions of such stellar pairs exist, differing greatly from our solar system, in which the sun is the one luminous and all-dominating body, incomparably greater than the many planets, which revolve about him like little satellites. HERSCHEL'S EXPEDIENT Determined as he was to discover the structure of the universe, and unable, because of their remoteness, to measure the 694 distances of the stars directly, Herschel was forced to adopt a different expedient. Consider some brilliant star, such as Vega. Its brightness to the eye must depend upon two things: the total amount of light it radiates (its absolute brightness) and its distance from the earth. Imagine Vega to retreat into space, until it reaches a point ten times its present distance from us. Instead of appearing as one of the brightest stars of the heavens, it would then be barely visible to the naked eye. Suppose it to move still farther away, where it could be followed only with a telescope. At goo times its present distance, according to Herschel's estimate, it could still be seen wdth his most powerful instrument. THE DEPTHS OE THE UNIVERSE Thus if all the stars were of the sameabsolute brightness, their relative distances could be determined by measuringtheir apparent brightness. We now knowthat stars differ enormously in size and inbrightness, and-Herschel himself, did notassume them to be all alike. What he did the Milky Way over goo times the aver age distance of a first-magnitude star, and less than one-fifth of this distance in the direction at right-angles. But he had no means of determining the average dis tance of a first-magnitude star. In fact, so great is the variation in absolute stellar Fig. 7. Lunar craters Archimedes, A ri st ill us, and Aufolycus. As the scale indicates, the diameter of Archimedes is about fifty miles. The sun is on the right, so that the crater walls and mountain peaks cast black shadows to the left. assume was that by dealing with very large numbers of stars, using averages for hundreds or thousands instead of single values, his results would come close to the truth. And in this he was not far wrong. His picture of the stellar universe, based upon soundings made in every direction, is not very different from that of the present day, though he was, of course, unable to penetrate into the remote depths since rendered accessible by great modern telescopes and the photographic plate. He concluded that our stellar system is like a flattened or watch-shaped disk, extending in the direction of the star clouds of brightness that certain very faint stars are actuallv much nearer than some of the brightest ones. This became evident in 1838 when Bessel finally succeeded, by the most refined instrumental means then available, in measuring the parallax of the star called 61 Cygni, which is barely visible to the naked eve. Its displacement, when observed from opposite ends of the earth's orbit, is four-tenths of a second of arc— the diameter of a one-inch ball at a distance of eight miles. This means that 61 Cygni is about 40,000,000,000 miles from the earth, and affords a first glimpse of the THE DEPTHS OF THE UNIVERSE enormous scale of the stellar universe. For this is one of the nearest of the stars. SCALE OF THE UNIVERSE In the light of this result and of late measures of stellar parallaxes, let us see where we stand in our survey of the universe. We must first form some conception of scale if we are to appreciate in any degree the stupendous distances involved. tance from the earth to the sun, 93,000,000 miles. Neptune, at the outermost limit of the solar system, is 2,800,000,000 miles from the sun. But the moment we pass to the stars no ordinary unit of measurement is large enough for satisfactory use. We therefore substitute the light-year, nearly six million million miles. Light travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles per Fig. 8. Great sun-spot group, February 8, 1017. The comparative size ot the earth is shown by the disk in the corner. Even the earth seems a fairly large body, when we remember that its entire surface has not yet been explored, and reflect, for example, on our impression of the remoteness and peril of expeditions seeking the Pole. Yet its diameter is only 8,000 miles. Place the earth beside the sun, which is more than too times greater in diameter, and it becomes a very insignificant object, much smaller than the larger sun-spots or the enormous flames of glowing gas that rise from the sun's surface. The mile is still a practicable unit of measurement, however, and we may even retain it in describing the great dis-second would pass around the earth in less than an eighth of a second, it reaches us from the moon, our nearest celestial neighbor, in 1.2 seconds, and in about 8 minutes from the sun. Alpha Centauri, the nearest of the stars, is 4H light-years distant. Sirius, 26 times as bright as the sun, is 8.7 light-years away. Only four stars, in fact, are known to be less than 10 light-years from us. Procyon's distance is 1 1 light-years, while that of Altair is about 15 light-years. Vega and Arcturus, each about 60 times as bright as the sun, are about 30 light-years away. The spectroscopic binary star Capella, Fig. o. The Pleiades. The distance from the earth of this well-known cluster of stars, enmeshed in nebulosity, is about 325 light-years. each of whose components is about 100 times as bright as the sun, is 54 light-years distant. Rigel, about 13,000 times as bright as the sun, is almost 500 light-years from the earth. The well-known cluster of the Hyades is at a distance of about 130 light-years, while the Pleiades, a cluster of from 300 to 500 stars, over 30 light-years in diameter, is about 325 light-years away from us. The group of blue stars in Orion is nearly twice as remote (600 light-years). Thus we may begin to appreciate the meaning of Herschel's expression that the telescope penetrates into time as well as into space. When a new star suddenly blazes out in the Milky Way, and passes rapidly through its changes of light, we are watching events that transpired hundreds of years ago. In fact, we sometimes see a star long after it has ceased to shine. SPACE PENETRATING POWER But great as these distances are, the objects thus far mentioned must actually be looked upon as our near neighbors in space. Beyond them the stars stretch away in countless numbers and decreasing apparent brightness into enormously greater depths. As our telescopes increase in size we penetrate farther and farther into these remote depths, and thus bring to view hundreds of millions of stars beyond the range of previous instruments. 697 THE DEPTHS OE THE UNIVERSE Fig. io. Star field in Auriga. Only one star appears, though the exposure was sufficient to show stars to the ninth magnitude. Fig. 11. Star field in Auriga. The exposure was long enough to show stars to the twelfth magnitude, beyond the limit of Galileo's telescopes. Fig. 12. Star field in Auriga. Showing stars to thefifteenth magnitude, the limit of Herschel's iS-inch telescope. Look, for example, at the region in Auriga illustrated in Fig. io. The brightest star shown is of magnitude 3.3, and is thus visible to the naked eye. No other star appears, though the exposure was long enough to include stars of the ninth magnitude. The next step (Fig. 11 ) takes us to the twelfth magnitude, beyond the limit of Galileo's telescopes. Fig. 12 includes all of the stars within the reach of Herschel's 18-inch reflector, which attained the fifteenth magnitude. The next photograph (Fig. 13) includes much fainter stars, while Fig. 14 shows stars down to the eighteenth magnitude. All of these pictures were taken by Seares with the 60-inch reflector on Mount Wilson, with increasing exposure times. A long exposure with the 100-inch telescope would show many more stars in the same region. Over the whole sky the 60-inch would probably record more than 1,000,000.000 stars, while the 100-inch should add fully 500,000,000 more.* The method of trigonom-etric parallaxes, which measures a star's displacement as seen from opposite ends of the earth's orbit, is limited in its application to the nearer stars. This is because the angular displacement of stars more than a few hundred light-years distant is too minute for measurement, even with all the exquisite refinement of the * The larger size of the images of the brighter stars on photographs made with increased exposures is due to a purely photographic effect, and has no relationship to the true diameter of the star. The circle in Fig. 12 results from reflection of the light from the back of the plate. The straight lines, like rays, that project from the largest images are diffraction effects caused by the metal bars that support the small mirror at the upper end of the telescope tube. THE DEPTHS OElatest instrumental and photographic methods. In penetrating greater depths of space we must have recourse to still more powerful means, which fortunately have recently been discovered and applied. Consider the bright star Sirius, and call its distance unity. If it were moved to distance 2, its apparent brightness, which decreases as the square of the distance, would be one-fourth. At distance 4, it would be one-sixteenth; at distance 8, one sixty-fourth, etc. If, then, we knew the absolute or intrinsic brightness of a star, i. e., the brightness it would have at unit distance, its easily measured apparent brightness would give us at once a measure of its actual distance. But how are we to determine its absolute brightness? This apparently insoluble problem has recently yielded to a vigorous attack, which has greatly extended our means of sounding space. By the new method of Doctor Walter S. Adams it has become possible to determine the distance of a star of known apparent brightness from simple estimates of the relative intensities of certain lines in its spectrum. SPECTROSCOPIC MEASURES OF STELLAR DISTANCE Strontium chloride, when placed in the blue flame of a Bunsen gas-burner, colors it a brilliant crimson—the effect of a strong line in the red part of its spectrum. This line, with several others of smaller intensity, can be seen with an ordinary one-prism spectroscope. These radiations are characteristic of the strontium atom, which recent investigations have shown to be composed of thirty-eight electrons, presumably rotating about a positively charged central nucleus. We can change this spectrum very decidedly, however, by placing some stron THE UNIVERSE tium chloride in an electric spark, which ionizes the vapor. This means that the intense electric discharge tears away one of the electrons circling about the nucleus of the atom, leaving a positively charged system minus one negative electron. In-Fig. 13. Star field in Auriga. Showing stars to the seventeenth magnitude. tense heat is also competent to produce this disruption of the strontium atom and to give rise to certain lines in the spectrum that are weak or wholly absent at low temperatures. Two of these "enhanced" Fig. 14. Star field in Auriga. Showing stars to the eighteenth magnitude. lines, in the blue part of the spectrum, known to spectroscopists as A.4077 and A.4215, when contrasted with a line of calcium (X4254), which is strongest at low temperatures, are able to give us an extraordinary amount of information reFig. 15. The 60-inch reflecting telescope of the Mount Wilson Observatory. In this arrangement of the instrument the light from the star under observation, after falling on the 60-inch concave mirror at the lower end of the tube, is reflected back to the smaller convex mirror near the upper end. This return-the narrowing cone of light to a plane mirror at the intersection of the declination and polar axes, which reflects it upward to the focal point at the side of the tube. Here it passes through the narrow slit of the spectrograph, then through a coliinating lens and two prisms and finally through the camera lens to the photographic plate, where an image of the star s spectrum is recorded. The task of the observer is to watch the slit through a small auxiliary telescope throughout the exposure, and to move the large telescope slightly from time to time by an electric motor, in case the driving-clock fails to maintain the star's image exactly on the slit. garding the 'absolute brightness, and hence the distance of the stars. These lines are mentioned merely as typical examples of the two great groups of enhanced and low-temperature lines, which are exhibited by many different elements in varying degrees of intensity in the various stages of stellar life. Stellar spectra are photographed ott Mount Wilson with the aid of the 6o-inch and 100-inch reflecting telescopes. A spectroscope arranged for photography is mounted at the focus of the telescope, and the image of any desired star is brought to the slit by moving the telescope with electric motors. When exactly on the slit, through which its light passes for analysis by one, two, or three prisms, the star is held in position by the driving-clock of the telescope. The observer constantly watches the star on the slit so as to correct any wandering of the image 700 by means of a motor, which slightly accelerates or retards the driving rate of the clock. The exposure varies from a few minutes for the brighter stars to several hours for very faint ones. In this way the spectra of thousands of stars, down to the limit of visibility of Herschel's telescope, are photographed one by one for study. While examining these plates Adams and his associates on Mount Wilson have given special attention to certain lines because of their changes of intensity in the hotter and cooler regions of the sun, and their corresponding behavior in laboratory experiments. The distance of some of the stars in which such lines were observed had been determined by the method of trigonometric parallaxes, and consequently their absolute or intrinsic brightness was known. It soon appeared that in stars of great intrinsic brightness -3 -2 -/ O + 1 t2 +3 +4 <\5 FEJ Absolute Magnitude Fig. io. Curves used by Adams for determining the absolute magnitude-and the distances of the stars. The curves arc made once for all by plotting the relative intensities of certain pairs of lines against the known absolute magnitudes of the corresponding stars. The arrows indicate how the absolute magnitudes of Arcturus and [he brighter component of the double star 70 Ophiuchi are given by the curves when the relative intensities of the lines in these pairs are learned from the spectra shown in Fig. 17. some lines are exceptionally strong while relative intensity of the calcium line and others are weak. In certain of these, for one of the strontium lines then gives example, the "enhanced" or spark lines a measure of its absolute magnitude. of strontium are
\-ery strong,
while the Knowing its apparent brightness, its discalcium line A4254 is weak. In intrinsitance at once follows. cally faint stars the reverse is true—the The ease and quickness of application calcium line is stronger than the stronof this method render it x'ery advantatium lines. It thus became possible, in geous in studies of the structure of the fact, to determine a definite numerical universe. Unlike the trigonometric methrelationship between the intrinsic brightod, its use is not restricted to the nearer ness of a star and the relative strength of stars. It may thus carry our sounding-t hese lines. Tu rning, then, to a star of unline deep into space, where distances are known distance, a simple estimate of the reckoned in thousands of light-years. Fig. Spectra of 70 Ophiuchi and Arcturus, between comparison spectra of iron. Note the relative intensities in each star of the lines indicated by arrows. These give the absolute magnitude and hence the distance of the star-. THE DEPTHS OF THE UNIVERSE STAR CLUSTERS Another method of measuring distances has been used by Doctor Harlow Shapley in his extensive investigation at Mount Wilson of globular star clusters. The constellation of Orion is one of the most beautiful of celestial objects, both to the naked eye and under closer scrutiny in the telescope. The brilliant stars that outline the figure of the giant hunter and mark his girdle are scattered over a vast expanse of sky, but all of them except Betelgeuse constitute a definite physical group, doubtless of common origin and still moving together through space. This is an excellent example of an Fig. 18. Globular star cluster N. G. C. 7006. open star cluster, repeated in Shapley finds its distance to be about 220,000 light-years Ursa Major and again in the more condensed groups of the Prior to 1900 only sixty precise measures Hyades and the Pleiades, both of which of stellar distance had been made by the are also true physical systems. laborious methods, for the most part This clustering tendency is widely ilvisual, applied up to that time. The work lustrated among the stars. The simplest of Schlesinger with the 40-inch Yerkes case of stellar grouping is that of the telescope initiated an American school of binaries, in which we observe two stars, parallax measurers, whose efficient use of photographic methods added new and more precise determinations at such a rapid rate that the total number of trigonometric parallaxes is now about 1,400. In 1915 Adams and his associates began systematic application with the 60inch telescope of his spectroscopic method, which was subsequently extended to the 100-inch telescope and has already yielded over 2,000 determinations of stellar distance. In a later article some of the important conclusions based on these new results will be described. They not only prove decisively the existence of dwarf and giant stars, but also throw a flood of light on the structure and evolution of the stellar universe. Fig. 19. Globular star cluster Messier 79. Shapley finds its distance to be about Ss.ooo light-years. THE DEPTHS OF THE UNIVERSE 703 frequently larger than the sun, revolving about their common centre of gravity. Thousands of such double stars have been found, in some cases accompanied by a third member. Groups of this kind differ materially from open clusters of the Orion type, where the widely separated members do not revolve about a common centre, but move in nearly parallel lines through space. But the most striking of all stellar svstems are the great globular clusters whic h have been used by Shapley for a study of the dimensions of the stellar universe. Only about eight)' or ninety of these highly condensed clusters are known, and the problem of determining their distances and dimensions is of fundamental importance. Several years ago, in an examination at the Harvard obser\-atory of photographs of the small Magellanic Cloud, the late Miss Leavitt gave special attention to certain stars of the Cepheid class, which fluctuate in brightness in regular periods ranging from 1.25 to 127 days. By comparing the average apparent brightness of each star with its period of variation, she detected a Fig edge of its apparent brightness gives us its distance. DISTANCE OF GLOBULAR CLUSTERS By this means, and also by other methods, Shapley determined the distances of all globular clusters photographed with Great globular star cluster in Hercules. definite relationship between Shapley finds th IE distance of this cluster to be 36.000 light-years. On this basis over 3, .000 of its stars arc as bright as the sun, while the three stars the two. Thus, if in any in the small circles are one hundred times as bright. The length of the short line at the centre is four and one-third light-years, anil the diameter star; of- this, class only the of the large circle is ten million time.- the distance from the earth to the sun or TOO I ;ht-years, period were known, its average brightness could be accurately predicted. As all of the stars in the Magellanic Cloud are at essentially the same distance from the earth, the differences in their apparent brightness correspond to differences in absolute or intrinsic brightness. Thus this simple method, if. it holds strictly for all variables of the Cepheid class, should provide a means of determining the absolute brightness of such a star, however remote, from the length of its period. As we have already seen in Adams's spectroscopic method, as soon as we know the absolute brightness of a star a knowlthe 60-inch and IOO-inch telescopes. With long exposures these instruments show them to be composed of many thousands, of stars, grouped in globular form. The great cluster in Hercules, for example, contains fully 35,000 stars as bright as the sun, and some of these are more than a thousand times brighter. Among them are many Cepheid variables, and by observing their periods and their apparent brightness, their absolute brightness and hence their distance has been found. This reaches the immense figure of 36,000 light-years. 704 THE DEPTHS OF THE UNIVERSE If this measure is correct, and there is much independent evidence to support it, we take a tremendous leap into space and time when we reach out to this cluster. We have seen that light travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second requires 1.2 seconds to reach us from the moon, 8 minutes to come from the sun. and 4^ years to cross the space between us and the nearest star. Our views of such objects are thus contemporaneous, or nearly so: we see them as they are now or as they were within a few years. But the Hercules cluster is in another class. The light that left it 36,000 years ago, travelling at the rate of nearly six million million miles per year, has only just reached us. Thus, we cannot say how the cluster appears to-day, or whether it has existed at all since the dawn of our civilization. There is every reason to believe, however, that if we could see the present cluster—as astronomers will see it 36,000 years hence—it would appear essentially as it does in our photographs of its remote past. For 36,000 years is as a day in the cycles of the universe, where millions of years bring little change. Look at the cluster as shown in Fig. 20. All of the stars that appear in this picture, as already remarked, are brighter than the sun. The immense size of the cluster is indicated by the short horizontal line drawn on the centre of the image, which represents the distance from the earth to a Centauri—4J3 light-years. The diameter of the large circle is 10,000,000 times the distance from the earth to the sun, or ioc light-years. The total diameter of the cluster, which extends far beyond this circle, is more than 350 light-years. This enormous star system, according to Shapley, is the nearest of the globular clusters. One of these lies at a distance greater than 200,000 light-years, and beyond this may be others still more remote. They appear to be isolated systems, not closely associated wdth the stars, but nevertheless so distributed that they belong to the great stellar universe represented by the Galaxy. The distance of the Hercules cluster is about the same as that of the star clouds of the Milky Way recently measured by Seares. These measures relate to stars down to the fifteenth magnitude, but many of the fainter stars must be much more distant, perhaps as remote as the farthest globular cluster. SIZE OF THE GALACTIC SYSTEM Thus we may think of the galactic system as a flattened disk or watch-shaped aggregation of stars, having a diameter of perhaps 300,000 light-years, with the sun at a very considerable distance from the centre. The thickness of the disk is about one-eighth of the diameter, or 37,500 light-years. These great dimensions have been denied by Curtis, who argues in favor of a galactic system about one-tenth as large. But more and more evidence is accumulating in favor of the larger conception of Shapley, which has already found wide acceptance among astronomers. The question at issue, it should be emphasized, is the size of the galactic system of stars to which the sun belongs. This includes all the stars within reach of observation, together with the planetary nebulas and the irregular galactic nebula?, both bright and dark. It does not necessarily include, however, the very remarkable spiral nebulae, about a million of which can be photographed with the largest telescopes. The question has not yet been settled whether these are no farther from us than the more distant stars or whether they should be regarded as "island universes," isolated in the depths of space and comparable in size wdth the galactic system. Curtis, who holds the latter view, estimates their distance to range from 500,000 to 10,000,000 light-years, while Shapley, van Maanen, and others believe them to be much nearer. Interesting arguments have been advanced on both sides, but these are too numerous to be included in the present article. The vast scale of the universe easily explains phenomena that were once obscure. Even the moderate distance of 350 light-years causes a star like Antares, more than 400 times the sun in diameter, to shrink to a tiny point too small to be magnified by any telescope into a true disk. Thanks to Michelson's interferometer, used with the 100-inch telescope, the diameter of Antares, and that of a few other stars have been measured by indirect means.* In this and other ways great modern instruments have rapidly advanced our knowledge of the structure of the universe and enabled us to sound its depths and to watch the evolution of the stars. * See "The New Heavens," Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922.
For the Benefit of the Belgians BY REBECCA N. PORTER ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESTER RALPH ISS MINERVA sat bolt upright in bed. She had heard a noise. It was the creepy kind of noise that is associated with burglars. Every nerve and muscle tense, she listened again. The stealthy footsteps passed the porch and went along the path to the rear of the house. She threw aside the bedclothes, and slipping on stockings, slippers, and bathrobe, stole over to the chiffonier. There was no use in rousing Finnette. She had been working hard in the war-garden all day and needed her sleep. Besides, the old Frenchwoman under stress of emergency was apt to be more voluble than resourceful. Miss Minerva was not the timorous, swooning, scream-equipped spinster of a past generation. She lifted from the top drawer of the chiffonier something small and heavy which she stripped of its leather case. Then, clutching it in one hand, she glided down the back steps. It was two o'clock and the air was heavy with the mysterious perfumes of night. The fragrance of orange-blossoms and jasmine enveloped " Goldacres " in an invisible mantle. She paused an instant on the lawn and listened again. Breakers beating against a distant bluff were the only sounds that broke the stillness. From the Santa Barbara lighthouse far away came the intermittent gleam of the big revolving lamp. And then, all at once, those stealthy footfalls again near the garage. She remembered all at once that George, who had a room out there up-stairs and was the chauffeur and only other caretaker on the place, was hard of hearing. Like a telegraph-operator on duty his attention was set only to the call of his own signal. The starting of an automobile engine would VOL. LXXI.—45 have roused him at once, but the unobtrusive footsteps of a burglar were for other ears. Miss Minerva followed the sound past the garage and out to where a row of rabbit-hutches lined the stone wall that separated "Goldacres" from the neighboring estate. Pedigreed Belgian hares were not to be regarded contemptuously in war-times when all patriotic citizens eschew red meats, and every hare sold nets a neat sum for the Red Cross. Next to the old family plate Miss Minerva knew that Cousin Ada Mills valued those rabbits as her most precious possession. Not while she, Minerva Garrison, was on duty should the territory of the Belgians be invaded. There was no moon. Through the blackness she could see nothing and her defensive equipment did not include a spot-light. When the footsteps halted near the rabbit-hutches she halted too, and her voice rang out clear and authoritative in the darkness: "Stop! I've got a gun and it's pointed at you!" There was a moment of silence and then the sound of some one trying desperately to scale the stone wall. A curious exhilaration seized Miss Minerva. She felt herself master of a tense, dramatic situation. It was not enough merely to ward off an attack; the marauder must be discouraged from ever making another entrance. Pointing the revolver at a spot which she judged to be about three yards from the escaping thief, and aiming at the ground, she fired. There was a yell, a snapping of dry twigs, and the thud of a body on the soft earth. Exhilaration and calm authority forsook Miss Minerva. Without daring to approach the ghastly spot where her victim lay, she dropped her weapon and fled up the inside steps of the garage. "George!" she cried in agonized tones as she beat with both hands upon his 705 FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BELGIANS door, "George, get up—I've killed a man!" A moment later the door was wrenched open from the inside and the chauffeur stumbled dazedly down-stairs armed with a spot-light and clothes-brush. In his eyes was a sort of awed admiration. Miss Minerva on her first night of occupancy had given "Goldacres" the only thrill that it had known during his five years of residence. He was not bloodthirsty by temperament but five years of house-parties and golf tournaments and motor trips down to Los Angeles had paralyzed that hope of adventure which is the inalienable right of every male under thirty. Could it be possible, he asked himself now, that this attractive but conventional maiden lady from out of the East had murdered somebody? No, a broken leg was the best he might expect. But even this spectacle was denied him. For beside the ivy-covered stone wall there lay revealed in the circle of light a spotted setter dog. He was quite dead. As Miss Minerva knelt with relieved pity beside him, she rejoiced that his agony had been brief. George's blase eyes surveyed the victim with a gleam of genuine interest. "Gee!" he ejaculated, "some shot. He belongs on the next place. The Coulters brought him all the way from New York. He's just like one of the family. Pedigreed stock. Everybody in this valley knows that dog." A little cry escaped Miss Minerva. She had caught sight of the three lifeless and mutilated bodies of the largest-sized bunnies. "Look at that!" she commanded. "Oh, to think that anything intrusted to my care should be butchered that way! I don't care if he is a pedigreed dog. He's evidently been hanging around here all night, and he'd have had the whole hutch overturned next. He deserved to be killed. I'm glad I did it!" George didn't get all of this, but he judged by the tears in the assassin's eyes that she needed comforting. "Don't be too cut up about it," he soothed. "Bein' a lady, he can't say much to you." "Who are these Coulters?" "Why, he's some kind of a scientist. Writes books on mathematics or something." "I don't care if he does. This will teach him a lesson about respecting other people's property. Bury him, George" (her tone indicated that she meant the mathematician), "but leave these poor little bunnies where they are. If he comes over making inquiries in the morning, I'll show them to him." It was only when she was back in her own room, away from the admiring eyes of George, that Miss Minerva's gallant independence collapsed and the taut nerves which she had come to "Goldacres" to relax, claimed their own. When at last she had dried her tears she lay sleepless, staring into the dark. The hours dragged toward dawn. From Santa Barbara came faintly the sound of the Old Mission bells calling the faithful to early mass. "Finnette," she announced the next morning while the old servant and companion served her breakfast in the glass-enclosed porch off the dining-room, "I am not going into town much. I don't care to have it generally known that Cousin Ada has a relative out here on her place. Her friends might feel that theyr ought to call and I can't—I simply can't see people yet." Finnette nodded with silent understanding. Once, in the days of her youth, when the brute whom she had called her husband mercifully died, she had suffered a nervous collapse, and so she knew that terror of chance encounters with strangers which only the nerve-racked can know. Now, with all the passion of her fiery old heart she longed to have Miss Minerva get what she termed "her chance." At thirty, she admitted grudgingly to herself, first youth is gone. It is gone even before that if one lives out the golden years in the sick-room first of a fretful mother and then as the sole companion of a complacently tyrannical father. But first youth is not, she had observed, an indispensable prerequisite for happy marriage, and never during all those recluse years of Miss Minerva's youth had Finnette's sharp eyes ceased their search for eligible suitors. Several times had her vigilance been rewarded, and then, just as the cruiser was nearing shore, Miss Minerva had hung out a "no landing" sign, and it had sought a more hospitable port, "And now it is that she is so used FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BELGIANSto wavin' 'em away," the old woman had complained bitterly, "that she's lost the knack—I'm afraid she's lost the knack." Just why the unhappily wed should be the most ardent advocates of matrimony is a mystery which psychologists have never solved. But any unmarried man or woman who numbers such on the roll of friendship can bear testimony to the truth of this. Finnette, surveying now Miss Minerva's slender little figure in crisp black-and-white mourning gown, surmounted by irregular curves of dark hair, ventured a suggestion. "It is pleasant at the beach. One does not need to " "Oh, no, I don't care about going there," her charge interrupted hurriedly. "There is something about the water, a restlessness, an incessant effort—" She wandered off toward the steps. "No, I shall stay on ' Goldacres' during the two months that I am here. Why should any one ever want to leave such a place?" "Down under the old sycamore is a pleasant place then," Finnette remarked. "I have never seen the nasturtiums growing high up in the branches like down there, and the little bench " "Yes, I mean to try it," Miss Minerva answered, picking up a floppy garden hat with a wreath of dull-tinted chrysanthemums around the brim. But on her way down to the big sycamore she stopped at the garage, drawn thither by the morbid instinct of the murderer. George had gone into town on some household errands and would not be back until noon. The tragedy of the night had had a curious psychological effect upon Miss Minerva. From being rather indifferent to the existence of the Belgians, and coldly neutral concerning their ultimate end, she now found herself partisan to a violent degree. George had piled the victims of the massacre near the stone fence and Miss Minerva decided to obliterate the disaster from her memory by giving them decent burial. When she emerged from the tool-house with a sinister-looking shovel she found a man in a hat as floppy as her own leaning over the wall watching her through the ivy-leaves. "Good morning, neighbor," he said genially, and completely ignoring the significance of the shovel. "Good morning," Miss Minerva answered in the lowered tone appropriate to bereavement. Her habitual reserve was intensified by cold indignation. She began to dig in eloquent silence. "If he has a grain of sense he'll see that I don't want him around and will go away," she said to herself. Evidently he hadn't, for he stayed and began peering inquisitively along her side of the fence. "Are you looking for the fourth dimension, Mr. Math-Man?" Miss Minerva inquired at last. "No," he answered still genially, "I'm looking,for Euclid." There was a long silence and the pile of earth at the side of the grave grew steadily. "Why don't you eat them instead ? " the intruder suggested at last. Miss Minerva made no reply. She had stopped digging and was wiping her heated forehead. Without the slightest warning the Math-Man leaped over the fence and appropriated the shovel. "Let me finish," he commanded. "I think it ought to be deeper." Miss Minerva relinquished the shovel without protest. It was the least he could do to offer to bury them. " Oh, dig my grave both wide and deep, wide and deep," he sang buoyantly, and laid the Belgians in a straight row down the trench. "You raise them for the market, don't you?" he asked. "I'll try to raise the rest of them for the market," she replied with mild irony. "Well, if you're doing that," he went on pleasantly, "you'll have to do some clever advertising." "M y cousin, Mrs. Mills, keeps a card in the papers all the time," she told him briefly. He waved aside the words with a touch of impatience. "Other people are raising Belgian hares to sell," he informed her. "Did you see this ad?" He drove the shovel into the earth and drew a clipping from his pocket. She read it silently. FOR SALE! Belgian hares from the famous Tracy Warren poultry farm. Fat, juicy, delicious. Hoover eats 'em. Nothing beats 'em. Phone 127. Miss Minerva handed it back gravely. "It is a better ad than ours," she admitted. 708 FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BELGIANS "Oh, much better," he commented. "When I finished reading this I yearned for the flesh of a Belgian." "Help yourself," she invited wickedly. "Those that you are burying are perfectly good. Thev were killed only last night." He had finished the task now and was returning the shovel to the tool-house. "If he'd take off those owlish glasses he wouldn't be bad-looking," Miss Minerva decided. "Thank you very much," she said when he came back. "Oh, don't mention it," the Math-Man responded, and added with cheerful tactlessness, "I'll be glad to do it for you any time." He vaulted over the fence with athletic grace. "If Euclid comes over, send him home, will you ?" he called back. Miss Minerva was investigating the hutches. "If he wants to find out anything about that dog he'll have to ask about him," she explained to a black rabbit who occupied cage D all by himself. She wandered down the line of wire hutches, all lettered and showing the number of inhabitants in chalk figures on the outside. "Fourteen in C," she read. "Every hare has been numbered. How systematic George is!" It was that same evening that George came up to the house after dinner to announce breathlessly to Miss Minerva that he had been accepted for the service and would leave early in the morning. "I have been tryin' for a year to get in," he explained, "but always my deafness has stood in the way. But I got a notice this afternoon. I'm goin' with a bunch of mechanics for repair work. In the place where they've assigned us they say everybody gets deaf in a month anyway. I know you're not the scared kind," he finished, "so you won't mind it havin' me go." He gave her careful instructions in the care of the Belgians, and the next morning Miss Minerva filled the water-cans in each cage and replenished the feeding-bins from the barley sack in the tool-house. As an additional treat she stole from Finnette's vegetable war-garden lettuce and cabbage leaves. By the time she finished this task the Belgians had completely won her heart. "Such dear, patient, innocent little things!" she said to Finnette when the indefatigable old woman came out a few minutes later armed with a rake, a hoe, and other armament of the soldiers of the soil. But Finnette's eyes were fixed upon a tall figure in floppy hat who was irrigating long lines of beans on the other side of the fence. When Miss Minerva came in to lunch, after writing a letter to Cousin Ada down under the big sycamore-tree, she found the old woman in a genial, chatty frame of mind. "It is that next-door man who knows about the vegetables," she began, as she set a raw egg disguised in orange-juice beside Miss Minerva's plate. "He shows me how to water a better way this morning. He covers it all up afterward to keep it moist. He has the biggest lettuce!" Finnette's two hands indicated a lettuce incredibly large. "It is a new kind he is trying and almost ready to pick." Miss Minerva tapped one daintily shod foot absently on the soft rug beneath her chair. "I suppose he makes a specialty of it," she mused, her mind evidently busy with something else. "Yes, Queen Alexandra is the name. Perhaps he may let us try a head when it is ready next week." "I hope not," Miss Minerva said, suddenly alert. "I don't want to be under any obligation to him, Finnette." When she used that tone the old woman always subsided, but there was the gleam of a smile in her eyes as she went out to the kitchen for the dessert. Miss Minerva eyed her with sudden suspicion. She had an uncomfortable feeling that Finnette might have hinted for an Alexandrian lettuce. It would certainly be awkward to receive a present from the owner of Euclid. But the next morning when she went out to feed the Belgians the sight that met her eyes routed all apprehension concerning a donation from next door. The fastening on hutch C was evidently weak and had yielded to inside pressure. The cage stood wide open. There was no sign of a prowler this time. Miss Minerva cast a wild glance under the row of hutches. Not a rabbit was in sight there. But her searching glance fell upon a wide hole which the departed Euclid had probably once dug beneath the stone dividing
Drawn by Lester Ralph. •'Why don't you eat them instead?" the intruder suggested at last.—Page 707.
710 FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BELGIANS wall. Half fearfully she let her eyes travel to the other side of the partition. Then suddenly a little gasp escaped her. Crouched at irregular intervals down the aisle of Queen Alexandra lettuce, fourteen Belgian hares nibbled gratefully at the crisp, curling leaves, wet with morning dew. Without waiting even to call Finnette, Miss Minerva drew herself over the fence aided by wires of ivy and bore down upon the army of occupation. The Belgians, surfeited by the spoils of war, made little effort to escape. Long captivity had deprived them of all power of defense. She had gathered a gentle, unprotesting robber into her arms and was reaching for another when she saw the Math-Man coming through the lemon-grove with a bucket over his arm. She scrambled to her feet, sinking ankle-deep in the soft moist earth. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Coulter," she began. "I just discovered that they had escaped. I don't know how long they've been here or " He set down the bucket of lemons and swept a speculative eye over the devastated lettuce-bed. "AH night, I should say." He gave this estimate in a dispassionate, unhurried voice, as though he were calculating the duration of a railroad journey. "I don't know what I can do about it, except pay for the damage, of course," she hurried on. He was bareheaded to-day, and he stood looking down at her gravely from behind the owlish glasses. Miss Minerva mentally subtracted five years from the forty which she had given him at their first meeting, and wished desperately that he would smile. "Let's catch them first before we discuss damages," he suggested, and nabbed a surprised little bunny by his long ears. It proved a longer task than either of them had expected. The Belgians had lost their fleetness, but they had an aggravating talent for just eluding the grasp of their pursuers. Miss Minerva and the Math-Man bumped their heads together sharply several times during the pursuit and clawed wildly at each other over the heads of the Alexandrian lettuce. When the last of the fourteen had been safely secured in cage C, they sought the cool shelter of the sycamore-tree, festooned with gaudy nasturtium-blossoms, to regain their breath. Miss Minerva took off the chrysanthemum-wreathed hat and fanned herself. The Math-Man noticed all at once that her eyes were gray, lustrous, blue-gray, not dark as he had first labelled them. It was the heavy black lashes, he decided, that had misled him. "Were you raising them for the market?" Miss Minerva asked contritely. "What? Oh, the lettuce? Well, I'll try to get the rest of them to the market." She met it without flinching. "I'm afraid I was rude yesterday. But I was a little upset. You see, this place doesn't belong to me, and I feel responsible for everything intrusted to my care. Your dog—I ought to have told you about it yesterday— It was really an accident, but—I killed Euclid." "Yes, I know." "You knew about it all the time?" " No, not all the time; but after I'd met you I began to be suspicious. Then I got George to confirm it. I'm glad you told me. I felt a delicacy about mentioning it. But I'm under deep obligations to you— I hope the lettuce tragedy will help to square my debt." He apparently enjoyed the mute questioning of the wide-open gray eyes, for he spoke in drawding soliloquy now. "That dog had a family tree that could have shaded the whole Belgian nation, and he was the bane of my life. He has kept sick neighbors awake and stolen the property of well neighbors. Since he came into it, my life has been one prolonged apology. I couldn't kill him myself, for he didn't belong to me, and I couldn't give him away, but I could have yelled wdth joy when I heard of his timely end." "I wish you had told me," Miss Minerva sighed. "I wouldn't have worried so much, but—" Her eyes lighted now with sudden fire. "I love animals, dogs especially, and I never killed anything in my life before, but I enjoyed firing that shot. It's the only thing I ever did that I didn't have to consult somebody else about first!" "I see," he said slowly, and for an instant Miss Minerva was frightened for "It was really an accident, but—I killed Euclid."—Page 710, fear that he really did. "I'm sorry you worried about it," he said gently. "You're out here for your health, aren't you ? " "How did you know?" "My dear lady, it's easy. I've seen enough worn-out war workers to " "It wasn't war work," she hastened to correct him. "So much the worse. That's the only service that awards medals or honorable mention. Listen. Resting is the hardest job in the world just now; but it's worth the effort. Don't worry about anything while you're tanking up on strength. Raise rabbits, and read, not war stuff, but something light and entertaining like " "Like what?" "Well, try some of Rex Martin's short stories. He writes about burglars and highwaymen and piratical sort of chaps, 711 FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BELGIANS but they're such clever devils and so decent at heart that somehow they get you. I don't know of anything better than 'The Adventures of the Blackbird' to feed worn-out nerves." At this moment Finnette appeared bearing a silver pitcher and glasses. Her face was inscrutable but hospitality radiated from the fresh cup cakes and fruit punch. When Miss Minerva came up to the house a few minutes later Finnette called to her sharply from the back screen porch. "Why is it that you do not invite him to lunch?" "How absurd you are, Finny. I don't know him well enough for that." She wandered out to where the old woman sat mixing salad dressing. "It was terrible about our rabbits getting into that wonderful lettuce, but he was very nice about it. He simply wouldn't let me pay him." "If he comes over to-morrow we will ask him to lunch." Finnette said simply. The Math-Man did come over the next day to show Finnette a new kind of cucumber, but he was not invited to lunch. For Miss Minerva lay in the blue-and-gold bedroom racked with pain, the aching spinal pain that only the nerve-weary know. The next day she was no better, and then Finnette, coming up with her milk-and-egg drink, announced that the Math-Man had offered to take charge of the Belgians. "Already he is doing it since yesterday," she reported. "He's very kind," the sufferer sighed. "I suppose I'll have to let him, but I hate to be under such " "He sends you this note telling how they get along," Finnette went on imperturbably. Miss Minerva opened the thin slip of paper. The message was concise and brief. "Report from the Belgian front. "2B + SA + 12E = 0 K. "C - 14 = 0." "It is the lettuce that kills one whole cage." Finnette explained the tragedy of the last equation with tranquil stoicism. "He says green feed, if it is damp, will kill them every time." The next evening the report came concealed in the pages of "The Adventures of the Blackbird." It was more encouraging. "Break in the Belgian line. "B — 2 = $1.00 E — 9 = $9.20. "N o casualties." "He sells them by the Red Cross salvage department in town," Finnette exulted. "He says they are at the age to sell and should go. And in this way it is not necessary to advertise." "Thank goodness!" Miss Minerva sighed. "It's wonderful to have such a capable manager." "What I always tell you," the old woman reminded her, "is that talent of a kind you may have, but you know little of business." The next day, when the Belgian report came in on a note half hidden in a huge Alexandrian lettuce that looked like a colossal green rose, Miss Minerva wrote a message of appreciation which Finnette bore in triumph to the Math-Man. It expressed the hope that he would call the next day and allow her to thank him in person. During the weeks that followed, he reported daily at the sycamore-tree, for, although Miss Minerva announced herself perfectly recovered now and equal to any task, he pointed out that the position of food administrator for the Belgians was too important a post to be filled by a novice. And so the Belgians continued to thrive, and the Red Cross continued to be enriched, and Miss Minerva and the Math-Man continued to chat under the friendly shade of the big sycamore. During the long mornings Miss Minerva sometimes wrote at the rustic table. There were frequent letters to Cousin Ada, in which she assured her in glowing terms that she was completely recovering her health, and that " Goldacres" was the Garden of Eden. She wrote other things too as the days passed, sketchy, fragmentary things, and one- morning the lines of a poem began to write themselves across the table. " I dare to take what my eyes desire, And to keep what my heart holds dear." There was a long pause after this assertion, and then other lines added themFOR THE BENEFITselves, and the morning was miraculously gone. It was the next day that the Math-Man handed in his resignation as food administrator to the Belgians. They were standing on the rustic bridge that spanned a dry creek bed bordered with myrtle, and he had just finished superintending the carting away of a dozen marketable rabbits. "I'm sorry to give up the position," he explained, "but I must get back to work. I gave myself two months to rest and they are gone." "Work?" Miss Minerva echoed the word incredulously as though it were quite a new one. "Something, I suppose, along the line of—engineering?" "Yes. Engineering the fortunes of the Centennial Magazine.'' "You are its editor." Miss Minerva made the statement in a musing voice, looking down a vista of trees that ended in a patch of green-blue ocean. "I thought," he said, "that you thought I was—somebody else." "I did at first, but your name was in— that book you lent me, you know." He smiled. " I wouldn't know an algebraic equation from the shorthand notes of a Czecho-Slav. M y brother's the math. whiz. When he went into the service he suggested that I come out here and be caretaker for his place till I got a line on my nerves. But how did you know who I was?" "I ought to know, if anybody does. I've had a great many letters from you." "Letters?" "Letters. But not so many of those as printed slips. Yours are the only ones Fve ever kept. You write such delicious things on the margins. I suppose," she went on after a moment of silence, "that you came out here to get away from writers?" He nodded dumbly. "And I came out to get away from editors." '.'You must write under a pen name." A kind of terror was gripping the editor of the Centennial Magazine. "I had to. You see, my parents were the old-fashioned, conservative kind. They had very strict ideas about what a daughter ought to do. I didn't dare tell OF THE BELGIANS them about—my work. And yet," her voice had sunk to a tragic little whisper, "I should have died during these last hard years, if I hadn't had—the Blackbird." He was staring down at her, this demure, feminine little creature in the dainty black-and-white gown, as though he were seeing her for the first time. "The Blackbird!" he murmured incredulously. His voice was awed. "Yo u little woman you, do you mean that you —you write about ?" "About robbers ! " she cried passionately, "and highwaymen and piratical sort of men!" She faced him with a tremulous defiance. Thirty years of self-suppression and outraged youth and stifled dreams were in her voice as she hurried on. "Highwaymen and robbers and pirates go after what they want and take it, in spite of everything. They are not hampered by the fear of consequences, by fear of anything. It's glorious!" The editor of the Centennial Magazine was not aware that his next words were spoken aloud. "I dare to take what my eyes desire, and to keep what my heart holds dear." "But I don't," Miss Minerva said bitterly. "I never have." A wave of hot color swept her pale face. "How could you read—what somebody else wrote?" He smiled shamelessly. "Reading what other people write is my business. I found that down under the sycamore-tree yesterday, and it gave me courage." He reached out and took her two hands in a strong, masterful grasp. "As a caretaker, I'm a miserable failure," he confessed. "I haven't taken care at all." Through a mist in which the oak-trees along the creek seemed to dance grotesquely, Miss Minerva gazed at the patch of green-blue ocean that has lured artists from all over the world. But what she saw was a long, bleak trail of dead years slowly dissolving into the fog. Above them on the terrace a fiery-eyed old woman scurried out of sight around a corner of the big house. "Fourteen Belgians and two rows of Alexandrian lettuce gone," she murmured wdckcdly. "Well, it was worth trying, and Mon Dieu! everything in life costs something." Angela BY EDWARD C. VENABLE Author of "Pierre Vinton," "Six-Feet-Four," etc.. NGELA is really very much like her great-grandmother. She doesn't know it and she would be furiously angry if I were to tell her; but nevertheless she is. It is a most comforting resemblance. Sometimes I am inclined to think it the most comforting aspect of Angela. There is a portrait of her great-grandmother over the fireplace in the library, a lady in the tightest-fitting black "waist" I have ever seen, with her hair smoothly parted and drawn down over her ears and her hands prettily folded in her lap. I look at that picture and feel sure that no one who is, as Angela is, the spiritual replica of such a person can ever be what Angela assures me she intends to become. But I cast such glances furtively, for fear Angela should catch me at it and read my thoughts. To be told she resembles her great-grandmother would, I imagine, be the bitterest reproach she could receive— unless perhaps to be told the same thing of her great-great-grandmother, because Angela's ambition in life is to be new. In man}' ways she is, but these are superficial ways and it is the fundamentals of Angela that I am concerned with, inasmuch as the laws of consanguinity forbid my marrying her, just as the laws of heredity compel me to be her guardian. This is, indeed, one of her grievances— that I am her guardian, I mean; she hasn't the slightest desire to marry me. She is not quite so new as that. "Why," she asks me, "why should an intelligent human being of mature years (she is twenty-two) and without criminal instincts have a keeper?" You should never answer Angela's questions. The only safe method is to ask her another. So I ask: "Why don't you marry, then?" "I shall never marry," she assures me. 714 "Don't, Angela," I implore, "be so disagreeable." As a matter of fact, we agree on this question of the guardianship. Angela does not dislike it an}' more heartily than I. We both regard it as an imposition. To ask, as was asked of me—a bachelor of sober habits, with a tendency to dyspepsia—to regard an individual like Angela as his "own daughter" is more than an imposition—it is an absurdity. I could no more regard her as my own daughter than I could look upon her as my own airplane. And yet how characteristic of her poor, dear father that he should attempt to establish such a relationship by pen and ink. Poor fellow, he tried to establish a new universe by means of pen and ink, and now the only existing evidence of this reformer's life is Angela, and she is exactly like her great-grandmother. Verily, for such it must have been written: "There is nothing new under the sun." Apart from this fundamental absurdity in our relationship, however, Angela and I get on together not uncomfortably. In a way, I think, we rather like each other. I do not hesitate to give the credit for this happy state of affairs to my own acuteness in spying out that absurdity. If I had not, and if I tried to regard Angela as my own daughter, disapproving of her as I do, there would inescapably be friction between us. There would, to be quite frank, be rows, tremendous rows. I should probably lock her up to keep her from going to the sort of places she frequents, I should forbid my house to some ninety-odd per cent of her acquaintance, I should add about twelve inches to the length of her skirts, I should make an eternal ass of myself and a spiteful little sneak of Angela. As it is I do none of such things. By merely repudiating that snare of scriptural paternity I dwell in peace with Angela and even with her friends. ANGELA 715 I add that final clause with dubiety. Angela's friends are difficult. In my opinion and her phraseology, they are a scrubby lot. They are not, I fancy, like their great-grandfathers. For practical purposes most of them, I am confident, never had any. I do not refer particularly to the men. I scarcely know them. They never call at the house, and when they dine there smoke in the drawing-room with Angela. The women I know better. Very much better. They call and dine, and especially they lunch. I have a suspicion they do not approve of my lunching in my own house, and so when I do they try to ignore my bad habit as completely as possible. This is very polite of them and it also gives me the opportunity of knowing them intimately because, I being conventionally not present, they talk among themselves. It is really very hard on the butler, though. I ventured to point this out once to Angela, but not very clearly, I am afraid. "You see, Angela," I said, "there is Thomas." "What has Thomas got to do with it ?" asked Angela. "Well," I said, "Thomas is a gentleman—I mean, of course, a man." Angela stared blankly. I went a step further. "He is even," I suggested, "a bachelor. And do you think that the personal prospects of Miss Balch in the science of eugenics " "That," said Angela, "is the very class we want to reach." Doubtless. But they will never reach Thomas, nevertheless. He wdll leave first. It is impossible to explain to Angela such an apotheosis of modesty as a bachelor who happens also to be a butler. This really exasperates me. To lose Thomas for the theories of Miss Balch is too much. And they are only theories, too. That woman hasn't any prospects. I told Angela as much. "Mathilde Balch," said Angela, "belongs in the front ranks." "Mathilde Balch," I replied, "belongs in the Litany, somewhere between the fury of the Northmen and the perils of childbirth." It is after a luncheon such as this that, safely secluded in the library, I look up to the portrait of the great-grandmother, from whence at such moments comes my only help. She was a beautiful woman in the fashion of her day. Her face is beautiful even now on the canvas, disfigured as it is by all the absurdities of that day's eccentricities. Just so, I reflect, Angela too is a pretty girl despite the efforts of her dressmakers. I am credibly informed that the lady on the canvas, when she moved under the open sky, wore on her head a sort of inverted bird's nest, and if the portrait were of a slightly different shape it would necessarily show a "bustle," or it may be a "hoop." I must by daily experience acquit Angela of a "bustle" and, only vague rumors to the contrary, of a "hoop" also. Can I in common honesty convict her of anything worse? Nay, even as bad? I review meticulously the wardrobe of Angela as I know it and must answer truthfully I cannot. No, on the whole the lady on the canvas in her demure black and her precise coiffure has no right to look so virtuously down, after all. What if I did the other day find a little brown curl on the hall table's drawer ! Were there not in the other lady's day things known as "waterfalls"? How do I know what there is even now at the back of her smooth brown head? She doesn't show me in the portrait, and I doubt whether she was quite frank wdth the artist either. This same lady was imprudent enough to leave a diary. It is a weakness which I assess as equivalent to Angela's recklessness with the kodak. Angela has kodakalbums which will some day be the joy of her irreverent descendants. A similar fate has already met her great-grandmother's diary. It opens with a record of the progress of an antimacassar. I lay the volume down an instant to visualize Angela and an olive-drab sweater. The unguent of Air. Macassar balances against the chill mud of Flanders! The sleek head of a Nat Willis against the broad shoulders of a Victor Chapman ! I think Angela has the better of her great-grandmother in that opening chapter. I close the book there for the time. I feel that it has done me good, and I may return to the discussion of Miss Balch with greater equanimity. If I were Angela's father, or even if I 716 ANGELA were so silly as to take her real father's advice and regard myself as that, I would not take the trouble to seek after equanimity- in my relations with her. I should never apply at all this antidote of her great-grandmother's diary. I should stamp and swear and sa\r disagreeable things about friends like Miss Baich, but not being silly in this one instance I strive earnestly to retain balance. So poised I perceive that the characteristic feature of this little group of thinkers—Angela's group—is unanimity. I have never seen so many people so completely in accord so frequently. And they not only agree among themselves but they refer ominously to "opinion," a vast gloomy background somewhere which is inexorably enveloping humanity and of which that particular luncheon-party is only a tiny detached portion. Miss Balch is the fuglewoman of the group. I have never heard any one of them disagree with Miss Balch in any instance. I can't altogether blame them for this; I would not care to disagree with Miss Balch myself. But nevertheless unanimity is a suspicious quality/. There is something Teutonic about it. When I listen to these young ladies agreeing to the dot of an "i " on subjects as various as international politics and the nutriment of the human young, I sometimes awfully suspect the existence in this district of Manhattan of a central-office opinion-distributing or some such cultural establishment. A sort of intellectual Sears-Roebuck. How else could they each know so exactly what to think? It is curious that young ladies who are so very particular about the individuality of their frocks should be content to acquire their mental garments wholesale. Yet, after all, did not their great-grandmothers acquire theirs in a precisely similar manner? Angela's did, I know. The garments, to be sure, were of a very- different pattern—both kinds of garments, those for the body and those for the mind —but that is a matter of very small consequence. Angela's great-grandmother was one of the most incurably wholesale thinkers whose thoughts I have ever been able to get at. "I feel every day," she writes under date of July 9, 1S37, which was exactly seventeen years and nine days after the date of her birth, "I feel every day how little the Life of the World and of Pleasure can take the place of Firm, Religious Faith." Angela is similarly certain of the inadequacy- of fun. All young ladies of pleasing personalities have such certitudes —else there wouldn't be any fun. Angela, to be sure, is not quite so emphatic as her ancestors who called all who were not convinced of the inadequacy of fun "ungodly." Angela merely calls them "parasites." This is due to the fact that Angela patronizes Ellen Key, while the older lady shopped at the establishment of Hemans & Tupper, whose wares were more highly colored, I think. It is comforting to me to observe too that Angela onlyr shares her great-grandmother's disapproval of her spiritual pastors and masters, for Angela's disapproval of me, though in the main harmless, at times makes me nervous. She says I am antisocial. Miss Balch balefully refers to capitalism in the same connection. But what's that, what's capitalism compared to "infidelity"? And French infidelity at that! That was the charge her poor, dear great-great-grandfather lived and died under. The diary painfully/ records how-it was necessary during holy worship to assume a position in the pew between the diarist's parent and the aisle. Otherwise apparently the old infidel would be out and aw-ay—to a race-track probably. It was even necessary, I infer, to prayr, as it were, with one eye open and fixed upon the backslider, because she says her watchfulness was disturbing her devotions. I wonder if the old gentleman was capable of hurdling his kneeling offspring and escaping that way ? Otherwise, why was not the blockade of the pew sufficient? Evidently he was a resourceful son of Belial, full of the traditional wiles of the children of darkness. The relations between Angela and me are much less strained. We argue our differences of the sort and, on the whole, argue with amiability. The reason,suppose, of this superior amiability is that our relationship is not complicated as were those others by such external superficialities as paternity-. By strictly disregarding her father's dying wishes I have simplified our problem, made it of human ANGELA 717 solution not only capable but even easy. Angela here is not my own daughter, not my foster-daughter. She is not my anything. She is simply the Woman in the House. Before she came, an impudent Little creature of sixteen, this position was occupied by a Mrs. Pusey. Mrs. Pusey used to look in at me at meal-times through a crack in the pantry-door. When I saw her doing it I would put up the newspaper. Later I believe she entered in and carefully counted the fragments that remained, thereby saving me tremendous percentages in monthly bills. A most capable soul! I trust she prospers somewhere. Angela is different, quite different. I am confident too that when she came she intended, if she gave the matter any-thought at all, to be even more different. She had no desire to occupy the position she at present holds. The dignity was thrust upon her, partly by me, I suppose, much more by Thomas. It was done as that silent, mysterious man performs all his works, noiselessly, almost imperceptibly, but irresistibly. The whole process must have taken place under my eyes and yet I had never so much as an inkling until the fact was accomplished. Thomas is not so much a man as a noiseless, irresistible force pervading certain latitudes of my household. On that very first morning when Angela came to breakfast—the true significance of it all is clear to me now for the first time—she was late. This was bad. I felt apologetic toward Thomas. To my surprise, he did not seem offended. I know now he was absorbed in weightier matters. I did not realize that such business was afoot. I had even fancied in a vague way that Angela's plate would be laid around the corner from mine, and I had kindly intentions of placing upon it choice morsels of unusually crisp bacon and of otherwise being parentally condescending. It was not that I was regarding her as my daughter but as somebody's daughter. Thomas made no such blunder. His vision was farther-sighted. Angela's plate was not around the corner at all. It was at the other end of the table, and between me and it was a plated-silver coffee-urn that stood two feet high on the table-top. And oh, vatic urn ! It had belonged to Angela's great-grandmother. It was a most impressive piece of metal. It must have been almost overpowering to Angela when she found it there that morning for the first time. I imagine Thomas felt something of the sort. I remember he stood very close to her elbow when she first stretched out her hands to it. I felt abashed, though not at all understanding why. Thomas's manner made me so. He bore that first cup of coffee the length of the table with a solemnity which he otherwise reserved exclusively for plum-pudding. He placed it before me as though it contained an elixir of immortality. Then he withdrew to the pantry. The Irypocrite! I caught him watching through a crack in the door, just as Mrs. Pusey used to do. It was that gave me an insight into the true meaning of the occasion. Then I knew that unconsciously I had been thrust into a ceremony. Angela's eyes around the urn were fixed— blue, wide, and full of fear. I was almost overcome. M y hand trembled. I scarcely dared lift the cup. I tasted it barely and [nit it down. It rang against the saucer. I looked fearfully at Angela. "Is it," asked Angela, "is it—all right?" "It is," I answered; "it is delicious." Then the clock struck half past eight on the chimney-piece, and Thomas came in with the eggs. Oh, Angela, Angela, it is not your fault or your virtue that you are
so \-ery like
your great-grandmother ! I fear after all it is only an ineluctable necessity. From that day until this one I have never read the newspaper at the breakfast-table. I am, it may be, slow on the uptake, but once sufficiently instructed I have a proper respect for occasions. Surely, if Angela can lay aside the perfecting of the human race long enough to perfect that early-morning cup, I can lay aside the chronicle of those same creatures' mistakes long enough to thank her for her solicitude. That I firmly believe the solicitude is in no sense of her \-olition, that it is a necessity bound upon her, in no way lessens my responsibility in the matter. I lift that cup not to Angela, not even to her great-grandmother, but to a presence that both, in their genera718 ANGELA tions, have—not unworthily, I am sure, though unconsciously—incarnated, the presence of the Woman in the House. What a restless spirit she is! No sooner has she safely ensconced herself in this title and dignity than she begins to meditate a yet more adventurous attempt. She intends to become a woman in somebody else's house. Of course, being possessed of five normal senses, I have been aware of such meditation for some time. I was not, however, prepared for its sudden crystallization, as it were, into action. Angela, unlike me, has no sense of occasions. She came into the library dressed for the street, even to her gloves, and after asking me if she could do anything for me up-town she added: " I think I am going to marry." "What!" I asked. "Herby," Angela answered. She meant, I discovered, Arthur Herbert Spencer. I don't altogether like Arthur Herbert, which may possibly account for Angela's infatuation. At that time I didn't remember him. Later, however, he came to dinner, and I discovered I didn't altogether like him. To begin with, I don't like his names, any of them—Arthur or Herbert or Arthur-Herbert or Herby. Spencer is permissible but the others are altogether too smooth. Then I don't like his clothes. They are always too short— his trousers, his coats, his waistcoats, his collars—everything he wears. He suggests having been outfitted at some earlier period of his development. He retaliates by not liking my whiskey and tobacco. For my person he evidences a profound respect and some affection. That first evening after dinner Angela left us alone together. That was how I discovered I didn't altogether like him. I suppose she had some groundless feminine theory that I had something to say to him. Of course I didn't. I never had less to say to a man in my life. The only common interest we had in the world was Angela, and I couldn't very well talk to a comparative stranger about the woman he was going to marry—especially when I knew the woman as I know Angela. He told me I knew his father. After a good deal of explanation I found out he was right, only I thought he was dead. It was stupid of me, but when the boy first spoke of the man and added the hope I would soon meet him again I was startled and showed it. "Where is he? " I asked. "In Arizona," said Spencer. I was relieved. I am never quite sure what one of Angela's friends is going to say. Fortunately she came in then and I covered up my blunder. I don't altogether like Arthur Herbert and I imagine I never shall, and yet I feel sorry for him. Angela has deceived him. We never discuss Angela, but of necessity her existence is referred to by one or the other of us from time to time, and even by these very occasional flashes I perceive that Angela has imposed upon him the current misapprehension of her originality. The calm confidences with which he uses the preface "Angela thinks," as if he were thereby opening up some vision of a new heaven and earth, would alone give her away. And I further perceive that he is ever so slightly afraid of this newness. It at once enchants and affrights him. And as the days pass and the final day approaches his enchantment and his fright grow together. We come up here to the library every evening for a half-hour after dinner, while Angela is busy elsewhere, and sit opposite each other by the fireplace. Between us hangs the portrait of Angela's great-grandmother. At first I thought that Angela insisted upon these conferences and he dutifully obeyed, but I was wrong. He seeks them. During them he often looks at me silently for whole minutes together, and he looks—I am sure of it—imploringly. "You," he beseeches, "you have lived with her for many years. Tell me. In the name of our common father Adam, speak." I grin in silence behind the cigar-smoke. What, I betray the hard-bought knowledge of my years, the secret of my generation to this impudent knocker at the door ? All day long youth kicks at my heels, treads on my toes, pushes, hustles, insults me in a hundred ways, but for one short half-hour at evening age has its revenge. I weigh it out to the very grain. And the very precariousness of my power adds to its sweetness. There, not three feet above his head, hangs the answer to ANGELA 719 his riddle, if he had only sense to read it. But I shall never point it out to him. Meanwhile, I know Angela is hanging about outside somewhere. She imagines we are deep in self-revelation, he allowing me to glimpse his spiritual treasures momentarily, I revealing myself to his rare discernment in that role of not-as-crossas-I-seem which Angela has cast me for of late. Poor child—if she only knew it—I am on such occasions malice incarnate. Arthur Herbert is going away shortly, as soon as they are married, and for once in clothes that are fully large enough for him—khaki. It is cut in all sizes these days. Before he goes he is going to ask me to take care of Angela for him; not openly—he is different from that—but dumbly, incoherently, with words that mean nothing and would be quite superfluous if they did, with that stricken young face of his to speak for him. And I shall promise him in some similarly inadequate fashion, I suppose. What a farce! What wdll be taking care of Angela then will be quite beyond my power to disturb. And I shall watch it at work when she sits there across the fire—under the eyes of the picture on the wall. As a matter of fact, she speaks as if she were going with him, but that, of course, neither of us will ever permit. It is quite out of the question. She looked in from the hall to wish me good-night just now on her way to bed. Arthur Herbert has just left. She was radiant. I have never seen her look more completely Angela. I wished her in my ponderous fashion pleasant dreams. " I never dream," she answered, with a smile. Ah, she will soon. (By kind permission of the censor) "July 22, 1017. "DEAR UNCLE SIMON: "Look up from those darned old books of yours for a minute and listen to me. "Herby came a cropper last Thursday at Avord. He was trying a 'Vrille' for the first time and of course he muffed it. He always does. He muffed me the first time, the first three times in fact, though you were so book-blinded you thought I had pink-eye, or some antediluvian disease. Anyway he is laid up now. He is going to get well. Doctor G says it's certain. But he thinks I am not. "That's the trouble. If he thinks I won't hard enough, he won't, and then I won't, or at least won't want to. I know I am not very clear, but you wouldn't blame me if you could see me writing on this board the nurse holds up wdth so many all around me who can't, wdio simply can't, get well. "Now, the point is Herby wants—I want too—you to take little Angela if anything should go wrong. I know you think you have done enough for Angela. You have, but I want her to pour coffee out of that old coffee-urn; she has such pretty hands, Uncle Simon, even now. I wonder if you ever noticed mine when I did? . ,, Devotedly,n £ L . „AG A
Gardens of the Alcazar, Seville. Some Spanish Gardens BY ERNEST PEIXOTTO I LLUSTRATIONS BY THE A UTHOR T "TOW comparatively little we know,|—I in America, of the charm of theSpanish garden ! Yet the exuberant quintas of Valencia, the gay, tiledcourts and fountains of Seville, the hanging gardens of the Alhambra, the romantic and melancholy groves of Aranjuez,and the majestic vistas of La Granjamight well serve as models for the settings of our country homes in Florida orin California or in the growing Southwest,so Hispanic both in color and in character,The gardens of Spain, with a few notable exceptions, were not laid out on thegrand scale of those of the Italian villas'/20 near Rome, nor of the more magnificent of the French chateaux, but they have a romantic flavor of their own and a charm that is quite unlike that of any other Eu ropean gardens—a charm that, in no small measure, can be directly traced to the influence of the Moorish occupation, This Moorish influence is particularly apparent in the gardens of southern Spain (and they, after all, are the most charac teristic), where the vegetation is semi tropic in character, and where palms and myrtles and thickets of citron and orange trees give a truly African quality to the landscape. Perhaps as characteristic as SOME SPANISH GARDENS any of these southern gardens are the Giralda Tower alone remain. Upon the Jardines del Alcazar in Seville. reconquest of Seville by the Christians the Of the original Alcazar, a huge fortress Alcazar was almost entirely destroyed, that formed the main military bulwark of and was rebuilt by the Spanish sovereigns Pavilion of Charles Y, Alui/.ur Gardens, Seville. the city, little or nothing remains. It had of the fourteenth century and their sucbeen built in the twelfth century by the cessors. Their architects, however, were Sultan Abu Yakub Vusuf, the same en- either Morescoes or Spaniards inspired lightened monarch who had caused the by the Mudejar architecture that they great mosque to be erected, of which the saw about them, this influence still being Court of Oranges and the world-famed seen plainly in the diapered wall-panels, Vol. LXXI.—40 SOME SPANISH GARDENS the cusped arches, and the ajimez windows of the Patio de las Doncellas that was built as late as the reign of Charles V. The Alcazar Gardens, as we see them to-day, were also laid out under this same Emperor, and they exhibit the same tendency to borrow ideas from the Moors, so that, in them, we see Mudejar fountains fraternizing with Chirriguerresque archways and tiled Moorish seats built along walls that might have been designed by Berruguete. These gardens are usually entered through the long, dark, corridor-like Apeadero, from which you emerge with blinking eyes into a dazzling white courtyard with a wealth of flowers and potted plants ranged along its balustrades. From this court you descend a few steps, revetted like the seats that adjoin them, with beautiful azulejos, or tiles. Hence a cave-like entrance admits you to the vaulted Banos, where, according to tradition, Maria de Padilla used to bathe while her admirers gallantly drank the water she had used for her ablutions. Opposite these baths an archway leads to the outer gardens, which are a perfect riot of light and color. They are laid out in a series of rectangular compartments enclosed by clipped hedges and planted with patterns in box, and further embellished with a profusion of flowering shrubs and plants: laurels, azaleas, jessamine, and roses. At the intersections of the paths the corners have been cut off so as to form octagons, in which are placed fountains set on octagonal bases made of tiles, mostly blue and white, but with occasional dashes of a rich yellow. In a far corner of the garden stands a little colonnaded pavilion or pleasure-house, erected by Charles V, also in the Moorish style— a gem of an edifice, whose walls as well as the seats that surround it are all faced up with brilliant tiles. Behind it is a mezquita or little mosque, whose image is reflected in a deep blue pool of water; so that, in this end of the garden at least, one might fancy oneself in Tunis or in Fez, or in some villa in the outskirts of Tangier. But the walls that surround these gardens are truly Spanish, topped as they are with fantastic copings and enlivened with gateways of capricious design, supported by baroque buttresses and surmounted by broken pediments capped with obelisks and vases. Along their northern side the gardens arc bordered by the varied structures of the Alcazar itself, while along their eastern end they are shut in by highly colored walls, finished with stalactic rustica and adorned with statued niches, with grottos, and with arcades whose white arches gleam dazzlingly against the lapis-colored sky. Palm-trees of great height and luxuriance, varied with an occasional cedar of Lebanon or some other dark evergreen, project the only bits of shadow upon its glittering pathways, so that the beholder, on a sunny day, is struck with an overpowering sense of brilliancy and splendor, of color and perfume and rich southern exuberance. This same sense of tropic brilliancy is characteristic of the patios for which Seville has long been famous. They, too,are a heritage from the Moors, with their tiles and their fountains, their arcades and bright-colored toiidos, or awnings, to protect them from the sun. Every Spanish city has its favorite Alameda or Paseo. Seville is no exception to this rule, and the Paseo de las Delicias that leads to the Parque Maria-Luisa is a typical example of the shaded promenades, planted with sycamores or lindens, under whose cool vaults the people love to saunter at ease and take the air on the long summer evenings. But the most beautiful of these Alamedas that I know is the one that leads from Granada up through the Valle de la Assabica to the gates of the Alhambra. It is planted with elms brought from England by the Duke of Wellington in 1812 —trees that now, centenarians, rear their mighty boles aloft like the pillars of some vast cathedral, while their branches, meeting high aloft, intertwine to form a verdant roof, impenetrable even at midday, that excludes the rays of the summer sun and breaks the winds, leaving the floor of the valley cool, still, and shadowy. Three fountains decorate its leafy aisles. They murmur constantly with the sound of running water that gushes from countless springs in the hillside as well as from the Acequia del Rev that brings down the melting snows of the Sierras SOME SPANISH GARDENS from above the Generalife. To add to designers have been able to impart a sin-the charm of this mystic grove the air is gular beauty and show how much can be filled with the songs of nightingales that, done with a very small space. The best attracted by the cool shadows and the known of these is the Garden of Linderaja, The Garden of Linderaja, Alhambra. calm atmosphere, nest by hundreds in its lying in the very shadow of the Peinador dense foliage. de la Reina. Erom its centre rises the These beautiful groves lead us, at last, exquisite alabaster fountain whose praises to the Moorish Palace of the Alhambra, have been sung by Washington Irving in which contains three small gardens that his "Alhambra." About it the symare usually neglected by the tourist in his metrical beds are confined by thick hedges interest in the palace itself. Two of them of box and shaded by orange trees and are really only courtyards laid out with cypresses, while from above, between the garden features, but even to these the high, protecting walls, falls a powdery, SOME SPANISH GARDENS sifted light like that from a studio skylight, that lends to this little garden a very peculiar charm. The second of these Alhambra gardens, known as the Jardin del Cuarto de Machuca, lies at the western end of the palace. It also is laid out in geometric patterns, with clipped hedges and rose arbors, wdiile through breaks in its massive walls you catch glimpses of the Albaicin opposite, with its church towers silhouetted against the sky and its red-tiled roofs descending the hill, pell-mell, in picturesque confusion, to the valley, worn by the Darro, far down beneath you. But it is the third garden, the Jardin de los Adarves, or Garden of the Ramparts, that is the most characteristic and the most beautiful of the three. As its name implies, it lies imbedded within the very walls of the old Moorish stronghold in the shadow of the Alcazaba, or keep of the fortress. But even within these restricted confines, it manages to contain a world of pretty features: fountains enclosed in box hedges, pathways made of little rounded rocks, roses of Castile clambering in profusion over trellises of iron, whose arches frame fascinating views of the city, and the Vega lying far below, wdth the mountains of Elvira and the Albaicin rising opposite. It is due to the choice of such spots upon the heights that the Granada gardens owe a large portion of their loveliness; for in them, shut off from the world and embowered in flowers, you feel an intimate solitude, a quiet sense of retirement as if you were secluded in a well-furnished room, yet when you look out of your window, so to speak, through an opening in the wall, cunningly devised so as to command a certain prospect, you have the feeling that all the world lies spread out at your feet for you to gaze upon and wonder at, wdtile to your ear there mounts the creak of a distant cartwheel, the bark of a dog, or the cries of children in the Albaicin to stimulate your imagination. And it is at night that the magic of these gardens is most potent. This Garden of the Ramparts will always remain connected in my mind with certain enchanted nights in May, when, at his invitation, we met the Governor of the Alhambra and another friend of ours to make a visit to the lowers by moonlight. We crossed the Plaza de los Aljibes to the door of the Alcazaba, which the conservador opened wdth a ponderous key. As we entered the Garden of the Ramparts we found its rose arbors and thickets of myrtle and hornbeam tipped with silver, while in them the nightingales sang exultantly. Almost on tiptoe, so as not to break the spell, we crossed it and clambered up the steep steps of the Torre de la Vela, the highest of the Alhambra towers, until we reached its roof-terrace, where we found that chairs had been set out for our reception, and cushions to lean upon had been disposed along the parapets. The roses in the gardens down below and the flowers placed in pots along the castle walls seemed to exhale a stronger perfume than by day. Far beneath us lay the city gleaming with its countless lights, the streets about the Puerta Real shedding forth a mellow glow. Opposite rose the Albaicin wdth scattered lights shining upon its pale white walls—a fairy city bathed in moonlight enchantment, while from its caves and houses the faint click of castanets and the strumming of guitars reached our ears and told us that the gypsies were dancing. Above our heads rose the Espadana, a turret that contains a great bell that tolls every fifteen minutes throughout the night and regulates the opening and shutting of the sluices, dating from the days of the Moors, that irrigate the farms of the Vega. A young girl rang this bell, a girl whom we had passed upon the steps—a maiden, our host had told us, still in her honeymoon. No one else lived in the tower or anywhere near it, and over its silent terrace there lay a magic spell. The Alhambra hung like an enchanted palace against its hills, its silver towers restored by the pale moon's rays to all their pristine beauty, " Fortcresse, aux crencaux festonnes ct croulans Oil l'un entend la nuit de magiques syllabes." The nightingales trilled their richest carols; the lights on the Albaicin went out, one by one; and the air grew more ethereal, quieter, and cooler, until one seemed to forget the body and live in a Cppur gardens of the Generalife, Granada. beatific state, hung between earth and sky in the spell of some strange enchantment. There are a number of other gardens in and around Granada that deserve the attention of the traveller. There are, for example, those of the Carmen de Arratia and the Villa de los Martires, situated on top of the Monte Mauror. The latter consists of three gardens placed one above the other. The highest, lying wedged between the house and the hillside, is embellished with a grotto and a lake in which is set a rocky wooded island. The middle gardens are enclosed by walls of roses and planted with palm-trees ranged round a circular basin, while the old-fashioned lower garden is surrounded with dark, dense hedges, clipped close, against which a profusion of brilliant SOME SPANISH GARDENS flowers detach themselves like fireworks against a midnight sky. Perched high above the Alhambra, clinging to a spur of the Cerro del Sol, hangs the Djennat-al-'Arif (Garden of 'Arif), corrupted into the word Generalife, by which name this summer home of the Moorish sultans is known. To me the Generalife is a palace of enchantment, the most beautiful of the gardens of southern Spain. Restricted in area, overcrowded with features, somewhat confused in plan, it nevertheless possesses a potent fascination that makes it a delight to the lover of gardens. From the entrance one steps at once into the main court, the beautiful Patio de la Acequia, traversed in its entire length by the Alhambra aqueduct that throws aloft a multitude of sprays and jets to nourish the myrtle hedges and orange-trees of the court. This aqueduct, built by the Moors, brings the water from the eternal snows of the Sierras to cool and freshen the Generalife Gardens; then to play in fountains and in runlets through the courts of the Alhambra and sparkle in its gardens, and at last to course merrilv down the hillslopes through the beautiful groves that I have described bordering the Alameda of the Assabica. And even then its mission is not fully-completed, for it still flows on to fill the cisterns of the city and water the rich farms of the Vega. At the far end of the Patio de la Acequia rises the palace itself, now, alas, much fallen to decay and spoiled by tasteless restorations. The gardens, however, have preserved their Moorish aspect to a remarkable degree. They lie both to the east and west of the palace, that to the west being but a broad terrace, planted with venerable yew-trees, that adjoins what used to be the main entrance to the villa. The principal gardens lie above the main court to the eastward. They are laid out in terraces one above another, becoming smaller and smaller as they ascend the hill. Each terrace is enlivened with busts or grottos, with arbors or clipped hedges or fountains. They are connected with each other by flights of steps divided into sections by platforms, on each of which a fountain plays, wdrile down the balustrades, in channels made of inverted tiles, course little streams of water that gurgle pleasantly and impart a delightful sense of coolness to the steep ascent. Perched on the topmost terrace rises a mirador, or belvedere, that commands a far-reaching panorama of the Alhambra with its many towers, of the city of Granada and its surrounding hills and mountains. These Generalife Gardens, hung high upon their hillside, cool, fanned by the Sierra breezes, still convey to us a perfect picture of Moorish life—a life filled with a love for small things, but highly finished and exquisitely wrought; a life filled with intellectual quietude and a love for calm retreats where one might meditate, removed from the world, yet looking out over it on wide prospects and great expanses of varied landscape. All these qualities I felt as I sketched in these delightful gardens. In one court there played beside me an alabaster fountain standing in a basin filled with goldfish; in another, walls of Bankshire roses hemmed me in, their beauty reflected in the turquoise waters of a quiet pool; white butterflies flitted from fkwver to flower, and the sound of running water was constantly in my ear, lulling the senses by its quiet murmuring. Aside from this no other sound broke the utter silence save, once in a while, the sound of the gardener's foot crunching the gravel walk, or the voice of a rare visitor, or, as on Sunday, when the bells of the city would wake to life and the chorus of their voices would rise to my ears, at first faint, then swelling deep and sonorous to a mighty diapason, then dying down again, fainter and fainter, till the jangle of a tardy bell would sound the final note. . . . There are many Spanish gardens in the south that I might mention, but they all bear at least a family likeness to those already described. As one goes north in Spain, however, the aspect of the country changes, and with it the character of the gardens. The landscape becomes bleak and arid. North of Cordova the Moor left little trace of his passage, and the gardens of the northern provinces were laid out under the Hapsburgs or the Bourbon kings. SOME SPANISH GARDENS The two most important of these northern A series of bends in the Tagus makes gardens are Aranjuez and La Granja. this verdure possible. In one of these Aranjuez lies south of Madrid in the bends lies an island, cut off from its surrocky valley of the Tagus. After travers-roundings by a little stream, La Ria, that Tin- fountain i'f \|.o!ln. Aranjur/.. ing the sun-baked plateaux of Castile, is controlled by a presa, or weir. This dry and denuded of all vegetation save island has been occupied for centuries: where some little watercourse gives sus-first, by a convent of the Order of Sanlitenance to a few stunted trees and shrubs, ago, then by a favorite summer abode of it is indeed a surprising transition to Isabella the Catholic, and lastly by the alight from the local train and penetrate present palace of the Hapsburg kings, the deep bosky groves and densely whose impress is plainly written on the wooded parks of Aranjuez. romantic Garden of the Island, sombre as SOME SPANISH GARDENS the thoughts of the pietistic Philip II, who built the Escurial; mysterious and gallant as the pleasures of Philip IV. The trees that shade its leafy aisles are for the most part those of the northern climes—poplars, lindens, oaks, and elms —brought over from England by Philip's wife, Queen Mary, but, in this southern climate, grown to prodigious size, with their roots tapping the waters of the Tagus. The broad Avenue of the Catholic Kings, bordered by a quadruple row of giant plane-trees, skirts the river itself and leads into the depths of this mysterious Jardin de la Isla, where fountain after fountain, dedicated to Venus, to Neptune, to Jupiter, and other gods and goddesses, and decorated with their statues, fling their jets of water into the air, or trickle streamlets from basin to basin adorned with sculptured ornament. The tinkling of these fountains, the innumerable dim vistas, the half-light—one might almost say the obscurity of these dark groves, even at midday—the songs of the nightingales that nest by hundreds in their leafy arches, induce, as a Spanish author puts it, an "agr'adable melancolia," or agreeable melancholy, that has inspired many a Spanish poet, like Calderon or Garcilasso, to sing its praises, and that induced Schiller to choose it as the scene of his "Do n Carlos." The other gardens of Aranjuez are less romantic. The Jardin de las Estatuas dates also from the time of Philip IV, but the other gardens were laid out at a much later period under the Bourbons, and are in accord with the taste of the great palace itself that vaguely recalls Versailles or Marly. Immediately about the palace are formal gardens and parterres laid out with patterns in broderic and decorated with numerous fountains and statues. Two of the best of these fountains, the Fuente de las Conchas and the Fuente de los Tritones (a painting of which by Velasquez adorns the Prado), were taken awav from Aranjuez about fifty years ago and set up in the Royal Palace Gardens in Madrid, where they are now to be seen. The fountains that have taken their places are bad, and for better taste one must look elsewhere and walk over to the Jardin del Principe that lies hemmed in between the d'agus and the Calle de la Reina, a superb avenue of mighty trees that remains quite as Velasquez painted it when it sat to him for its portrait centuries ago. The Prince's Garden contains the Casa del Labrador, that bears the same relation to the palace that the Petit Trianon does to Versailles. This so-called "Laborer's Cottage" is cold and formal in design and character, its rooms being decorated with elaborate paintings and marble mosaics, hung with silk brocades and crystal chandeliers and furnished with malachite tables and gilded chairs, the gifts of emperors and kings. But its gardens are less formal, though they, too, have their vistas and avenues and fountains. In their general aspect, however, they resemble an English garden, with their winding pathways and watercourses,.in which stand pavilions of fantastic shapes, a certain portion of their area being also reserved for the cultivation of the excellent fruits and vegetables —strawberries, peaches, asparagus, and the like—that grace the royal tables as early as the month of January The Jardin del Principe has a perimeter of nearly four miles, and much of it borders the swift-running Tagus, whose eddying waters are confined by stone embankments decorated with pots of flowers. If the gardens of Aranjuez already have a northern character compared to those of southern Spain, the vast gardens of La Granja, surely the most extensive and elaborate in the Iberian Peninsula, have even more of this septentrional character, for they are situated north of Madrid in a fold of the Guadarrama Mountains nearly four thousand feet above the sea. They were laid out under Philip V, who built this palace in the mountains that is still the official summer residence of the Spanish King. Philip, first of the Spanish Bourbons, was naturally thinking of Versailles when he built it, and to lay out the gardens he summoned a Frenchman, Boutelet, who sought to impose upon these mountain solitudes in the Guadarramas, where the granitic hills are covered with dark forests of coniferas, all the artificialities and regularities of the Le Notre Garden, and subject nature in her wildest mood to the rule of the T-square, and confine her with SOME SPANISH GARDENS symmetrical lawns and hedges reflectedin circular or rectilinear pools and basins,The result, if not congruous, is highlyimpressive, for in no other gardens thatI know can one have such imposing vistasof towering mountain forms at the end of Elizabeth Farnese who married Philip V, and held such sway over her weak hus band, and who was responsible for so many of the costly features of these La Granja Gardens. At first sight many of these features will The Carrera tie Caballos, La Granja. noble avenues, nor the sight of suchmasses of water disporting themselves instupendous fountains. Here at LaGranja, instead of the laborious pumping-systems that are usually necessary to supply fountains with water, a great lake,El Mar, situated high above the gardens,yet fed by numerous mountain springsand streamlets, provides an inexhaustiblewater-supply, and the pressure is so greatthat some of the jets rise to a height ofmore than a hundred feet, and are plainlyvisible from Segovia, seven miles away.La Granja made us think of anothergarden far away in Parma, with itspleached alleys and parterres in the oldFrench manner, laid out also by the same undoubtedly be disappointing. One who knows Versailles or Vauxde-Vicomte will be inclined to criticise the ornate and overdone Baths of Diana or the Fountain of the Frogs, so obviously copied from the Basin of Latona, and to remain somewhat cold before the Parterre de la Fama or the New Cascade, with their frigid and formal atmosphere. But even in these foun tains the vast water-supply affords a pos sibility for superb effects that, as far as I know, are unsurpassed anywhere, and I defy any one to remain unmoved when first he beholds the fairy-like perspectives of the Old Cascade or Carrera de Cabal los, for one is charmed beyond words at the sight of these basins—grander than SOME SPANISH GARDENS any at Versailles—mounting one above another, filled with careering horses attended by Nereids and Tritons and spouting water from their nostrils and from vases and sea-shells. Avenues of oaks and elms, bordered bv hedges of horntudes, are its sole inhabitants. For the greater part of the year, the royal palace sleeps silent in the sunshine, and the gardens seem lulled to slumber as if enchanted by a magician's wand. One day—one of the very first I spent The Royal Palace andbeam, rise with the terraced fountains, mounting higher and higher toward the dark-blue mountains that girdle this terrestrial paradise. For it is a paradise, this Garden of La Granja—a garden as it should be, fed by countless springs, whose crystal waters rush down its rose-colored terraces and through its murmuring channels in a constant flow. But no one sits to watch their eddies. White nymphs, petrified in graceful atti terrace, La Granja. there—1 was sketching in a quiet avenue, when, of a sudden, the smiling heavens darkened, the mountains grew black and inky and, again as if by magic, the trees shuddered, and the smooth faces of the fountains quivered into innumerable ripples. Then a great blast of wind came down from the Guadarramas; the trees bowed their heads and bent before its breath; the rain poured down in torrents into the boiling basins, and the mountains resounded, echoed and reechoed with peal DIVING THE BRIDGE after peal of thunder. Then, as if the sorcerer's anger had been appeased, all was over as quickly as it had begun. The shadows lifted, the heavens grew serene again, the rain ceased, and the sun burst forth. But the air remained chilled as I walked up to El Mar and looked out over the retaining walls into the surrounding pine woods. Little patches of snow still lay in the hollows under the trees, and it seemed indeed strange, with this Alpine picture before me and the chilly wind fanning my cheek, to fancy myself in Spain in the month of June. But it is this very Alpine quality of the atmosphere that renders La Granja so agreeable a retreat from the burning sunshine of Madrid, and for this reason it remains a favorite resort of the Spanish King and court. Alfonso arrived a few days after we had come to see his royal domain, and with him came his brilliant cavalry, who took up their quarters in the big cuartel, or barracks, just behind our hotel. There was music in the plaza every evening, and each day the pink bloom from the chestnut-trees, late in this altitude, was carefully swept up in great piles and carted away. Several times we passed the little Infantas in the gardens, and one day saw the King himself come out of the palace on foot, dressed very democratically in a straw hat and outing clothes, and cross the square to the stables to give some sugar to his favorites. How different from the gloomy Spanish pomp of other days!
Diving the Bridge BY GRANT HYDE CODE ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE WRIGHT I PECS was a queer duck. So the muckers of Cambridge said, and their judgment of character is likely to be as acute as il is quick. In this case the description was apt in more ways than one. Specs was a "puhfessuh." In this fact alone there was nothing peculiar considering the presence of Harvard College. To speak as a mucker, Cambridge is lousy with professors. Some of them are a bit queer, though it is lese-majesty to say so. Be that as it may, to this latter group Specs belonged. His queerness consisted in his familiarity with the muckers of Camb ddge, the boys and girls wdio swarm about the streets and with whom the acquaintance of most self-respecting professors extends scarcely so far as to the affable pitching of a penny in response to the cry: "Scramble, mister?" Of course, it is not the mister who scrambles. The children do that, piling up a miniature football scrimmage, from which one of them emerges with a penny and a liberal touch of that same muck which gives him a title to his generic designation. Specs never pitched pennies and no mucker ever said, "Scramble, mister?" to him. He came among them quietly with an air of being one of the fellows. He spoke to many of them by name. He gave some of the little ones "lessons in flying," by catching them by the seat of the pants and the scruff of the collar and whirling them through the air while he spun round until he was dizzy. The afternoon he invented that game was a warm one for him and a happy one for the muckers. It was reported that he had not disdained to accept an invitation to play hide-and-seek near the Lars Anderson Bridge. As for the duck part of it, he was to be found at some time during almost every hot summer day at one of the bathing places along the Charles River. Sometimes he swam from the park near the DIVING THE BRIDGE bridge, sometimes on the other side of the bridge near the Weld Boat House, sometimes from the Weld float, sometimes across the river near the old boat-house, sometimes far away at the bend in the river near the spot marked as the Vineland abiding place of Leif Ericson, called The Lucky, who probably never came nearer the spot than Labrador. Enclosed by a low iron railing, the plot where he is supposed to have built his cabin is hallowed ground. There is a superstition among the muckers that any one inside this railing is invisible to the outside world. So there they undress and put on their bathing trunks, quite sure that they are unobserved no matter how many people may be standing near by. Specs venerated this tradition and availed himself of it when he swam at the bend. Little things like this marked him as queer, but they also made him acceptable to the muckers, whose company he seemed to enjoy. He was a queer duck, as web-footed as they make them. Not being a mucker, you would doubtless have been surprised to see a gray-haired man wdth the stamp of scholarship upon him stop on the Lars Anderson Bridge to speak to a little girl who was mostly sunburn, wet pink bloomers rolled high, and wet white chemise. She was seated astride the coping watching a group of sleek wet boys at the middle of the bridge. You would not have expected this fine old gentleman, bareheaded and clad in white flannels, black linen coat, and tennis shoes, to claim acquaintance with the little girl and wdth her smaller, red-haired brother, comfortably dressed in overalls and his own skin. Yet there he was, smiling as politely as if one of the first dames of Brattle Street were before him and saying: "Hello, Ethel. How's the water to-day? Hello, Dennis. Haven't vou been in yet?" "Hello, Specs," said Ethel. None of the muckers knew his real name and neither they nor the professor cared. "The water's great. Feels like a hot mud bath. Look at my legs. I just had a bath last night, and now they're as brown as the river. You'll need a bath too after you've had a swdm. The water's dirtier than ever." "What are you up here for? You are not thinking of diving the bridge?" No mucker ever thought of saying, "diving from the bridge." You dive the gate and you dive the bridge, provided you have enough nerve. The coping of "the bridge is at least thirty-five feet above the water. The gate by the old boathouse on the other side is a short fifteen. "Not me," said Ethel. "I'm watching Jimmie. He's my fellow, you know." "Yes, I know." Specs usually did. "The men are giving him a quarter for a regular dive, and fifty cents for a swan or a sailor. The other kids only jump. They get ten cents for that." "They'll get something else if the officer catches them." "Aw, gee ! He won't do anything but holler to them, and they'll get down and begin again after he goes. The cop's all right. There was a lot of kids diving bare-naked right where he tied his boat, and he didn't say a word. He drove his boat past and made waves for us too. He's all right." '' Where's Jimmie ? " » "He's under the bridge now. He just did a swan. It makes me scared to see him, but I like it. I'd be afraid to dive off anything. I never dived in my life. But I can swim pretty good. I tried the stroke you showed me, but I ain't got onto it yet. I can't go fast at all." " I'll give you another lesson if you stay till I swim across the river; I'm going in from the other side." " I'll be here all right, as long as Jimmie keeps on diving the bridge." Walking on, Specs met Jimmie, a little boy of ten or eleven, clad from head to foot in a coat of burnished tan, and girded about the loins with a wet wisp of something blue that had once been a cheap pair of trunks. "Hi, Specs!" called Jimmie, with a lovable grin. Very much alive was Jimmie, too alive to be conscious of the brief transition from life to death he seemed to dare so gaily. "Hi, Specs !" cried half a dozen others. "Gimme a cigarette," demanded one. "They are veryr bad for you," said Specs, snapping open a silver case and offering it to the brown hand outstretched. "Yo u ought not to smoke them at your
Drawn by George Wright. "Hi, Si.ccs!" cried halt' a dozen others. "Gimme a cigarette," demanded one.—Page 732.
734 DIVING THE BRIDGE age," said the owner of the brown hand, very gravely, taking a cigarette and waiting for the professor to strike a match. There was a howl of good-natured laughter and Specs grinned. "Watch yourself, Jimmie," he cautioned. "Be careful there's no one below when you dive, and don't take a bellyflopper." "Fat chances!" Jimmie was contemptuous. He was the best diver of his age in Cambridge, and he knew it. Specs watched the light-brown figure climb to the coping, run along it to the centre of the bridge, and pause, graceful as a bronze figurine. "Who's paying?" he called, looking about him. "I pay," a young man replied flipping a coin at him. The shot was sudden, but Jimmie caught it, poised with one foot dangling over a thirty-five foot drop. "Paddy's my banker," he said, passing the coin to a youngster seated on the coping. "What'll it be? " "Just a straight dive, but make it a pretty one." "Give him change," directed Jimmie, turning toward the river. He glanced down at the water to make sure that two boys who had just jumped were out of the way. Then he performed the little ceremony no mucker neglects before diving. He signed himself with the cross. Now, when one of the common rabble of muckers crosses himself hastily, and with the same gesture seizes his nose between his thumb and finger and hurls himself feet first into the water with a mighty splash, the combination of the sublime and the ridiculous is too much for the person who beholds this ceremony for the first time. But with Jimmie the gesture had some of the grace and confidence of every movement he made. Specs was not prepared to suppose that Jimmie was more sincerely religious than any of his fellows, but when Jimmie made the sign of the cross it never failed to stir a little prayer in the heart of Specs and a thought of the real significance of the act. Not all who enter the waters come forth again. Jimmie raised his arms. He seemed to reach upward toward the blue heaven against which he was outlined cleanly. He stood poised a moment for every one to see, dropped his arms to his sides with a swift movement that was like a brief concentration of life and energy, then straightened out into flight. He seemed to balance on the air even as he fell swiftly. His was the clean downward swerve of a flying creature, as perfectly poised, as graceful, and as easy. When he disappeared in the water there was no splash, only a little spurt of foam. He rose to the surface gliding easily forward, tossed his head, and struck into the smooth sweep of his swimming stroke. Specs turned away. He walked slowly and thoughtfully, looking at the ground. He even failed to notice Tom Hurley, the river police officer, who was ringing in at the police-box. "Hi, Specs!" Hurley called with a good deal of surprise in his voice, but Specs walked by without noticing. He was deep among the thoughts that queer ducks have sometimes. He was thinking of death in the water and the mystery of drownings. There did not seem to be much danger of such an event here where the river was lined on both banks with good swimmers. Yet in almost every account of a drowning he remembered reading of spectators who were able to give the fullest details of the whole affair, who had apparently watched fascinated, but who had never stirred to help the drowning person. " I suppose I should be like all the rest," he said aloud, fancying no doubt that he was thinking to himself. " I should stand here watching, and never move till the last struggle was over—and then I would run to telephone the police." "Snap out of your dope." A boy was slapping him with a wet bathing-suit. "Where do you think vou are? Sever Hall?" Specs found himself among the gang and began to undress. Specs could swim well and dive well. He dived the gate regularly and had been known to dive the bridge. He made no practice of diving the bridge, though, because it attracted too much attention. When he went in swimming near the old boat-house, he usually dived a bit just to be sure he was in practice, swam about a little, frequently changing his stroke, and then completed" his exercise with a short
Drawn by George yVright. "Who's paying?'' he called, looking about him.—Page 734.
DIVING THE BRIDGE race for speed or a longer swim up or down the river. Sometimes on these long swims he visited the youngsters who were bathing at other places. Then he climbed out on the bank and sunned himself for a while, talking if any one showed a disposition to talk to him, smoking with any one who asked him for a cigarette, or thinking his own queer thoughts, alone in the noisy crowd. This afternoon he emerged from the disorderly heap of his clothing, wearing, as usual, his short scarlet trunks. They were queer too. Every one else wore blue, and among the muckers, he who is different from the rest, especially in dress or speech, is taboo. But this tradition was invalid in the case of Specs. Everything about him was queer, and he was accepted with this understanding. He did not plunge into the river as quickly as usual. Instead he paused on the stone river wall among the divers, and watched the bridge where the diving and jumping were still going on. He was deep in that same queer thought of the mystery that brings about death in the water when help appears to be close at hand. Later it seemed unbelievable to him that he should have stood there staring, horrified, and inactive after his whole train of thought had prepared him for the thing that happened. There he was, a spectator, just like those incredible spectators about whom he had read. He was an expert swimmer. He was poised in the very act of diving into the water at a distance from the bridge that he could make in three breaths. Yet he stood there. Round about him other good swimmers stood, looking on, motionless with terror. Across the river on the float of the Weld Boat Club were other swimmers, not terrified children nor queer professors, but active young men and women from the summer school. Yet they all stood watching and making no move. It seemed to Specs afterward that he perceived the whole accident out of some depth of thought that was abnormally transparent, for he saw with claritv unusual in a man who is condemned to wear spectacles at all times except when he swims. Yet that depth of thought seemed to weigh heavily upon him like the paralyzing heaviness of an anaesthetic. He saw a brown figure erect on the coping, a figure that could only be Jimmie. He saw the form shorten and knew that Jimmie had lowered his arms preparatory to springing into the air. He saw the boy launch himself into the arc of his flight. Then, with a flash of fear that came like sudden physical illness and weakness, he was aware of a rowing shell, a single, stabbing through the water under the dark central arch of the bridge. A second of time could not have intervened between the perception of the danger and the crash. Yet in that second Specs felt the air heavy, moist, and hot about him, the air sickened with a taint drifting down the river and having its counterpart in the brown pollution that left its stain on swimmers. Jimmie, as he dropped, saw the shell beneath him and tried to deflect his course in mid-air by a sudden wrench of his whole body. To the spectators he seemed to strike the shell a glancing blow, overturning it and disappearing into the wrater. The oarsman floundered up, clutched the shell and hung on, dazed no doubt, unable to understand what had happened. Ten feet away on the opposite side of the shell something inert rose sluggishly to the surface, and disappeared. The oarsman worked round to the stern of the shell and began to push it ahead of him toward the float, swimming with his feet and one arm. The silent watchers still looked on motionless. A murmur of fear arose from them. The professo-'s voice came strangely to those near him in the silence. Out of that queer depth in which he was powerless he phrased a line of some forgotten poem: " And on some unexpected wind comes death."* He spoke softly and no one moved. Then from the farther shore along the coping there was a flash of running feet. Over the central arch of the bridge a figure too pitifully light and small for the tragedy beneath stopped and turned to the river, was launched into the air, curved, fell, entered the water, rose, swam * I am indebted to my friend Alan Pope for permission to quote the line from his poem, not "forgotten, as the text has it, but unpublished. LIFE AND THE LIBRARIAN to that terribly inert form that floated, grasped it, and began to make slow headway toward shore. In battle, when a taut line of skirmishers is checked by superior force, one courageous leader springing out of the ranks finds himself followed by every one and the strong point falls. The first move to action is always the tremendous move. It is the overthrow of inertia. After that is accomplished, to act is not hard. The rescuer was scarcely in mid-air when the professor dived. When he rose to the surface the river was full of strong swimmers converging to a single point near the central arch of the bridge. Jimmie was brought to shore and placed in the hands of a doctor. Thanks to the effort of that wrench to one side, he had touched the shell with but one shoulder, and that broken shoulder was his only injury. His rescuer was mostly sunburn, wet pink bloomers, and wet white chemise. Ethel, the child who was afraid to dive at all, had dived the bridge.
Life and the Librarian BY ELIZABETH T. KIRKAYOOD AIM an assistant in the periodical department of a big city library and hardly a day passes without some one saying: "This is such nice, clean work, isn't it? You get to read all the magazines, don't you ? " The public thinks all I have to do is sit behind my desk and read the nice new magazines. Certainly a most ladylike occupation ! There have been times when this department was no place for a lady. We cannot escape seeing life in the raw. Before the war, when our city was full of unemployed, our room was more thickly populated than it is now, and some very unpleasant things happened. I have seen drunkards fail so swiftly that I feared that they would die before my eyes. One had a terrible coughing spell and hemorrhage of the lungs, but he had strength enough to get out of the room. 1 never saw him again. He had been coming to the library for years and I had classified him as an English remittance man. Three times men have had epileptic fits in our room. When a man feels this spell coming on he begins to moan and make the most weird sounds imaginable. I telephone for help, then go out into the room, and see what the readers have done for VOL. LXXI.—47 the afflicted man. He is a most horrible sight. The thing that has made the most unpleasant impression upon me, when looking after a case of this kind, is not so much the man having the fit, as the attitude of the readers in the room; the listless, kind of sodden attention and utter lack of feeling that they displayed. There would be the man stretched out on the floor, foaming at the mouth, moaning and kicking, and people almost near enough to touch him would just glance at him and go on reading. They do not seem human. It seems impossible to disturb their apathy. These same people will read or look into space while the bands are playing and parades go by. When it was an event to see an airship and a convoy went over our city, these people stayed in their chairs and hadn't, interest enough to go to a window. What has life done to them to leave them in such a condition? Two more events, not quite so nerve-racking, were reviving a woman who had fainted and stepping between two men who were on the verge of a fight. Both wanted to use the dictionary at the same time and one tried to pull it out of the hand of the other. They began talking at the top of their voices. I sallied out from my protecting desk and in a low, but intense tone, told one of the men to leave the room at once, or I would have him arrested. Our numerous other ladylike tasks are to quell LIFE AND THE LIBRARIAN the loud of voice and the too socially inclined; request patrons to take their feet off the tables and their hats off their heads; not spit on the floor and not make a lunch-room of the library. I have laid aside my dignity and fairly raced after a woman who had cut a magazine, but she was too swift for me. Just at present, the disturbing element in our room is a man who either should have a keeper or be in an asylum. He is apparently harmless, but I always manage to keep a safe distance from him. I believe the periodical department catches the worst class of library habitues, with the exception of the newspaper-room. There you find the worst type of down-and-outers. Seeing this class of people day after day has a more or less depressing effect. This was brought to my mind rather forcibly by a conversation I had with my dentist. On account of sickness I had broken an appointment with him three times, and when he had me safely wedged into his dental chair, he began his investigation of the cause. He said: "What is the matter with library work that it 'gets' so many of you people?" And he mentioned some of my friends who had broken down in health and had to give up library work. Just on the spur of the moment I could not give him a very definite answer, for being surrounded by more or less torturous-looking instruments and a regular jam of fingers in my mouth, I could not think very clearly on the subject of occupational diseases. Since then I have been thinking what there is about library work that would affect a person unfavorably. One's surroundings have a great deal to do with cheerfulness of spirit. A big library is sombre and oppressive. The air is stale and heavy. Books give out a rather peculiar odor—a dusty antique smell that makes me think of the past instead of the present or future. We have a patent system of ventilation that is supposed to purify the air. But we risk the wrath of the engineer and let in some of God's good out-of-doors, whenever we get a chance. The class of people we see constantly does not cheer us up, for the poor we have with us always. At times it seems to me that a library is not a place of learning, not a place to increase the intelligence of the community, but rather a place for the poverty-stricken and the outcast, the halt and the blind; a haven of rest for the loafer and the derelict; and the favorite haunt of the religious crank. We look into the faces of life's failures from morning until night. They come in when the doors are open and do not leave until the lights are out. The same ones come to the library, not day after day, but year after year. The question that has bothered me for years is, "Who takes care of these people?" Our room is always full of men. It is so crowded with them that, time and again, women have come to my desk and asked haltingly if only men were allowed in this room. A large per cent of these men are fairly well dressed and well fed. Apparently, they do no kind of work. They are wdth us so constantly that I wonder when they go out to eat. During the war it used to irritate me exceedingly to see these able-bodied men doing nothing, wdien there was so great need of workers. I longed for the state to pass a compulsory working law. It seems a crime that so many men are permitted to idle their lives away. I used to live in Emporia, Kansas, a town of ten thousand inhabitants, and ever so often my sister and I journeyed to Kansas City to take in the theatres. Our small-town sophistication was somewhat bored at what we considered exaggerations on the stage. We knew that no farmer, tramp, or a score of other eccentric characters could possibly look like these stage productions. But I can truthfully sayr that not any exaggeration that I have ever seen on the stage can compare with the human freaks and scare-crows that have passed before my eyes since I have worked in this department. Why they stray in here will always be a puzzle to me. The night brings out more peculiar ones than the day. For that reason night work is more depressing than day work. The room is very quiet and I have more time to observe our patrons. This is the time to see life's failures and to study their tired, hopeless faces. Some read, some just make a pretense of reading, and others just look straight ahead. It seems to me that the walls of this room must be soaked wdth bitter thoughts; and when it is so still they seem to descend on me like a pall, and I have to get up and do something to shake off the disagreeLIFE AND THE LIBRARIAN able feeling of unreality. There is so much to learn concerning the subject of psychic influences. If a violin is soaked with the vibrations of the music played upon it, might not the walls of a room be affected by years and years of bitter thoughts ? This type of people try to find help and comfort from certain kinds of magazines. They ask for magazines on new thought, theosophy, spiritualism, and kindred subjects. It seems to me they are trying to get out of this world by an effort of the mind. They do not seem to be all here. Sometimes they do find comfort in these magazines, for a woman, who takes out the most unintelligible one of the lot, told me with tears in her eyes that it had done her so much good and she did hope that I would read it. To my practical mind, this magazine was just a jumble of mysterious, rather unfamiliar words, with no definite meaning. Expressed in simple language, it meant nothing. A lawyer happened to glance through this magazine while waiting for me to check out his selection. He laughed and said: "Great stuff that, but I would like to know what it means." He really touched their point of appeal to these people. It is their vagueness, their indefiniteness. They contain nothing exact or matter of fact. Hence they offer an avenue of escape from the real. The great trials of a librarian are the number of people who take up her time telling their life histories. We seem to have the atmosphere of the long-lost, sympathetic friend, and we become the depository of a great variety of tales of woe. Even a college professor, with whom I did not have a speaking acquaintance, made use of my sympathetic ear. We have a splendid chance to study human nature. When people come to the desk I can tell, fairly accurately, the type of magazine they will call for. I classify them as Physical Culture, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Christian Herald, or Yale Review readers. I very seldom make a mistake in these five types. But at times I get the wrong cue. One day a woman came to the desk and I classed her at once as Christian Herald, but her sanctimonious face altered when she turned an oily smile on me and asked for the Astrological Bulletin. That smile changed her whole face and I could see the tricky fortuneteller. If I were a reporter I could find all kinds of material for sob stuff. We have the comic and tragic in abundance. Some human peculiarities are beyond my comprehension. I do not understand why people rush past my desk, gaze vacantly around the room, wait until I sit down, then come to the desk and make me get up again. Perhaps I do not look so formidable when I sit. But it is certainly hard on my knees. My life is as full of ups and downs as the elevator man's. Sometimes patrons rush in, seem to get panicky, then go out in the hall, call up some kind of reserve courage, then come timidly up to the desk and ask for what they want. But others are far from timid. It seems to me people have given me their views on every subject under the sun. One even pursued me back of my desk and read a lengthy poem to me. I am a regular depository for pet theories for reforming the world. I have agreed with innumerable earnest enthusiasts. I feel a twinge of conscience for being so hypocritical, but agreeing with them is the easiest way to head them off. Not only is our patience taxed to the limit with this class of people, but we must show considerable ingenuity in library work, because so often people give most confused titles to articles and queer names for authors. It seems to me a person who is good at conundrums is especially fitted for library work. By constant practice we become great at guessing. So far I have given only the gloomy side of our profession. The pleasant things far outweigh the gloomy ones. The derelicts and life's failures are very much in the minority. We meet some very pleasant people, and some very distinguished ones, who treat us with consideration and appreciation, but these do not stay with us long. They get what they want and are out of the library as soon as possible. I might say they dash in and out again. I like library work in spite of the drawbacks. I think I should choose it again from among the many kinds of work suitable for women. I like to know what people are doing and what is going on in the world. So, in a way, my business is my pleasure. I must keep up with current events. Besides, librarians make very good friends and congenial LIFE AND THE LIBRARIAN associates. There is an esprit dc corps that is not so strong in other professions, for we are not a large class and we depend a great deal on each other. It is our business to be unbiassed, and for that reason I do not think we take sides so strongly as other classes of educated people. We acquire the habit of seeing both sides, and are more lenient with people whose ideas and beliefs differ from ours. Our training helps us to avoid the temptation of being dogmatic and thus we do not rub people the wrong wray. If we have such a thing as a slogan, it is, "Be tactful." In library school tact is preached to us morning and night. "Be tactful" is the first and last advice given to us and it is preached to us constantly throughout our library course. Be tactful has taken a place in our subconscious minds. I try to give people what they want and not what I think the}' should have. This rule is very hard for me to keep, for so few people really know what they want and what is best for them. Another rule is never to say off-handed we have not anything on that subject, for in a large library there is a great mass of unrelated material that sometimes comes in handy. It is as hard for a librarian to say, "We haven't it," as it is for a druggist. If we have not the kind of intellectual tonic the person requires, we try to hunt up a substitute. We cannot bear to turn people away empty-handed. To my mind the most marked characteristic of a librarian is gentleness. The more I see of people of my profession the more I think of them as gentle. Although I consider them intellectual, capable, and a variety of other appropriate adjectives, yet always lurking in the back of my brain is the modifying word, gentle. I have come to look for this trait in nearly every librarian I meet. There is something in our temperament which makes us turn from the disagreeableness, the harshness, the more or less ruthlessness that must be met in business. We think of the missionary as gentle. A good librarian must be imbued with the missionary spirit. We are the intellectual missionaries striving with all our might against the inertia of ignorance. Through the power of the printed page we open up new and better worlds to many perplexed brains. Carrying the missionary idea a little further, in the matter of remuneration also we resemble the humble servant of Christianity. But on the question of salaries our missionary spirit weakens and we become very human. At one time, in many a household, when discussions on the salary question had reached the acute stage, my brother said to me: "You librarians are a bunch of ' gentle Annies'! Why don't you raise a row about your salaries the way the teachers are doing?" This outburst of plain language was due to a bitter remark of mine because a page from our department, just a mere boy, had gotten a position at the city hall which paid a third more than I was receiving. The teachers of our city put up a strong fight. They made themselves felt, heard, and heeded. Our pedagogical sisters have become so militant that it would be a surprise to us if they ever stopped agitating for higher salaries. I heard a conversation on a street-car a few days ago which applied to librarians. It was between two women who were talking about the fight the teachers were making for another raise. One said: "It seems to me teachers are always getting raises. My sister is a teacher and she fusses about her salary and her work all the time. I told her if she stood on her feet all day, the way we do, she would have something to fuss about. They fuss worse than any other class of people. Look at the librarians. They are the poorest paid profession and you never hear them kicking about their salaries. Did you ever see anything in the papers about librarians being poorly paid ? I was a librarian for eight years and I worked harder than any school-teacher, and I was mighty poorly paid, too, but I didn't fuss about it. Librarians are hardworking and poorly paid, but they don't fuss." She went on at greater length with her back-banded compliment. I shook my head mournfully. "Gentle Annies," thought I. Christopher Morley says of us that we have delightful, demure, and public-spirited virtues. I like that word demure. It carries out my impression of gentleness. But I believe we would esteem ourselves more if a stronger tinge of the pugnacious spirit were instilled into our gentle temperament.
The Candor of Augusta Claire BY CAMILLA KENYON ILLUSTRATIONS BY EVERETT SHINN i|HEN Mr. Kipling announced with finality that "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," he should have allowed for an occasional exception, such as the case of Oliver Roscelyn Thrale and Augusta Claire. Yet their encounter was so out of the natural order of things that it took no less than the Great War to bring it about. Oliver had had pneumonia in France, and his health demanded a mild climate. So instead of going on at Princeton in the authentic Thrale fashion he came out to California, where somewhat to his surprise he found civilization, even the institution of afternoon tea, fairly well established on the shore of the Pacific. But except geographically this brought him very little nearer to Augusta Claire. Oliver's letters to certain transplanted connections of his mother's—who as a Roscelyn had the equipment of colonial ancestors and distinguished poverty which the Thrale formula required—took him at once into a circle as carefully shut off by a sort of Chinese wall from the vulgar, jostling world outside as that in which he had been reared. Needless to say, the frequenters of it were sublimely ignorant of the existence of Augusta Claire until she appeared among them in her own extraordinary fashion. Oliver had dropped in for afternoon tea at Mrs. Adair's. He had formed the habit of doing this rather often, for which he is not to be blamed, for it was as delightful a house as any in the beautiful university town, and Mrs. Adair as delightful a person. She was, agreeably, a widow, still so young that the adjunct of an elder and invalidish sister seemed a concession to decorum. Her beauty wasn't undeniable—no devotee of the obvious but would have denied it—but if you perceived it, it pleased you as did the beauty of a gray day or the taste of olives; you relished it, so to speak, lingeringly upon your tongue. Oliver perceived it, at least to the point of assuring himself that beside it mere prettiness would be cheap — especially short, plump prettiness; how she'd extinguish a woman of that sort with her height, her flowing lines ! Oliver could, without dismay, picture Bernice Adair in the most esoteric drawing-rooms of his native Philadelphia. In the company, then, of Mrs. Adair and of the invalid Miss Bart, becomingly arranged upon a sofa, Oliver was imbibing tea when Augusta Claire arrived. She did it by sending her car over the edge of the steep hillside street into the Adair garden, which was on the down slope of the hill. Nothing could be more surprising than the sight of Augusta Claire flying through the air on her way to the door, unless it were the spectacle of her aplomb when the horrified witnesses rushed out to view the remains. She was just picking herself up from the mat. "I told that boob at the garage the brake wasn't working," she remarked. "I expect I've about ruined your calcelarias—hope you aren't too peeved." Here she grew rather white, but stood smiling at them gamely if weakly. Clearly there was but one thing to do, and Oliver, after an uncertain moment, did it. He put an arm about her substantial little body and conveyed her into the house. She didn't faint—couldn't, she informed them, not if she were to hold her breath and inhale through her ears— but consented to be put in a low chair and refreshed with tea. It was sometime before the color returned to her cheeks, but not once did her cheerfulness fail her. She was cheerfully apologetic about strewing Andrew over the flowerbeds so—Andrew, it appeared, was her 741 742 THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE car, and a very good car, too—and cheerfully certain that not if you were to bet her a hat could she perform the same feat again. As for her own flight from car-seat to front door, well, she remarked, there was nothing for it but a parachute attachment if she were going to do stunts like that. But at least, she reminded them, there was room for thankfulness that she hadn't come in by the window. "And bounced," she added, frankly smiling at Oliver, as the person most likely to be intrigued by this performance, "bounced and knocked things off the mantel. VVhen I was small I was so fat that that's what I actually did, they say—bounced when I fell down, you know." Mrs. Adair and Miss Bart, for whom bouncing at any time in their lives had been out of the question, looked at her curiously if remotely. She was short, dark, and plump, with a plumpness which had no suggestion of the over-ripe about it, but seemed rather a survival from a cuddlesome babyhood. She had a round face and extremely valuable assets in the way of big, long-lashed brown eyes and deep, come-and-go dimples. Health and vigor radiated from her; her tanned skin had a golden warmth, and the freckle or two on her short, straight nose was piquant as a beauty-patch. In her neighborhood Mrs. Adair looked, if increasingly distinguished, also a little angular. "I expect it would have been a lot brighter of me to have broken a bone or two," Augusta Claire went on, letting Oliver get her a second cup of tea. "Because then mother would have been too busy being thankful I wasn't killed outright to fuss about Andrew. Oh, she won't grouch about the damage—what'll peeve her is that the ruin isn't complete ! You see, since I was pinched that time she persists in believing me a speed-fiend, though the cop himself backed down and told the judge he guessed he'd got the wrong dope—when the judge talked of keeping me in the jug a day or two, you know. But there's no convincing mother —she says I've corrupted the police force somehow, and that's how I manage to keep out of jail. Poor mother! She couldn't understand how I survived being arrested and wanted to give right up and go back to the ranch. I told her it made no difference in my young life—getting arrested was the classiest thing one did these days. But she balked at letting them have my picture for the paper, and they put in somebody that wasn't me at all—looked like a toothpaste advertisement. Well, I hope the reporters don't get to buzzing round this time. If they do, please tell them I'm dead and gone to the morgue—if they put in the toothpaste person as my corpse I shan't care. And—and thanks very much for being so nice about it, and not peeved about the calcelarias or anything. I'll get them to haul Andrew away as soon as I can." She handed her cup to Oliver, with the gratuitous addition of a smile complicated by dimples and a sudden gleam from behind the long lashes. But she grew rather white when she stood up, and subsided again into her chair, her brown eyes suddenly wide and childlike and a little frightened. I won't say she looked at Oliver, but it was Oliver, at any rate, who caught this look, a look curiously appealing, coming after all her gay bravado. With polite precipitation, her hostesses suggested their car—oh, it wouldn't be the least trouble ! Quite naturally, when the car appeared, Oliver accompanied her to it—and into it. Miss Bart watched the pair disappear into the intimacy of the limousine with a smile of amused approbation. "The good boy!" she applauded. "He'll squire that little bit of Western crudeness home as devoutly as if she were a duchess—and never let her guess the bore it is !" Mrs. Adair, having undergone the disillusionments of matrimony, didn't look so amused. She understood, better than the virgin Miss Bart, that streak of unregeneracy in the male which succumbs to eyelashes and dimples, in defiance of creed and code. Nevertheless she, too, had faith in Oliver; surely he was too entirely a Thrale—Mrs. Adair, having visited in Philadelphia, knew all that this implied—not to get the correct vision of Augusta Claire. You couldn't imagine a person more the antithesis of the Thrale tradition. And Oliver's attitude, when he returned—very promptly—strengthened this faith. He had delivered AuClearly there was but one thing to do, and Oliver, after an uncertain moment, did it.—Page 741, gusta Claire dutifully to an agitated and glimpse into the double life Oliver was incoherent mother, and appeared to have leading—could you call it less than that no more to say on the subject. when the two halves of it matched so Hence, some weeks later, the severity badly ? She was taking her bulldog for of the shock to Mrs. Adair of her first an airing, and who should ride by, on 743 THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE their way up into the hills behind the town, but Oliver and Augusta Claire. She recognized him at once; Oliver was very much in the Thrale tradition when it came to looks. He was tall, with a dart-like slenderness and straightness, an almost annoyingly regular profile, and thick golden hair. Mrs. Adair's handsome gray-green eyes could have distinguished Oliver at some distance. If her heart beat a little quicker when she saw him, it stopped altogether for a disagreeable moment when she made out his companion. It couldn't be ! And yet it turned out, on nearer view, that it indisputably was. That little figure, sitting so firmly yet loosely in the saddle in the fashion of a Western cowman, was the little Thompkins, as Mrs. Adair had facetiously called her once or twice, Thompkins being the regrettable anticlimax to Augusta Claire. The little Thompkins and Oliver rode by without noticing Mrs. Adair, who on a sudden unaccountable impulse had turned a corner quickly to escape. She didn't want to be overwhelmed by Augusta Claire's exuberant friendliness— and she didn't want Oliver to look as she foresaw he would look, a little guilty, a little defiant, a little resentful at being detected. For it was detection, wasn't it, considering that Oliver had never given them a hint of any continued acquaintance with the Thompkinses ? He had said nothing of it even when she gave him that humorous account of Mrs. Thompkins and her daughter coming to call, to apologize all over again for the misbehavior of Andrew and the destruction of the calcelarias. WTien Mrs. Adair made report of this phenomena Miss Bart raised her eyebrows. "But it's ridiculous, Bernice !" she said with conviction. She spoke as if, thus labelled, the thing were done for. "Ridiculous or not, Myra, it's true," returned Mrs. Adair with a certain sharpness. "T o us, of course, her crudity is the salient thing; to him—well, if he had been going to mind it he would have minded from the first, wouldn't he ? But he didn't; they never do, really, when there's youth, long eyelashes, that sort of lusciousness !" "And you mean that Oliver—with the generations behind him !" "Yes, I do! " She looked stormily at her sister. "Oliver's a man, don't you understand? A million generations of Thrales couldn't evolve anything else— without dying out in the process. Can't you realize that for dimples like Augusta Claire's a man will forget his ancestors?" "And also, it would seem, his descendants," Miss Bart darkly remarked. "By no means—it is probably because of his descendants that nature is on the side of Augusta Claire!" said Bernice recklessly. It was in no premeditated treachery to the Thrale tradition that Oliver had gone, the day after the accident, to inquire for Miss Thompkins. Such a proceeding, he had assured himself, was no more than decency required. Mrs. Thompkins, who had received her daughter the day before in an agitation which ignored Oliver, greeted him now with effusive cordiality, with a gratitude, indeed, which thrust Oliver, against his own protestations, into the role of rescuer. When he insisted that he had done nothing, Mrs. Thompkins merely shook her head, a smile of mild obstinacy creasing her fair, faded face. "Oh, but my little girl has told me!" she reiterated. What, precisely, her little girl had told her didn't appear, but evidently in the narrative, one can only hope in the conviction, of Augusta Claire, Oliver had played an heroic and essential part. To a warier, more suspicious nature, there might have been a faint shade of the ominous in this fact. To Oliver it conveyed an impression merely of amiable absurdity on the part of Mrs. Thompkins, and when Augusta Claire appeared in visual evidence of her own undamaged state there was no trepidation in the alacrity in which he rose to greet her. Oliver stayed longer than he had meant to stay, but then they insisted so on regarding him as, mysteriously, the rescuer of Augusta Claire. "But it was so kind of you I" Mrs. Thompkins kept repeating. "Picking her up and helping her into the house like that!" And Augusta Claire had looked at him devoutly. Absurdly, Oliver found it agreeable, though aware Her hostesses suggested their car—oh, it wouldn't be the least trouble!—Page 742 how ethereal was the foundation on which his reputation as a hero had been built. When Mrs. Thompkins asked Oliver to dinner, Oliver, opening his lips on a polite refusal, suddenly found himself accepting with thanks instead. Was it because of the soft, eager eyes that met his at that moment ? Was it just that Mrs. Thompkins herself was so pathetically simple and friendly in her invitation? She might have been asking a country neighbor to run in. At any rate Oliver's no became yes, and Augusta Claire's dimples, which for the moment of his obvious hesitation had disappeared, came into play again. She smiled with a warmth which seemed somehow to get into Oliver's blood, making it tingle a little. Clearly, before the hour when Oliver fulfils this rash engagement is the time for the arresting hand of an ancestor to reach out from the grave to check the doomed young man in his course. But none did, and on the appointed evening 745 THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE not excuses but Oliver arrived at the Thompkins' door. Augusta Claire received him with cordial smiles. After a shy glance or two at his dinner coat she remarked candidly: "You don't know how thrilling it is to have someone coming to dinner in evening clothes! Up at the ranch I used to read about people doing it, and think how heavenly it must be, and I even begged dad to send down to the city for a dress suit, and wear it just now and then, say when I was extra good and deserved it. But dear old dad—he would have done anything else in the world for me, I guess —just naturally drew the line at that. He said the party that got him into a dress suit would rope and tie him first. And of course darling dad would have burst out the seams of one in no time, I expect, he was so big and husky—they'd have just popped! "But since mother and I have been down here we have been practising dressing up—not in full war-paint, you know, but just kind of half and half." Augusta Claire was in half and half now, a frilly pink thing that showed off her eyes and dimples rather bewilderingly. "Mother said she felt pretty foolish at first, remembering the time when she had had to hustle from the table whenever something boiled over on the stove. That was a good while ago, of course—Lin Chin was cook at the ranch from the time I was a little thing. But dad and mother began with just a cabin and a few head of stock. The other children all died—scarlet fever and no doctor, for the ranch was awfully remote in those days; now it's only twenty miles from the railroad. And dad and mother buried them themselves. Then I came along, and dad said I turned their luck—the cattle stopped dying, the rustlers were driven out, and things came our way at last. Well, it doesn't seem fair that I should have it all, does it? All that dad and mother worked so hard for, I mean, and that the other poor little things that were born in the cabin should have died, and I should come in for the ranch and everything. But I do love the ranch! You'll—" She stopped short, the dusky rose of her cheeks deepening. Perhaps it occurred even to Augusta Claire that she was going rather fast. But she finished gamely. "I mean you would love the place, too, if you were to see it. It's so big! I don't mean just in acres—but everything is so big—the mountains, the timber, the wonderful outlooks across the valley to more mountains, and more and more. Oh, sometimes I feel choked here among the houses !" She put out her hands in a vigorous gesture—all her gestures were vigorous. And Oliver sat trying to digest the surprising fact that an Augusta Claire who had been born in a cabin and who openly exulted in his evening clothes was still somehow, mysteriously, not vulgar. Not vulgar, because—now Oliver had it!— she accepted her disadvantageous antecedents with such simplicity, with even a kind of pride. Could it be possible that those breeds which, instead of staying at home to accumulate traditions, had sought in every generation a new abode and a fresh adventure, had in fact their own tradition—that they even preferred it to another? When Mrs. Thompkins, wearing her company air, came in, he saw her suddenly in a new perspective. Fancy burying those babies, she and her husband all alone there at the cabin, burying them and then going on somehow wdth her life. Oliver had an illuminating moment when he perceived that very obscure, ordinary people, quite impossible people, according to Thrale standards, might have backgrounds rich as this. She was inarticulate, this plump, faded woman; she couldn't look or speak her tragedy, the sublimity of her final resignation, her recovered peace; she didn't suggest, as she stood there in her beaded lavender georgette, wdth artificial pearls on her fat neck, the anguish, the stark horror, the unassuageable hurt of the memories she must carry wdth her always. She merely smiled her kind, rather fatuous smile and remarked: "Well, I guess Olga's ready now and we may as well go in to dinner." And she was frankly amazed, and looked in a disturbed way at Augusta Claire, when Oliver neglected that young lady to offer his arm to her mother. Whether Oliver's culpability—from a Thrale standpoint—was henceforth of an active or merely passive order might be difficult to determine. A very firm little chin and beguiling eyes are an effective THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE 747 combination, and Augusta Claire possessed it. Andrew, after his adventure in the Adair garden, had come out of the repair shop as good as new, and Oliver was a frequent passenger while Augusta Claire at the wheel sent the car whizzing along the hill roads. And he sat in the Thompkins living-room, where every detail cried aloud of a department-store decorator turned loose, while Augusta Claire entertained him with popular airs on the graphophone. He didn't even take alarm when Mrs. Thompkins withdrew, as she invariably did, for the obvious and undisguised purpose of leaving Augusta Claire alone with her young man. No, he continued to occupy the chair three feet from the davenport, where, in one corner, Augusta Claire sat looking rather small and isolated, with a significantly empty desert of velours beside her. But so far he hadn't offered to fill it. This brings us to the day when Mrs. Adair, perambulating with her bulldog, received her shock. After her interview with her sister she went to her room, flung her hat on the bed, and began pacing up and down with that long, easy stride which Oliver had aforetime noted with approbation. Nature, in other words the primitive man in Oliver, might be on the side of Augusta Claire, but even at that the battle was not yet lost. There were forces, potent and subtle forces, which could be marshalled in array against her. Bernice, of course, took high ground in the matter. She said to herself that Oliver must be rescued, that he mustn't be allowed to spoil his life like this. Yet she paused in her stride before the mirror and looked into it for a long time reflectively. She was three or four years older than Oliver, seven or eight years older than Augusta Claire. But her grace and distinction, her enigmatic gray-green eyes, her heavy dull-black hair, had nothing to fear from the passing of youth. And of other weapons, of which Augusta Claire didn't even suspect the existence, she had a whole arsenal. Augusta Claire and her mother were immensely pleased with the informal and friendly fashion in which Mrs. Adair dropped in on them. They told Oliver about it, and were innocently unaware of the somewhat mixed nature of his emotions. But can one, even so innocuously as Oliver, lead a double life without suffering embarrassment when the veil of secrecy is rent? He went next evening to see Mrs. Adair and her sister, in the get-itover spirit with which one visits the dentist. He might as well discover at once the degree of his black-sheepishness in their eyes, so typically the eyes of his own particular world. But Bernice received him charmingly; Myra wasn't so well and didn't appear. He didn't miss her, so pleasantly intimate was his tete-a-tete with Mrs. Adair. She spoke in a casual fashion of her call at the Thompkinses, assuming so simply that he would know of it that Oliver had a bewildered moment when he almost believed that she had been in his confidence all the while. He was quite sure, on reflection, that she had not; but it seemed equally certain that in some way she had known all along of this erratic deviation from his normal orbit, without realizing that she was not supposed to know. He did remember, yes, indisputably he remembered, that she had exercised her mordant wit rather unsparingly on the mother and daughter after they had called to apologize for the indiscretion of Andrew, but then on whom didn't she, when the freak took her, exercise it? Now she spoke of them in the kindest way, but without over-stressing the kindness. What more apparent than that here was the very friend for an Augusta Claire so unquestionably in need of forming? And what could be more delicately implied than the friend's willingness to undertake the mission ? The touchiest admirer of Augusta Claire couldn't have taken alarm. Naturally, then, that first friendly overture of Mrs. Adair to the Thompkinses proved only the beginning. Augusta Claire went half a dozen limes to the Adair house, and drank tea, and listened to talk she in no wise understood, and was mysteriously oppressed in spite of understanding that she was very much privileged. Of course what gave the privilege its shining value wras that these were friends of Oliver's, their ways his ways, their allusive speech his speech. And Augusta Claire had that in her soul which made her, yes, even Augusta Claire, tremulously, divinely humble. Mrs. Adair came half a dozen times to the Thompkinses, and dined once when Oliver 748 THE CANDOR OFwas there, and was utterly gracious and charming, while Augusta Claire and her mother struggled against a queer awkwardness which seemed increasingly to envelop them, and Olga, catching the eye of the lady guest, was stricken suddenly so maladroit that she spilled soup down Oliver's neck. Mrs. Adair steered them past this disaster skilfully—you felt that without her, utter wreck could not have been averted—and brought them with an effect of rescue through to coffee. She departed finally, carrying Oliver away with her in the limousine, leaving her hostesses at once thrilled with the distinction her presence had conferred, and depressed by a vague, baffling sense of humiliation and defeat. It was on this evening that Augusta Claire, going rather silently to her room when the guests had departed, sat very still for a good while after she had taken down her hair. Augusta Claire was thinking profoundly, and the effort brought a small wrinkle to her smooth forehead and a compression to her soft lips. Was she thinking of two enigmatic gray-green eyes, plumbing them to find the meaning that lay behind them ? Was she considering their mysterious power of making you see, as they saw, flaccid, flustered, inadequate Mrs. Thompkins as merely that, with all the kindness, faithfulness, heroism of her extinguished by their irony? Was she viewing Augusta Claire by the same light—as Oliver perhaps against his will had viewed her? Was she dimly, incredulously, but surely perceiving the significance of that friendship which she had so guilelessly and gratefully welcomed? Augusta Claire made no confidences to the little pink-and-white room which was the scene of her meditations, unless one might so translate a remark apparently addressed to the electric light as she extinguished it. "And to think how you fell for it!" she cryptically murmured. At the same time Bernice and Oliver were sitting before the fire in the library of the Adair house, over a confidential cigarette. Bernice had made it confidential, somehow, from the moment when with a relieved sigh she had taken her case from her desk. "Of course one couldn't—before a woman who probably belongs to a AUGUSTA CLAIRE league against it!" she said with a smile which took his own sense of the humorousness of it for granted, and sank into the chair which, obedient to her gesture, he had drawn before the fire. Oliver hesitated, then sat down. Having accepted her invitation to come in, there was really nothing else to do. And it was certainly a charming room, satisfying, reposeful, exactly the right place for fireside confidences with a woman who had Bernice's gift that way. Indubitably two months before Oliver would not have been insensible to the agreeableness of it. Whether he was now was what Bernice couldn't, from the straight, impassive profile, quite determine. Under such circumstances the rule is, play the suit you wish were trumps; it's ten to one your lead is returned. Bernice, therefore, with the intimate smile which included Oliver as so inevitably of her own point of view, reverted to the evening just past. "So good, so genuine, the very salt of the earth!" was her tribute to Mrs. and Miss Thompkins. And you felt at once that these excellent qualities cut them off hopelessly from others much more interesting. "It fills you with belief in our country, doesn't it, when you see how sterling they are, people of that class—" Bernice paused to light another cigarette. "Of course abroad they would be, in fact, peasants, with all the peasant sordidness, ignorance, servility," she concluded. "I believe the Thompkins ranch contains some fifteen thousand acres," remarked Oliver, with seeming irrelevancy. "Ah, that's just it—consider the chance they have had, in this country, to rise! In Europe they'd be still in a hovel, you know, with Augusta Claire herding the cows barefoot instead of going to college." "Oh—" said Oliver ambiguously—then he, too, paused for a light. " Strikes me they are more in the class of the landed proprietor, aren't they?" he added, throwing the match into the fire. "Ah, but that implies—well, backgrounds, ancestry, traditions!" She seemed to remind him subtly of his and her own possessions of that order. "The house of Thompkins may have them in a hundred years, but now—!" Her light laugh evoked the mother and daughter in THE CANDOR OF AUGUST A CIAIRE unanswerable witness that they had them not. Oliver said nothing, and Bernice, with another glance at his profile, allowed a long moment of silence to prelude her next remark. It was in a different key. "I was so glad for you to hear, Oliver —your cousin Mary's letter came to-day —that you have been offered that fascithrobbed between them, distinctly as the spoken words, Take mine ! Into the silence her soul projected it, on a wave of emotion which left her trembling, as though there had gone with it something of her life. How clearly her message reached him she couldn't tell, didn't, indeed, dare look at him in that moment to discover. He "You'll add distinction even to the Thrale name." nating place in the diplomatic service. Of course if later you wish to practise law —well, there is always Mary's husband's office ready for you. But i have a feeling, a hope, that it will never come lo that. Once in the diplomatic life—ah, that's the future for you, Oliver! Your gifts will ripen quickly—it's a perfect forcing-house for talent, that European atmosphere—you'll find yourself as a writer—yes, I know it's in you! You'll add distinction even to the Thrale name." "In the diplomatic life a man needs money, and I'm poor," said Oliver bluntly. Bernice said nothing, and yet there continued to stare at the fire, his elbow on the padded chair-arm, the cigarette between his fingers. His emotions didn't come easily to the surface, Bernice knew. And, besides, could he, on so subtle a hint, do other than remain quiescent? If it bore fruit it must be later, when they could both ignore their consciousness that the impulse had come from her. Oliver tossed his cigarette into the fire and stood up. " Good-night. It's been awfully pleasant—thanks for letting me come in." He was gone, leaving her to feel satisfiedly that the hour just ended had been THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE the closest and most intimate of all their acquaintance. Within the week occurred the dinner which Bernice was giving for the Plor
nisb.es,
and to which both Oliver and Augusta Claire were asked. The affair, indeed, might have been called the culminating point in Mrs. Adair's campaign against the little Thompkins. Myra Bart, not entirely initiated, had gasped a little over the invitation to Augusta Claire. "But, my dear, to meet the Plornishes —and Bryce Duprey !" "No, Myra," said Bernice tranquilly, "to meet Oliver." "Bernice, you're subtle!" conceded Miss Bart admiringly. To meet Oliver, then, in all the merciless light of contrast, Augusta Claire was asked to the dinner where the other guests were so emphatically of the elect. The Plornishes were New Yorkers wintering in California, he a sculptor whom talent would have carried far if he hadn't married a wife so rich as to make effort ridiculous. Bryce Duprey was going through on his way back to the Orient, where he was usually to be found if you looked for him in the right place—often a very difficult place to look. For some reason, perhaps his eccentricities, he was credited with having more brains than he ever used, and they spoke of him in clubs all round the world as a fellow who might have been distinguished in any of a dozen ways if he hadn't been so damned clever in eleven others. He was undependable of tongue and temper, but, of course, to be insulted by him was a thing you told of afterward with pride. Naturally, to meet this trio Mrs. Adair had picked her guests carefully—down to the bottom of the list, that is, where occurred the undistinguished name of Augusta Claire Thompkins. There was no disputing it—even Mrs. Adair admitted it as she glanced over the circle around the mahogany—Augusta Claire looked pretty. The big, long-lashed eyes, the roses, the dimples, all seemed more in evidence than ever, more apt to prove refreshing to the jaded masculine eye. But, then, Oliver's wasn't a jaded eye; it was an eye still young enough to be allured by a contrasting maturity, sophistication, finish. And Bernice herself was superb to-night. Besides, Augusta Claire's prettiness might count for something now, but wait until the talk got moving! Bernice had seen her silent, bewildered, extinguished, with a mere half-dozen women at tea, subdued, by that comprehension of her own inadequacies which Bernice had subtly managed to instil, to a little stammering country girl, humbly watching her mentor for a cue. One would now have to wait, merely, to witness the final, satisfying eclipse of Augusta Claire. It was in one of those lulls which will happen at the best-regulated dinner-tables that the voice of Bryce Duprey boomed forth. His apologists said he was a little deaf; those who had suffered too grievously at his hands maintained that he merely bellowed out his rudenesses for the sake of increasing their effect. "Mrs. Adair, that young person over there—what's that, Miss Thompson?— well, whatever her name is, she's been watching me out of the corner of her eye for ever so long. What's the matter— did she expect to see me wdth a queue?" The whole battery of eyes turned to Augusta Claire. Oliver's face flushed darkly. You might have heard the whole company holding their breath. Bernice's mind flashed ahead, foreseeing —any of the things that might have happened, but not the thing that did. For the voice of Augusta Claire, wdth a ripple of laughter in it, came clearly back. "Queue? That would make you a back number even for China, wouldn't it ? No, I just wanted to see what you were like, after I had so much trouble looking you up in the dictionary." "Looking—me—up—in the dictionary ? " The celebrity stared, and his eyebrows drew together, but not all the way, because Augusta Claire, showing her dimples, was too delectable a sight to be frowned at. "Had to, you know, because Mrs. Adair called you such a long word. She told me you were—very wonderful, but a little—well, frightening—that, in fact, you were caviare to the general. And I said, ' Good land! is that an aide or an orderly? Anyway, it's a new one in the military line to me, and I thought I had the thing all doped out during the war.' And Mrs. Adair said, 'Oh, it's—just a phrase, dear !' " Augusta Claire reproTHE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE 751. duced with exactitude Bernice's pained but determinedly sweet air. "But I couldn't see how you could be just a phrase, so I went home and looked you up in the dictionary." "And you found I was—?" The man before whom dusky potentates had trembled waited. "Distinctly an acquired taste." Utter demureness was in the droop of Augusta Claire's lashes. Then laughter, wholehearted, masculine, much too loud for Bernice Adair's dinner-table, broke forth, and Bryce Duprey laughed loudest. Some of the women laughed, Mrs. Plornish stared disapprovingly, and Bernice, though she smiled tolerantly, managed a slight, very slight shake of her head at Augusta Claire. But Augusta Claire, so biddable but a week ago, ignored the gesture. Quite openly and shamelessly she brought the whole effect of eyes and dimples to bear on the celebrity. "And should you suppose it possible to acquire it?" he demanded, looking at her with frank delight. "Isn't it possible to acquire almost anything—with practise?" she murmured, dimpling wickedly. Bernice, recovering from her astonishment, hastily resumed command of the situation. No time now to reflect upon this extraordinary development, only to nip it in the bud. "I want to tell you—may I, Oliver?— we're all such friends here!—about the prospect of Mr. Thrale's going abroad soon—and in such a particularly delightful way!" Further details brought a congratulatory chorus. Oliver received it ambiguously; nobody could have guessed what he thought of the delightful prospect. If you had been watching Augusta Claire you might have seen the sudden flushing of her cheeks, but she was quite herself again when in response to a remark of Mr. Plornish's, who sat beside her, her clear voice reached the listening roomful—listening because Bryce Duprey had at once rudely interrupted a remark of Mrs. Adair's to give his attention to Augusta Claire, and the others had followed suit. "Yes, it must be lovely to get a job like that where you don't have to work for your living—just draw down your salary and go about to teas." At this picture of his future Oliver looked down at his plate. "Now I shall have to work for my living awfully hard !" Augusta Claire turned a plaintive gaze on Mr. Plornish. "Really? At what?" he inquired interestedly. "Running the ranch, of course. Yes, that's what I'm going to college for—not to learn to write free verse in early middle English, or essays on ' Socialism under the First Babylonian Dynasty.' Snap courses like those are all right for the leisure classes, but I've got my job all cut out. Beef on the hoof is the topic that keeps me burning the midnight oil—electric juice, I mean. And, believe me, in Cow College you work!" "And so you personally are going to run a ranch, Miss—ah—Thompkins?" Mr. Plornish's eye-glass was skeptical as he trained it on his diminutive neighbor. "I sure am !" nodded Augusta Claire. "I'm getting ready to as fast as I can, for the place will stand more looking after than it's getting now, I'm afraid. There's a pretty good foreman in charge—good when he's sober, that is. But he's sober a lot oftener because he knows something's due to drop on him if things aren't going right when I come up in vacations. Twice a year, anyway, old Jake Peters knows he has to ride over every acre of the place with me, and if there's anything wrong I just stand him up and wade into him. He says he'd a lot rather have had dad land on him with his fist than get a dressing-down from me." Augusta Claire dimpled deliciously in the same moment that she tried to frown. You could see her from the eminence of her five feet dressing down old Jake Peters. "That is a very interesting career you have marked out for yourself," said Mr. Plornish, " but I don't see what allowance you have made in it for the—yes, one can only say the inevitable husband! Suppose his career should take him in quite another direction—a long way, in fact?" As if on a sudden thought Mr. Plornish glanced at Oliver. Augusta Claire's gaze may, for the fraction of a second, have taken the same course. As to Oliver, the portrait of Mrs. Adair's great-aunt on the opposite wall appeared to claim his full attention. "Well," said Augusta Claire, with a certain deliberation, "I don't know that 752 THE CANDOR OF AUGUSTA CLAIRE he's inevitable—because sometimes two that—that like each other awfully let circumstances and—and people interfere. Of course nothing needs to interfere, because if he—the man, you know—had something really big to do in the world, the ranch would come out a poor second —Jake and mother would have to worry along by themselves. But his job would have to be the kind that counts for something—not a pink-tea snap. Because the ranch does count for something—you're doing your share of the world's work when you help feed it, aren't you? And I want to do my share—to feel every day of my life that I've earned my keep." Mr. Plornish, who certainly did not earn his keep, found nothing to reply, which gave Bernice the opportunity to cut in smoothly. "The husband, then—you know we can't help considering him inevitable, dear!—unless he can prove his own career of superior importance, will have to go and live on the ranch—and let you earn his keep, too? Ah, my dear, I'm afraid I can't congratulate you on the future— what shall I say?—Mr. Thompkins!" Augusta Claire looked up quickly, and across the table the eyes of the two women met. For a measurable instant they held each other. "No, he won't be Mr. Thompkins," said Augusta Claire clearly. "And he'll earn his own keep, you know. Because first he'll learn to run the ranch, and then he'll—run it. To begin with, while I was finishing college, he would go on the place as a puncher until he was ready for Jake's job—I mean to retire Jake on a pension as soon as I can. And from that he'd graduate to manager—and the man that manages Elk Rock Range—and me—will a lot more than earn his keep, I can tell you!" " I believe you !" boomed the man from the Orient. "But it will be a job worth holding down!" Augusta Claire's triumphant evening drew to a close at last. In the drawing-room she had sat between Mr. Plornish and Bryce Duprey, to whom with freedom and fluency she narrated histories of Elk Rock Range, while other rather languishing conversations were drowned out by their delighted laughter. Glowing and sparkling like a dusky jewel, with the aura of victory still about her, she came to say good-night. She took Bernice's slender, unresponsive fingers into her strong little brown hand. "Thanks so much for the best time! People are so nice when you take them as just human, aren't they—your caviare person, for instance ? Of course I forgot all the lovely manners I was trying so hard to learn from you—they just don't fit me, I expect. I might as well give up pretending I'm a perfect lady, I suppose, and be—just candid." "Ah, you're certainly that, dear!" returned Mrs. Adair in a slightly raised voice—Oliver was standing by, waiting to accompany Augusta Claire home in Andrew. "T o take us all into your confidence so delightfully about the status of the future Mr. Thompkins! The first thing we shall ask, when we hear you're engaged, is what terms you've hired him on." "I'm sure he won't mind telling you, dear Mrs. Adair!" murmured Augusta Claire with unmistakable significance, and again the eyes of the two women held each other, while abruptly their hands unclasped. Augusta Claire and Oliver rode home in Andrew^ silently. They put the car in the garage and then paused to say good-night at the house door. "I hope you'll like that—that d-diplomatic post, Oliver," said Augusta Claire in a shaking voice. "Shouldn't," said Oliver briefly. "But let me tell you, Augusta Claire, if I chose to take it my wife would go wdth me, do you hear?" "I—I expect she would, Oliver," gasped Augusta Claire. "And I think a man had better hold down even a pink-tea snap on his own account than—than live off his wife's property, don't you?" "B—but you wouldn't, Oliver! It would be a real job, Oliver ! Oh, Oliver, I knew it was that, and I came out right there before them all—right when she was trying to make you see that I wouldn't do at all for a diplomatic post—I explained just how we'd manage, Oliver !" "Augusta Claire, what wages do you pay a puncher?" demanded Oliver, as for the second time—and on a door-mat, too —his arm went round her substantial little figure. Continuity BY CHRISTOPHER MORLEY ILLUSTRATION BY W . J. ENRIGHT HERE was always a stir and movement among the leaves, in that strip of woodland beyond the empty house. The dim blank windows, with dusty scarfs of cobweb in the sash corners, looked into alcoves of green perspective where, at the bottom of the vista, clear twinkles of sky sifted through. No matter how still the day, how heavy the air, there seemed a gentle trouble in the boughs. Among the tangle of blackberry briers and dying chestnut trunks matted with robes of poison-ivy, were some dogwood-trees. In a light spring air their blossoms of four white twisted petals tossed and spun like tiny propellers. The tall oaks lifted rough gray rafters under the lattice of tremulous green. There was always an eddy and chiming under the eaves of that airy roof. What word is soft enough to say it? A whisper, a murmur, an audible hush, a sigh. Paths that men have made persist surprisingly. Behind the old faded blistered barn a still visible way among the thickets led to a deserted dump-heap among the trees. Here, quietly rotting in a flicker of sun and shadow, lay the cast-off rubbish of former tenants—broken china, rusted cans, a skeleton umbrella, an old slipper, warped and stiff. Poison-ivy had grown up again along that path. The blackberries softened, and then withered, unpicked. The two men who walked up the hill did not see all this. Their first glimpse of the house, seen by chance from the road, pleased them. The faint sadness of any dwelling, lonely and stripped, was at that moment only an agreeable air of strangeness. In the transparent blaze of light and warmth, under a golden pour of late afternoon sunshine, the place VOL. LXXL—48 was ideal for their bivouac. They had tramped far, were tired and hungry. The rich green of mint and cress on the hill-slope led them to the spring: when the paste of dead leaves and twigs and seed clots had been scummed off, the water was cold and sweet. There was dry hay in the loft of the barn. Here they spread their blankets. By an old log, scarred with axe-cuts, they lit a small cautious fire, made tea, and fried bacon. In the valley they could see opal shadows gathering, rising, a lake of dusk, a blue tide making up a green estuary. Daylight retreated on the great tawny hillsides, slipping quietly among scattered gray boulders. "Now let Time stand still a while," said Dunham, lighting his pipe and stretching out at ease. "I didn't know how tired I was until I got out here, away from all the meaningless pressure of the office. I'm too tired even to think. I couldn't think if I wanted to." "There's a good many in the same case," said Grimes, with a faint grin. "But not for the same reason." They gazed about them with a sort of vacant satisfaction. "M y mind feels like that old house there," said Dunham. " A dusty shell, vacant, lifeless, and yet somehow aware that it once was alive. Just a foggy memory that I was, forty-eight hours ago, a hustling business man tied down by telephone wires." "Yes, you're tired," said Grimes. " Everyone's tired. The world itself is tired. I'm glad it is. If it gets tired enough, desperate enough, it'll come to its senses. Think of a place like this, close to the main road, in this heavenly country, and lying empty. I suppose the people who lived here moved to the city. I can imagine them, huddled in some mean crowded street, going to the movies every even-fog." 753 CONTINUITY There was a throbbing down the road, and round the curve that embraced the hillside flashed a big touring-car, lifting a swirl of powdery dust. They watched it disappear, with the small pitiful smile of two ghosts, just stepped off earth and reviewing the quaint futilities from which they were now released. "These arcadian spots aren't always what one imagines," Dunham said. "It doesn't do to live too close to nature. I've always noticed, it's the loveliest places that lie vacant. That's just it— they're too lovely. People get frightened. There are days, like to-day, when the very harmony of air and sunlight terrifies me. Days so excellent they trouble the heart. They make you suspect that life is only a queer dream, one of those nightmares in which your limbs are paralyzed in the face of sure disaster. Perhaps we will wake up in the Fourth Dimension, who knows ? " " Yes, it's all a disordered mix-up. But life is rather like a detective story. No matter how badly written, or how clumsy the plot, somehow you generally want to read it to the end." "Yo u admit, then, it's a kind of fiction. Exactly. But if life is fiction, then what represents biography?" Grimes laughed. " My dear boy, we're getting uncomfortably subtle for two tired loafers. Let's wash the frying-pan and take a stroll." The rusty old pump, under the grape arbor near the back stoop, was found to yield water after some priming. And then Dunham, poking about, noticed that the outside cellar door was unfastened. "Hullo," he cried. "Here's a way in! Let's explore. I never can resist an empty house." Through a dark earth-smelling basement they felt their way gingerly. Grimes lit a match and they found the stairs. The door at the head of the flight was hooked on the inside, but not tightly: there was enough gap to insert a penknife blade and lift the fixture. They were in the pantry. Nothing is more fascinating to a thoughtful mood than rambling through a deserted house, imagining it peopled with one's own domestic gods, and also conjecturing the life of the former occupants. A home keeps so many subtle vestiges. The creak of the stair, the stain on the wall-paper, the hooks in the cupboard, the soot of the fireplace, all these are mysterious and alluring whispers out of that unknown household. You can feel the vanished reality, obscurely existent and yet dumb, intangible. There must be some way, you would think, of wiping the dust from that old mirror and seeing the lingering reflection. "They were good housekeepers," said Grimes. " I never saw a place more scrupulously clean. No scraps of paper or curtain-rings or flabby tooth-brushes lying about. The woman had an upstate conscience, evidently." "Too clean," said Dunham. "I don't like it. It's too—too naked. I don't think they loved the place. If they had, they'd have left something for it to remember them by." "I'm going up-stairs before it gets too dark to see. It's interesting. I wonder why they closed all the shutters just on this side of the house and not on the others?" Dunham was examining a large cupboard under the stairway. He heard his friend's footsteps go upward over his head. The heavy walking shoes moved slowly from room to room, he could hear them strike sharply on the echoing floor. At the back of a cupboard like this, he was thinking, would be the likeliest place for things to be forgotten. He groped carefully into the dark corner, with a curious feeling that he would find something. Above him was a sudden soft pattering. Mice, he thought. Then he heard Grimes calling. "Here's some evidence!" he was saying. Dunham turned—perhaps with an irrational feeling of relief—from the stuffy blackness of the closet. He went upstairs, and found Grimes standing in a fair-sized room on the sunset side of the house. "There were children. See the Mother Goose wall-paper, all scrawled over with pencil marks." "Pretty tall children," Dunham said. He pointed to some of the scribbles, which were just at the height of his shoulder. "They do it standing in their cribs." CONTINUITY Grimes smiled. " I know that from home experience." Dunham opened a closet door in one corner. " Funny," he said. "They left all their toys." On the floor of the cupboard, neatly arranged, lay an assortment of childish treasures: a clockwork locomotive and battered tracks, building blocks, a tin shovel and pail, some small tools. "Children had grown up when they moved away," Grimes suggested. In the darkening room they seemed to see the little tin rails set out in a circle on the splintery floor, the toy engine clattering round until, like all such contrivances, it reeled over and lay with a loud buzzing, like a kicking beetle turned on its back. From some far-away imagined childhood the picture presented itself. The room seemed very lonely. "Let's go outdoors," Dunham said. They walked quietly up and down the rough driveway that lay between the house and the woods. Among the trees was an occasional blink of fireflies. The evening air was cool, and Grimes rebuilt a small blaze, but Dunham still paced around the house. The place moved him with a grave appeal. As the last green light drew westward, darkness crept in from under the trees, where it had lain couching. The wood itself drew closer and whispered more certainly. It loomed immensely high, like a wall of blackness, darker than the dark. The house seemed smaller and had lost that look of established confidence that houses have. Happy houses welcome the night, built to conquer it, their gallant windows hold swords of brave yellow lamplight to pierce our first enemy. But here, Dunham thought, this lonely steading quailed beneath the shadow. Darkness invaded it and triumphed over it; it lay passive, but still afraid. At last he joined his companion, who was lying comfortably propped against a log. "This is just the sort of place I'd like to live in," said Grimes. Above them the ruddy shine of their bonfire was caught upon the boughs; it hung like a bright mist among the softly shaking leaves. Each way they looked was warm glow, but the dark was always just behind them. "Curious how much closer the woods come at night," said Dunham. " Sunlight keeps them at a distance, but now they press nearer. They seem to lean right over the house. If I lived here I'd clear out some of the trees. I like a bit of open space around me, to give the stars room to move about in." "I don't like trees at night," he continued presently. "I'm not surprised those people shuttered their windows on this side. There's something strange about that towering blackness. You might think it goes all the way up." "All the way up? " said Grimes, lazily tapping out his pipe. "It probably does." "I guess not. It's only earth's little shaft of shadow, waving through the empty brilliance of space. There must be sunlight away up, or we shouldn't see the stars. They haven't any light of their own—have they?" " My astronomy's rather vague. Come on, let's turn in; I'm tired. I'll pour a pan of water on those embers." The barn loft was airy, with a faint dry sweetness a little ticklish to the nose. They swung open a big upper door that looked upon the yard, and arranged their blankets on the hay. Dunham was thinking of the people who had lived here once. A broken pitchfork stood against the wall: its wooden handle was dark and slippery from the moisture of many palms. As he settled himself comfortably he had a sense—with the sudden clear vision of the mind—of the Past, of all humanity's past: the endless broken striving of men, their fugitive evasions of disaster, their hazardous momentary happinesses. And when you realize (he was thinking) how everything vanishes, surroundings once dearly familiar pass out of one's life, with what an emotion you remember things you once loved and will never see again ! This plain house, deserted under the dark profile of the trees, had once been filled with life. To some one, every sill and corner had had meaning. Now, in the tremulous summer evening, it had an air of defeat, of flight, the air of tragedy worn by abandoned things. This is a sadness felt by all, a personal and selfish sadness, CONTINUITY the universal pang of the race troubled by Time's way with men. To his mind came words half-remembered "All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering carl, The heavy steps of the ploughman . . . the ploughman. . . ." How did it go ? "By the way," said Grimes, "what was that you said about—" the hay rustled as he turned over. "Said about what?" Grimes paused. "Never mind," he said. "I was going to ask you something. I've forgotten what it was." They fell asleep. Dunham woke as one does in middle night—not drowsily, but sharply, definitely, with a mere opening of the eyes. As he lay he could see out through the open door: everything was lovely with a pallor of moonlight. In that wan, delicate shining the trees were a milky gray: every leaf distinct and separate, limned upon seeping chinks of shadow. The crickets and other night sounds had fallen still. A comfortable calm possessed him. The feeling of sadness and oppression had passed. In this clear tranquillity he was necessarily placid. The old hypnotism of the moon, as she passes her silver mirror gravely before humanity's face, makes all passions and perplexities seem vain. He rose, quietly, for Grimes lay solidly asleep, and descended the ladder to the barn floor. He walked out softly, for there was sure enchantment in the night. Moonlight never fails of her spell upon the imaginative; but this was a brightness so hushed, so secret, so crystalline, he seemed drowned at the bottom of an ocean of light. He trod, as he had dreamed in childhood of doing, on a clean sandy sea bed where light struck radiantly down through leagues of clear water, gilding corals and shipwrecks and green caverns with a tremble of pale colors. Again the tall proscenium of woodland seemed to have receded under the flow and purity of that thin gleam. A straight white barrier lay between the house and the trees. He walked almost on tiptoe. This was a different world from that shadow of loneliness and trouble that had lain across the hillside a few hours before. Sometimes from sleep men rise like Lazarus from the dead; their eyes see newly. Fears and fevers were dissolved in this pearly lustre. Not with horror but with tenderness he saw the splintered lives of men, whose weakness alone makes them lovable; and even this poor shell of a house, once dear to men, shared in that generous emotion. A faint reiterated rhythmical sound reached him as he strolled quietly beside the house. He wondered, at first, whether it was bird or insect. It seemed partly a whistle, partly a squeak; and as he halted to listen, it queerly conveyed a sense of something revolving. It was always on the other side of the house. A bat, perhaps, he thought idly. But then he detected in the sound a small rattling or jolting. He stood under the grape arbor, with just a subtle prickling of nerves. The soft creaking seemed to pass now along the stony roadway under the trees. There was a suggestion of metal in the sound. It ceased and then was renewed, irregular, but with a rhythm of its own. Men are easily frightened at night, but Dunham was not frightened. In some curious way he felt that this was part of the destiny of the evening. He felt only an unexplained sense of pity. He had known this was going to happen. Ever since he had first divined the quiet misery of this house under the horror of the trees, he had known But it was quite different from his expectation. Round the corner of the house, into a pool of moonlight, rode a child on a velocipede. He was about four years old and wore a sailor suit. There was a faint squeaking from the unoiled cranks of, his toy. A crumpled sailor cap was carelessly tilted on his head; his face was bright with gaiety. With a kind of reckless dash and glee he twirled the tricycle round and rode briskly, with a merry up-and-down of bare knees, down the bumpy drive. What on earth is that child doing here • at this time of night? thought Dunham, his tension suddenly relaxed. Some
Drawn by W. J. Enrigld. He stood under the grape arbor, with just a subtle prickling of nerves.—Page 756.
758 CONTINUITY neighbor's youngster, strayed away from home ? He followed slowly, not to frighten him. But the child, absorbed in his escapade, had not noticed any watcher. He had halted the velocipede, and was sitting thoughtfully, bent over the handle-bars. "Hullo!" Dunham called, gently. "What are you up to, sonny? You ought to be in bed." The figure turned on the saddle. Through the overhanging trees the blanched light fell hazily upon the small face: Dunham could see it change, first to shyness, then to alarm. He pedalled swiftly, bumping over the stones, down the hill to the highway, and disappeared in the mottled shadow at the turn in the road. For no reason he could analyze, Dunham looked up at the house. At an upper window, white in the glitter on the pane, was a woman's face, colorless, staring, horrified; with a sudden dreadful movement her hands flew to the sill, as if to throw up the sash. Her mouth opened in a soundless cry. Dunham ran to the bottom of the hill, and looked along the road. There was no one there. As he walked up the driveway again, he looked, against his will, at the window where he had seen that anguished face. It was closely shuttered. The next morning Grimes went among the trees to collect sticks for the breakfast fire. "Look here!" he called. "Here's an old dump heap. More evidence !" Dunham followed the old track among the bushes. There, quietly rotting in a flicker of sun and shadow, lay the castoff rubbish of a vanished household— broken china, rusted cans, a skeleton umbrella. Among the litter, broken and badly twisted, lay an old velocipede. After breakfast, while Grimes was packing up their kit, Dunham slipped into the house. In the morning light, that broke in golden webs across the dusty rooms, the place was only faintly sad. In the cupboard under the stairs, far at the back, he found a child's sailor cap. As they were setting off down the road, a farmer passed in a hay-wagon. "How long's it been empty?" he said. "Oh, five, six years, I guess. The folks moved away after their little boy got killed by a car. They was all wrapped up in that kid, too. He was riding his tricycle, right here in the road. That bit of woods, you see, it shuts off the view of the curve." The wagon was creaking on when Dunham turned and ran after it. "Say," he called, "when will it be full moon, d'you know?" The man meditated. "Why, the full o' the moon was about two weeks back. Another fortnight, I guess. Nights are pretty black just now, I reckon." He went on down the road. As Dunham joined his companion, Grimes said: "Oh, I remember what I was going to ask you. You said something yesterday about the Fourth Dimension. That interests me. Just what did you mean ?" " Lord knows," said Dunham. " Sometimes I've thought that the Fourth Dimension is what the moving-picture people would call Continuity. When you paste all the little shots of film together, it goes on and on and never stops. Everything that ever happened is happening still." "In other words, the Fourth Dimension is Memory?" Dunham looked off down the valley, where great areas of shadow were moving, subtending the silver floes of wind-drifting cloud. "Put it this way," he said. "It's the shadow that life casts on eternity." "Or maybe the other way round. The shadow eternity casts upon life?" They walked on round the hillside, skirting the patch of woodland that hid the house from the road. An eddy and trembling rustle of leaves was chiming under that airy roof. What word is soft enough to say it ? A whisper, a murmur, an audible hush, a sigh.
THE POINT OF VIEW
T seems absurd to be troubled about goodness in a world that is being decried more than ever for its evil. To me one of the most significant statements in that delightful history of Mr. H. G. Wells is a quotation from the writings of Mo Ti, a follower of Confucius in t h e f o u r t h century before Christ: "All this has arisen from want of love. . . . Men in general loving one another; the strong would not make prey of the weak; the many would not plunder the few; the rich would not make prey of the poor; the noble would not be insolent to the mean; and the deceitful would not impose upon the simple." All this time many people have thought thej' were being good; yet the world to-day resembles very perfectly that of the Chinese philosopher 2,300 years ago. One feels oneself touching triteness on all sides or descending into the pomposities of didacticism the minute one discusses goodness, even its dangers; yet we all suffer from the good people we know, and it seems a pity not to analyze our troubles sometimes lest we fall into folly of the same kind. It is not that the dangers of goodness are numerous; the trouble is they are insidious. To try to be good would seem innocent enough, but the first thing we know we are avoiding the whirlwind only to butt into the firmest of Scyllas. The only rule about it that seems to me of real value is that one can afford to be only so good as his disposition will bear sweetly; so many people are a little better than the traffic will bear. Thus they spoil themselves and become Marthas or martyrs or saints. Of the three I suppose the saints are worst, because they are intolerant, while the Marthas and the martyrs are merely bad company. The capacity for goodness varies, of course; in a few fortunate souls it is great. One of t he most delightful men I have ever known is, I like to think, the most beautifully good. He is more than eighty, but even the endurance of old age—that most trying of all diseases—has made no blemish upon the utter sweetness of his nature. He is so genial, so mellow, so unselfish, so young in mind and heart that he is a source of joy in any company. But most of us must exercise care in this matter of goodness. The supreme wisdom is that of the Greeks—Measure—to know when to stop. The Greeks were not too good; it took the Barbarians to be that. As a rule we escape being saints. The Stoics are, I think, in greatest danger. Stoicism is a splendid virtue if only one can carry it off; but frequently the Stoic is one that thinks about it afterward. Very few people can endure to the end; one endures at the time with set teeth, and then, when it is over, dwells upon it. After all it is pleasantcr to make at the time all the fuss one cares to, and then forget it. All honor to those that do endure to the end. For most of us there is a strain about our attempts at Stoicism that is not as perfect as the quiet endurance that does not set its teeth at all, and yet bears. The absence of strain is so truly the essence of art. The greatest danger to most of us is that of becoming martyrs. When one discovers that one is sorry for oneself, then it is obviously time to go out and commit a dark, terrible, pleasant, wicked deed. When one's family seem unappreciative and hurt us more than usual, then it is time to leave them. We can be of no use to them; better forget them altogether, no matter how supremely important to them one may be convinced he is. When one becomes oppressed with a sense of how unselfish one has been to his friend, and how brutally unappreciative the friend is, drop him and forget him; if he really cares about you he will do the rest—unless, perchance, you can heap coals of lire and enjoy doing it. I have thought about the matter of coals, and I am certain the trouble is that most people are submerged under a sense of their own nobility when they are heaping coals, and thus they lose most of the pleasure and all the point. This is that they are deliberately putting the other person in the wrong and keeping him there, which is the most effective defense in the world and the most selfish. Incidentally it should be precious balm to the soul. 759 760 THE POINT OF VIEW As for the Marthas, they are, in a way, a variety of both saint and martyr, the difference being that they themselves suffer so. They are forbidding on the face of it, and do not invite company. They are neither co-operative nor sociable; for the latter they are too busy, and for the former too competent. Therefore they are solitary in spirit and more or less sufferers in consequence. The joy of life escapes them, they are so intent upon the accomplished task. There are so many Marthas in America. Is there any other country in the world where prevails that inexplicable variety of virtue that expresses itself in being "so busy one does not know what to do "? Even the college professor is ashamed not to have it so. The great shock-absorber for goodness is, obviously, a sense of humor, and, failing of that, good health. A great sweetness that no goodness can sour needs one or the other. The sense of humor is safer, but good health will do the trick. That is, however, retroactive. Good health very often depends upon one's not being too good. Too great goodness has wrecked quite as many constitutions as being too bad has. Incidentally this is another of the dangers of goodness. Perhaps all that it amounts to is that it is well not to minimize happiness. The saints have usually tried to find it the wrong way, and the Marthas and the martyrs not at all. The best comrade is the one who is looking out for the joy of life, and does not mind telling you when he finds it. Emerson, with all his solemnity, knew this and smiled his "Why so hot, little man?" R. L. S. knew it, with his "It is my business not to make my neighbor good, but to make him happy if I can." And, as Marguerite Wilkinson says in her "People by the Wayside," Mascfield knows it, with his "The days that make us happy make us wise." RE you married?" That seems to v
R1 be the criterion by which a woman over twenty-five stands or falls. Whenever my mother chances upon an old acquaintance she is met with the question: "Oh, and your daughter. I suppose she ^ is married?" The reply being in tneSpinsters3 6 ° negative, the inquirer changes the subject. Every time I run across a married classmate her first query is: "You're married, too, aren't you? " And when I answer "No, " I feel like the little girl who was told to bring a written exercise to school—and didn't. I am even beginning to wonder if St. Peter at the gate of heaven will not look at me kindly but firmly, like that teacher, shake his head and, saying gravely, "Ah— but where is your husband?" turn me away. But whatever St. Peter's standards may prove to be, it is evident that this world favors the time-honored conception of spinsters as a separate species, not only a little lower than the angels, but a little lower than men and married women, too. We are less than men because we are women; and less than married women because we have no men. To a young married woman the singleness of a feminine friend is a skeleton-inthe-closet, to be glided over as hurriedly as possible, or in some way gilded. Now, I regret my husbandless estate as much as any one else could for me. But, popular expectation to the contrary, I will not hang my head. At a social gathering in our town, where a number of unattached girls in the middle twenties were present, a married woman observed: "Ho w strange that none of you have ever married !" But is it, after all, so strange ? I suppose each one of us grew up with the idea that some time, all in due season, a knight would come riding. But he never did. In high school that future seemed too far away to worry about. Studying, "practising," and outdoor games occupied most of our time. There were boys, of our age and younger, to about half the number of the girls. On rare occasions after school we played hare-and-hounds or duck-on-therock together. Later, in augmented numbers, we went ceremoniously to dancing-school. The boys wore white cotton gloves, and brought water-pistols and fountain-pens that popped. But in the end we all learned the waltz and two-step on the square. Then, abruptly, higher education took us in hand. The first girl I met at college was "corresponding with six men." I shall never forget the thrill with which I listened. For the first time romance seemed near and real, and I began to wonder if, around some unTHE POINTexpected corner of the curriculum, mine own fair stranger might come riding. But curriculums are not built that way. Moreover, in contradiction to the girls' stories I had read in younger days, not one of the seven or eight girls I knew best at college had a brother! Sometimes, in brief vacations at home, the old group of playmates got together for a party or two; then, before really getting reacquainted, separated again. Four years spent in building ideals passed quickly. In the next spring came the war. The boys left college, or the careers in which they were just beginning to get started, and went. When they came back, between two and three years later, to take up life where they had left it, we who stayed at home had scattered to positions of our own, and there we have remained. Most of us teach in boarding-schools during the winter, and in summer go as counsellors to girls' camps, or live quietly at home in the town which the boys, in their turn, have left. And from one month's end to another we never see a man. Oh, see them—yes! At summer camp there is a riding-master; at home, the grocer and the iceman. In winter, on distant platforms, we glimpse stage heroes; at school there is the janitor; and at parties—other people's husbands. No, we have never married. But is that fact, after all, so strange ? Is it, after all, so much to our discredit? Almost without our realizing it, the time for true knights to come riding has slipped by, and we find ourselves on life's battlefield alone. The next question is what to do about it. Mr. Roger W. Babson, the statistician, in a recent article,* states that "old maids are unfit for school ma'ams." Nor does he think they ought to go into business. What, then, is left for the unmarried woman over twenty-five to do but to slip unobtrusively out of life ? But I do not entirely agree. Perhaps if women were allowed to go to war that might be managed. Failing that, I do not see how it could honorably be arranged. For is not any other form of suicide an admission of cowardice? After all, life is an obligation, and must be met. It is true that we have missed the one thing that, to a woman, makes life really * Boston Sunday Herald, October 16, 1921. OF VIEW 761 worth while. Yet, in spite of Mr. Babson, we must go on living. More than that, we must live to some purpose. That means, first of all, work. Whether we teach or whether we go into business, there is a deal of self-disciplining ahead of us. The young wife faces the necessity of adapting herself to the personality of one man and the requirements of a home. A spinster faces the necessity of adapting herself to a variety of people and places and to conditions that are unnatural. We who teach or go into offices must, if possible, keep all the tact and patience that belong to us as women. They will be needed. But in mental alertness and physical stamina we must endeavor to be men. We must learn to work with other people; to know when to put forth our own ideas and when to give them up. We must be efficient and self-reliant; keen and quick, yet steady; untiring and unafraid. At the same time we must be happy. The quick waves of emotion and tenderness that are part of a married woman's strength are to us only liabilities. These, and the dreams and longings that are most natural to us, are unbusinesslike. We must set them aside, and resolutely, determinedly, find pleasure in small things. Hardest of all, each one of us must learn to be her own source of comfort, inspiration, and inner strength. (Alas ! so much easier to be those things for some one else!) We must meet hardships without complaint, disillusionment without bitterness, and sorrow without weakening. A girl on the eve of marriage looks forward into a blinding radiance. The way ahead is as hidden as that before her lonelier sister. But whatever the possible hardships, she sets forth sustained by that abiding faith and hopefulness that only love can give. The girl on the eve of spinsterhood looks forward into emptiness, and falters; then, because she must, looks into emptiness again. The lessons ahead of us are hard ones; and they must be learned alone. It is perhaps inevitable that we should fall short, or, in struggling to master them, acquire characteristics which mark us as a class distinct. But, whatever our idiosyncrasies, in the last analysis we, too, are human beings; we, too, arc "carrying on." Whatever faults and failings may be charged to us as a class, grant us one thing, also, and that is—courage. 762 THE POINT
HE achievement of greatness is likely to prove a sufficiently unhappy experience, but to be cast, for what one may have done, in "indestructible" metal or cut in "imperishable" stone, and to be forced to sit or stand im 1Lltues movable in the market-place like any Hindoo fakir, is undeserved by, as it is undesirable to, any thinking mortal. If one could but consult with his sculptor as to the nature of his garb, for the clothes are as immortal as the pose! But fashions change and the amplitude of one's coat or the cut of his trousers cannot be altered. There is no escaping the unhushed voice of criticism, and the risible finger is pointed without pity. There is no changing of raiment for adjustment to the season, nor—to take a bath—and oftentimes one needs to go into the tub, clothing and all. One must be out in all weathers, in snow and rain, in heat and cold, and serve as bird roost besides. Still, all this might be endured if, after one's unveiling, he might be remembered and recognized with the respect anticipated from the oratory, music, and flowers of that day. Of course, on that momentous occasion one must expect to divide honors, but not profits, with the sculptor, though when immortalized in three dimensions one can well afford to be generous. But the strains of the band have scarce floated away, the flowers have hardly faded, ere one is passed and repassed by the hurrying throng with barely so much as a glance of curiosity. Within a generation only the occasional antiquarian, or haply some thoughtful schoolboy, stoops to decipher the legend written on the pedestal. On the other hand, hoboes sit unwittinglv in the shadow of the philanthropist, and anarchic demagogues lift their strident voices in the shadow of founders of republics. For those whose real selves were not appreciated in life, possibly a lofty and excusable sort of indifference marks the attitude of these images, but when one has been hailed by the mob and feted by the elect, the neglect of his likeness must eat at a heart of stone. Like animate life, statues must suffer from competition, but without power to struggle for existence. If there were fewer, each would be treated with more deference. OF VIEW If one must stand forever in park or marketplace, the small community will prove the more effective home. Every one in a village knows and looks up to (at least when exhibiting the sights to visitors) the likeness of its one hero, while statues in the metropolis jostle one another, and men rush by the images of a dozen more notable persons without so much as a glance. How grateful indeed must be the indwelling shade of one of these when the papers, orange peel, and remains of cigarettes are cleaned from his base by the impartial attendant! Sentiment aside, from the point of view of public economy and of "education," it is most regrettable that there should be so little return, in public attention, for cash expended in setting great men on a public pedestal. The way to obviate this was long since pointed out, though only recently made possible. Every one knows Memnon —his statue—for did it not become vocal at dawn and, of course, by way of preface to what else it may have uttered, remark: "I am Memnon. I lived in such and such a time. I performed such and such feats, so worthy that you should not forget them nor him who did them"? The mechanism of that early phonograph is lost, but there can be no question that the modern instrument will serve the desired end. The "speaking image " of a great man need no longer be a bit of hyperbole. Then, as the indifferent loll in the square or loiter idly in the park, their attention would be riveted by "I am George Washington, the Father of Your Country !" and there might follow, with good effect, a selection from the Farewell Address; or "This is Fulton, Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat. There are others who claim this honor, but the honor belongs to me! " Or "This is a statue (a mighty poor one) of George Peabody, philanthropist and builder of museums. The nearest of these is at ." So much for possibilities. Nowadays, a record of the real voice (or a real record of the voice) might be secured and laid away "for insertion, should a statue ever be erected" to one's memory. A suitable saying, methods of winding the machine and starting it at the appropriate moment, and other minor details, could easily be "worked out." Suffice it to say that interest in public statues, and on the funds invested therein, would be assured. THE FIELD OF ART Museums and the Factory MAKING THE GALLERIES WORK FOR THE ART TRADES BY RICHARD F. BACH Associate in Industrial Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ILLUSTRATIONS BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM
OR reasons not far to seek, we have is as ordinary as your daily bread, and it is drifted into a queer mode of thought not necessary to have an intelligent opinion regarding all the arts: line arts and regarding its design, industrial arts are set off in separate cate- Bui both are children of art, both truly gories. Fine arts are exalted and rare and are industrial art in descent, though the no one can afford them; industrial arts are painting has not always run true to strain, get along without rative arts, have carried common week-day things and no one can The equally noble arts of daily life, the deco-them. For an arrangeon from century to ment of colo r on a century responding to canvas, to be called a myriad changes of "Snow and the Lonefortune, and now serve some Pine, Pequan-to exemplify stupennock, N. J.," only an dous mechanical as well "artist" will do; for a as artistic achievedrapery fabric, of which ments. fifty thousand yards The truth is that will be made for disthese arts, and we have tribution in the four taken but two out of winds of trade, a "dehundreds to carry our signer " is good enough. point, are of the same Some one may buy that stock. Their relationsnow scene and a few ship is as close as that of his friends may see of blood brothers. Deit; but several thousign is the backbone of sand wives and mothers each, the same aesthetic will have to buy the principles hold sway fabric, and it will bewhether the composicome for their children tion is in millinery or part of the background metals, in pigments or of growing youth and in pewter, in silver or in slowly shaping ideals. silk. Vet one of these is fine The cause of the diffiart, too often admired cult y lies in man's in ignorance, the open queer ways—above all, sesame to the exclusive his proneness to favor precincts of that half-some leading thought knowledge men call that offers the greatest culture. And the other A Greek mirror aided the designer of this interest at any time. wall bracket of antique bronze is just goods—you can with alabaster bowl. So during the nineget it in every shop, it Designed by Walter W. Kantuck. teenth century various 763 THE FIELD OF ART V modern American "Wilton rug woven in Worcester, Mass., from designs by Frank Haas. The source was a so-called Polish rug in the Museum dating from about 1600. causes gave men's minds a mechanical turn. This was applied to manufactures of all kinds, art included. Had paintings been an absolute necessity of life, no doubt some whimsical genius might have found mechanical means to turn out "originals " as fast as we now turn out phonograph records. But chairs and rugs and dress-goods were necessities of life and, the mechanical interest being uppermost, these succumbed to the era of rapid production. The machine was young, it had its limitations, as it always will have, and so there was nothing to do but to create such designs as the machine could handle. Result—chaos, and the arts of the home all but disappeared in the quicksand of "commercialization." Now there is a business of art, there must be; but it is different from the business of making carpet-tacks, however similar the primary steps of production may seem. These men of mechanical turn of mind failed to see that point. They bought so much lumber and this made so many tables—or, as it is done to-day, they may have made so many table-legs, not even whole tables 1 Now it takes more than lumber and labor to make a table-leg. Algebraically, there is a factor missing to make our equation balance. Lumber and labor must be multiplied by design. This is the appealing quality which satisfies the mind as the wood does physical needs. But, while the leg will live as long as the wood will wear, the design is deathless. So these experimenters with complicated tools were too quick to snap their fingers in the face of fate. The machine became the master, and ever since then we have had fine arts vs. industrial arts, and they have agreed as the nations now agree on disarmament: each agrees to letting the others disarm. Was there ever a time when such a distinction held favor? Think of Greece and Rome, and Amiens and Florence. Architects, sculptors, carvers of choir-stalls, mosaicists, mural painters, goldsmiths—they were artists all. But to-day? Show me a painter who can—and will—design a textile, and I will show you an emancipated artist. What, in fine, is industrial art? Your watch-chain or necklace, your cloak or cravat, your lamp or humidor, your wall panelling, your stove, all are objects of industrial art, quite in the same degree as altars and metal gates, "suites" of furniture and "sets" of dishes. It includes alike the china service plate at ten thousand dollars a dozen and the wall-paper at seven Velvets, cretonnes, brocades, and other fabric types have counted heavily upon Museum material as sources of design. THE FIELD OF ART cents a roll, the tapestry at twenty-five dollars a square foot and the gingham at twenty-five cents a square yard. Nor does it exclude the work of the craftsman designing and producing a single item at a time and doing the whole work himself. Decorative arts and industrial arts are one and the same. Some incline to limit merically what it amounts to. The number of pencils that may be got out of a giant cedar-tree may be amazing, but such wonderful statistics are useful only to the pencil manufacturer. It is design that counts— not how many bolts of printed cotton from one cutting of the rollers, but the original design from which the rollers were cut. These are covers for a booklet about clothes for men ami designed by Walter Dorwin Teague. the term to designs turned out in quantity. But then, let some one first define art, and I shall know where to begin to define industrial art. Our case is like that of medical practice in inner China. The patient consults a doctor who knows nothing about diseases; the doctor prescribes medicines about which he knows nothing; the prescription is made up by an apothecary who knows nothing of drugs. The patient takes the dose and gets well. But should you put that patient in a hospital and give him studied doses of tested compounds he will either escape or die. Now the industrial arts are a giant territory, but it will not do to figure out nu-Twenty thousand Martha Washington sewing-tables are a mighty army for good or evil. Was the first model good? Perhaps twenty thousand of anything, but dollars, is too many; but within limits let the original design be good and I care not how many duplicates you send out into the world. Each is then a messenger of good design, ,I silent teacher. These are some side-lights on our present position: the machine and its attendant benefits and evils is the leading consideration; it is the beginning and end of the whole problem. Use it right and it will bring you wealth and perhaps the consciousness of duty well done. Fail to command it 766 THE FIELD OF ART The design of this furniture by Alice S. Erskine, was based upon doors of the Clehel Situn (Palace of the Forty Columns) erected at Ispahan at the end of the sixteenth century by Shah Abbas. it. It is constructive work and only museums can do it. Let us see how this works out in the one institution in which it has been given a thorough test. (I quote from an account in a current monthly.) In certain galleries at the Metropolitan Museum,recently, one might have found the chiefs of our leading textile houses in amicable but animated discussion of their work. The occasion was a special evening at the Annual Exhibition of American Industrial Art, and the presence of these men most significant. They were long-headed business and. you plot against public taste. This is a serious responsibility, especially when every flicker of taste must be assiduously fanned ! The greater is this responsibility, in view of our lack of educational facilities for training not only specialists in design but also the appreciation of Jack and Jill in the schools and their descendants. Until this vast educational machinery of the future begins to function, we must continue to get our appreciation second-hand from lecturers and from art criticism in the Sunday papers, and our manufacturers must continue to buy designs in Europe. Our few schools of design cannot stem this heavy tide, and Europe can but hope that it will swamp us. Think what America could do to European commerce (and perhaps even the home industries of countries there) had we designs that could compete with theirs. Think of the millions our citizens could keep here that are now paid in profits to other lands. Yet we can help a little—our art museums can help the industries. Efforts can be made to render collections accessible for close study by producers and designers, necessary red tape can be made less troublesome. The museum's attitude of helpfulness can be made less that of condescension and more that of co-opera Lion. Objects can be interpreted, and a staff officer maintained to go into the factories and workshops to learn at first-hand the difficulties and successes, the problems, the processes, and the hopes of machine production. This is educational work, and museums must do men; they could discern the logical steps of progress in their industry while those steps were yet leagues away, and they saw in this exhibition an indication of their best thought in the difficult matter of design. Here was a realization of hopes that promised little before the war, but gained much impetus from our splendid isolation in matters of design during the conflict. Here was the work of over one hundred firms and designers, in all some six hundred and thirty objects brought in evidence to prove that design is the leading commodity offered for sale in scores of business fields, and that to command its price it must be studied in the light of the best originals An American china service plate with decoration in deep blue and gold, designed by Frank Graham Holmes. THE FIELD OF ART available. For these objects were one and all of museum inspiration; that is to say, each owed some part of its design value to study of the collections in the Metropolitan Museum. There were silks and cottons, silver and iron, lacquer and lamps, cabinets and commercial containers, fringes and car cards, scrims, batiks, rugs, ribbons, blankets, bedspreads; in fact, a most varied collection of modern commercial material, each how difficult to set up again when a welter of hybrid forms and garish colors has smothered them in the pursuit of "volume" and "turnover." But the number of these wideawake producers is steadily increasing; in always greater numbers designers are learning the very first concept of all design, namely, that this pervasive quality cannot be evolved out of an inner consciousness, that it means work and study followed by Lustre ware so well designed and executed as to beguile an unsuspecting collector, yet made by a worker whose purpose was to discover the secrets of Persian lustre decoration on pottery of the thirteenth century. The designer was Rafael Guastavino. with an across-the-counter selling value, and each maintaining that value because in its production museum originals played a part. Copies? Yes, a few; the trade will always demand some. And then, again, repetition is the mother of study, as the Latin text-book says. But the real truth of progress lies in designs which are the result of what may be termed the inspirational use of the collections—when a lamp manufacturer gets ideas from Cellini bronzes or Greek mirrors—this means progress. When a neckwear manufacturer studies Chinese vases or French armor, or a tile designer studies Persian miniatures, we may safely say the clear light of a new day is dawning in American design. These designers have found the open road to freedom, they have come to an understanding of first principles. It is surprising to discover how few these first principles are, how easily they are lost sight of and more study and work before the foundation of knowledge is laid and the structure of wisdom erected on it. The foundation is not a collection of plates grouped in a selected number of pattern-books; the foundation is not a course in a school that does its best and then achieves but indifferently. The foundation is education tuul books; best of all, study of originals of other times, originals that have stood the test of years of use, and have passed t+ic scrutiny of experts and connoisseurs not only of to-day but of centuries before us. For these designers and manufacturers the museum maintains a separate department, in charge of a "liaison officer," who acts as interpreter—and sometimes, alas, as mediator—between the collections and the active world of production. The results of this work are annually gathered together in a selective exhibition, all entries being in some way the direct result of museum study. THE FIEED OF ART No better proof of our pudding could be found than that brought by every piece in this exhibition of current work. Each item is taken out of stock and is returned to the salesroom to continue the career for which tion of the museum as an addition to his own facilities of production. And more— the dealer or distributor must in turn appreciate this value and by his own diligent study of originals bring his information to such a point that he can sell his goods in terms of suitability of design, quality of design, form or color expression, as related to a customer's needs. Manufacturer, dealer, designer—all are of the same company, all can help or hinder the improvement of American home environment, all can use or ignore the best facilities that have ever been made available. If design sells the article, the design must be good. To be sure, this requires a degree of judgment which designers, makers, buyers, and sellers in nine cases out of ten do not possess; and among the purchasing public even the tenth has yet to achieve that pinnacle it was destined. Each belongs to the here and now, and represents the outlay of a present-day Ameri can's salary expended in purchasing home furnishings, clothing, etc. Above all, each piece is a demonstration of the practical use of art collections for the improvement of current design, and represents a kind of study which leads to fresh conceptions in design, conceptions in which the identity of the original is generally lost. The crucible of the mind has melted down a number of motives and colors and other artistic requirements, and the mode of their blending has been determined by the ability and progressive thinking of the designer. Thus, a new thing has been evolved, a modern design produced. And the new thing is better because Flock wall-papers, designed by Frank E. Leitch. of appreciation. But The sources used were old velvets with pile cut these are stirring days. in patterns, Byzantine and other types of ornament being followed. it is based upon study of the old. Progress is possible in no other way. To aim at truth by ignoring the world's interpretation of it not only now but in "the past is folly—nay, more, lunacy. To "create" designs that do not respond to any chords of human feeling as shown in the artistic records of civilizations that produced our own is impossible, and those who try it add malice to foUy. The burden does not fall upon the designer alone; his soul is not his own. The manufacturer himself must grasp the value of study of originals, must realize the posiProducers and dealers, designers and public—all are beginning to feel the leaven of a new growth. Somehow progress comes—though at any given moment there may be breakers ahead, we discern now and then through the confusion of miscellaneous designs some light that points the course. At any rate the findings at the Metropolitan Museum seem to give that promise. It is the most salutary evidence of our faith in ourselves, of the conviction of an always increasing number of producers, that the best design is good enough for America and that the best resources must receive constant use to achieve that end. A calendar of current art exhibitions will be found on page 7. f FINANCIAL SITUATION The Changing Economic Scene BY ALEXANDER DANA NOYES
T has been the peculiar history of this spring season that the attitude of financial markets was altogether hopeful while the actual course of political events was described as distinctly disappointing. On one or two occasions the Political deadlock in the programme at Events Genoa and the collision of naana the . . , . ... Markets tional ideas and prejudices were such as to inspire the British Premier (and with him some of the newspaper correspondents) to indulge in talk of another war; of something which Lloyd George described, in sufficiently gruesome language, as a new "welter of bloodshed." Yet the financial markets, although hesitating now and then in a kind of puzzled curiosity, presently resumed their movement of recovery. This was anomalous enough to require some explanation. If the attention of the whole political world was fixed on the recent Washington conference, it converged no less anxiously on the conference at Genoa; but with this difference, that whereas Washington struck the note of resolute hopefulness and definite achievement from the start, Genoa presented confused alternations of feeling as to both purpose and possible results. This was the reason why the foreign exchange market, which measures the financial community's impressions of such events and in which sterling rose from $3.63 to $4.44 during the conference at Washington, moved irregularly back and forth at a lower level after the Genoa gathering convened.
HE proceedings at Genoa, although undoubtedly of high importance, fulfilled the prediction of our State Department that this would not be primarily an economic conference, but "a conference of a political character." They also served from the outset to confirm the financial market's view that the problems of currency and foreign exchange could not be solved ?, ore v' gI 1 by such a conference on the ^^^" ^ lines laid down by the states- Conference men. In particular, the futile notion that foreign exchange rates might be somehow fixed at an arbitrary level and kept at that level afterward was at once rejected, as every intelligent person knew it would be. The preliminary report to the conference by its finance committee bluntly declared that "artificial control of exchange operations is useless and destructive." Lloyd George, when outlining to Parliament his programme for the conference, declared that trade and exchange rates could not be restored "until you have established everywhere convertibility of currency' into gold or its equivalent." The British Premier had to admit that already in some countries (presumably meaning England, France, and Italy) "wonders have been achieved." But he added that " the world cannot afford to wait," and declared emphatically that the remedy "will involve the revaluation of currency." So clever a politician as Lloyd George would hardly pin himself down to practical suggestions. Therefore he did not even hint whether he had in mind the scaling-down of the nominal amount of paper currency outstanding, or reduction of the gold in the standard monetary unit through which the currency was valued. But the finance committee of the conference evaded the question quite as resolutely; in the end, they shifted the whole question onto the shoulders of a future conference of central banks to be called by the Bank of England, a prospective gathering at which our Federal Reserve will 769 THE FINANCIAL SITUATION be represented, and which may have interesting consequences. Meantime, however, as might have been expected, the British Premier's orphic declaration brought upon the scene the volunteer economic doctors whit their own prescriptions.
R. MAYNARD KEYNES, on whom the great vogue of his "Economic Consequences of the Peace" had apparent!}' imposed peculiar responsibilities for solving the world's economic problems in the light of his own ideas, pro-Proposals duced his "stabilization plan "Devalua-fo r Genoa"; which, in subtionists" stance, proposed that the legal redemption value of the paper currencies in gold should be reduced from the present statutory $4.86-,;s to S4.41 in the case of the British sovereign; from 19 1 3 cents to 8? s in the case of the French franc; from ig}$ cents to 4.$$ in the case of the Italian lira; from JO' 3 cents to i 1 2, or thereabouts, in the case of the Czechoslovakian crown, and so forth. This was a change of front from last autumn's proposal of Professor Cassel and the London Statist for reduction of the gold content of the British sovereign from $4.86^i to $3.63, while still declaring by law that the sovereign thus degraded was the pound sterling in which old contracts were to be fulfilled. Since that interesting suggestion of last autumn, however, the pound sterling had risen on the open market of its own accord from S3.63 to S4.44, the franc from 7 cents to oj 3, and the lira from 4 cents to 5E2. Clearly, in order to escape absurdity, the figures of the autumn experts had to be revised. But, as the foregoing figures show, even the ingenious Mr. Keynes had not been able to keep up with the automatic recovery of the exchange market, and meantime the cold response by the French, Italian, and Belgian delegates on the finance committee of the conference was that.their governments had no intention whatever of "devaluing" their currencies, but proposed eventually to resume gold redemption tit the pre-war parity. It was all a striking reminder of the mournful confession to Parliament by an English "devaluationist," in the deprcdated money days which followed the wars of a century ago. The exactly similar proposal of that early nineteenth-century philosopher went on the rocks because "we could not agree on what ought to be the amount of the new standard." Hie trouble had been that, while one expert was of opinion that the new pound sterling "ought to be £4, 10 or £4, 15 per ounce gold," his fellow-theorists "thought it ought to be £5, 5 or £5, 10"; and that, in fact, "the mind of the country, the strong opinion, and the moral feeling" were against the project. Thus does history repeat itself. Even in political economy there is no new thing under the sun. To the real banking experts at Genoa, who had charge of the finance committee, these crude proposals merely meant repudiation—not in the straightforward way of cutting down the paper currencies, but through an indirect and purposely misleading by-path. In the last analysis, such a policy must have seemed to them to be what it is—the meeting of a government's debts by clipping or debasing the coin in which payment of those debts had been contracted —a familiar recourse of needy monarchs in the Middle Ages, when they were "the government" and when it became personally inconvenient for them to pay their war debts in pre-war values after the war was over. One of them is scorn-full}' recalled by Dante, in explaining why the royal economic expert was not encountered by the poet in his journey through Paradise. THE political aspect of the Genoa conference as an influence on the financial situation was another matter. Cordial co-operation in a common purpose by the Entente allies and the new Central European states was clearly a sign of promise. It is possi- Russians ble, despite the impractical >le Q 1ns rma attitude of the German dele-t Genoa a gates, that important results will be found in the long run to have been achieved, simply through the fact of the presence of delegates from Berlin at an international council table. But it was evident from the start that at Genoa the real theme was Russia. (Financial Situation, ontinucd on page 55)
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(Financial Situation, continued from page 770) posal was received, the Soviet delegates anInclusion in the conference OF delegates from the Soviet, on which Lloyd George insisted from the first, had, as we all know, been regarded with the greatest scepticism by financial markets. It had been objected that the mere fact OF such quasi-recognition OF the Bolshevist cabal—an organization without bona fide political backing, a mixture OF the French Revolutionary Triumvirate with its "Mountain,'' of Huerta's Mexican dictatorship with its mercenaries, and OF Tammany with its graft, its stupid public declarations and its incompetent administration—would merely give the Soviet delegates an opportunity to display- before a world-wide audience their special brand < IF EFFrontery. The prediction was immediately fulfilled. Confronted with the question whether the Soviet, as the price of obtaining recognition by respectable governments, would agree to recognize Russia's pre-war debts and pay foreign owners for their Russian property which the Soviet had confiscated, Tchitcherin and Rakofsky produced a bill against the Allies, in the tidy sum of 300,000,000.000 francs gold, as indemnity for alleged assistance to anti-Bolshevist military demonstrations. Somewhat abashed by the ridicule with which this pronounced that they would compromise on immediate payment of 2.000.000.000 francs by the Allies, but would insist on getting a loan along with it. Then they asked for the loan without the indemnity. The German delegates, true to the diplomatic denseness which had marked their government's conduct from K ) 1 4 DOW N to the present day, selected the second week of the conference to conclude at Genoa a separate treaty with the Soviet, "whereby each would allow special and exclusive privileges to the other. Notwithstanding the vital importance of many international questions which were in the balance, the farcical element repeatedly predominated. Back of all this stood the question of the qualified offer. I>\ a communist AN D anticap italist government, to hand over Russia and the Russian resources for exploitation by foreign capital—one of the most extraordinary episodes in modern history. What the end of it will be, very few people venture to predic t; but the end was certainly not at Genoa. There were those who believed that the Soviet was simply dangling a bait before European capital, in order to get the money with which to guard their own organization from an other(Financial Situation, continued on page 57)
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(Financial Situation, continued from page 55) wise inevitable collapse; after which they might repudiate their engagements. There were also those who believed that Lenin, as a disillusioned fanatic, was directing the fortunes of Iris country with the subtle purpose of bringing back people and government into a permanent capitalistic system which would insure bis own supremacy as a new Napoleon. The one supposition assumed sharp practice toward the rest of Europe; the other assumed sharp practice toward Lenin's confederates. We have vet to see the real test of either theory.
HESE considerations were not the governing influence on the season's financial markets. Out of all the past month's series of
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In many respects the most impressive movement of that market was that which simulFOUNDED I855 taneously occurred in the foreign government Correspondent Offices in 300 Cities bonds, issued during the past ft tu r < >r li ve years on the basis of payment of interest and princiGiccncb(iumBonds-iooyJafepal in dollar values. T11 1917 England placed with American investors a United Kingdom USE THIS COUPON 12 per cent loan, whose maturity was subsequently extended to 1937. It was sold at 90; Greenebaum Sons Investment Company it fell to 81^4 in August, 1920; last month it La Salle and MADISON Streets, Chicago had risen to 103. The French Republic 8 per Please send without obligation latest list of Hank cents, floated in our market at par during 1020, Safeguarded llonds and handy coupon clipper. sold down a year ago to g6}4; they brought 108^-4 this spring. The Swiss Confederation's NAME 8 per cents, subscribed for at par in 1920, lately-reached i20 TJ. More striking still, a couple STREET -of months ago two European loans were placed in New York whose market was experimental. CIT Y . 16 STATEOne was the 6 per cent loan of the Paris, (Financial Situation, continued on page 50)
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(Financial Situation, continued from page 57) the 4J4S subscribed in October brought only Lyons & Mediterranean Railway of France, with interest and principal payable not in dollars but in francs. It was offered at 83, yet it commanded 85^-2 a fortnight later. The other case was that of the Chechoslovakian Republic, the floating of whose $14,000,000 loan in New York last March was the first introduction of a Central European state as a borrower in the American investment market. That 8 per cent loan was placed at 967^2; it commanded ioo-V by the middle of April.
ET these comparisons made less impression on the financial mind than those which presented themselves in the market for United States war loans. With the exception, first, of the Victory bonds, whose redemption at par is near at hand, and, second, of one or BRADS' t w 0 liberty loans wdth special tax-at Par exemption privileges, none of the government's war loans had ever, up to the middle of this April, sold on the open market at their subscription price of par. Even when first dealt in on the Stock Exchange, the 4K per cent bonds for which subscribers had just paid par in the Liberty loan "drive" of May, 1918, brought no higher price than 99E8; 987" 8. From those figures these 4 /4 per cent loans had fallen 13 and 16 per cent in the first year and a half after the armistice, reaching in May of 1920 the low-record prices of 85^8 and 82 respectively. On the 15th of last April they and practically all the other Liberty bonds crossed par in a rising market. For this very remarkable movement of investment values, different people assigned different causes. Wall Street was disposed to attribute the persistent rise to the fall of money rates, and in fact the general return of the Liberty bonds to par in April was immediately a consequence of an incident in the money market which strongly emphasized that market's changed position. Cost of investment capital to high-grade borrowing governments or companies is closely measured by the rate of interest paid on its short-term floating debt by the United States Treasury; a rate determined by the supply of investment capital. This kind of indebtedness is for us an inheritance from the war, although other governments than ours had long before the war resorted to sale of Exchequer bills for payment of current expenses in anticipation of tax collections. 'Financial Situation, continued on page 61)
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(Financial Situation, continued from page 59)
FTER our entry into the war, the prodig. ious military expenditure necessitated the raising of very great sums on such short-term notes from time to time—obligations which would later be taken up through proceeds of the funded war loans. These so-Fall in the called "certificates of indebtedTreasury's ness" were authorized in the War Interest Rate Loan Act; $268,000,000, running two months, were sold to the banks at a 3 per cent rate a fortnight after war had been declared. When the first Liberty loan had been placed in June of 1917, however, with a 3J-2 per cent interest rate, subsequent issues of short-term certificates naturally had to bear at least as high a rate. During the later years of war they paid 4J2 ; but with the general rise of money rates in 1919 it cost more and more to float the short-term certificates, until on December 17, 1920, a $400,000,000 issue running for one year bore the rate of 6 per cent. That was the highest; the floating debt at the earlier high rates was thenceforward gradually retired as it matured, being replaced by borrowings at a progressively lower interest charge. In July of 1921 a one-year loan brought a 5*^ per cent return; in December, 1921, a six-months loan carried 4*2; in March, 1922, another one-year borrowing was placed at 4^4. When the Treasury had to borrow again last month to take up maturing floating debt, it was commonly expected that the rate on the new $150,000,000 six-months loan would be placed around 4 per cent. Instead of that, the Treasury offered only 3^-2', notwithstanding which, the loan was covered twice over by the applicant banks.
HIS meant that the best measure of the cost of investment capital had now placed that cost at the lowest percentage reached since September, 1917, and nearly at the prewar rate. The effect of that achievement, both on the monev market and on Pre-War the investment market, was imme-Money . ,. , Rates diate and far-reaching. It did not, indeed, come alone as a sign of prevalent conditions. On March 12 the Bank of France had reduced its official discount rate from 5^2 per cent to 5 (it had been 6 per cent in 1920) and simultaneous!}' the interest rate on the French Government's new one-year loans had been cut down } of 1 per cent to 24%, and on the three-months bonds to 3^ . On April 13 the Bank of England's rate was reduced from 4^2 per cent to 4, the new rate being lower than any which had existed at that (Financial Situation, continued on page 63)
The Strength of AMERICA Reflected in Washington TO Washington, the Nation's Capital, flows A steady stream of visitors from all the States in the Union. They come to see the Government buildings, the national memorials and the many points of historical and patriotic interest. They return home impressed and inspired, not only by the magnificence of what they have seen, but also by the manner in which the Capital City reflects the strength and permanence of America, and of its institutions and ideals. Where else if not in Washington, would youexpect real estate rallies to be sound and First Mortgage Investments to be safe ? The name of The F. H . Smith Company has been linked with First Mortgage Investments in Washington since 1873. W e have sold our offerings to conservative investors throughout the country on our record of no loss to any investor in 49 years. If you have funds to invest now, or if you save money systematically, inquire about our 7% Safeguarded First Mortgage Investments, secured by improved, income-producing busine*„ property in the heart of Washington. You can invest in denominations of #100 , #50 0 or #1000 , for as short A period as two years or as long as ten years. "2V£O loss to any investor in 49 years For full information address Dept. 1 4 ^^F.HSMITHCD. ^founded /<f/j First Mortgage Investments WASHINGTON, D. C. I What Portion of Income Should Be Invested?
HIS is a question for individual consideration, but the following figures, based on the average experience of a great many families, may help to answer it. TYPICAL BUDGETS FOR VARIOUS INCOMES For an average American family—two adults and two children NECESSITIES ADVANCEMENT SURPLUS INCOME (Per Month 1 t Per Month) (Ins. and Inc. Tax not deducted! Per Per Operating Per Education Per Per Per Food Shelter Clothes MainRecreation Year Cent tenance Cent etc. Cent Month Year .< 2,500 79.2 S 5 5 $ 45 S 35 $ 3° 11.2 $ 23-33 9.6 S 20.00 $ 240 3,000 74 60 5° 40 35 I 2 30.00 •4 35.00 420 3.5°° 7 = 65 60 45 40 12.6 36.67 •5-4 45.00 540 4,000 69 7° 60 5° 5° •4-5 48.33 16.5 55 a° 660 5,000 66 75 7° 60 70 '4-5 60.42 »9-5 81.25 975 7,500 56 100 100 75 7 5 16 100.00 28 175.00 2,100 10,000 5 > 100 •25 75 125 17 J4J-33 3* 267.00 3,*°4 1 2,500 42.2 100 125 90 125 17 176.67 40.8 425.00 5,100 15,000 J7-* "5 125 100 >*5 16.8 210.00 46 575.00 6,900 20,000 34-5 150 150 125 1 50 16 266.67 49-5 825.00 9,900 25,000 33.6 »75 200 125 200 16.4 341.66 5° 1,041.67 12,500 30,000 33 200 250 150 225 17 425.00 5° 1,250.00 15,000 40,000 27.8 200 250 •75 300 18.2 608.33 54 1,800.00 2 1,600 50,000 27.6 250 300 200 400 18.4 766.67 54 2,250.00 27,000 Send for Booklet and Plan Sheet TH E above figures are from the "Plan Sheet" in our booklet, " A Sure Road to Financial Independence." For a $5000 income, the living expenses are analyzed on the plan sheet to show in detail how the indicated surplus is arrived at. There is a blank for applying the analysis to fit your own case. Every one interested in a systematic method ol building up a surplus invested in sale bonds will find it worth while to read this booklet and make use of the "Plan Sheet." Write for booklet SM-16 HALSEY, STUART &, CO. ' INCORPORATED CHICAGO NEW YORK BOSTON PHILADELPHIA 209 S. LA SALLE STREET 14 WALL STREET 10 POST OFFICE SQ. LAND TITLE BUILDING DETROIT MILWAUKEE ST. LOUIS MINNEAPOLIS FORD BUILDING 1ST WIS. NAT'L BK. BLDG. SECURITY BUILDING METROPOLITAN BK. BLDG. ,,.,.,.,.»..... Fill i below for copy of "A Sure Road to Financial Independence" booklet SM-16 .™™ ntfl£amc , , Street City 02
(Financial Situation, continued from page 61) institution since the week before the war began. With the exception of Switzerland—whose money market has been abnormally easy beN I N E cause of the huge deposits of Central European capital sent to that country for safe-keeping— I N V E S T O R S the new London bank rate was the lowest bank rate in the world, and it was lower than any OUT OF TEN Bank of England rate in 191.3. Tins decline in the rate for money practically know the Franklin automobile as a light, to the pre-war level was bound to affect the easy-riding, economical car, made by a successful organization, driven by repreprice of fixed-revenue securities; for investment sentative people. in a twenty or fifty year bond is merely a loan Reputation of the car is typical of the of money on security for that period, and the investment qualities of Franklin securities. only way in which a long-term 4 or 6 or S per On Franklin Common Stock an average cent bond sold on the Stock Exchange can reyearly cash dividend of $13.1 4 per share has been paid on each $10 0 of such stock outspond to a fall itt cost of money is through standing each year during the past 20 reduction in its yield to the investor at the years. Two previous issues of Preferred purchase price—in other words, through the have netted 9}i','° and 11V-, respectively. advancing of its price. Even the British war We offer new 7yo Cumulative Sinking loans advanced very rapidly when the London Fund Preferred Stock and new Common Stock as a desirable investment for indibank rate was reduced to 4 per cent, the 5 viduals—proceeds to be used for manufacper cent bonds, which had been subscribed turing the new Franklin Four. Our circular at 95 in 1917 and had sold on the market for gives interesting details. Please send for it. 83 last year, crossing par on the London Stock Partial Payments Exchange. Nevertheless, falling money rates F. A . Barton, Treasurer were not the only influence in this season's exH. H. FRANKLIN MANUFACTURING COMPANY traordinary investment market. Syracuse, N . Y . THE question was repeatedly asked, even among Wall Street bankers, Where does this seemingly unlimited fund of investment capital come from ? How is it possible for a country which had just emerged from a year of trade reaction, business losses, S O U N D A D V I C E Where did commercial bankruptcies, frozen the Money Come credit, and industrial unemployT ^HE ordinary individual usu-From? ment, to be pouring into the marally has neither the time nor ket for investment bonds far greater sums than that market had been able to comthe facilities required to make a mand at any time since the war ? One familiar thorough independent investianswer, correct so far as it goes, is that this gation of the bonds he buys. very process of liquidation, the forced sale of speculative holdings, of merchandise and That is why the advice of a stocks, the withdrawal of capital from indusreliable investment house is so try, releases an immense amount of capital essential for the proper safewhich must thereafter, during the period of guarding of investment funds. idle trade, either lie idle in bank deposits OR J be placed in sound investments. All of our offerings Iiavc witllr Indeed, the mere fall in prices for commodistood rigid tests as to safety— tests developed through nearly 45 ties, taken by itself, will set free a substantial J years' experience in the busiamount of capital previously used to purchase J ness. May we send offerings ? and move such goods. Every one knows that when prices of commodities advance on the Ask for Circular "JS" average 25 per cent, the merchant dealing in them must, if he wishes to continue his business WELL S ^DICKE Y COMPAN Y Established 187&in the same physical volume as before, obtain MINNEAPOLI S MINNESOTA for that purpose, either from his private capital (Financial Situation, continued OD page 65)
TI:; I^^feWlEr/LOURING... — YO U WILL FIND THE BUMPS IN THE FINANCIAL ROADWAY SMOOTHED OUT BY — •of. A * B * A ASSS L CHEQUE S FACTS FOR TRAVELERS About AB A Cheques — universally used by travelers in every land. — your countersignature in presenceacceptor identifies you. of — safe to have on the person because they cannot be used until they have been countersigned by the original holder. — safer than money, and frequentl y more convenient than Letters of Credit because the bearer is less dependent on banking hours. — issued by banks everywhere in denominations of 310, £20, $50 and £100. Ask for them at your bank — compact, easy to carry, handy to use. or write for particulars to BANKERS TRUST COMPANY New York City
(Financial Situation, continued from page 63 or from his bank. 25 per cent more money than was required before the rise in prices. That is the evident reason why bank loans and company capitalizations in Germany to-day are :fifty or sixty times as great as they were beforethe war; prices of commodities, measured in Germany's depreciated paper money, have advanced in the same proportion. Bui the converse is equally true, and when the fall in American prices since the spring of 1920 has amounted on the average to 40 per cent, a fairly equivalent percentage of the capital employed at that date in general trade must have been released. TET us remember that it was immediately L/ after the long trade depression which followed the panic of 1803 when American investors subscribed directly in 1000 and 1901 for $208,000,000 of the British Government's Boer war loans, for an 80,000,000Investment marks Imperial German loan, and aFinancial Sio,000,000 Swedish borrowing, Reaction ,n c lirs l transactions of the kind in American financial history. It was only a year or two after the violent and seemingly destructive American trade reaction of 1903 that our investors took $130,000,000 of loans issued in 1904 and 1905 by the Japanese Government in the Manchurian War with Russia, and that was our people's first investment of the kind in an Asiatic loan. Both the aggregate amount of accumulated capital and the scope of the fall in prices were far greater in 1920 and 1921 than on those earlier occasions; the capital released for other investment musl have been greater in proportion. Yet even this well-known principle does not by any means explain all the phenomena of this season's investment markets. A year ago huge sums of capital had already been set free by the trade reaction and the fall in prices, yet there was no revival in the investment market. It was difficult during 1921 to place new loans of governments or companies with American investors. When they were floated, they had to pay exorbitantly high rates of interest; a large part of those loans which found a market was repeatedly left for months in the hands of the banking-houses which bail underwritten them, and (as we have already seen) many of them sold in the open market afterward for less than their subscription price. The true reason for this anomaly, and for the complete contrast between the present bond market and that of 1921 or 1920, must be ascribed to other considerations in the history of the period. (Financial Situation, continued on page 66)
I OWE IBISMUCH TO MY CHILDREN' "Someday I will be sixty. Between now and then I should do much for them— much that takes money. Will I be able to do it? The chances are against me if I merely drift along. 85 Vo are dependent at 60. The thought brings a, shudder, but it's true. I can't face that kind of future with their voices ringing in my ears. "For them I'll call a halt on thoughtless spending. I'll see that every possible dollar is carefully saved and wisely invested. A new plan enables me to earn an average of over 43S'yo on my monthly savings, at present interest rates, over a ten-year period. This I can do without sacrilieing safety. Isn't this the lastword in thrift?'' •The True Story of Plain Tom Hodge" 13 a fascinating book that will tell you just what this novel, new plan will do for you. It will show you the way tofinancialindependence—how to be a good saver and a good investor. We orge that you send for this book at once. It's a true story that will reveal to you a new profit. A complimentary copy of "The True Story of Plain Tom Hodge" will be mailed promptly upon request. Write today. Tear out this ad, write your name and address in margin, mail to us. GEORGE M. FORMAN & COMPANY Farm Mortgage Investment* DEPT. 1763, 105 W MONROE ST.. CKICTRE THIRTY-SIX YEARS WITHOUT LOSS TO.A CUSTOMER K.%&K. SERVICE places at the disposal ol American Business Men and American Travelers, world-wide foreign exchange lacilitic^, highly organized and efficient. Collections or payments made through our correspondents all over the world. K. N. & K. Travelers tellers of Credit and Travelers Cheeks tire paid in all foreign countries at the current rate of exchange. They are used by experienced travelers everywhere. Knauth.Nachod & Kuhne 120 Broadway New York
(Financial Situation, continued from page 65) 'Preferred 87,o SHARES AN ATTRACTIVE INVESTMENT at recent market price is to be found in the 8% Preferred Shares of Standard Gas and Electric Company Listed on Chicago Stock Exchange On e o f the nation's largest investment and management organizations, whose operated companies 6ERVE half a million customers in 578 cities and towns. Approximately 30,000 home shareholders are personally interested in the welfare o f the properties. Write for "Foundation Investment " Circular S-10 H. M. Byllesby and Co. 208 South La Salle Street, CHICAGO NEW YORK BOSTON
1 Broadway 14 State St. To realize the significance o f the Prudence-Bond Guarantee, try to get one from somebody else! Send for "New Booklet 'A GUARANTEED INCOME' which explains Prudence-Bonds in detail Ask for Booklet S. C. 235 The PRUDENCE COMPANY, Inc. ( Really Associates Investment Corporation ) 31 Nassau St. 162 Remsen St. New York Brooklyn Capital and Surplus $1,100,000
was in 1919 that the popular mind wasTgiving over Continental Europe to capture by "Bolshevism." The overthrow or reversal of existing political institutions then seemed so possible a sequel to the war, to the Russian communist experiment, and to the general unsettlement of ideas, that Th e . the attempt of our own railway ^g Sp 0°j. o f brotherhoods in the autumn of that war Period year, to hector Congress into setting up a kind of labor Soviet for the railways, led not a few minds to imagine that even the United States might be one victim of the Red propaganda. That particular illusion soon wore away. Continental Europe outside of Russia settled the matter of Bolshevist propaganda, sometimes by overwhelmingly adverse majorities at the polls, sometimes by very direct disciplinary action on the propagandists. Our own Congress of that period (with a composure strikingly unlike the truckling of the present Washington legislators to any and every organized propaganda) tossed the brotherhoods' ultimatum of August, 1919, into the Congressional waste-basket and enacted a statesmanlike railway law. But the illusions of 1919, though themselves dispelled, were followed in 1920 and 1921 by another and more persistent set of illusions. Wall Street itself indulged in them to the full. What one was then apt to hear even in transportation offices, when first-class American railway bonds were offered, was that the American railway system was hopelessly insolvent; from which the investor might reasonably have inferred that purchase of its securities would merely be pouring money into a ruined enterprise. The comment frequently made on the Stock Exchange, when high-grade industrial bonds came on the market, was that the world-wide reaction had left American production and industry also without a future. When bonds of foreign governments of the highest standing were offered for subscription, less than a year ago, any one could learn in respectable banking circles that Europe was bankrupt, that it could never pay its debts and therefore, inferentially, that it would never redeem its bonds. The investing public was hardly to be blamed for taking at their word such Wall Street bankers and such railway leaders as promoted these ideas. It was perfectly natural that the average investor should have left his private capital to accumulate in his bank. As we now know, the American public as a whole was even then immensely rich; of that the subsequent inpour of foreign gold on an unprecedented 66 scale, when our market called in its floating foreign credits, was conclusive demonstration. That the investment market's available reA Asources were of enormous magnitude, subsequent events have proved quite as conclusively. That's oAll"But the resources had been driven into hiding.
HAT was it, then, which so completely reversed that situation as to change the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion into such confidence that private investors, professional speculators, and fiduciary institutions should have been bidding eagerly against eacnaerCAUSED the °t-f° r the very bonds which Change? they might have bought last autumn at prices 10 or 15 per cent lower? Primarily, it was the investing public's discovery that the dismal prophecies of the financial experts of 1921 had been as groundless as their - equally dismal predictions of •1919. -The railways, whose declining traffic was to bring them into insolvency, had so far cut down their expense account that during last year as a whole, notwithstanding a 10 per cent further decrease from 1920 in the gross receipts, their net earnings had increased no less than 144 per cent. The total net income from transportation in one month of last autumn reached 5^ 8 per cent of property, valuation, or barely"^ of .1 per cent less than the 6 perxent originally contemplated by the Railway Act. Following this achievement of 1921, the new year was hardly started when reports of cars loaded with freight in the entire American railway system began to show larger weekly totals than in the corresponding weeks either of 1921 or 1919. At times, the reports indicated a greater volume of traffic even than in the prosperous business at the outset of 1920. During February and March such loadings exceeded the corresponding months a year ago by 10 to 20 per cent, with actual net earnings almost at the 6 per cent of property valuation, contemplated by the Railway Law, as against an actual deficit in the early months of 1921. THE industrial situation, which a year ago was supposed to make it unsafe to lend money on first-mortgage bonds of high-grade manufacturing concerns, was similarly illuminated by the movement of events. Whereas last February was the first month sulceMovement I9 2° m which payments made of Events through checks drawn on American banks exceeded the same month's record in the preceding year, in March the increase over a year ago was 6 per cent. In (Financial Situation, continued on page 68)
Bonds for Investment W e buy and sell securities outright for our own account as principals, but not as brokers. P. W. CHAPMAN & CGUNC. 11 6 S. LA SALLE ST. 11 5 BROADWAY CHICAGO NEW YORK 70 Sc/o oyo 38 YEARS WITHOUT LOSS T O AN INVESTOR We furnish FIRST MORTGAGES, secured by Improved Farms in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, paying 8% interest. They run for a term of five years, without right of redemption. Follow the rule—SAFETY first, and buy Farm Mortgages such as are offered by TH ETITLE GUARANTY &TRUST CO. FIRST NATIONAL BANK BUILDING BRIDGEPORT, CONN. H0RTH6RN OFFICE OF THE GEORGIA LOAN &.TRUST CO MACON. GEORGIA Organizing a Company ? Save the usual incorporating expenses and taxes, and avoid personal liability by forming your organization on the regulation Common Law Plan under a pure Declaration of Trust. National Standard Forms (the work of recognized attorneys! furnish complete requirements with which anyone in any state can organize and begin doing business the same day. Pamphlet A-24 free. C. S. Demaree, legal blank printer, 613 Walnut, Kansas City, Mo. G7 FLYing We'd ALL LIKE to ILY—if we ONLY knew HOW— And if we ONLY FELT SAFE in THE flying— We'd ALL LIKE to INVEST—if we ONLY knew how—and FELT SAFE in THE INVESTING. Here are thirty-fire booklets telling how to invest safely. 1—How to Invest 2—Bonds and the Investor 3—Investment Position of Municipal Bonds 4—Partial Payment Investments S—Variety and Classes of Railroad Bonds (i—Railroad Equipment Issues 7—The Public Utility Field 8—Public-Utility Securities as Investments 9—How to Select the Sound Utilities 10—The Future of Our Various Public Utilities 11—Things to Know About Stocks 12—Preferred Stocks—"A Middle Ground Invest men I" 13—Preferred Stocks, Pro and Con 14—Unlisted Securities—Whence Do They Come? 15_The Machinery of the Unlisted Security Market 16—Unlisted Securities—Where Do They Go? 17—Our Foreign Bond Holdings 18 "Internal" Foreign Loans and the Exchanges 19—Foreign Bonds to Suit All Tastes 20 Real-Estate Securities—Strong-Box Investments 21—The Unique Investment—The Mortgage Loan 22—The Mortgage in Retail Packages 23—Mobilizing Mortgage Money V 24—Amortization of Mortgages :5—The Farm Mortgage as an Investment \ 20—How Sound Farm Mortgages Are Made \ 27—The Various Forms of Farm-Mortgage v Security \ 2S—Story of the Farm Mortgage Bank-Attached \ ers Association I I \ 20—What is the Stock Exchange ? IS CNEEK (or \ 30—Exchange Members and What MONEY ORDER) \ They Do F « o nn F \ 31—The Sinews of the Market Ior uu Ior, **-N 32—Investment and Specu-WHICH sem i .'3.3 \ lation • II . \ 33—Dimensions of the BOOKLETS. \ Market (Long and Investor's Semite Department \ short) .VNNIVMV , , . „ , \ 34—The Committee rS< K1KNER S> MAGAZ1NK \ Business on597 Fifth Avenue, New York Conduct x\ 35—The Odd V Lot ISamc _ \ Address..
(Financial Situation, continued from page 0;J April the weekly increase got as high as 25 per cent. Whereas unpaid loans inherited from the unlucky speculation of 1919 and 1920 had lately so far tied up credit resources that the ratio of cash reserve to liability at the Reserve Banks in three typical "frozen credit" districts, West and South, stood at 42 per cent ,1 year ago and 46J 8 at the end of 1921, the payment of such loans had proceeded on such a scale that the percentage was up to 71 at the end of April. A year ago the American steel-manufacturing plant was working at little more than 30 per cent of maximum capacity, and it got no higher than 45 per cent in the brief recovery of last autumn. Before May it was working at 75 per cent; which meant, since the plant itself had been immensely increased during war-time, that the new rate of production would probably have engaged the entire available facilities of the American industry in 1914.
much for the change in attitude toward Ohome securities. But we have seen that the change did not affect American railway and manufacturing corporation bonds alone, or United States Liberty bonds alone; that it was even more strikingly in evidence with the loans of European govEurope ernments. It can hardly be supand posed that the Genoa conference European Bonds was the primary cause for the financial public's altered view of those securities; for, in the first place, the financial community was sceptical from the start as to important economic results at that conference; in the second place, the economic achievements at Genoa were disappointing, and, in the third place, the great activity in foreign bonds at rising prices occurred before any one knew what the conference would even try to do, and continued after it had failed to do anything. What had altered the investor's point of view in this direction was his own discovery, from facts which for the most part were as plainly visible last autumn as this spring, that the talk of a bankrupt France, a crippled England, a financially ruined Continental Europe as a whole, was the kind of shallow inference which one always gets from manipulators of the financial udescope who cannot see the forest because of the trees. That England, Italy, and France were steadily bringing their foreign t rade to a balance was easy for any one to perceive as long ago as the beginning of last autumn. That all three countries were reducing continuously their inflated paper currency, that Europe as a whole had sent £500,000,000 gold to the United States in 1921 in payment LIS of its indebtedness, and that American capital was being placed in great quantity on Europe's own investment markets, should have been equally well know , especially when the rapid movement of New York exchange rates in favor of those countries was under way as long ago as last October.
T seemed, however, that the investing public was the first to interpret rightly those signs of the times. Wall Street itself continued to doubt, to deprecate, and to distrust. Apparently it did not actually awake to the truth of the situation until in March, when Wall Street the French financial credit instituand the tion, organized by the government General Public to finance economic reconstruction of the devastated districts, offered an unlimited loan to raise the necessary funds and when it thereupon received subscriptions, wholly from French investors, in the substantial sum of 4,700,000,000 francs, or more than the French people subscribed to the whole series of war indemnity loans of 1871. The situation to which Wall Street and the general public then opened their eyes was remarkable enough, considered by itself; but its paramount importance lay in its implication on the matter of Europe's political and economic problems. In this regard the simple fact of rising prices for outstanding investment bonds was much less significant than the fact of seemingly unlimited capacity for absorbing new securities. On the very day of April when a $45,000,000 New York City loan was nearly seven times oversubscribed, two other offerings were made in the New York market, one of Canadian government bonds and another of bonds of an American industrial company, amounting together to $140,000,000, and both were oversubscribed before the day had closed. 'PHIS meant a very wide field for new securi1 ties in the American market, and the further facts which we have seen—that the London investment market was moving similarly and that French investors seemed to have in hand an incredibly large investThe ment fund—proved that the reserLonger voir of available capital was by no Economic Sequel means limited to the United States. It was not mere coincidence that precisely at this juncture the Bank of England should have invited the world's great central The Right Bank In The Right Place The Continental and Commercial Banks are situated at a point from which they can serve American business interests to the best advantage. 7£e CONTIN ENTAL W COMMERCIAL BANKS CH1CACO More than $55,000,000 Invested Capital banks to meet in conference for discussing Europe's economic problems, or that the head of the largest private banking-house in New York, a house which had hitherto acted as agent for the Entente allies, should have consented to serve on a special committee to consider the possibility of floating a German foreign loan to raise reparations funds. I have hitherto pointed out that the $50,000,000 loan placed by Czechoslovakia in London, New York, and Amsterdam was the entering wedge for use of foreign credit in the working of Central Europe's economic rehabilitation. I have also shown repeatedly that Germany would never solve the reparations problem until, like France in 1871, it prepared a systematic programme for recourse on an extensive scale to a home loan or a foreign loan, or both, but that up to this time the infatuated policy of the Berlin government in regard to its paper-currency inflation was destroying both its home and its foreign credit. The strong probability is that, with the new turn of events in the world's investment markets, the situation is moving rapidly toward a phase in which the economic chaos of Central Europe will be approached with strong remedial measures ; based, not on government grants or new paper-money experiments, but on practical recourse to the world's investment markets through the pledge of real resources. This was the way in which the similar economic tangle was unravelled after 1815, and after 1865, and after every other emergency of the kind which has arisen in modern history. Recognition of this fact, even by the Genoa conference during the abortive effort of its organizers to discover some overnight short cut to economic recovery through arbitrary public measures, means that after-war economic history is entering a new chapter.