MCCLURE S
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DECEMBER 1910
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THE
OF RICHARD MEYNEU
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[pgbrk] MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE
S. S. McClure, President; Cameron Mackenzie, Treasurer; Curtis P. Brady, Secretary
CONTENTS FOR DECEMBER, 1910
The Masters of Capital in America...................................
John Moody and George Kibbe Turner 123
II. The Multimillionaires of the Great Northern System
Grace for Light. A Poem Moira O’Neill 140
The Merry Christmas of Giovanna. A Story. Amanda Mathews 141
Illustrations by Wladyslaw T. Benda
The Adventures of Miss Gregory . . . Perceval Gibbon 149
IV. The Adventure with the Slave-Dealer Illustrations by W. Hatherell
Goldwin Smith’s Reminiscences .......................................159
III. Recollections of Great Englishmen
Two Poems......................................William Butler Yeats 168
The Case of Richard Meynell. A Novel. Mrs. Humphry Ward 169
Illustrations by Charles E. Brock
Paul Ehrlich: The Man and His Work . Marguerite Marks 184 Working-Girls’ Budgets . . Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt 201
III. Unskilled and Seasonal Factory Workers
The Stormy Heart. A Poem................................................Anita Fitch 211
The Dub. A Story Oscar Graeve 212
Illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele
Miss Cal. A Story.....................................................Elizabeth Robins 218
Illustrated with a frontispiece drawing by F. Walter Taylor
The Things that Endure. A Poem . . Florence Wilkinson 228
The Trial and Death of Ferrer .... William Archer 229
Part II
The Present Status of Polygamy in the United States . . 242
Entered as Second-Class Matter at New York. New York. Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Post-Office Department, Canada. Copyright. 1910, by The S. S. McClure Company, New York. 44-60 East 23d Street, New York; 186 Oxford Street West, London. Subscription terms: In the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and American Possessions $1.50 per year. In all other countries in the Postal Union $2.50 per year.
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3
[pgbrk] GOOD KING WENCESLAS
GOOD King Wenceslas look’d out,
On the Feast of Stephen;
When the snow lay round about,
Deep, and crisp, and even:
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath’ring winter fuel.
“Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know’st it telling,
Yonder peasant who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest-fence,
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”
“ Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together:
Through the rude wind’s wild lament And the bitter weather.
“Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart I know not how;
I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, good my page;
Tread thou in them boldly:
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage Freeze thy blood less coldly.”
In his master’s steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor Shall yourselves find blessing.
Dr. Neale
[pgbrk] Drawn by F. Walter Taylor
"SHE HESITATED, STANDING THERE, ALL WHITE AND GOLDEN, AT THE TOP OF THE STAIR
See "Miss Cal," page 218
[pgbrk] McCLURE’S MAGAZINE
VOL. XXXVI DECEMBER, 1910 No. 2
THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
THE MULTIMILLIONAIRES OF THE GREAT NORTHERN SYSTEM: THE AGGREGATION OF A BILLION-
DOLLAR RAILWAY CORPORATION IN THEIR HANDS AND THEIR ALLIANCE WITH J. PIERPONT MORGAN
BY
JOHN MOODY AND GEORGE KIBBE TURNER
II
THE three years the grasshoppers were eating up Minnesota — eighteen seventy-four and-five and-six— “Jim” Hill used to sit in front of his coal-and-wood store on the levee at St. Paul, talking about buying the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. St. Paul was under
25,000 then — a little frontier town. Hill was a well-known town character — a short, stubby man with long hair, one blind eye, and a reputation as the greatest talker in the Northwest. For years he had been a familiar sight on the levee — sitting there, whittling at his old chair, and giving out nuggets of thought on current events.
It was twenty years since Hill had drifted in, an eighteen-year-old Scotch-Irish boy from Ontario, and begun work in a steamboat office on the levee in St. Paul; and now, in 1876, he was thirty-eight years old, and was a fixture of the town. And the town felt that it had his measure. He had been in a variety of things: he was agent for the Davidson steamboats on the Mississippi River and for the Kittson boats on the Red River, and he had prospered moderately. Everybody knew him and liked him;
but no one took him very seriously. The idea of his getting hold of the St. Paul and Pacific was amusing.
The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad was built largely with Dutch capital, which contributed to the building of so many American railroads. The bondholders had put nearly twenty million dollars of real money into building it. In 1872 the Dutchmen believed that they were being badly swindled, and stopped the money; in 1873 the road went into the hands of a receiver. It was an irregular thing, sprawling out of St. Paul in three separate branches. One went north to the Northern Pacific road at Brainerd; another one went west two hundred miles to the Red River; and the third was projected to the Canadian boundary, three hundred miles northwest. The first two were practically done in 1873, but only patches of the road to Canada were finished.
Hill, Kittson, and Smith
The most promising part of the St. Paul and Pacific, when it failed in 1873, was the branch west from St. Paul to Breckenridge on the Red River. Hill was the Mississippi River
Copyright, 1910, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved
123
[pgbrk] 124
THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
Steamboat agent at one end; at the other end, an old Hudson Bay trader, Norman W. Kittson, ran two little old stern-wheel steamboats from Breckenridge to Winnipeg. One of these boats Hill had had built for him, taking the engine out of a Mississippi steamer that stuck on a sand-bar. Hill was a kind of jack-of-all-trades who had his hand in everything.
A large proportion of the freight that Hill and Kittson handled was for the Hudson Bay Company. It came up the Mississippi, went across on the St. Paul and Pacific to Breckenridge, and then up the Red River to Kittson’s steamboats. The man who got it at the other end was Donald A. Smith, chief commissioner of the Hudson Bay Company at Winnipeg — or Fort Garry, as they called it then.
Smith — now Lord Strathcona — was a lean, tall, urbane Scotchman with a soft manner and a long red beard. In 1876 he was fifty-six years old, with a life of strange, wild adventure behind him. Banished to Labrador by the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, when under twenty, to take charge of the company’s station; for thirteen years alone there — one white man among the Indians; in the ’6o’s practically king over all the great, savage territory of the company on the waters entering Hudson Bay; captured by Riel in the Half-Breed Rebellion of 1870; sentenced to death by Riel, and saved only because Riel dared not kill him — Donald A. Smith had already achieved a career unequaled, in its way, in America. But he had accumulated no great amount of money.
Wanted — A Few Million Dollars
It would be a great advantage to Smith to have a railroad from St. Paul to Winnipeg for gathering in his supplies when the Red River boats were frozen up in winter. He wanted it very much. The service on the St. Paul and Pacific between the Mississippi and the Red River was frightful. So in eighteen seventy-three and -four and -five these three men — Smith and Hill and Kittson — were growling about freight conditions, telling what they would do with the St. Paul and Pacific if they had it, and finally speculating on whether they couldn’t get hold of it. That seemed very unlikely. It would be a transaction running into the millions.
The only one of the three men who had any financial connections was Smith. The Hudson Bay Company banked with the Bank of Montreal; he was well acquainted there. So Smith, whenever he went East, kept calling the thing to the attention of George Stephen,— now Lord Mountstephen.— the head of the bank.
The Plague of Grasshoppers
Minnesota certainly was a dismal place for investment just at that time. In 1873 Jay Cooke and Co., the backers of the Northern Pacific, failed; and the Northern Pacific came to a dead end forty miles east of Bismarck, in Dakota. In 1874 the plague of grasshoppers spread across the West. They ranged eastward all over the western half of Minnesota—-square miles of them — and ate everything off the face of the earth. The State bought coal-tar and gave it to the farmers, and the farmers smeared it on long pieces of sheet-iron,— in a kind of fly-paper arrangement,— and dragged it around their fields, three or four sheets trailing after a horse. When the sheets were full of grasshoppers, they scraped them off with a board and left them in heaps. For ten years afterward you could see the little black spots on the prairie where these heaps had been. But it was of no use; the farmers could not raise anything. By 1875 they were giving it up and going out of the country.
The Flip of a Penny
In 1875 George Stephen and Richard B. Angus, the second man in the Bank of Montreal, went to Chicago to look after a lawsuit there. They had made a big loan to the Joliet Steel Company, the Steel Company had failed after the panic in 1873, and the bank was suing to get some of its money back. The lawsuit in Chicago was adjourned, and they had two weeks on their hands, so they flipped a penny to determine whether to go to St. Louis or St. Paul to kill part of the time. The penny sent them to St. Paul.
“I am glad of that,” said Stephen; “it will give us a chance to see the prairies, and look over that St. Paul and Pacific Railroad that Smith is talking about.”
They arrived in St. Paul one Sunday morning, and James J. Hill made theSt. PaulandPacific people get out an engine and an old passenger car and take them over the line to Breckenridge. The country had been scoured by the grasshoppers, and looked like the top of a rusty old stove. But Stephen was a broad-minded man, wise enough to know that the pest of grasshoppers could not last forever. It was the first time in his life he had seen the prairies, and they impressed him very much — the great empty level, miles of rich farm-lands, made a great contrast to the meager soil of eastern Canada and of Scotland, where he had been raised. He liked the idea of getting hold of the road, but he didn’t see how it could be done. Here was a
[pgbrk] “JIM” HILL IN 1885
transaction of millions, and Stephen himself had only a moderate fortune.
That was in 1875. Meanwhile Hill kept talking about the St. Paul and Pacific. He talked continually to everybody in St. Paul. He was getting wildly enthusiastic. When Hill was enthusiastic he made a curious gesture with the little finger of his right hand, and in 1875 Hill was talking about the St. Paul and Pacific and waving his little finger excitedly at everybody in St. Paul. George Stephen was figuring what could be done for the finances. The only way he could see was to get the Dutchmen to stick and put up more money.
A Forty-Cent Option
Finally, in 1876, Stephen went over to Amsterdam to see the Dutch bondholders. The Dutch had then, and have now, their own peculiar way of investing in securities — through
what they call “administrations.” Thousands ol small holders buy securities through these “administrations,” who keep the bonds or shares, give the owners a certificate for them, and represent the owners’ interests in dealing with the corporations —• doing everything, from collecting dividends to voting. This makes it very easy to deal with Dutch investors; the management of their investments is so centralized. Stephen went to the manager of the house that had placed most of these bonds, and pleaded vigorously for more money to finish the road. The Dutchmen had had enough, and nothing would move them.
“I’m no Don Quixote,” said the manager.
Stephen kept arguing; for he thought it was the only way the thing could be put through.
“ I tell you what we will do,” said the manager. “We’ll give you an option on those bonds, if you like them so much.”
125
[pgbrk] 126
THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
“If you gave me an option you’d want some money for it,” said Stephen. “I don’t believe I can give it to you; but how much do you want?”
“One guilder,” said the manager. He knew Stephen, and realized that he was an honest, able, and entirely reliable man.
“All right,” said Stephen.
So, half in jest, he gave Stephen an eight months’option on the controlling bonds for one guilder. A guilder is worth forty cents.
The price agreed upon, which Stephen was to pay for the Dutchmen’s bonds, was thirty cents on the dollar—less than the accrued interest which was due and unpaid on them. Eight months would give them a chance to see what they could do with the Minnesota legislature about the franchise.
Kennedy, the Trustee, Comes in
Then Stephen came back and started out to see what he could do. John S. Kennedy, a New York private banker — a cautious, side-whiskered Scotchman — was either a trustee or the agent of the Dutch bondholders, or both, for all of the principal St. Paul and Pacific mortgages. Kennedy could be very useful to them. He knew just where the bonds they hadn’t got options on lay, and the best way to get at the bondholders and buy them out. They got him into the combination right away. Then Hill, who was an excellent “mixer,” and knew half of the people of the State in his position of station-master at St. Paul, began to work with the Minnesota legislature.
It was at the time of the Granger revolution against the railroads in the Mississippi valley; the session of the Minnesota legislature was limited to sixty days, and the Northern Pacific interests, which already owned the worthless stock of the St. Paul and Pacific, wanted to get hold of the road. Hill had the fight of his life to get his bill through in those sixty days. The franchises and the land grant had lapsed with the failure of the railroad; it was necessary to revive them. For two months Hill buttonholed politicians, traded votes, compromised with the Northern Pacific people by giving them the branch to Brainerd, and shook his little finger in argument before the members of the legislature. But, up to the last minute, he seemed to have been beaten. Four days before the session closed, his bill had not passed the Senate, where it was introduced, and had not been acted upon at all by the House. It passed the Senate finally; then, by pure accident, the House passed it on the last or next to the last day of the session, under suspension of rules.
There was one more thing for Hill to do. The road had been entitled to two million acres in land grants. The State had validated them; now it was necessary to get the Government to do so. This was done soon after the legislature closed.
So, then, in the spring of 1877 they were ready to take over the St. Paul and Pacific. People still smiled at it in St. Paul, and wondered a good deal how Jim Hill had mesmerized a bank president like Stephen into getting him to put up the money. If it hadn’t been for the grasshoppers, it would have been different. But, as it was, no one could take it seriously. When the syndicate came to pay its lawyers, Bigelow, Flan-dreau and Clark, it offered them a choice between $25,000 in cash and $500,000 in stock. They took the cash, as everybody else in the section would have done. This was a mistake that cost them, principal and interest to the present time, some $15,000,000, all told. But they did not know then, and could not know. No one, of course, could guess the thing that was about to happen.
The Grasshoppers Leave
The spring of 1877 came in, and with it the usual plague of grasshoppers. They grew and increased for two months — swarms of little fellows who could only crawl and jump a foot or two high. Then, in the early summer, it came time for them to fly. One day, without the slightest warning, they left the country — swarms square miles wide. They never came back again, and, stranger than that, no one in the entire country either saw where they went or could figure it out afterward.
A few of the settlers had stayed on the farms to make a fourth trial of the pest-ridden country. The grasshoppers had eaten the young wheat, but, like early frost, their eating had merely driven back its growth, given it stronger roots, and really helped it. That year saw the greatest wheat crop for its area ever grown in that region. The farmers who remained started the new railroad carrying out their crops day and night. The station at St. Paul was piled to the roof with the baggage of farmers going back to take up the deserted farms. And Hill, with his twenty or thirty locomotives and few hundred cars, was frantic with success. He worked every possible source for more freight-cars; and, to get the troops of immigrants to his farms, he sent as far East as New York to buy a lot of discarded passenger-coaches given up by the Harlem road. Any one familiar with the Harlem road at that time can imagine what the passenger-cars it abandoned in 1877 would be like. They had board seats, and in the for-
[pgbrk] JOHN MOODY AND GEORGE KIBBE TURNER
127
HILL’S OFFICE AND WAREHOUSE AT ST. PAUL IN 1868. HIS NAME CAN BE SEEN ON THE BUILDING
ONE OF THE OLD STEAMERS I.AND-ING AT THE ST. PAUL LEVEE
ward ends of the cars were old box-stoves for cord wood. But they served their purpose, if they weren’t pretty.
The plague of grasshoppers had made a new group of multimillionaires. If it had not arrived as it did, no one could have bought the St. Paul and Pacific for the price they paid for it. If it had not ceased all at once, they might have been unable to finance it.
But now, with their forty-cent option on the bonds, they found themselves in the fortunate position of a man who can mortgage his property for more than he paid for it. This group of six men had paid out altogether $283,000 in completing the deal, making surveys, locating and negotiating for the remainder of the bonds, and getting their franchises and land grants. In 1878 they secured and advanced money for the receiver to complete the road. Stephen in the Bank of Montreal and Kennedy in New York easily found the money for it; capital was gladly advanced for so safe an enterprise. Then, in 1879, they paid for everything — the bonds, their expenses, and the advances for finishing the road out of two new bond issues, and made
in addition several million dollars of profits. The old bond issues outstanding had aggregated $24,000,000, with an annual interest charge of $1,680,000. The new issues aggregated $16,000,000, with an annual interest of $1,120,000. So they saved on the outset $560,000 a year, to come to the stock instead of the bonds. Nearly enough, in itself, to pay four-per-cent dividends on $15,000,000 worth of stock.
The Whole of Lake Michigan
So, then, it was time for this syndicate to divide up. In May, 1879, the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad was formed — the bonds were sold and the stock divided. The enterprise was divided
into five parts. Stephen, Smith, Kennedy, and Hill had one fifth apiece; Angus and Kittson divided the other fifth between them. Hill’s fifth was given to him.
The question was, how much stock should they put out? Stephen, who was a very far-seeing man, wanted to make the capital $25,000,000. It would be done once and for all, he said, and if they tried to do it later they would be exposed to the usual cry against stock-watering.
“Water!” said Hill. “We’ve let in the whole of Lake Michigan already!”
Hill’s proposition was to make the capital only $5,000,000. Finally they compromised on $ 15,000,000.
[pgbrk] 128
THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
Men Who Knew How to Hold On
Very few of the cloudbursts of fortune which created the multimillionaires of the last century equaled this one. It had cost this group of six Scotchmen $283,000 to get this railroad property; in 1883, four years after its incorporation, their investment showed a value of nearly $40,000,000. The $15,000,000 of stock which they issued to themselves was worth $140 a share bv 1882; that is, $21,000,000 in the aggregate. In 1882 they divided between a million and two million more of profit by issuing to themselves $5,000,000 more of this stock at par. In 1883 they issued to themselves $10,000,000 worth of six-per-cent bonds for $ 1,000,000. Together with the profits from their first bond issues, they had securities and profits aggregating well toward $40,000,000.
This was an interesting thing, but not of chief importance. The main thing was the strong young corporation which this group had secured, and which was to grow under their hands. It was a little thing, comparatively, in 1879: less than 600 miles of cheaply constructed railroad, 49 locomotives, 58 passenger-cars, 761 freight-cars, and a capitalization of $31,000,000, about equally divided between stock and bonds. That was all. But before it, if rightly directed, was a future of tremendous and irresistible growth.
It was in exactly the right hands to hold it — six wise, canny Scotchmen, of the type that has pioneered and developed the whole of the Canadian Northwest. Every one of them, with the possible exception of Kittson, saw the growth that was coming, and every one of them held on to the property to get the benefits of it. Lord Strathcona, in particular, has framed his whole long business life upon the principle of buying cheaply in a new country and never letting go. It is a well-known Canadian tradition that he never sells anything.
The Growth of a Railroad
Now, it is absolutely necessary for a railroad to grow. If it doesn’t grow it dies, or is eaten up by the road that does grow. This has been an inexorable law of the railroad corporation in America. The one thing essential is that the growth be strong and healthy, but not too rapid. The early direction of the growth of this strong new corporation came into the hands of Stephen and Hill. Stephen was its president the first half dozen years, and Hill its general manager for ten years more. Stephen, still the one financial power in the combination, had charge of the all-important matter of raising money. The two men made a powerful combination. Hill talked and schemed; Stephen built
up a secure financial foundation. But more and more, after the first few years, James J. Hill became the railroad; the other men rarely went near it. Kennedy, indeed, testified, toward the end of his life, that he had never attended an annual meeting. Hill developed a great genius for railroading. He was not the old “Jim” Hill who sat whittling at his old wooden chair on the levee-front. His appearance had not changed, it is true; he still talked his eager plans to the bootblack, the minister, and the bank president; he still let his hair grow till his wife told him that he’d have to have it cut. But he was no longer the individual, Hill: he was a strong young railroad company personified.
And so, from 1879, every year the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba kept growing. By 1893 — as the Great Northern system — it had gone to the Pacific Coast, and had rolled up a mileage of 4,300 miles; in 1898 it had 5,000 miles, nearly ten times the number it started with. In 1893 it had a capitalization in the hands of the public of $143,000,000 — $103,000,000 in bonds and $40,000,000 in stock. In 1879 it had been capitalized at $31,000,000, about equally divided between stock and bonds. It had grown, that is, over seven times in mileage, while its capital had grown four and a half times.
No man could have managed this more cheaply and more wisely than James J. Hill. He knew the Northwest from end to end; he spent more than three quarters of a million dollars surveying the best route for the Pacific extension to the coast. When the Pennsylvania Railroad, he said, was rebuilding great sections of its road on the fourth different location, it was enough of an object lesson; he intended to start right, with the lowest grades and the cheapest route. In spite of the impression that these roads were built with the proceeds of stock, the greater part of them — when not built from earnings — were built with bonds; and bonds at four or four and one half per cent, instead of seven, as at the beginning. The corporation was pursuing the logical course of a successful young monopoly — extending its plant with cheap borrowed money, and dividing the growing profits among the stockholders.
Stockholders Get $31,000,000 More
In 1898, when the road’s great period of expansion to the West was about closed, Hill began his division of profits among his associates. It was a great and difficult task to avoid the public clamor that is so easily aroused by such an operation. Mr. Hill performed it wonderfully. The Interstate Commerce Com-
[pgbrk] JOHN MOODY AND GEORGE KIBBE TURNER
129
mission has paid this tribute to Mr. Hill’s ingenuity in performing it: “It would be difficult to devise a scheme better intended to confuse and to conceal than that employed in the development and operation of the Great Northern System.”*
The way he divided up was, roughly, this. The operations to 1883 had given the stockholders $20,000,000 of stock and $10,000,000 of bonds, par value, for $6,000,000 in cash. In 1890, by a very clever manipulation of bonds and stocks, the Great Northern Railroad was formed. This was a device calculated exactly to double the stock issue. The stock of the old railroad company was guaran-
* Opinion No. 820, Interstate Commerce Commission, City of Spokane, Washington, et til., vs. Northern Pacific Railway Company et al.
LORD MOUNTSTEPHEN (GEORGE STEPHEN)
teed a six-per-cent dividend by the Great Northern; the Great Northern could then distribute the surplus earnings in a second dividend on its own stock. The net payment from the stockholders for this $20,000,000 of new stock — by use of a bond issue in 1888 — was $8,000,-000; the water was $12,000,000.
In 1898 the final big division of this period made $19,000,000 more of water. Twenty-five million dollars in stock was given out. Although nominally the stockholders paid $ 15,000,000 for this, really their only payment was the $11,-000,000 in cash which the bonds, retired with the $15,000,000, cost them in 1892. Twenty-five million dollars more was given • to retire the $20,000,000 of stock of the old St. Paul, Min-
LORD STRATHCONA (DONALD A. SMITH)
ROBERT B. ANGUS
[pgbrk] 130
THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
ncapolis and Manitoba. The Great Northern Company now came into full possession of the property. So now, at the end of this period, in 1898 the stockholders had received $55,000,000 of securities free — $46,000,000 in stockout of a total of $75,000,000, $9,000,000 in six-per-cent bonds.
All of these securities were worth far more than their face value. The strong young corporation was well capable of paying large dividends upon them; and the management of the corporation still stayed in the same able and vigorous hands.
New Yorkers Come into the Group
The group had changed somewhat with the years, but not essentially. Kittson had died in the ’80’s; all of the original men had disposed of some of their holdings; but by 1892 there were only one hundred and twenty-two stockholders, great and small, in the Great Northern. Hill and Lord Strathcona, Lord Mountstephen and Kennedy, all held to great blocks.
The most notable change was the addition to the group of capitalists from New York. D. Willis James, the head of the big metal-selling firm of Phelps, Dodge and Company, of New York,—a friend of Kennedy, and a representative, like Kennedy, of the old dignified, side-whiskered class of financier of the ’6o’s,— came in early. George F. Baker, president of the First National Bank of New York, acquired an interest of millions. The enterprise — like every great enterprise of the country — was feeling the great centripetal financial force drawing toward New York. But the group was intact, staying always with the property— their property, they considered it, as truly as a horse and wagon. And always Hill was watching the stock books of the company to see that the control lay in their hands. It was becoming a great property; but as yet it was in its youth.
M Bargain of the Panic
And now came the profitable and interesting Great Northern iron-ore deal. The panic of 1893 had come, meanwhile, and new roads and little roads and weak roads were falling, and the strong roads were devouring them. Hill watched the Northwest with an acute and restless eye to see what his strong railroad should take in.
There was a good little railroad going northwest from Lake Superior, called the Duluth and Winnipeg, just being started by St. Paul and Baltimore men. It had out $750,000 of debt —
largely in the form of demand notes in the banks of Baltimore. In 1894 Hill sent down to Baltimore and bought up the demand notes. The little railroad could not give him his money when he asked for it. So Hill petitioned for a receiver. It looked very much as if he would get it for its debts.
A Sudden and Unexpected Loss
Then, all of a sudden, he lost it. He was out of town, traveling to the Pacific Coast, when they telegraphed him from St. Paul that the $750,000 had been tendered the court to pay its notes. Hill telegraphed back at once to demand that payment should be made in gold. It was made. Hill understood at once. There was only one interest strong enough to do this. The Canadian Pacific had taken it and hitched it to their Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railroad. Naturally, Hill was very much disturbed. It was a road of excellent promise, especially because it went up through the great new iron-ore district of northern Minnesota. But this was only the beginning of his troubles; in the next few months something far more serious happened.
The air was full, in 1894, of the development of the great iron-ore district above the northwest corner of Lake Superior — the greatest in the known world. John D. Rockefeller had taken over and begun opening his great Mesaba mines; the profits, even at that troubled time, promised to be tremendous. It was the one great speculative dream that obsessed the imagination of the Northwest.
Wright and Davis, the big Michigan lumbermen, were cutting off a great tract of timber-land in the Mesaba range to the west of the Rockefeller mines — thousands of acres. One day their workmen found iron ore under an uprooted tree. Everybody was familiar with the red stuff when they saw it. Then Wright and Davis bored, and found that their tract was full of ore. Before Hill could act, the Canadian Pacific people had got an option on these ore lands and the logging railroad, which ran from the Mississippi River, crossing the Duluth and Winnipeg on the way.
Hill’s Methods of Work
James J. Hill is his railroad; for thirty years he has been nothing else. Night and day he works for it, with the enthusiasm of a fanatic. He is a tremendous worker,— in a very curious way,—-planning, all the time, how he will extend and enlarge his road and distribute its great profits, and always talking his plans aloud to any listener— from the barber to the Wall Street
[pgbrk] JOHN S. KENNEDY
magnate. Those who know him best believe that he can think successfully only when he is talking, and talking to an auditor. And, day after day, he goes down the line of his acquaintances, telling them of his plans, getting their opinion of them, changing and improving them as he goes along, and finally bringing them out in an entirely different form from any he has talked about. For this reason his enemies have called him a liar. He is really an inventor, inventing and planning aloud. He is, in fact, a very fortunate man; his enthusiasm drives him to accomplish an enormous amount of work, with the greatest of pleasure, every day.
When Hill heard of the loss of this great iron-ore development, he was wild with disappointment. It was not the property alone — the value of that was only partly understood at the time: it was the traffic lost to his railroad as well.
The Canadian Pacific was built very largely by Strathcona and Mountstephen and Angus — three of the men who were made multimillionaires by the St. Paul and Pacific operations. It was, in fact, a direct outcome of the fortunes made in the American road. Hill and Kennedy had been with them at the beginning in the early '8o’s, but had dropped out. The Canadians
were still directors in the Canadian Pacific, and Hill immediately went to them to get back the Duluth and Winnipeg and the tract of iron ore. He pleaded, threatened, claimed it was the Great Northern’s natural territory, and promised them a great east-bound traffic from his lines, and a perpetual right to run their trains across the Duluth and Winnipeg, if they would surrender it to him. His enthusiasm and promises won; they gave the whole thing over to him. But they never got the east-bound traffic promised them. Hill did not give it, and it would be useless to try to go to law about it. Such contracts were not enforced by the United States courts.
The ‘Division of $100,000,000 from the Ore Deal
The ore beds and the logging road cost about $4,500,000. From time to time Hill added on lands that had not been prospected, tongues of property which jutted into the main tract and rounded it out into one big whole. Whenever he saw desirable additions, he picked them up. In all, the additional cost was but a few million dollars. For twelve years Hill talked over this greatest single gift of the Great
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THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
Northern to its stockholders. In 1906 he distributed it to them, one trust certificate for each share of stock, giving title to an equal share in the profits to every share of Great Northern stock.
It was now clear that this was one of the half dozen greatest ore bodies in the known world —
65.000 acres of land, a little over .100 square miles. In 1906 the United States Steel Corporation leased 39,000 acres of this,— sixty per cent, — selecting what it thought to be the best territory. This was estimated by Mr. Hill to contain 700,000,000 tons of iron ore. The Steel Corporation agreed to take out 1,500,000 tons in 1908, and to add 750,000 tons each year, until, in 1917, they reach the high point of
8.250.000 a year. It is to pay 85 cents a ton for this ore the first year, with 3.4 cents additional each year succeeding; the Great Northern gets 80 cents a ton for hauling it, and the steel company bears all the cost of mining. It has now started on its contract, and has already expended many millions in development. When it reaches the maximum output in its contract, it will be paying out for ore $9,817,500 a year, and for hauling $6,600,000. All the $9,817,500, together with the profits from the mines which are developed in the other forty square miles of ore lands, go to the Lake Superior Company, Limited,— the company that holds the mines,— for distribution to the holders of the Great Northern ore certificates.
It is difficult to estimate exactly the real value of these 1,500,000 trust certificates. The $9,817,500 due from the steel company when its contract reaches its full proportions would alone pay a dividend of six per cent upon them — an income that should make them worth over $100 apiece; they sold for 85 when first issued, and in the panic times of 1907 went down as low as 37. A fair average price in the stock market since their issue would be $70 apiece; and at that price the free gift made of them by the Great Northern to its stockholders would be $105,000,000.
Net Profit to Stock, $260,000,000
With this, in 1906, the Great Northern made its last division to its stockholders; and in the same year it made the last of several great increases of stock following 1898 and raised its own stock issue to its present figure of $210,-000,000. The accounts with the railroad stockholders in the twenty-seven years since the original deal in 1879 stood, then and to-day, about like this. Stock outstanding, $210,000,-000, less $60,000,000 par value of free stock and
bonds, leaves $150,000,000 paid in. This, less the gift of $105,000,000 worth of ore certificates, leaves $45,000,000 — the actual net cost to stockholders of the $210,000,000 of stock.
With Great Northern stock — for years a regular payer of seven-per-cent dividends — estimated at 145, the total value of the capital stock of the Great Northern Company is about $305,000,000; and so the profits of this distribution have come to $260,000,000 in twenty-seven years — practically a quarte-r of a century. The original venture in promoting the concern was $283,000; so whatever stock the original group still retained — and they held great blocks of it—-showed a net profit of a little less than 1,000 to 1.
It was a most remarkable showing to stockholders, of which Mr. Hill is very naturally proud; a spectacular thing; and yet not the matter of chief interest. The Great Northern was now, in 1906, a company of nearly $360,-000,000 outstanding capitalization, eleven times as large as the corporation — the St. Paul and Pacific— which began the series of aggregations in 1879. And yet the Great Northern was a minor part of the greater aggregation which had been accomplished.
The Fall of the Northern Pacific
From the day the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba started west in 1887, paralleling the Northern Pacific, it was simply a case of the survival of the fittest between the two roads. In the end it was little short of murder. The Northern Pacific road was a rickety, sprawling growth of twenty years — fifty-four different companies tangled together into one system. It cost fifty per cent more per mile to operate than the Hill road; its fixed charges were fifty per cent more. When the panic came in 1893, the Great Northern earned more than ten per cent on its $20,000,000 worth of stock; the Northern Pacific lacked almost a million dollars of paying its current debts. The two roads had fought from the beginning — particularly in the way of building branch lines on their common territory. In 1893 the Northern Pacific was tottering; the Great Northern pushed what it could by cutting rates. On August 15, 1893, the Northern Pacific went into the hands of receivers. And the first feasible plan of reorganization announced called for its absorption by the Great Northern.
There was no intention, on the part of Hill or his associates, to wreck the Northern Pacific so that they could take it over; the plan of the absorption came from another source. And it came simply from the logic of events; simply
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133
because of two railroads fight-ing for the same terri -tory, one must be absorbed; simply, in the last analysis, because a railroad is naturally and properly a monopoly, and, in spite of legislative efforts to make it competitive, must eventually be established as a monopoly. No one could expect to take the Northern Pacific, just emerging, weak from bankruptcy, and fight the Great Northern for the Northwest. So it was definitely agreed and arranged that the Great Northern should take over the Northern Pacific.
The Deutsche Bank, of Berlin, and Drex-el, Morgan and Co. had financed the bond issues that built the Northern Pacific. Early in 1895 the following plan was agreed upon between these two interests and Hill. The Northern Pacific would be reorganized by an issue of $200,-000,000 bonds and $100,000,000 stock. The Great Northern would guarantee the low interest of three and four per cent promised in the bonds; in return for this, it would be given half of the new stock of the Northern Pacific.
Great Northern Forbidden to Own Northern Pacific
The arrangement was annuonced in May, 1895; on March 30, 1896, the United States Supreme Court decided that this plan was illegal, because, by uniting two parallel and naturally com-
petingroads,it created a monopoly, which was contrary to the laws of Minnesota.* So the railroads combined in another way.
Statutes alter the path of the inevitable drift toward railroad monopoly, but they have never checked it. J. P. Morgan took up the Northern Pacific reorganization and carried it through, and then handed it to the Great Northern group as individuals. If the Great Northern could not own the Northern Pacific, the multimillionaires who owned the Great Northern could. There is no restriction yet by law regarding the individual’s right to own what property he chooses.
"Bargain Day” for Multimillionaires
It was, then, the remarkable period in American railroad finance when the multimillionaire formula by which this Great Northern group of financiers was created was to be repeated in the railroads and many of the industries of the United States. This movement was under the leadership of the financial center of New York, and more particularly under the management of J. P. Morgan and Co.— into whose hands the great bankrupt railroad systems of the country had come for reorganization. The money required for reorganization was to be secured
* Pearsall vs. Great Northern Railway Co., 161 U. S. 647,
THE GRASSHOPPERS SWARMED EVERYWHERE DURING THE PLAGUE IN MINNESOTA
‘SELKIRK,” AN EARLY RED RIVER STEAMER IN WHICH HILL WAS PART-OWNER From an old wood-cut
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THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
quite largely by the assessment of stockholders. A very considerable part of the stockholders refused to be assessed, and their stock fell back into the hands of the reorganization management. It lay there in great blocks. In the meanwhile the charges for interest on reorganized railroads had been cut down between a third and a half; so that these reorganized roads were really worth much more than before their reorganization. It was a “bargain da}'” for the financial powers — or for the few of them that had ready resources — which built up new multimillionaires, swelled the fortunes of older ones, and concentrated financial control of the great corporations of the entire country beyond anything ever known before.
Se far the Great Northern had kept out of New York pretty well in its financing; it had always had great surpluses in its treasury; and in the late ’8o’s Stephen and Hill had gotten the money for the extension toward the Pacific in London from Baring Brothers, before that great firm failed. Hill was in and out of New York, of course; he had offices in New York, where a large proportion of his new group of stockholders were. But now the Northern Pacific matter brought him, with the other roads, into the great financial drift toward America’s chief city.
Episcopal Convention Brings Morgan and Hill Together
In October, 1895, the National Convention of the Episcopal Church was held in Minneapolis. J. Pierpont Morgan, as every one knows, is the leading layman of that denomination in America, and attended, as usual, its triennial gathering. Hill is not an Episcopalian, but, as the leading citizen of the section, he and Morgan naturally saw a great deal of each other. They had known each other before, of course, but it is from the time of this Episcopal convention that the business and personal confidence and intimacy between the two men dates.
It was the most natural association in the world. The positive, optimistic character of Hill, the strong, solvent character of his enterprise, and the sound, conservative, and aggressive character of the group of men behind inevitably appealed to Morgan. These were men of the old generation of financiers, with whom he had been raised. Kennedy had been his friend for thirty-five years.
In 1896 Morgan completed the reorganization of the Northern Pacific. Even before this, Hill and some of the Great Northern group held several millions of Northern Pacific bonds. The reorganization called for a $15 assessment on the common stock; a large number of the
old stockholders refused to pay it, and consequently there was some $30,000,000 of this in the hands of Morgan as reorganizer. In February, 1897, Morgan sold $25,834,100 par value out of $80,000,000 of this common stock to Hill and Lord Mountstephen for the Great Northern groups for $4,133,456 — $16 a share.* The monopoly, which the capital invested in both roads demanded, had been accomplished -— as, in one way or another, it always is.
A Sure Profit of $25,000,000
When all but a few of the railroad capitalists of the United States had their resources tied up by the panic, these men had great sums free for use, especially those of them who lived outside of this country and were unoppressed by the crisis here. Because of the opportunity this gave them, the same group of men repeated in the next four years their old and brilliant gains of 1877 and 1879 in the St. Paul and Pacific. The Northern Pacific before reorganization had had to pay in interest and rentals of other roads $11,000,000 a year; by reorganization this was cut almost in half — to a little over $6,000,000. The stock of the concern was almost $5,000,000 a year nearer dividends than it was before. The stockholders, as usual, did not realize this; tens of millions of dollars’ worth of stock was thrown over.
On the other hand, the men who had planned and intimately understood the reorganization knew perfectly well — especially after the connection with the Great Northern group had been made and a practical monopoly assured — the real value of the stock. Mr. Morgan stated this precisely on the witness-stand, in the case of Peter Power against the Great Northern, on March 26, 1902.
“From the day that that plan of reorganization was issued,” he said, “we never had one moment’s doubt that, within a few years, and before the expiration of the time fixed for the voting trust, the common stock would have reached a point in its price where it could be sold at par or better.”
In April, 1901, and before the “corner” of May — six months before the voting trust had originally been planned to expire — Northern Pacific common had gone up just about one hundred points. In two months more than four years the Great Northern group had seen a profit of just about $25,000,000 on their holdings. It was to be a great deal larger.
It was not quite so large or so spectacular a profit as had been made at their opening operations in 1879; but it was a vast profit at
* See Peter Power vs. Creat Northern.
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Copyright by Pach Brothers JAMES J. HILL AT THE PRESENT DAY
a comparatively small risk, and, more than that, it doubled, at one stroke, the great railroad system which the group held in their control. The length of the Great Northern road in 1901 was 5,500 miles; of the Northern Pacific 5,600— a total of more than 11,000 miles, out of the
200,000 miles of railroad in this country. The control of it lay in the same old hands into which an erratic fortune had placed the St. Paul and Pacific, plus another great factor — the house of J. P. Morgan and Co.
The Community-of-Interest Plan
The Great Northern, for a quarter of a century sufficient to itself, had outgrown its own particular territory, and had become an integral part of the greater movement toward monopoly which was consolidating the railroads of the country.
The United States, by the Interstate Com-
merce Act of 1887, had forbidden "pooling” of railway earnings or business; failing this, the railroads had been turned into the much closer bond of common ownership of stock — either by individuals or by the railroad corporations themselves — which was becoming known as the “community of interest.”
In those days of continual activity of the Government against monopoly of any kind in railroads, the financiers retired to the rights of private property as an irreducible stronghold. They were not only rights: they were the basic principle of the financial religion that these men had been taught — the sacred thing upon which society was founded.
“Men Who Own Property Can Do What They Like with It’’
"The community of interests,” said Mr. Morgan on the witness-stand, in the Peter
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[pgbrk] WINNIPEG
St. Vincent
KENNEDY
Grandforks
BRECKENRIDGE
BRAINERD
THE ST. PAUL, MINNEAPOLIS and MANITOBA RAILROAD IN 1880
have its own connection to the great railroad center of Chicago. As the purchase of any connecting railroad system cost a great deal of money, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific naturally decided to buy it together.
Mr. Morgan has described the operation, in his blunt, straightforward fashion, in his testimony in the Peter Power case.
“I think,” said Mr. Morgan, “it was 1899 — it may have been 1898— I made up my mind that it was essential that the Northern Pacific Railroad Co.— Railway, or whatever you call it — what is it?”
Mr. F. L. Stetson (his counsel). "Railway.”
Mr. Morgan. “Railway should have its eastern terminus practically in Chicago; and, in the same manner, that the New York Central, of which I am a director, at that time or soon after decided the same thing with regard to their line; that the western terminus of their line should be in Chicago, practically, by acquiring the Lake Shore; in other words, that the transcontinental line should come to Chicago, and the eastern line should go to Chicago. So that was to be the central point. And I talked it over with a great many people interested in the Northern Pacific, and I found they all
ST. CLOUD
Power suit, “is that principle that a certain number of men who own property can do what they like with it.”
Question. "But they sha’n’t fight one another?”
Mr. Morgan. “There is no fighting about it. If they choose to fight their own property — but people don’t generally do that.”
Question. “Is not this community of interest one of working harmony?”
Mr. Morgan. “Working in harmony, yes.” Question. “Even though they own competing and parallel lines?”
Mr. Morgan. “No; they own them all.”
So in this, as often, legislation against combinations created a still greater and closer concentration of capital.
iMorgan Decides to Extend to Chicago
Both the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific in 1900 came no farther east than St. Paul; the Great Northern had never done so; the Northern Pacific had cut off the Wisconsin Central, which previously had taken it into Chicago, at the time of its reorganization. And now it was clearly necessary for each road to
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[pgbrk] THE PRESENT “HILL” SYSTEM
agreed with me, and the question came up as to how it could best be done. Of course, we were confronted with the question, which is always arising and repeats itself, as to whether a line that you want is an independent line, or whether it is a competing and — what is the other term?” Mr. Stetson. “Parallel.”
Mr. Morgan. “Parallel and competing line; and from a study of the case I came to the conclusion that there were but three lines available. . . . I said, take St. Paul, because the financial responsibility was less.”
So Mr. Morgan started out to buy the St. Paul from its board of directors — exactly as a farmer would buy a piece of land he needed to add to his farm. The St. Paul directors finally refused to sell.
Hill Buys the Burlington
Now, Mr. Hill had never wanted the St. Paul; he had wanted the Burlington. He differed from Mr. Morgan on this point simply because he was a railroad operator and Morgan was not; and the logic of his railroad property demanded the Burlington. There was a second necessity for his railroad, equally as urgent as an outlet
to Chicago — the necessity of economical operation.
The great drift of freight in the United States is from west to east; two loaded cars come east to one that goes back west. And every unloaded car that passes over a railway represents a dead loss. Naturally, the effort of the American railway operator is to secure the westbound traffic. Hill was fighting with all the rest to get more than his share; and naturally, when it came to buying railroads to the east, he planned to get the greatest west-bound traffic that his great sources of money would buy. He did not want the St. Paul; he wanted the Burlington road, which stretched its 8,300 miles, like a great drag-net, down the Mississippi to St. Louis, and across the rich prairies to the west as far as Denver. In the first four months of 1901 — together with Charles Steele, of J. P. Morgan and Co.— he bought the Burlington road for the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific.
Burlington stock was quoted at about 165 at the time; it was closely held, and very little was for sale on the open market. Hill and Morgan offered, through the directors, $200 a share in four-per-cent bonds — a trade that
1 WESTMINSTER
CANADA
*SAN FRANSISCO
SANTA FE
KANSAS CITY
DENVER
salt LAKE CITY
PORTLAND
BUTTE
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THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA
was quickly taken by the stockholders. There was much criticism, at the time, of the high price paid. “In a few years,” said Jim Hill, “they will be saying that I stole the road.”
"Take the Burlington stock at 200 and add it to the bonded debt per mile of the road,” he said, in the Peter Power case, “and it would give the average cost of the Burlington about $42,000 a mile, which was about what it cost us; that is, $10,000 or $12,000 a mile less than any of these Granger roads are selling in the market. In other words, the Burlington was the cheapest property altogether.”
There was never doubt of the value of the bargain. The Burlington has from the beginning thrown traffic to the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific; its profits have been well concealed, but, if necessary, it could have paid
METHOD OF DISTRIBUTING GREAT
NORTHERN CAPITAL STOCK
INCREASES TO STOCK-
HOLDERS
ST. PAUL, MINNEAPOLIS and MANITOBA
Cash paid in Stock issued
1879 $15,000,000
1882 $5,000,000 5,000,000
1888 (fooo.ooo1
GREAT NORTHERN
1890 $2,000,0002 $20,000,000
1892 10,875,00c1
1893 5,000,000 5,000,000
1898 25,000,000s
1898 5,ooo,ooo4
1899 15,000,000 15,000,000
1900 10,000,000 10,000,000
I9OI 20,000,000 25,000,000
1905 25,000,000 25,000,000
1907 60,000,000 60,000,000
Totals $158,875,000 $2 10,000,000
Less profit of bond
bonus of 1883 9,000,000
149,875,000
Less ore certificates
at $70 105,000,000
Total actual cost $44,875,000
1 Cash payments for bonds, which were later re-
tired means of stock increases.
2 $10,000,000 cash was paid in for stock;
$8,000,000 of this was used to retire $8,000,000
par value of bonds for which stockholders paid
$6,000,000 in 1888. Net cash payment by stock-
holders, $2 ,000,000.
3$15,000,000 cash paid in; was used to pay for
bonds sold to stockholders in 1892 for $10,875,000.
4$25,000,000 Great Northern stock exchanged
for $20,000,000 St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba;
net stock increase, $5,000,000.
the four per cent upon these bonds and half as much again.
The Geometrical Progression of the Multimillionaire
It was a long march of events from the time Jim Hill left the coal-and-wood business in St. Paul, but a perfectly direct and simple one, once he had obtained possession of the St. Paul and Pacific. Railroads must aggregate; it is a law of the working of traction machinery as certain as gravity. The strongest road, in course of time, must inevitably take in its competitors. And upon the owners of the stock in the successful surviving corporation is focussed both the control and the profits of the whole aggregation, growing in almost geometrical progression — two and four and eight times the power and profit with each successive growth.
The operation works according to an almost invariable formula. The American railroads were built with bonds; beyond a certain specified per cent — four or five or six — to which they were entitled by their terms, they got no share in the profits of the enterprise. When railroads aggregate, it is with bonds, again, that they pay for their additions. And so, in the successful railroad corporation, all the growing profits are aggregated upon the stock — the part of the securities that originally cost little or very frequently nothing, and whose control in the United States has been concentrated in the few hands that grasped them at opportune times. And, in this way, in forty years there has arisen the wonderful spectacle of the growth of the American railroad fortunes from nothing to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Billion-Dollar Property
And now the little group of men at the center of the great aggregation had accumulated an economic power that would have been inconceivable twenty-five years before. Twenty thousand miles of railroad; a capitalization of over $900,000,000 outstanding; receipts of $110,000,000 a year — all came under their direct control. They had sold much of their stock in the Great Northern as time went on; but the group still held some $35,000,000 — nearly thirty per cent of the company’s stock — in the spring of 1901; with J. P. Morgan and Co., they held between $35,000,000 and $40,000,000 of the $155,000,000 stock of the Northern Pacific — about a quarter of the whole. And through the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern they held the Burlington.
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RECORD OF THE “HILL” RAILROAD EXPANSION (Statements at end of fiscal years, June 30. Compiled from Poor’s Manual)
AVERAGE BONDS NET PROFIT
MILES STOCKS AND GUARANTEED TOTAL . GROSS ABOVE ALL
OPERATED STOCKS CAPITAL EARNINGS CHARGES
1880 656 $1 5,000,000 $16,324,900 $31,324,900 $2,885,330 §555,795
1881 702 15,000,000 l8, 107,700 33,107,700 3,700,852 732,466
1882 926 15,000,000 18,646,000 33,646,000 6,629,694 1,960,084
1883 1,203 20,000,000 20,791,720 40,791,720 9,090,63 I 3,381,275
1884 1,378 20,000,000 31,368*000 51,368,000 8,256,868 2,210,677
1885 1,459 20,000,000 32,436,000 52,436,000 7,776,164 2,352,240
1886 1,470 20,000,000 32,336,000 52,336,000 7,321,730 1,654,380
1887 1,739 20,000,000 43,289,977 63,289,977 8,028,448 ',457,591
1888 2,304 20,000,000 55,283,944 75,283,944 9,561,905 1,348,168
1889 2,932 20,000,000 60,985,000 80,985,000 8,586,566 1,089,263
1890 3,000 20,000,000 85,778,900 105,778,900 9,582,931 2,327,090
1891 2,797 20,000)000 86,429,900 106,429,900 10,281,714 1,638,621
1892 2,865 20,000,000 89, 149,200 109,149,200 12,604, '28 1,943,476
1893 3,352 20,000,000 123.435.754 143,435,754 13,522,581 2, 182,330
1894 3,765 2 5,000,000 125,080,455 150,080,455 ",345,357 1,083,346
1895 4,374 2 5,000,000 125,279,355 150,279,355 16,530,425 1,439,508
1896 4,374 2 5,000,000 125.433.325 150,433,325 19,612,564 2,292,547
1897 4,4 5 2 5,000,000 126,141,854 15', '4', 854 19,436,060 2,457,267
1898 8,828 180,000,000 292,412,854 472,412,854 46,257,262 9,985,344
1899 9,365 230,000,000 259,449,000 489,449,000 51,066,577 12,427,653
1900 9,790 2 54,000,000 267,579.45 5 521,579,455 58,932,107 19,910,360
1901 10,302 2 55,000,000 274,756, I 12 529,756,112 60,911,673 '6,797,719
1902 18,484 280,000,000 640,81 5,982 920,815,982 131,214,982 26,364,013
1903 18,935 280,000,000 656,923,652 936,923,652 149,566,131 35,27',598
1904 19,263 280,000,000 680,071,239 960,071,239 151,810,119 33,55',740
1905 19599 280,000,000 680,039,585 960,039,585 160,222,010 39,976,759
1906 20,234 305,000,000 675.970.952 980,970,952 186,686,427 45,878,670
1907 20,547 354,272,892 670,524,315 1,024,797,207 206,152,485 45,730,163
Notes: St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba stock placed in bond column from 1890 to retirement in 1899.
Great Northern’s “proprietary lines” not included in mileage or gross earnings column in years 1891-4.
Northern Pacific system included in above figures after 1897.
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy system included in above figures after 1901.
“Surplus” after charges from 1902 on is combined balance after making full allowance of four per cent on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy collateral bond issue. Chicago, Burlington and Quincy stock, being nearly all owned, is not included in the above figures.
Dates refer to condition at close of fiscal years — June 30 of each year. Figures of capitalization cover only stocks and bonds outstanding in the hands of the public on those dates.
Average miles operated are usually somewhat less than total mileage owned or jointly controlled.
The capitalization represents securities in the hands of the public.
Taken altogether, it was one of the most remarkable groups of men ever got together in the country— these wise, aggressive Scotchmen and their few later associates. They would have been remarkable if for nothing else than that they had hung together for all these years, and taken for themselves the natural growth of a powerful corporation in a new and expanding country. But they were a group of old men now; it was twenty-five years since they undertook their venture with the St. Paul and Pacific. It occurred to them that they were about to die.
About to Die, We Consolidate
Lord Strathcona was eighty-one, Mount-stephen seventy-two, Kennedy seventy-one, and even Hill was sixty-three, in 1901. It came to Kennedy — always the cautious one — as far
back as 1897 that they would better tie up their property, the Great Northern, so that nobody else should get hold of it. They did not now, to be sure, own the whole property, nor actually half of the stock; but they certainly controlled it; and they considered it as much their property as their houses. Why shouldn’t they? They had managed it always. A man’s property is his own. This new thing of singling out railroads for especial control by the Government they not only did not understand, they considered it an outrage. Their attitude was exactly like Mr. Morgan’s: a man has a right to do what he pleases with his own property. So they proposed to tie up their Great Northern stock in a holding company. Living or dead, the majority vote of their stock should rule the Great Northern Railway.
When Kennedy proposed the plan, it found general favor among the party of old men.
[pgbrk] 140
MOIRA O’NEILL
They were a hardy set; Strathcona even now, at ninety, is still vigorously planning enterprises that will occupy him for twenty years to come. Yet it was well enough to be safe. They did not act at once, but in the spring of 1901 they were about ready to take it up.
A Sudden Catastrophe
Then suddenly out of a clear sky came a catastrophe. They were in danger of losing their property in the New York stock market. “Something had occurred,” as Hill said later, "that never had happened in New York before
— an attempt to buy a control of $155,000,000 of stock in the market.”
It was the Harriman-Schiff forces hunting the Northern Pacific and the Burlington. If they got them, Hill testified, the property of his associates, who had been with him so long, would be ruined; their plans and management would be taken by other hands; and the whole structure would be destroyed.
The Old Guard of the Great Northern, and their ally, J. Pierpont Morgan, awakened suddenly to defend their property in the greatest financial battle in American history — the Northern Pacific corner of May 9, 1901.
The next article will describe the rise of the Harriman-Schiff railroad alliance ont of the Southwest, their battle with Morgan and his allies, and the culmination of the great movement of railroad consolidation throughout the United Stales
GRACE FOR LIGHT
BY
MOIRA O’NEILL
WHEN we were little childer we had a quare wee house,
Away up in the heather by the head o’ Brabla’ burn;
The hares we’d see them scootin’, an’ we’d hear the crowin’ grouse, An’ when we’d all be in at night ye’d not get room to turn.
The youngest two She’d put to bed, their faces to the wall,
An’ the lave of us could sit aroun’, just anywhere we might;
Herself ’ud take the rush-dip an’ light it for us all,
An’ “God be thanked!” she would say,—“now we have a light."
Then we be to quet the laughin’ an’ pushin’ on the floor,
An think on One who called us to come and be forgiven;
Himself 'ud put his pipe down, an’ say the good word more,
“May the Lamb o’ God lead us all to the Light o’ Heaven!”
There’ a wheen things that used to be an’ now has had their day, The nine Glens of Antrim can show ye many a sight;
But not the quare wee house where we lived up Brabla’ way,
Nor a child in all the nine Glens that knows the grace for light.
[pgbrk]
THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF GIOVANNA
BY
AMANDA MATHEWS
AUTHOR OF “THE HEART OF AN ORPHAN,’’ ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY WLADYSLAW T. BENDA
MOTHER of my thankful heart,—
Yesterday was Thanksgiving and the Principal said in chapel for us to count our bennyfits up to God. That was easy like anything because when he gave you to me seems like he said “Giovanna, here is all your bennyfits in one package.”
Our school turkey was big as a little ash barrel
and the dinner so many courses it was like a week of meals tied together.
I fell awake in the middle of Thankful Night and first believed me to be back in the sylum for the many girls in white nightys. But when I saw those nightys all embroidery and my shiny bed of brass and one girl to toast marshmallows on the steam heat I knew the difference and was
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THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF GIOVANNA
glad. Dolly my poet chum now rooms with me by both our wish. Dolly stood on her bed making her arms act like the priest’s and whispered a speech most out loud to say she had been taken with an idea in her sleep very grand even noble.
The Eggsloosifs laughed much and whispered “Here! here!” and sat on our beds and floors to listen and passed chockylet creams. Only one was sleepy and said pickle that idea but the rest put shame and pillows on her. I asked “ Dolly, is it a new poem?” and she answered “no but better for a poem is just litteryture and this idea is all true izem.” I asked “What’s izem Dolly?” but she never explained. She made more speech but low for teachers wake easy. She said there is us pampered darlings of our doting parents and there’s orfuns who are Miss Fortune’s wafes and poor things. Her grand idea was for the Eggsloosifs to give the orfuns of the sylum a Christmas like they never dreamed could be in this world. The girls jumped themselves up and danced in their bear feet for glad of my chum’s noble idea and i never loved Eggsloosifs quite so hard as that minute.
Dolly put me in her speech to name me cyclo-pede of orfun lore who must understand their habits and for me to all times speak up.
One girl said the orfuns could use her tree the next day after the day after Christmas. I said did they truly want the cyclopede of orfun lore to speak up? They answered “Yes, lay on mack duff.” I shook some in my bed but lay on like they said and explained how orfuns must be ever grateful for trees but all years to have Christmas not on the hollyday but after other persons have finished tastes like cold potatoes to their souls.
The girls said this must be no cold potato Christmas. They decided to beg their parents to sellybrate their presents at home Christmas Eve and to let them eat early Christmas Day so as to fetch the orfuns to the school before dark and all so promised except one girl that lives far off in the geography.
Another girl said “ Lets give the orfuns turkey dinner before the tree,” but some complained so many relayshuns wait for presents they could not put that much allowance onto orfuns.
But an Eggsloosif named Bessie made to answer “Lets ask the Principal if we have no desferts on our dinners from now to Christmas perhaps she will give us turkey dinner for the orfuns.”
The girl of sleepy replied “That is easy now to say when we have just finished mints pie and plum pudding and cake and ice cream and raisins and nuts all in one Thankful dinner but a month of no deserts would be terrible and
must reduce us all to skinnybone.” The other Eggsloosifs made laughs on her and more pillows and said no deserts was allright with them for orfuns’ sake.
Dolly poeted when she never knew she was going to.
“Dear cyclopede of orfun lore,
O wont you please to tell us more?”
So I told how the presents of orfuns are most times the same for all. You look at your present and then 3 or 4 dozen orfuns hold the same in their hands and if you let go of it you can tell no more if it is really that one except yours was not broken and the one you now got is so.
The Eggsloosifs had serious looks on them and said all gifts must be different. They'sang to me Dolly’s poetry.
“Dear cyclopede of orfun lore,
O wont you please to tell us more?”
So I told that if not the same then orfun presents must be already busted prettys of richness. In my sylum Christmas one time I got a doll like I prayed by my bed very beautiful except she missed one foot and one hand and one eye and a crack in her cheek. I tried to think onto her all that was missed but I never could so I played instead how she had been whaled by a cruel father but was now a whole.and adopt by me to love better for her misseds and whales.
Dolly hugged me and all promised no gifts must be busted and sang Dolly’s poetry at me again to speak up more.
I answered “This next is too much for orfuns but O the ache I usto have in me for a present tied in tisshoe paper with a red ribbon! I ached and ached and ached for that like a pain to take medicine with a spoon for cure.”
All exclaimed tisshoe paper with red ribbon must be wrapped round the gifts like for relayshuns or anybody.
I said I must wear my orfun clothes for them not to see me that usto be orfun now in dress of richness. Dolly made her arms act like 6 priests for telling all to wear orfun dress same as me and look like wholes. The Eggsloosifs cried “O lets! lets! lets!” and the girl who lives far in the geography said she would write her family to let her stay and have cold potato Christmas at home after all had finishe'd so she could wear a sylum dress.
But I said that is no fair because orfuns want to stare at pretty clothes and not come here to see like their own selves in the lookinglass.
Dolly was taken with another idea so big it made her most crazy — that was to put the pretty clothes on the orfuns’ backs to keep.
[pgbrk] DOLLY’S GRAND IDEA WAS FOR THE EGGSLOOSIFS TO GIVE THE ORFUNS OF THE SYLUM A CHRISTMAS LIKE THEY NEVER DREAMED COULD BE IN THIS WORLD”
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THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF GIOVANNA
She asked me how many orfuns and I answered I believed the orfuns to be about the same thickness of Eggsloosifs and she declared one girl must dress one orfun perhaps not new but good and pretty.
All got excited and forgot teachers and the Principal opened the door in a keemono. Dolly disapeared under the blanket but her head was wrong way round to her feet on the pillow.
The Principal went to look haughty but her eyes laughed and the girls begged her in which she came and they told her all. She said we might make Christmas for orfuns and econy-mize by no deserts for orfun turkey but now to bed and not catch our deathycolds which all so done very happy.
It is my turn to practice scales on the piano so I will say goodbye, darling bennyfit Mother of me. Giovanna.
Angel Christmas present Mother,—
We have so much orfun business in this school we almost cannot do our practice and lessons. The girls all secured easy the dresses but now have much trouble to find the right orfun which fits in the dress. All Saturdays go committys of Eggsloosifs to the sylum for measuringorfuns but just with their guess not to spoil the surprise.
Dolly begged her dress off an Aunt with a little girl cousin. It is navy blue silk deckrated with ruffles so her orfun must be 7 like the dress. She picked out a whole named Lizzie to fit it fine so that is not her grief and woe but it comes of asking Lizzie what she wants for presents and Lizzie begged “O please a Mama and a Papa.” Dolly has that kind of heart to promise first and then wonder if she can so now she’s got to anyway and it puts her most crazy. If Lizzie could just be the pretty kind but her com-pleckshun is pale trimmed with freckles and her teeth are some gone and not grown in yet. Her hair is red pigtales. Her nose skwints up a little but not enough to notice much and she has a good blue eye and a feckshunate dishpishin. Dolly names her hair tisshen but the Eggsloosifs laugh and say no, plain carrots. They all times advise Dolly to raffel her off at the tree with tickets but my noble chum will ever answer ‘‘Heethen creatures! raffel off your own orfuns if you want to but my Lizzie never do I raffel!
I will find her sootybell parents or adopt her myself.”
It’s a tight secret only Dolly lets me tell just you she’s got the parents of Lizzie all picked but they don’t know it yet and Dolly has awful scares to imagine how they will act when the news gets broke on them. It is an Aunt and Uncle not the one she begged the dress off of but another named Winnyfred and John with no
child and rich like anything. Dolly makes little tacks on their hearts like to say “What is home without an orfun?” But her Uncle will ever answer “When orfun comes in at the door piece flies out of the window” which is a mistake for Lizzie is not the kind to break the window like Dolly’s Uncle thinks.
This does not discourage my poet chum. She has a skeem to fix all Christmas night at the tree. The Eggsloosifs will invite their relay-shuns and the halfs their whichever they goi lefts and the maytrun will company the wholes. Dolly says anybody must give thanks for presents and never look like it is not the best thing they want in the big world so she will give Lizzie to her Aunt and Uncle for a present and them to Lizzie for a present and all live happy ever after and three off her list. I tell Dolly a present can be no fair like a lady in our tenny-ment O awful poor and a daygo organist made a present to her little boy of a sick monkey that must all days eat cream and bannannas. Dolly says the cases are different but she will ask the Principal so I may be satisfied.
Mother I had to choose the orfun of big mouth and little sense because nobody else could like her looks and ways but I know what feels you have to be that kind no person wants. She is most my size and will fit in my plain brown rainy dress or my red silk. The Principal says in chapel “mind your conshents” so I asked mine which dress? One conshent says “Shame Giovanna selfish pig girl, think how that orfun put her finger to that red silk dress at the sylum the day it was bought and said ‘pretty pretty’ and now with that dress on her she will be happy up to the sky and believe she is an angel.” And then another conshent will speak “Ungrateful one to give away the so beautiful dress of red whistling silk the first bought you by your darling Bennyfactor Mother that whistles all the times of her! What can it whistle to that orfun of big mouth and little sense?” Now Mother what do I make with those conshents? Our letters must go far so it will be done before I get your advice to tell what conshent I shall mind.
O if you could visit me that would be my Christmas present of the whole world but you say that cannot happen. I will try and not make too much sadness to myself for that because when I am your daughter every day is Christmas for my thinks of you.
Giovanna.
Mother of my Christmas heart,—
There stays just your me tonight in this school of many girls. All the Eggsloosifs selly-brate Christmas Eve at home except her that
[pgbrk] “THE PRINCIPAL GAVE OUT THE PRIZES WITH MANY CHEERS FROM ALL'
lives far in the geography and she went to Dolly’s tree not to notice homesick aches in her soul like she got simptums.
Dolly invited me so hard she most got mad on me not to go but I never could for lonesome. Here I have no lonesome but glad instead because you said in your preciousest letter of all that this Eve I could know you were writing to me. Last Christmas I was mixed with many orfuns but felt like sollytude. This Christmas I got such company as nobody ever had that together we write to each other. Last Christmas at the sylum I received a work basket with two spools and thimbel but no surprise for they were all on the maytrun’s bed when I swept her room and no names just any basket to whatever
orfun. The maytrun named me ungrateful to cry but Mother how could Christmas be glad when my surprise was lost?
I usto not think so much of Santa Claus as some to treat richness all times better than poorness but I learned off a kid on our doorstep at the tennyment that there isn’t any. So its no fair to blame a person who never was anybody and I believe a really truly Santa Claus would act like his photograf looks and not forget the stockings of poorness-------
The s of poorness has the long tale because in that minute the maid knocked with a bundle for me. This is my thoughts to open that box. O! O! O! O! O! O! O! To think you put in prettys for me to give to all the names in my
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THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF G I.OVANN A
letters. Dolly will jump and dance at the nugget buckle. Luigi will put a smile on him like anything to see the yellow pipe. O Mother never before in my long life did I give a present to any person. For somebody to look on me with present looks that will be my all new joy with this first Christmas to be your daughter.
In the boxes corner stayed a little package in tisshoe paper tied with red ribbon. O the teeny gold watch with G on it in pearls and a pearl pin to fasten it on top of my heart! O Mother it never can be me that usto be orfun Giovanna to own that watch! It must be a fairy dream and I will wake up in the sylum to say “What a dream I dreamed!” Always your presents talk to me of you or look at me with your looks but this watch speaks most of all not to stop in day or'night or get tired. I say to it “ Little
angel watch she is the Mother of my ” And
that watch so smart ticks back “heart, heart, heart, heart.” No other watch could be smart like this of pearly G and teeny golden hands.
O but it makes me feel twice as dreadful about your Christmas present you won’t get from me for an awful long time like next summer. If you are thinking this minute I forgot your present that is not the true but despare and most wear out my brains that is the true and now what looks like no gift. *
I was going to buy you a pretty with the money you sent for a swetter but the Principal said in chapel to take the money of your parents to buy them gifts what love in that? Give them what costs you effort and self denial. And she talked more to say never give debty presents just because you owe them or hopeful presents to get one back. Dolly raised her hand and asked “What if somebody needs a present which they don’t want?” The girls giggled to guess she meant Lizzie. The Principal replied “Decide that yourself with love and tact. Young ladies you are dismissed to your classrooms.”
Dolly savs love and tact and the Principal and a quarter which fell heads up are all on her side to give Lizzie to her Uncle and Aunt at the tree. She made a poem for her parents out of her own poetry but I cannot poet for you Mother because it must fall on one out of the sky or its no good. A musical girl dedycated her parents many staffs full of tunes but I could only make you some scales what are notes upstairs and downstairs and that would be no present. A very smart girl in lessons was to give her prize if earned which made me worse despare for many girls shorter in their skirts are longer than me in their grades which must put shame on you and the prize for spelling is past
my hope so how could I think to earn a prize except for stupid and faults?
Friday was the last day of this school turn, and the Principal gave out the prizes with many cheers from all and her of smartness earned the one for grammar which was a poetry book. At last the Principal said there was one more prize to decide by vote of all the girls which pupil had got most better in manners by trying hard.
O Mother that prize was given to me and not by fair because no other girl here was ever orfun so I had the head start in backness. I was so scared I almost could not hold out my hand and to walk back to my seat 1 did not know where it stood with the F.ggsloosifs to clap clap their hands so much. By and by when I opened the package the Principal asked me why I look so disapointed. I answered “It is very beautiful and never did I earn it but what can my Mother make with a Girl’s Memory Book of School for a Christmas present?” She explained that if I wrote it full of memorys for you Mother it would be a piece of real daughter present same as Dolly’s and the musical girl’s and her of smartnesses. But it is my grief and woe you will not get it in time for Christmas because I cannot write in it memorys that are not to happen yet but must wait till they happen.
I have decided to give away my red silk dress because my Christmas conshent says “Giovanna you got such lots and that orfun so little.” O my little darling watch! Itnowticks “You got to stop, you got to stop” because the electric will be off in one minute and so goodnight Darling Mother from little watch and me.
Giovanna.
Mother of my Merry Christmas Heart,—
The candles are just blown out on the orfun tree and I took a pink one not much burnt to put in the teeny silver candlestick Dolly gave me so I can write to you after electric is off.
I believe this candle likes to burn itself up for that because it waves round its little flame as if to speak “Giovanna remember me to your Mother.”
The Eggsloosifs all rushed back today quick as possible after their deserts to dress themselves orfun style. Such laughs never were heard in the real kind. Then came the jenuine orfuns and O the looks on them to behold the immitashun orfuns! Thatorfun which usto make tall her pompydoor with the maps out of her geography said if she had known she was invited just to other sylum she never woulda come.
The Eggsloosifs took each one her orfun to her room and dressed her all sweet and pretty and stylish like a girl of richness with two parents.
[pgbrk] LIZZIE STEPT CLOSE TILL UNCLE IOHN SAID, ‘WHOSE LITTLE GIRL ARE YOU?
One orfun said to her Eggsloosif “I thank you but keep this dress to your own self because you look worse poor than me.” And the father of that Eggsloosif is a iooooooair.
Mine which was her of big mouth and little sense all times touched the red silk with her finger and repeated “Mv red dress, my red dress” like my watch ticks and I was glad to see her love it that hard.
Dolly’s Lizzie turned not pretty but so Dolly named her quaint and said that was more dis-tinggay. Lizzie asked “Will my new Mama like me better in this dress?” And Dollv kissed her and pinned a card on her “Merry Christmas to dear Aunt Winnyfred and Uncle John from Dolly.” But Lizzie never saw Dolly wring her hands to me on the quiet to show what scares she got on herself.
Mother when all was finished the orfuns made immitashun Eggsloosifs like the Eggsloosifs made immitashun orfuns— I guess because the Eggsloosifs in dress of poorness acted like fixed grand for a party and the orfuns could not forget so quick their scroocht down feelings even in dress of richness.
Next was the turkey dinner with the orfuns in the chairs and the Eggsloosifs to act like maids. All their swallows could work fine and they were very satisfied except Lizzie teased to sit between her Mama and Papa but Dolly told her they were not yet come.
After turkey dinner all went to the big hall of the Christmas tree and there stayed the parents and relayshuns and whichevers. Dolly looked so pitvfull for her feelings on Lizzie a kind old man thought she was a jenuine and tried to
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THE MERRY CHRISTMAS OF GIOVANNA
give her a dollar in her hand but she explaned no thank you.
The janitor played he was Santa Claus and passed the presents and O the joy and surprise of those orfuns most paralized them. I gave mine a doll because her sense is younger than she is and it seemed as if she couldn’t hug it enough and I was glad.
But poor little Lizzie looked like weeps and said to Dolly “Where is my Mama and Papa like you promised?” My chum led her pretty near to her Uncle and Aunt where they sat and whispered to Lizzie which they were and ran to hide behind the tree. Lizzie stcpt close and close till Uncle John said “Whose little girl are you?” and she answered “I am yours, Papa,” and the surprise that Uncle had on him was wonderful. Aunt Winnyfred spoke “What nonsents! Run to your Mama, child,” but she answered “You are my Mama.”
Uncle John looked on her card and exclaimed “O that Dolly!” Aunt Winnyfred explaned to Lizzie how she did not want a little girl and all was mistake.
Lizzie got that kind of disapoint which hurts so bad you don’t cry the first minute and they thought she was satisfied but she fell herself down on the floor and her grief and woe were dreadfull and she all times talked in her cry
“O my Papa don’t want me! 0 my Mama don’t want me!”
Dolly ran to comfort her but she would take no comfort. Aunt Winnyfred stood up and spoke, “Let us go! this is very painful! Dolly you must be punished!” But Uncle John answered “Why not take her along and look her over? Anyway she said first she was mine.” Aunt Winnyfred talked back “Just because you sat on that side so she came first to you.” So Uncle John carried her but Aunt Winnyfred held her hand.
The little candle is most gone and so is my first merry Christmas but I got plenty of merryness this time to catch up on all I missed before.
O Mother what a long chain you started by your goodness to me. The Eggsloosifs tied some more to that chain by this wonderful surprise on the sylum; Aunt Winnyfred and Uncle John made another piece to adopt Lizzie. And I never did a thing to make it longer but perhaps I can some day. That is my wish.
I have just one more minute to say Merry Christmas so with that I will stop my letter. Merry Christmas, Mother! Merry Christmas, orfuns! Merry Christmas, Eggsloosifs! Merry Christmas, all the people in the big world! Merry Christmas, dear God up in heaven!
Giovanna.
[pgbrk] The Adventures of Miss Gregory No 4
by
Perceval Gibbon
The Adventure with the Slave Dealer
Illustrations by
W Hatherell
IT was high morning when the Kaffir porters, jogging over a saddle of hill, checked and cried out at the far sight of the camp; but evening was at hand before they reached it. Lazaro, the half-caste interpreter, puffed to the front to take stock of it, staring down over the broken land with lowered brows. It lay in a little cup of valley, among those brooding hills that stretch south from Mount Irati toward the lost rivers of the heart of Mozambique. The one tent, which proclaimed it the habitation of a white man, shone under the strong sun like a patch of snow. Lazaro turned to call the news to his employer in the rear.
“See,” he cried, pointing with a'lean dramatic arm. “I have bring-a you to an Inglez. Tonight you will have a society.”
Lazaro never failed to claim credit for any piece of good fortune that might occur; he waited now to be thanked for leading the party to this fortunate point.
His employer came briskly up the last of the slope, and gazed out over the world spread below under the sun — a world crumpled like paper into naked hills and abrupt valleys. She nodded briefly.
“ 1 see,” she said. “ But what are we stopping for?”
Lazaro smiled resignedly. “Only to see,” he answered, and called to the Kaffirs. The party strung out again on the downward slope, weaving in a ragged line through the rocks and clumps of aloe, with the red dust puffing up like smoke from under their feet. At the rear, Lazaro ranged himself alongside of Miss Gregory to indulge her with conversation. He had been chosen for his post by a British consul down
country, chiefly because of his skill in avoiding danger, but partly also because he spoke a fluent and recognizable English. The consul, who had lived most of his life in the tropics, disapproved of globe-trotting for ladies. Miss Gregory’s project for a journey of half a year in the unknown interior seemed to him hardly propef; and he felt it due to her family that she should not move out of hearing of the English tongue, at least. Therefore he had prevailed on her to accept Lazaro.
“He is said to steal quite a lot,” he told her, while Lazaro shuffled his toes in the sand outside the consular veranda and smiled sidelong, “and perhaps he’s not very clean; but think of the advantage of having somebody to talk to.” So Miss Gregory had become Lazaro’s master, and had fulfilled the consul’s good intentions by listening to the complacent singsong of his voice across nearly two thousand miles of wilderness. She hastened now to forestall his small talk with a question.
“Do you know whose camp it can be?” she inquired.
“ It can be anybody,” answered Lazaro pleasantly," but not many. Only three-four white men come up here — all Inglez, all very bad people.” “How?” demanded Miss Gregory.
“Whatyou call bolt-from-a-police,” explained Lazaro blandly. “Ye-es; very bad people.”
“I see.” Miss Gregory was not at all disturbed. She had already met the discreet outlaw of the Coast, and had not found him formidable. She was fifty years of age and a woman of the world, and her world was wide enough to accommodate human beings of all kinds. She had it in mind that her travels should result in
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a book — a big book, full of meat, spiced with character and pungent with real raw life; and in the meantime she saw all men in the light of possible literary material. Even Lazaro was down in her note-book.
From the heights the little camp had seemed to lie just below, near enough to shout to; but there was a day of hard going across rough spurs of hill and straggling thickets of aloe and cactus before Miss Gregory and her party came forth at last to the cool stillness of the little valley in which the one tent was pitched. A last tangle of spiked shrubs let them through, and Miss Gregory stepped forth on to short parched grass within fifty yards of the tent. The sun was already over the hills to the west, and the world was beginning to breathe again after its daylong torpor of heat. Beyond the tent, cooking-fires were sending up their thin spires of blue smoke; about them, Kaffirs moved babbling, and a single white man, conspicuous in shirt and trousers among their sleek bare bodies, stood with his back toward her. There seemed to be some business going forward; his voice sounded in curt queries and was answered with obsequious clamor.
As Miss Gregory advanced, with Lazaro beside and a little behind her and the Kaffirs straggling in the rear, he turned and caught sight of her. He stared for a moment, as well he might, for white women do not come within a month’s journey of that part of the world; but he recovered himself with creditable quickness, and came striding to meet her.
“This is capital,” he said—“capital!” and greeted her with a big, wandering hand.
He was a big, fair man, with a deep stoop in the shoulders, and a large, mild, absent face. His pale eyes looked through big spectacles with an effect of simplicity and vagueness; there was about him an indoor, scholarly suggestion, most strikingly at variance with the background of scarlet-plumed aloes and hushed, listening negroes. He beamed in a kindly, preoccupied fashion on Miss Gregory.
“Saw your camp this morning,” she said. “ Hope we sha’n’t be in the way, you know.”
“ In the way?” He waved the idea from him. “ But it’s capital, I tell you. So glad to see you. I’m Smith.”
Miss Gregory accepted the introduction, and imparted her own name. “Not Pirate Smith?” she inquired, as an afterthought. “ I heard of Pirate Smith when I was at Chinde.”
He shook his big, fair head. “No,” he said; “no connection. I know him, of course. He’s a shy bird. No. They call me‘Silly Smith,’for some reason. A chap gets all kinds of names out here, you know.”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Gregory. “It’s dreadful.”
He looked like some monstrous child, with loose smiles straying upon his large pink face. He seemed as soft and agreeable as a kitten. He waved the staring Kaffir porters to the fires and the company of his own Kaffirs, and led the way for Miss Gregory to the front of his tent, where his folding table stood ready for the evening meal. He shambled as he walked; there was nothing about him that was not vague and innocuous and amiable.
“Never could get used to eating my meals off the ground,” he said. “A man must have some furniture. So I always carry a table and a chair.” He made a sudden dive into his tent, and came out again with a collapsed chair in his hands. “Have the chair, by the way,” he suggested, and struggled to open it.
“Oh, please don’t bother,” begged Miss Gregory, as he pinched a finger violently in one of the joints of the ingenious machine.
“It’s always like this,” said Smith, looking at her worriedly as he sucked the hurt finger.
He let the chair go, and it opened of itself as it fell. He stared at it with a manner of suspicion, and pushed it gingerly toward her. “ Have it, anyhow,” he said. “ Don’t waste the beastly thing, now it is open.”
He left her and went over to superintend the erection of her tent, and Miss Gregory, watching him, saw that he possessed in the supreme degree the art of commanding Kaffirs. It is by no means a thing that any one can do; men spend half a lifetime in Africa and are no nearer it at the end than they were at the beginning. It is a gift more esteemed than virtue and more coveted than wealth. Miss Gregory had only heard of it, up to the present, in the casual talk of people she met; now she saw it, and recognized it forthwith. There was nothing of violence or menace in the man’s speech; he did not even raise his voice. He shambled at large round about the work, and delivered brief orders in the tones of commonplace speech; and Miss Gregory’s weary “boys” tumbled over one another in an undreamed-of haste to obey. Even Lazaro — Lazaro, who never worked with Kaffirs, who had his own "boy” to serve him and play white man to, who spoke English and wore a hat — Lazaro was drawn in, too. He was checked on his way across the grass to speak to Miss Gregory. The big, dreamy man cast him a word over his shoulder, and without a protest, without even an answer, Lazaro fell to. His reproachful eyes made complaint through the fresh dusk to Miss Gregory, but the music of his tongue was stilled. It was a beautiful thing to see: Miss Gregory felt that it
[pgbrk] 'WHAT IS THIS?’ DEMANDED MISS GREGORY"
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THE ADVENTURES OF MISS GREGORY
compensated her in some measure for months of Lazaro’s conversation.
“Do your ‘boys’ ever disobey you?” she asked Smith, when he came to tell her that all was ready for her.
“Disobey?” he repeated. "They never do anything else. Why?”
“ I thought you seemed to handle them rather easily,” she answered.
Smith shook his head. “You don’t know ’em,” he said. “ But you ought to see old Pirate Smith handling niggers. It’s like conjuring.”
In Mozambique the evening redeems the day. While Miss Gregory, in her tent, repaired the havoc of the march with much cold water and some hoarded eau de Cologne, the daily marvel achieved itself. There came a breath of wind out of the east, and forthwith the world came to life, like one that springs from sleep to full wakefulness. About the little valley, the bush was suddenly vocal. One heard movements, goings to and fro, the traffic of small beast life in the undergrowth; a parrot rent the peace with one raucous scream, and launched himself — a wedge of crude green — across the still air. Even the ground underfoot, baked and cracked with the oppression of the sun, became a theater of minute activities, and insects threaded among the stems of the dry grass. Night came striding up at the speed of the tropics; and when Miss Gregory, restored and refreshed, came forth from her tent, the sky was dark overhead and powdered with bold stars. A lantern on the folding table shed a steady light over the preparations for supper.
It was a curious meal, a meal of highly civilized foods which none the less were characteristic of the wilderness. There are few things eatable that can not be and are not put into tins and sold on the East Coast of Africa to those whose memories are fresher than their palates. “Silly” Smith produced for his guest pate de foie gras and lobster, as preliminaries to the eternal fresh venison one shoots for one’s self. He looked larger and more indeterminate than ever with the lantern shining on the twin moons of his spectacles; he was a sort of nightmare of an urbane host.
“By the way,” he asked, "I suppose you’re not up here for — er — your health? Charmed to see you, of course, in any case; but I just wondered.”
"I’m traveling,” explained Miss Gregory, sawing at the venison on her plate, “seeing the country; I’m writing a book.”
Silly Smith hastened to show comprehension. “ It was your askin’ about old Pirate Smith,” he explained. “That’s what made me think that perhaps—” He paused. “ Better shy that
meat away,” he advised gravely. “ No use spoiling your knife. I’ll chop you off a tender bit.” “No, thanks,” said Miss Gregory firmly. “No; I’ve only heard of Pirate Smith. They talk about him a good deal at Chinde. Rather a ruffian, I should imagine.”
Silly Smith stared. “A ruffian — poor old Pirate? Not a bit of it,” he said. "He’s not a gentleman, you know; comes of pretty poor stock an’ all that; but there’s no harm in him. Not”— he added thoughtfully—“not that you could call him an absolute saint, though.”
“I suppose not,” observed Miss Gregory. She had heard the name spoken at Chinde, and since. It was given as the name of a peculiarly bloodstained scoundrel. She examined her host with fresh attention, as a man of singularly tolerant standards.
“By the way,” she said, "since we’re asking questions, are you up here for your health?”
He smiled delightfully, almost gleefully. “Yes,” he answered confidentially. “Got away just in time, too. That was luck.”
It was impossible to connect him with law-breaking in the picturesque forms that the Coast affects; one could as easily have imagined a murderous baby. And yet, men do not take to the bush for matters of small moment. Miss Gregory gasped and gave it up.
"There is a man somewhere in Mozambique whom I had hoped to meet,” she said, abandoning her attempt to eat the venison. “His name is Jeal — John Jeal. He was the son of a tenant of ours in Kent. Have you heard of him?” Smith pondered. “Jeal,” he repeated. “That was his name in England, eh? How long has he been out?”
“It would be about ten years,” replied Miss Gregory. “He was a big youth ten years ago, with very red hair and a squint.”
“A squint, eh? I know somebody like that,” said Silly Smith; “but his name’s not Jeal. No, I’m afraid I don’t know your man. Do you want him particularly?”
“ I merely wanted to see him,” explained Miss Gregory. “One doesn’t like to lose sight of people entirely, and I promised old Jeal, his father, to see him if I could. They’re very good yeoman stock, the Jeals; tenants of ours, father and son, for two hundred years.”
"Ah,” said Smith, with interest. “And this one’s broken adrift? A pity, isn’t it?”
It seemed to make him thoughtful. He blundered back to the subject several times during the evening.
“Yeoman stock,” he would mumble reflectively, and turn his vacant eyes on Miss Gregory. “Your man seems like a throw-back, eh? Strain of devil in that family, somewhere.” He would
[pgbrk] “MISS GREGORY, SITTING ON HER BED, SURVEYED HER WITH FROWNING SPECULATION”
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shake his head regretfully, as if he, too, had experience of the small reliance to be placed in a carefully nurtured tenantry.
There was a thin moon in the sky when Miss Gregory bade him good night and prepared to go to her tent. He shook hands with her uncertainly and gave her the lantern for her use. The subject was still on his mind.
“ Jeal,” he said, when he had bidden her good night,—“Jeal. It’s a good name, too. Family like that might have mixed its blood as far back as the Crusaders. And it breaks out in this fellow. Pity, isn’t it?”
From her pillow in the darkness of her tent, before she fell asleep, Miss Gregory heard the low rumble of his meditations as he walked to and fro under the paring of moon, and “Pity, too,” reached her ears more than once. She was too tired for her regular nightly exercise with her diary and note-book, and postponed it till the morning. It was obvious that Silly Smith must go down in black and white in that copious record of Miss Gregory’s experiences; she saw precious humanity in him for the book that was to come. Africa has always its novelties; but even Africa is not fertile in men who combine the appearance of a university don with — so far as Miss Gregory could gather — the dark past of a villain of melodrama.
“Character,” murmured Miss Gregory to herself. “Character is what one wants in a book of travels.”
And it was upon that note she closed her eyes. She was awakened in the chill of early morning by the noise of voices near her tent — a babbling of Kaffirs, and now and again the soft, brief remarks of Smith. Also, there was another sound, which struck persistently through the mingled voices and lifted her sharply to her elbow — the sound of weeping. She listened acutely and made sure that she was not mistaken: some one was sobbing brokenly near at hand, with a quality of abandonment in the sound at which Miss Gregory exclaimed shortly and bundled herself out of bed. The dawn chill made her shiver, and she dressed in haste; she came out to the open with a long cloak shrouding her.
Smith and the Kaffirs were grouped near the fires, and the former turned round as she approached.
“Cold, isn’t it?” he remarked.
“Yes,” said Miss Gregory. “I thought — I’m sure I heard some one crying just now.” Silly Smith nodded. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “You see, a woman has just got into
camp and ”
Miss Gregory stepped round him as he stood before her, and the ring of Kaffirs opened out to
make way. They were gathered about one of God’s creatures, who crouched on the ground, with a face pressed into helpless hands, and uttered the slow, soul-shaking sobs of anguish she had heard in her tent. Miss Gregory halted in the middle of a stride and stared. It was a negro woman, foul with dust; there was blood here and there upon her body, from thrusting through thick bush. She half sat, half lay, in the center of that circle of men, and the noise of her sorrow never abated; the last protest of weakness and impotence was-eloquent in every line of her attitude. 11 was a slice of tragedy wedged suddenly into the scene.
“What is this?” demanded Miss Gregory.
Silly Smith mooned benevolently at her side.
“We can’t understand much of what she says,” he replied; “but her game’s pretty plain: she’s bolted.”
Miss Gregory stared at him, understanding nothing. “Bolted — from where?” she asked.
At the sound of her voice, the forlorn creature on the ground looked up. Her face — the pathetic mask of the negro, framed to be void and foolish — was alight with a sort of passion, hope, and servility joined together. She looked from the silent circle of staring black men to the one other woman.
Silly Smith waved an uncertain hand to the large east.
“She’s run from somewhere over there,” he said. “Got away in the night, you know. She doesn’t seem to have been chained or anything."
Miss Gregory’s lips parted. “A slave?” she asked, scarcely above a whisper.
“Well”—Smith seemed to shy at the plain word. “You can call it that, you know. There’s probably a train of ’em being marched northeast, and we don’t want trouble with ’em. Now, do we?”
“Trouble?” repeated Miss Gregory. The crouching woman’s face strained toward her. “What do you mean — trouble?”
The big, mild-looking man smiled down at his fingers.
“Oh, I meant trouble,’’ he answered. “If some one were to come after her, and found her here, you’d know what trouble stands for. I was just telling her to be a good girl and clear out.”
The woman shifted and crawled a foot nearer Miss Gregory’s feet. That lady stood for perhaps ten seconds in thought. In the background, the yellow Lazaro, shivering in the keen air, pursed his pliant lips disapprovingly. Silly Smith fidgeted and smiled and picked at his nails.
“Very well,” said Miss Gregory, at last. The hushed Kaffirs pricked their ears at the sound of
[pgbrk] “HE LAUGHED OUTRIGHT, AND ROSE FROM THE TABLE”
her voice; they knew the ring of decision. "If she’s fit to travel, I’ll take her with me at once.
And if not ”
Silly Smith dropped from his smiling reverie. “Ah! And if not?” he inquired.
"Perhaps, in that case, you’d, better move your camp beyond the reach of — er — trouble,” suggested Miss Gregory.
His eye met hers, and for the moment his gaze was steady and full of calculation. 11 was as if a
light had been flashed upon him and removed; that instant’s illumination showed a fell power under the man’s mask of manner. It lasted only while one might draw breath; then he smiled sheepishly again.
“Oh, I don’t think I want to shift, you know,” he answered.
Miss Gregory nodded; she was his equal in resolution. She turned from him and stooped to the woman. At the touch of her hands, the
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broken creature drew a short gasp; one could see how the revulsion of relief rent her. She closed her eyes and her head drooped; then, with her race’s instinct of obedience, she rose totter-ingly and went with Miss Gregory to her tent.
Silly Smith watched the canvas flap fall behind them, and spat meditatively. His wandering eye seemed to appeal to earth and heaven for an explanation; but, when it rested upon the Kaffirs, their staring group dispersed forthwith. The illumination that had enlightened Miss Gregory was an old story for them.
In her tent, Miss Gregory, eager to ease the trembling woman, found herself baffled by the fact that the poor creature had no needs beyond rest and security. She seemed young; her limbs were of that splendid black-brown which ripens under the equator; the muscles rippled in smooth waves under the sleek skin. It was a comely animal and little more. The sorrowful negro face, so formed for grotesque passions, fell back to vacancy and the exterior shape of content as the woman let herself sink on the rug which Miss Gregory spread for her. She would not eat; rest was the first of her requirements; and there was a flash of perfect teeth as she looked contentedly up to her protector and turned to sleep. In five minutes she was breathing like a child, and Miss Gregory, sitting on her bed, surveyed her with frowning speculation. There had been no gratitude, no tears, nothing fervent or moving; the runaway slave was in safe-keeping again, free from responsibility and the dangers of independence, and could now sleep in peace. “ It wasn’t from slavery she ran," reflected Miss Gregory. “Perhaps it was from the particular slaver.” And, while these reflections were fresh in her mind, she reached for her note-book and proceeded to perpetuate them.
The woman slept immovably, taking her fill of rest after a night of desperate flight. It was past noon when Miss Gregory stepped across her body and went out again. She had missed her breakfast, and had no intention of letting her host off the obligation of serving her with luncheon. No one who knew Miss Gregory would have expected it; and Silly Smith, who had known her for upward of twelve hours, made no mistake in this respect. The folding table was laid, with the foldingchair at one end and an upended whiskey-case at the other. Lazaro was placing knives and forks in position when she arrived. He showed the whitesof his eyes at her.
“Not go away to-day, Missis?” he asked quickly, in a whisper. Miss Gregory shook her head. “This Inglez very bad man,” sighed Lazaro. "Very bad, Missis; very rude. Better we go away.”
He stopped there, and resumed the placing of
the table equipment with jerking haste. Silly Smith had come out of his tent and was looking on agreeably.
"Young woman doing nicely?” he asked, with heavy politeness. “Yes? That’s good. But it’s a mistake, you know — a mistake. Like giving soup and blankets to another man’s tenantry. Bad form, bad form. You don’t mind me tellin’ you?”
Miss Gregory seated herself opposite to him. “Yes, I’ll take a little whiskey, please,” she said. “ I never was remarkable for good form, Mr. Smith, and soup and blankets are things of the past in my part of the world. When is the trouble you spoke of due to arrive?”
“Oh, any time,” said Smith; “any time. If you hear any shooting, you’ll know it’s here. The wonder to me is that it hasn’t started yet. They’ve had time enough to follow her up by now.”
Miss Gregory’s face set grimly. She had her moments of magnificence, and this was one of them. Smith peered at her short-sightedly through his spectacles, and there was no token of wayering in her.
“ I thought the slave trade had been put an end to,” was all she answered.
"It has,” said Smith. “There’s hardly any, really — not a dozen trips in a year. The markets are too far away, you see. You could count the fellows who go in for it on the fingers of one hand, and they’ve all got their own special customers.” He held up a plump freckled hand. "Let me see,” he said. “There’s King Jim — he’s one; there’s a Turk they call ‘Turkey
Gall'— he’s two; there’s old Pirate Smith ”
"The man you were talking of?” asked Miss Gregory.
“Yes; that’s the chap I mean.” He smiled as he spoke; Miss Gregory wondered why. “Well, that’s all I can think of at the moment, but there are a couple more. They’re a rough lot. I really think I’d turn that girl out, if I were you.” “Oh, no,” said Miss Gregory. “Oh, dear me, no. She’s not going to be turned out. Please let that be quite clear. I need to be able to look my countrymen in the face; and that girl goes with me.”
He laughed outright, and rose from the table. “Sure?” he asked.
“Quite sure,” she replied.
“ Right,” he said, and shouted to Lazaro. He "had still his studious droop, his soft and supple appearance, but there was a new briskness in him which warned Miss Gregory. She rose to her feet as Lazaro came running.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” smiled Smith to her; “but you must let me have my way in this.”
[pgbrk] “SILLY SMITH WRITHED IN RESPONSE TO A SICKENING KICK"
He spoke shortly to Lazaro in the native tongue, pointing at Miss Gregory, and then strode over the grass toward her tent. At the wave of his hand, his Kaffirs flocked after him. Miss Gregory made to go, too; but Lazaro, dancing in front of her in a nervous agony, stopped her with outspread arms.
“Missis, Missis!” he cried beseechingly. “Please — please to stop still. Meester Seelv
Smith say I mus’ make you. Please — please to stop still!”
“Let me pass at once,” commanded Miss Gregory.
Smith was at her tent door, and she pushed Lazaro from her. But he, with a last appeal to her to “please stop still,” laid hold of her jacket and hauled her back. She turned on him, flaming; but he only shut his terrified eyes and hung
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on desperately. Miss Gregory struggled, but it was no use: Lazaro was more afraid of Smith than of anything else in the world; he obeyed his orders and held her back.
She ceased to struggle; the purposelessness of it disgusted her.
“Very well, Lazaro,” she said. “We will have a reckoning by and by; but now I will sit down.” He was only too glad to let her. She had seen Smith enter her tent with a couple of Kaffirs, and had heard the woman’s short cry as they roused her. She turned to take her chair again, but stood rooted.
At the moment of her turning there had stepped forth from the fringe of the bush a tall white man bearing a rifle in the crook of his arm, and she stood now face to face with him. “White man” is the term, but this man was red — red and ardent, from the flame-colored hair under his hat to the great, cruel hands of him — a man tinted like fire. He was no less startled than she; he stared at her out of hard, narrow eyes that squinted evilly. He was big and limber and dangerous, potent and threatening in every aspect. Miss Gregory took a quick step toward him.
“Why, Jeal!” she cried. “Don’t you know me, Jeal? Don’t you know me — Miss Gregory — from the Hall?”
The man gave ground with a motion like a stagger, and the blankness of mere amaze swept over his face.
“Miss Gregory,” he repeated. “Well, if this
ain’t ” He paused, still gaping, and put a
hand to his hat. “Well, miss,” he said in a hard, matter-of-fact voice, "if this don’t beat cock-fightin’l”
Miss Gregory put a hand on his arm. “Jeal,” she said, “look.”
Across the parched grass, Smith was coming forth from her tent, thrusting the Kaffir girl before him by the nape of the neck. Jeal looked with all his little eyes.
“That’s my tent, Jeal,” said Miss Gregory urgently, “and he’s taking that woman to drive her into the bush. Don’t let him, Jeal.” “Eh?” Jeal needed a second or so to understand. “Your tent, Miss? Right.”
It was as if she had touched the button that let loose the waiting forces of a machine. Jeal discharged himself from under her hands like some sentient projectile, brushing past Lazaro with an impetus that sent that faithful servant spinning.
Miss Gregory sat down deliberately. She had good nerves, but the last few minutes had been full of stress, and it was as a confused and blurred picture that she saw Jeal’s arrival in the midst of Smith’s grouping, the scattering force of his charge, the Kaffirs spouting from his im-
pact as water spouts when a stone is thrown into a pool, the whirl of his blows, and the epic fall of Silly Smith.
“Jeal’s my name,” floated across to her, in the tones of fury. “Call me ‘Pirate’ again if you dare!” And the form of Silly Smith writhed in response to a sickening kick. “I’ll ‘Pirate’ you, you dog!”
Presently Miss Gregory, with her composure quite restored, sauntered across the grass. Jeal eyed her sheepishly, at an atrocious angle; Silly Smith sat up and blinked.
“Thank you, Jeal,” she said. “That was just what I wanted. But I suppose I ought to be moving now. Mr. Smith will be glad to see the last of us.”
Smith, seated on the ground, rubbed himself thoughtfully.
“Oh, don’t think that,” he begged, settling his spectacles on his nose. His vague, benevolent smile returned. “Now, if only old Turkey Gall was to turn up, we could make up a hand at bridge.”
Jeal scowled and his foot drew back. .Silly Smith, still smiling, edged, sitting, out of range.
“Good old soup and blankets,” he murmured. "The tenants are grateful, bless ’em!”
Miss Gregory turned to Jeal. “What you want, Jeal, is a holiday,” she said. “You ought to go back to Kent for a year. Do you no end of good. Your father’s getting old.”
“Is he, Miss?” Jeal squinted more than ever in his embarrassment. “I ’ope the Squire’s keeping ’is ’ealth, Miss?”
“My brother? Yes, thanks. Now, there’s just one thing more I want you to do for me, and then we’ll pack up and move.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Jeal. “Anything you like.” Miss Gregory smiled graciously, and beckoned to Lazaro. He came at top speed, though manifestly anxious.
“Lazaro,” said his mistress, "I’m not pleased with you. Now go with this gentleman and get a good beating, while the Kaffirs break camp.” “Come on, Lazarus,” said Jeal genially. And Lazaro went. A beating was bad,— as it proved,— but it was better than disobeying the man who squinted.
Silly Smith, benevolent and dreamy, bade Miss Gregory good-by at theedgeof the clearing.
“Good luck,” he said, with his big pink face wavering above her. “Wonderful how the old feudal spirit crops up, isn’t it? Breed ’em carefully for three hundred years, give ’em tracts for their morals and pills for their digestion, and old Pirate Sm—Jeal, I mean — a man like Jeal is the result. Pity, isn’t it? Good-by.” He waved his hand to the scowling Jeal, and stood smiling till the bush closed behind them.
[pgbrk] GOLDWIN SMITH’S REMINISCENCES
in
RECOLLECTIONS OF GREAT ENGLISHMEN
PARTLY by my connection with journalism, partly by my Eton and social connections, I was led to intimacy with some public men, with the Peelite circle at first, and afterwards with Bright, Cobden, and the Manchester school. Peel himself was always the object of my political allegiance. I saw in him a statesman, in his later days at all events, above party, who sought and studied with singleness of heart the good of the whole nation; and, though I had less respect for some venerable institutions than he had, I recognised his wisdom in preferring administrative reform, which he steadfastly pursued, to organic change. Beyond doubt, he had the confidence not only of the majority but of the most intelligent and respectable part of the nation. His fall before an unprincipled coalition of Protectionist Tories, office-seeking Whigs, English Radicals, and Irish enemies of the Union had increased my feeling in his favor.
Of Peel I saw nothing. When I went to London he had fallen from office — not from power: he was still at the head of the House of Commons and of the country. Greville says truly that he would have been elected Prime Minister by an overwhelming majority. Soon afterwards he was killed by a fall from his horse. He was a good shot, but a bad horseman, having a loose seat. Care was supposed to be taken in buying horses for him on that account; yet the horse that killed him had been offered for sale to my father and other fox-hunters in our neighbourhood, and had been rejected for its trick of bucking and kicking. Our neighbour at Mortimer, Sir Paul Hunter, met Peel riding in the park, recognised his horse, actually turned to warn him, but, fearing to intrude, abstained. The horse probably played its usual trick — threw Peel over its head; and he, falling with the reins in his hand, pulled down the horse upon him. The horse with his knee broke the rider’s rib, drove it into his lungs, and thus, like the mole whose mole-hill killed William III., played a part in history.
Peel’s Quarrel with Lord George Bentinck
It was currently reported, and the belief has found a place in Froude’s Biography of Disraeli, that Peel wanted to send Disraeli a challenge for something said by him in the Corn Law debates. Peel did want to send a challenge, and for something said in the Corn Law debates; but it was not to Disraeli — it was to Lord George Bentinck. The Duke of Newcastle, who was asked by Peel to carry the challenge, told me the story.
We were talking about our contemporaries at Eton and Oxford. This led to mention of Sidney Herbert and a reference to a false charge against Peel of having abused Sidney Herbert’s confidence in him. The Duke said that no one would be less likely to be guilty of such a thing than Peel, who was so sensitive about his relation to his friends that, for aspersing it, he had wanted to send a challenge to Lord George Bentinck. The Duke proceeded to say that after the debate, when the House was up, Peel had asked him to wait while he wrote the customary letter to the Queen, then took his arm and walked with him towards his own house in Hyde Park Gardens, saying by the way that Bentinck’s language had been an aspersion on his honour and the Duke must carry a challenge. The Duke remonstrated. Peel insisted. They walked to and fro till workmen began to pass on their way to work. Peel was then persuaded to go to bed, the Duke promising speedily to return. Returning, the Duke found Peel still resolved to send the challenge; but at length consideration for what the Duke pleaded would be the feelings of the Queen, in case of serious consequences, prevailed.
Having heard the story, I naturally asked how it was that Peel felt so much a blow of Lord George Bentinck’s bludgeon, when he showed such indifference to Disraeli’s poniard, of which he once only stooped to take cursory notice. The Duke’s answer was that, calling at Peel’s house on his way to the House of Commons, he
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had been shown by Peel, who took it from his bag, a letter from Disraeli asking place. That he had ever asked Peel for place Disraeli in the House of Commons denied. The letter which proves that he lied is now published by Mr. Charles Parker, and most abject it is.
The Duke gave me the fact with full liberty to use it. I took a note of it from his lips. But I was also cognisant of it in another way, Peel’s correspondence having been opened to me by his literary executors for the purpose of a projected Life. My inspection of the correspondence was confidential, and I felt bound not to embarrass the literary executors, especially when Peel had himself shown so much delicacy on the subject. It is not unlikely that the letter was before him in Peel’s bag when Disraeli’s falsehood was told. Thus the fact remained unknown until, after a long delay caused by various accidents, Peel’s correspondence saw the light. To me, however, it was well known what the man was who was making his gambling-table of my country. I do not feel sure that I did right in keeping the secret. Divulged, it might have averted mischief; but Peel had kept it.
There was one slip in the Duke’s narrative. He said that if he would not take the challenge Peel threatened to apply to Lord Hardinge. Hardinge was then in India. But I found that he had acted for Peel in an affair with a Colonel Mitchell, and to this, no doubt, Peel referred. There was always fire under Peel’s snow, and he was of the old school of honour.
Disraeli—“the Man Who Made a Gaming-table of His Country’’
Disraeli had, in reality, no great difficulties to overcome. He was a Jew by descent, but a baptised Christian. He was married to a rich wife. He started in public life as an adventurer, angling for a seat in Parliament by baits thrown out to both parties, and going through a series of transformations in the course of which he had a slanging match with O’Connell, who called him “the lineal representative of the impenitent thief.” In his “Letters of Runnymede” he fawns fulsomely on Peel and scurrilously abuses the Whigs.
One part of his Parliamentary strategy was the concoction of little pointed sayings about the personal peculiarities of his opponents; as when he said of Horsman that he was a “superior person, and alluded to Hope’s “Batavian grace. Lord Salisbury was “a master of gibes, flouts, and jeers.” People were weakly afraid of drawing these shafts of ridicule upon themselves. When, however, Disraeli tried to kill
Gladstone by saying that he was a “sophistical rhetorician intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity,” the ridicule turned on himself.
Disraeli’s strong point as a speaker was personal attack, apart from which he was apt to be heavy. I heard him at the time of the Mutiny make a highly laboured speech on the Indian question, which evidently wearied and partly cleared the House. Even as a novelist he indulges in personal attack, though when he comes to deal with Lord Hertford his own sycophancy betrays itself and he shows a strong contrast to the free hand of Thackeray. His “Letters of Runnymede” are an extravagant imitation of Junius. He says to Russell, who had given him no provocation:
A miniature Mokanna, you are now exhaling upon the constitution of your country, which you once eulogised, and its great fortunes, of which you once were proud, all that long-hoarded venom and all those distempered humours that have for years accumulated in your petty heart and tainted the current of your mortified life.
Disraeli’s Extravagant Flattery of Queen Victoria
He avowed that he was a flatterer, having, as he said, found the practice useful. To the Queen he “laid it on with a trowel,” and with most satisfactoryeffect. He once opened a sitting of the Privy Council with an extravagant compliment to her as an authoress. He was overheard pandering to her hatred of Garibaldi, and, when she said that she had been told the same things before, said: “Then it must be true, for no one would tellyour Majesty anvthingbut the truth.”
Peel could not give Disraeli place, but his reply to him was perfectly courteous, and it seems that he encouraged him at his rather unfortunate debut in the House of Commons by a kindly cheer. Disraeli presently commenced a series of laboured attacks on Peel. His object at this time was blackmailing, for he protested against being ruled out of the party, and afterwards asked Graham, Peel’s colleague, for patronage. The split between Peel and the Protectionists opened a grander game. That he had lampooned the Corn Law squires in “Popanilla” did not prevent his flinging himself into their arms and glutting at once his revenge and his ambition by a series of most intensely venomous attacks on the great convert to free trade.
He was fortunate in the split between Peel and his Protectionists. He was fortunate in finding such a tool as Bentinck, with his sporting reputation, his stolidity and violence, wherewith to work upon the angry squires. He
[pgbrk] Courtesy of Funk Wagnails
DISRAELI IN 1852
From a Painting by Sir Francis Grant, P. R. A.
was fortunate in finding a patron like Lord Derby, all-powerful with the Tory and Protectionist party, and at the same time not unjustly nicknamed “the Jockey,” with a good deal of the turfite in his character, and, though supposed to be a paragon of high principle, not too scrupulous to take a leap in the dark with the highest interests of the nation, if thereby he could dish the Whigs, of whom, at the time of the Reform Bill, he had been about the most violent. He was doubly fortunate in the sudden death of Bentinck, who was ferociously sincere and would never have consented to the second
part of his friend’s game, jettison of Protection. He was fortunate, again, in having on the throne no longer Prince Albert, who abhorred him, but Prince Albert’s widow, highly receptive of the flattery which, to use what was reported as his own expression, he laid on with a trowel.
His cleverness nobody denies. It was shown by leading the gentlemen of England out of the path of honour. But his whole course was one of manoeuvring with a selfish aim. Long as was his career, not one good measure of importance bears his name. Nor in his speeches is there anything high or noble, anything that can be
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quoted for its sentiment, anything that shows genius, unless it be the genius of the literary stabber. His elaborate oration on India at the time of the Mutiny, which I heard, was very heavy, and thinned the House. His vindictiveness was truly Oriental. In his Life of Lord George Bentinck he still gloats over the recollection of Peel rising “confused and suffering” from his attacks, as he fancied, though it was really pain at the rupture of the tie with party and friends, about which Peel’s feeling was intense. The passage is interesting, read in comparison with Peel’s scrupulous delicacy in respecting the confidential letter suing for place.
Disraeli Slanders Go/dwin Smith in His Novel “Lothair”
It may have been partly by suspicion of my possession of an unpleasant secret that Disraeli was moved to follow me across the Atlantic and try, as he did in “Lothair,” to brand me as “a social sycophant.” His knowledge of my social character was not great, for I had only once met him in society. His allusion to the “Oxford professor” who was going to the United States was as trans-parent as if he had used my name. Had I been in England, where my character was known, I should have let the attack pass; but I was in a strange country, where, made by a man of note, the attack was likely to tell. I therefore gave Disraeli the lie, and neither he nor any of his organs ever ventured to repeat the calumny.
Surely nothing can be more dastardly than an attack on character under cover of a pseudonym.
However false and malicious the slander may be,
Courtesy of Funk and Wagnails
FROM A WATER COLOR OF DISRAELI BY A. E. CHALON
the person attacked cannot repel it without seeming to recognise its aptitude.
In “Popanilla” will be found clear proof that Disraeli was not a Protectionist, but a satirist of Protection. He took to Protection for the purpose of his conspiracy against Peel, with the intention of throwing it over, as he did, when his object had been gained. This programme he could not have carried out if Lord George Bentinck had lived, instead of being removed, as he was, just at the right moment, by a sudden death. Bentinck was an honest fanatic, and would never have allowed Disraeli to turn him round for the purpose of the game. In Bentinck, who had the character and confidence of the land-owning gentry, which Disraeli lacked, was found the exact tool required by Disraeli. The charge against Peel of having “murdered” Canning, which Disraeli in his Life of Bentinck has carefully credited to his “friend,” was Disraeli’s own invention and infused by him into his dupe. Bentinck had been Canning’s private secretary. It was not likely that he would have followed Peel all those years if he had believed him to be the betrayer of Canning, and had he been himself devoted to Canning, as Disraeli
pretends, though Greville scouts the idea.
At the time when Peel declared for free trade, dire distress prevailed. Tens of thousands of workingmen were out of employment. Grass was being boiled for food. Wedding-rings were being pawned by the hundred. In Ireland a terrible famine impended. Yet this Semite, who had shown that he saw and ridiculed the fallacy of Protection, as he continued when Protectionism had served his turn to do, could for his own revenge and
advancement
coolly play the
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Protectionist game.
The Conservatives who had stuck to Peel through the Corn Law conflict, and though few in number were the brains of the party, included Graham, Lord Aberdeen, Gladstone, the Duke of Newcastle,
Dalhousie, Card-well, Sidney Herbert, and Canning. Having hovered for a time between the two camps, they ultimately coalesced and finally fused with the Liberals.
The six younger members of the group had been not only taken into office but personally trained by Peel, who was master of all departments and was unique in devices to provide the country with a succession of statesmen.
My chief political friends of the group were the Duke of Newcastle and Edward Cardwell. The Duke had been, like me, though somewhat before me, in Coleridge’s house at Eton, which I have said was a bond.
With Newcastle and Cardwell I was very intimate, passing much time and meeting interesting people in the houses of both of them. Clumber, the Duke’s abode, was in itself very interesting as a great historic house still full of historic treasures, gifts, some of them gifts of Royalty to statesmen of old. Among these was a superb pair of Sevres vases, the gift of the King of France. They had been lent to an exhibition, where one of them was swept in a roll of cotton off a packing-table and smashed to pieces, but had been very skilfully put together again. The Duke was trying to redeem the estate encumbered by the extravagance of his predecessors, one of whom had indulged his pride by buying and tearing down a vast and sumptuous mansion in the neighbourhood, that Clumber might have no rival. Rut saving must
Courtesy of Funk and Wagnalts
A PORTRAIT OF DISRAELI A FEW YEARS LATER
have been difficult when such a household as I saw in the domes-tic chapel at Clumber was to be maintained. These households must have eaten deeply into the revenues of the landed aristocracy of England.
The present King,* then Prince of Wales, was at Clumber. In his honour, a banquet was given in the state dining-room, with the ancestral dessert service of gold plate, which did not seem to me very dazzling
in its brilliancy.
The mayors of neighbouring towns were invited. Ice to cool wine had just come into fashion. One of the mayors took it for an entree, got it on his plate,
first tried to cut it, then carried a lump of it
to his mouth with a spoon. A well-trained footman, seeing the situation, whipped away the ice, but the Mayor’s confidence was shaken for the rest of the feast.
Gladstone Described by His Friend Lord Selborne as ‘ ‘ Morally Insane ’ ’
My memories of Gladstone, with whom I was also very intimate, I will not dwell upon here — his almost miraculous powers of work and speech, his mastery of the art of framing great measures and carrying them through Parliament, his triumphs as a financier, his general though less unchequered merits as a statesman, his virtues, graces of character, and piety as a man. Nor need I touch upon his weaker points—his liability to self-deception and casuistry, or the violent impulsiveness and combativeness which hurried him at last into his Irish policy and made his great friend and admirer, Lord Selborne, de-
* King Edward VII. was living when this was written.
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scribe him, in a letter to me, as ‘‘morally insane.”
Even in his intellect there was a strange mixture of weakness with strength. It is difficult to believe that the same man can have made the budget speeches and written as Gladstone, in the full light of research and science, wrote about theology and Homer. His fancy, heated with political fray, grew wild enough to compare the abolition of the exclusionist Parliament of Ireland to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In the earlier part of his career Gladstone, I suspect, was unconsciously controlled by the gentle influence of friends such as Cardwell and Newcastle, both of whom he lost. Of Mr. Morley’s Life the first two volumes are historical as well as admirably written; this can hardly be said of the last.
It does credit to Peel’s largeness of mind that he should have recognised and promoted high ability in a character so different from his own. Gladstone was loyal to Peel, but I do not think he ever loved him. Peel was an orthodox Protestant and Erastian, while Gladstone was a High-Churchman, with Ritualists for his special friends, and hankering for reunion with Rome. After Peel’s death, and when Protection, as Disraeli said, was “dead and damned,” Gladstone would have taken the Conservative leadership if Disraeli had not stood in the way. Disraeli professed his willingness to go, but did not go.
Gladstone’s Championship of the Oppressed
That for which I could never cease to be grateful to Gladstone was his noble advocacy of the cause of the oppressed; of the cause of the I talians oppressed bv Austria and the Bourbons; of the cause of the Christians oppressed by the Turks. Here, at all events, he was perfectly single-hearted and sincere. His sympathy was with everybody who was struggling to be free. This it was mainly, I believe, which led him, in the American Warof Secession, to lean to the side of the South, and, in a not very happy moment, to proclaim that Jefferson Davis had made the South a nation. His course gave offence to strong Liberals. It was probably with a view to regaining their good opinion that he wrote one of them a letter saying that if the South were separated from the North he would willingly see Canada annexed to the North. The avowal would not have satisfied those who desired the extinction of the slave power, while it might have embarrassed the writer if he had ever been called upon again as Minister to deal with Colonial questions. It was therefore destroyed.
It may safely be said that it was not without
serious misgiving that Gladstone went into the Crimean War. This probably was the real source of his secession from Palmerston’s Government. It happened that when he was meditating that step I was with him, one morning, on business. Our business done, he went on to talk to me, or to himself, about the war in a way that betrayed his intention. He said that Russia had offered us the terms originally demanded, and that if the Trojans would have given back Helen and her possessions, the Greeks would have raised the siege of Troy. It did not occur to him that the terms originally demanded might not satisfy after the expenditure of so much blood, or that when he had roused the pugnacity of the bulldog it might be difficult to call him off.
Criticisms of Gladstone’s Public Character
I can hardly attempt here fully to discuss his character — his public character, of course, I mean; for his private character, it need not be said, was admirable in every way. Labouchere said that he did not object to Gladstone’s having aces up his sleeve, but he did object to his thinking that the Almighty had put them there. Jowett, who always withheld his confidence, said something much more severe. Simplicity certainly was not Gladstone’s ordinary characteristic, nor could it be denied that he had a singular power of self-deception. It was the general impression that he would have taken the Conservative leadership if Disraeli had been out of the way. Having become the Liberal leader, he threw himself into his part with all the impetuosity of his nature — persuading himself, perhaps, that he had long been a Liberal, as he persuaded himself that he had long been inclined to Home Rule. It cannot be denied that his great Liberal moves, Disestablishment and Home Rule, coincided, though he might not be conscious of the coincidence, with the exigencies of his struggle for power. It has now been pretty well proved that his sudden dissolution of Parliament in 1874 without consulting his colleagues, which appeared so unaccountable and for a time wrecked his party, was his mode of escape from a personal dilemma in which he had involved himself by taking the salaried office of Chancellor of the Exchequer without going to his constituents for reelection. I was at Manchester when the dissolution was announced, and I remember the astonishment and consternation which it caused.
Archbishop Tait told me that what he most feared in Gladstone was his levity. This may seem paradoxical; yet I believe the Archbishop was right. That Gladstone’s moral aspirations
[pgbrk] Copyright by Walker and Cockerell
SIR ROBERT PEEL
were high cannot be doubted. It is more doubtful whether his sense of responsibility was very strong. At a dinner-party at which I was present, he came up late from the House. He was in the best of spirits and seemed to have nothing on his mind. At last he spoke of the motion of which he had just given notice in the House. The motion, as afterwards appeared, was one which would have brought the two Houses into collision with each other, and the notice of
which had been given amidst extreme excitement. When his love of power and his pugnacity were excited, it is questionable whether he thought much of anything but victory.
Gladstone Not a Statesman of the Highest Class
That Gladstone was a statesman of the very highest class I should find it difficult to believe.
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His moves always seemed to be impulses rather than parts of a settled plan. In his speeches on the extension of the franchise he failed to indicate the polity which he expected to produce, and talked fallacious commonplace about uniting the whole people about their ancient throen. If he attacked the Lords, it was not that he had deliberately made up his mind in favour of a change, but that they came in his way at the moment; and the constitutional doctrines which he put forward on that occasion were the angry fabrication of the hour. His proposal to give Ireland a Parliament of her own, and at the same time a representation in the United Parliament which would have enabled her to hold the balance of parties and practically to dominate there, can hardly be mentioned with calmness.
As a speaker he was in the highest degree effective, but the effect was produced by his command of the subject, by the ascendency of his character, by the impressiveness of his manner and an admirable voice, rather than by any grace or force of language. He was at his best,
I think, in expounding a great measure and steering it through the House. He had, as was said before, marred the freshness of his style by overmuch speaking in debating clubs early in life. His prolixity, which Disraeli called his verbosity, was not felt by the hearers of his speeches, who were rather struck by his command of perfectly correct language; but it is greatly felt by his readers.
“We are much better off than you are for a leader,” said a Conservative Member of Parliament to a Liberal. “Ours is only an unprincipled scoundrel; yours is a dangerous lunatic.”
Lady Russell’s Answer to the Report of Gladstone’s Insanity
Tories were always saying, and half believed, that Gladstone was literally insane, and stories of his insanity were current. One was that he had gone to a toy-shop and ordered its whole contents to be sent to his house. I asked Lady Russell whether there could be any foundation for this report. Her answer was: “I begin to think there must be, for I have heard it now every session for several years.”
If Gladstone had not, like Brougham, the vanity of versatility, he had the propensity in large measure. It is true that his amazing powers of acquisition enabled him, in a way, to deal with many subjects. But his writings, enormously voluminous and various, are of little value. His controversy with Huxley about Genesis displayed his weakness. His argument,
in effect, was that the Creator, though unscientific, had come remarkably near the truth about his own work and had all but hit upon the nebular hypothesis. In his Homeric and mythological lucubrations there are some things that are interesting, but there are others so fantastic that their publication shakes one’s confidence in the general wisdom of the man. He once propounded to me a Homeric theory which he was going to give to the world, founded on a philological discovery which he supposed himself to have made. I felt sure that the discovery was an illusion, and tried to convince him of this, without effect. Just then his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttleton, who was a first-rate classical scholar, came into the room. He evidently saw the matter as I did, yet he allowed himself to be half talked over, and I suppose the fancy went into print. Before the publication, Gladstone gave a Homeric dinner to half a dozen scholars, including Milman and Cornewall Lewis. The ostensible object of our meeting was to discuss Gladstone’s theories. But of discussion there was very little. I suspect it was not easy for adverse truths to find access to the Great Man. It was very difficult to convince him by argument, but I suspect he was more open to infusion.
There was nothing fine or indicative of high intellect in his face except the fire of the eye. The whole frame bespoke nervous energy. Gladstone was a first-rate sleeper. At the time when he was being fiercely attacked for his secession from Palmerston’s Government, I was told by a common friend whom I met one evening that he was in a state of extreme excitement. I happened, next morning to have business with him.
He went out of the room to fetch a letter, leaving me with Mrs. Gladstone, to whom I made some remark on the trying nature of his situation. She answered that her husband came home from the most exciting of the scenes, laid his head upon his pillow, and slept like a child; that if ever he had a bad night he was good for nothing the next day, but that this very rarely happened.
Greville’s “Journal” has revived the memory of the Peelites; and an article appeared the other day, by the survivor and the most renowned of the group, in which, as a set of men taking their own course and remaining outside the regular parties, they were designated as "a public nuisance.” One cannot help surmising that they incurred this severe judgment in some measure by their similarity to a set of public men who at the present time are so misguided as to refuse at the call of a party leader to say what they think false and to do what they
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think wrong. It is the car of the Caucus Juggernaut rolling backwards over political history.
The Men of Peel’s Party
Though I never was in public life, I saw a good deal of some of the Peelites, and from them heard about the rest more than, after the lapse of many years, I can remember. The acquaintance of the Duke of Newcastle I made through our common tutor at Eton, Edward Coleridge, who died the other day, and of whom, amidst the flood of biography, I wonder no memoir has appeared. Coleridge was the Arnold of Eton. He was a very Eton Arnold, it is true; and, as he was not head master, but only an assistant, his sphere was rather his own pupil-room than the school. But in that sphere, and in his own way, he did for the very dry bones of education at Eton what Arnold did at Rugby. “My Tutor” was greatly beloved, as he deserved to be, by all his pupils, and the connection always remained a bond. It drew together even those who, like the Duke and myself, had not been contemporaries at Eton.
Of Sidney Herbert I did not see so much. He was the model of a high-bred English gentleman in public life. To the elevation of his character, fully as much as to his powers of mind, he owed his high position, his designation as a Prime Minister that was to be, and the tears shed over his early grave. He had the advantage of historic rank and of wealth associated with the poetry of Wilton. Of aristocracy he was the very flower. The special qualities of leadership he can hardly be said to have shown, and, though he administered the War Office well, I should not suppose that his power of work rivalled that which was possessed by some of his associates. He had, however, beneath a quiet bearing and a slight appearance of aristocratic listlessness, plenty of courage and not a little force of character. Disraeli, who hated him as Peel’s "gentleman,” attacked him bitterly^, and found that he had better have let him alone. “If a man wishes to see humiliation, let him look there,” said Sidney Herbert, pointing at Disraeli (who had thrown over Protection) with his finger, beneath which even Disraeli cowered. Sidney Herbert was a High-Churchman, and Wilton Church shows that the aesthetic element of the school was strong in him. Mr. Gladstone, as all the world knows, was a High-Churchman also; so, in a less degree, was the Duke of Newcastle; and the combination of political Liberalism with Ritualism may be said to have had its origin in the secession of the Peelites from the Tory party.
“Clemency Canning’’ and the Sepoy Mutiny
Of Lord Canning I saw something in connection with the Oxford University Reform Bill, with which he was charged in the House of Lords, and for the debate on which I was set to cram him. He seemed to me, I confess, slow of apprehension and somewhat puzzle-headed. It was believed that he was sent to India to get him out of the Cabinet, where he gave trouble by his opinionativcness; and everybody shuddered, when the Mutiny broke out, at the thought that India was in his hands. I was dining with Sir Charles Trevelyan, who had been head of a college in India, and a chairman of the East India Company was one of the guests, when news arrived of the capture of Delhi by the Sepoy mutineers. Great was the consternation. It was increased by mistrust of Lord Canning, then Governor-General.
These misgivings he nobly belied. He met the tremendous peril well, and saved the character of the country by keeping control over the bloodthirsty frenzy of the dominant race, thereby earning for himself the epithet, meant as opprobrious, but really glorious, of “Clemency Canning.” What the frenzy in India was, and into what jeopardy it brought the honour of the Imperial country, may be learned from the letters of the good Lord Elgin and from those of Russell to the Times. One commander proposed impalement. In England also frenzy reigned, and horrible were the yellings of literary eunuchs displaying their virility bv cries for blood. Philanthropy itself, in the person of Lord Shaftesbury, was carried away so far as to countenance stories of the mutilation of Englishmen by the rebels, which, after bringing on a storm of vengeful fury, proved unfounded. We had a terrible lesson on the moral perils of the Empire.
Tutoring the Late King Edward, When He Was Prince of Wales
As professor of history at Oxford I had for a pupil the present King, then Prince of Wales.* He was a comely youth, like his mother in face, and with a slight German accent, showing, as he had not been in Germany, that German was spoken in his domestic circle. His manner was very engaging and he was thoroughly good-natured. I am sure I bored him when I went to examine him in history. A malicious story was current about Prince Albert’s death. It was said to have been caused by sleeping in an unaired bed when he had gone down suddenly to
*This refers, of course, to His late Majesty, King Edward VII.
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Cambridge, where his son then was, to break off a bad engagement. I can say positively that the story was untrue. I was invited to go with the Prince’s party to Canada, but could not leave my Chair. The notion that I wanted anything in Canada was preposterous. I was happily and perfectly settled for life. The King has always shown a kindly remembrance of his old preceptor.
My excellent friend Dr. Acland,* the professor of medicine, in whose house many a pleasant evening was passed, went with the Prince to Canada. He was very affable, and not very guarded. At a ball at Quebec he was
♦Afterwards Sir Henry Wentworth Acland—1815-1900.
accosted by a stranger of gentlemanly manner, who drew him into conversation about the Prince. He said that the Prince was extremely amiable, but had not the brains of his brother; the Duke of Edinburgh. When the stranger went away, some one asked Acland whether he knew to whom he had been talking. Acland said that he did not. “That was the correspondent of the New York Herald." A day or two afterwards the Prince came down to breakfast flourishing in his hand a copy of the New York Herald and saying, “Acland, I see that you think I am very amiable, but I have not the brains of my brother Edinburgh.”
TWO POEMS
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
YOUTH AND AGE
THOUGH leaves are many, the root is one: Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
TO A CERTAIN COUNTRY HOUSE IN TIME OF CHANGE
HOW should the world be luckier if this house Where passion and precision have been one Time out of mind became too ruinous To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun And the sweet laughing eagle thoughts that grow Where wings have memory of wings and all That comes of the best knit to the best; although Mean roof-trees were the sturdier for its fall,
How should their luck run high enough to reach The gifts that govern men, and after these To gradual Time’s last gift a written speech Wrought of high laughter, loveliness, and ease.
[pgbrk] The Case of
Richard Meynell
a Serioal Novel
Mrs. Humphry Ward
A FOREWORD
MAY I ask those of my American readers who are not intimately acquainted with the conditions of English rural and religious life to remember that the dominant factor in it — the factor on which the story of Richard Meynell depends — is the existence of the State Church, of the great ecclesiastical corporation, the direct heir of the pre-Reformation church, which owns the cathedrals and the parish churches, which by right of law speaks for the nation on all national occasions, which crowns and marries and buries the Kings of England, and, through her bishops in the House of Lords, exercises a constant and important influence on the lawmaking of the country? This Church possesses half the elementary schools, and is the legal religion of the great public schools which shape the ruling upper class. She is surrounded with the prestige of centuries, and it is probable that in many directions she was never so active or so well served by her members as she is at present.
At the same time, there are great forces of change ahead. Outside the Anglican Church stands quite half the nation, gathered in the various non-conformist bodies—Wesleyan, Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, and so on. Between them and the Church exists a perpetual warfare, partly of opinion, partly of social difference and jealousy. In every village and small town this warfare exists. The nonconformist desires to deprive the Church of her worldly and political privileges; the church-
man talks of the sin of schism, or draws up schemes of reunion which drop still-born. Meanwhile, alike in the Church, in nonconformity, and in the neutral world which owes formal allegiance to neither, vast movements of thought have developed in the last hundred years, years as pregnant with the germs of new life as the wonderful hundred years that followed the birth of Christ. Whether the old bottles can be adjusted to the new wine, whether further division or a new Christian unity is to emerge from the strife of tongues, whether the ideas of modernism, rife in all forms of Christianity, can be accommodated to the ancient practices and given a share in the great material possessions of a State Church; how individual lives are affected in the passionate struggle of spiritual faiths and practical interests involved in such an attempt; how conscience may be enriched bv its success or sterilized by its failure; how the fight itself, ably waged, may strengthen the spiritual elements, the power of living and suffering in men and women — it is with such themes that this story attempts to deal. Twenty-two years ago I tried a similar subject in “Robert Elsrtiere.” Since then the movement of ideas in religion and philosophy has been increasingly rapid and fruitful. I am deeply conscious how little I may be able to express it. But those who twenty years ago welcomed the earlier book — and how can I ever forget its reception in America! — may perhaps be drawn once again to some of the old themes in their new dress.
Mary A. Ward.
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I
HULLO, Preston! don’t trouble to go in.”
The postman, just guiding his bicycle into the rectory drive, --turned at the summons and dis-
mounted. The Rector approached him from the road, and the postman, diving into his letter-bag and into the box of his bicycle, brought out a variety of letters and packages, which he placed in the Rector’s hands.
The recipient smiled.
“My word, what a post! I say, Preston, I add to your burdens pretty considerably.” “It don’t matter, sir, I’m sure,” said the postman civilly. “There’s not a deal of letters delivered in this village.”
“No, we don’t trouble pen and ink much in Upcote Minor,” said the Rector; “and it’s my belief that half the boys and girls that do learn to read and write at school make a point of forgetting it as soon as they can —for all practical purposes, anyway.”
“Well, there’s a deal of newspapers read now, sir, compared to what there was.”
“Newspapers? Yes, I do see a Reynolds’ or a People or two about on Sunday. Do you think anybody reads much else than the betting and the police news, eh, Preston?”
Preston looked a little vacant. His expression seemed to say, “And why should they?” The Rector, with his arms full of the post, smiled again and turned away, looking back, however, to say:
“Wife all right again?”
Pretty near, sir; but she’s had an awful bad time, and the doctor he makes her go careful.” Quite right. Has Miss Puttenham been looking after her?”
“She’s been most kind, sir, most attentive, she have,” said the postman warmly, his long hatchet face breaking into animation.
“Lucky for you!” said the Rector, walking away. “When she cuts in, she’s worth a regiment of doctors. Good day!”
The postman looked after him with an expression that was not only friendly, but eagerly, militantly friendly; and, with a murmured exclamation, he mounted his bicycle and rode off.
Meanwhile the Rector passed on through the gate of the rectory, pausing as he did so with a rueful look at the iron gate itself, which was off its hinges and sorely in want of a coat of new paint.
“Disgraceful!” he said to himself. “Must have a go at it to-morrow. And at the garden, too,” he added, looking round him. “Never saw such a wilderness!”
He was advancing towards a small gabled house of an Early Victorian type, built about 1840 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, on the site of an old clergy-house, of which all traces had been ruthlessly effaced. The front garden lying before it was a tangle of old and for the most part ugly trees: elms from which heavy, decayed branches had recently fallen; acacias choked by the ivy which had overgrown them; and a crowded thicket of thorns and hazels, mingled with three or four large and vigorous though very ancient yews, which seemed to have drunk up for themselves all that life from the soil which should have gone to maintain the ragged or sickly shrubbery. The trees also had gradually encroached upon the house, and darkened all the windows on the porch side. On a summer afternoon the deep shade they made was welcome enough, but on a rainy day the Rector’s front garden, with its coarse grass, its few straggling rose-bushes, and
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its pushing throng of half-dead or funereal trees, shed a dank and dripping gloom upon the visitor approaching his front door. Of this, however, the Rector himself was rarely conscious; and to-day, as he with difficulty gathered all the letters and packets taken from the postman into one hand, while he opened his front door with the other, his face showed that the state of his garden had already ceased to trouble him.
He had no sooner turned the handle of the door than a joyous uproar of dogs arose within, and before he had well stepped over the threshold a leaping trio were upon him — two Irish terriers and a graceful young collie, whose rough caresses nearly made him drop his letters.
“Down, Jack! Be quiet, you rascals! I say — Anne!”
A woman’s voice answered his call:
"I’m just bringing the tea, sir.”
“Any letter for me this afternoon?”
“There’s a note on the hall table, sir.”
The Rector hurried into the sitting-room to the right of the hall, deposited the letters and packets which he held on a small, tumble-down sofa already littered with books and papers, and returned to the hall table for the letter. He tore it open, read it with slightly frowning brows and a mouth that worked unconsciously, then thrust it into his pocket and returned to his sitting-room.
“All right!” he said to himself. "He’s got an odd list of ‘aggrieved parishioners’!”
The tidings, however, which the letter contained did not seem to distress him. On the contrary, his aspect expressed a singular and cheerful energy as he sat a few moments on the sofa, softly whistling to himself and staring at the floor. That he was a person extravagantly beloved by his dogs was clearly shown meanwhile by the exuberant attentions and caresses with which they were now loading him.
He shook them off at last with a friendly kick or two, that he might turn to his letters, which he sorted and turned over much as an epicure studies his menu at the Ritz, and with an equally keen sense of pleasure to come.
A letter from Jena, and another from Berlin, addressed in small German handwriting and signed by names familiar to students throughout the world; two or three German reviews, copies of the Revue Critique and the Revue Chretienne, a book bv Solomon Reinach, and three or four French letters, shown by the cross preceding the signatures to be the letters of priests; a long letter from Oxford, enclosing the proof of an article in a theological review; and, finally, a letter sealed with red wax and signed "S. Marcoburg” in a corner of the en-
velope, which the Rector twirled in his hands a moment without opening.
“After tea,” he said at last, with the sudden breaking of a smile. And he put it on the sofa beside him.
As he spoke the door opened to admit his housekeeper with the tray, to the accompaniment of another orgy of barks. A stout woman in a sunbonnet, with a broad face and no features to speak of, entered.
“I’ll be bound you’ve had no dinner,” she said sulkily, as she placed the tea before him on a chair cleared with difficulty from some of the student’s litter that filled the room.
“All the more reason for tea,” said Meynell, seizing thirstily on the teapot. “And you’re quite mistaken, Anne. I had a goloptious bath-bun at the station.”
"Much good you’ll get out of that!” was the scornful reply. “You know what Doctor Shaw told you about that sort o’ goin’ on.” “Never you mind, Anne. What about that painter chap?”
“Gone home for the week-end.” Mrs. Wellin retreated a foot or two and crossed her arms, bare to the elbow, in front of her.
The Rector stared.
“ I thought I had taken him on by the week to paint my house,” he said at last.
"So you did. But he said he must see his missis and hear how his little girl had done in her music exam.”
Mrs. Wellin delivered this piece of news very fast and with evident gusto. It might have been thought she enjoyed inflicting it on her master. The Rector laughed out.
“And this was a man sent me a week ago by the Birmingham Distress Committee — nine weeks out of work — family in the workhouse — everything up the spout. Goodness gracious, Anne, how did he get the money? Return fare, Birmingham, three-and-ten.”
“ Don’t ask me, sir,” said the woman in the sunbonnet. “I don’t go pryin’ into such trash!” “Is he coming back? Is my house to be painted?” asked the Rector helplessly.
“Thought he might,” said Anne briefly. “ How kind of him! Music exam — Lord save us! And three-and-ten thrown into the gutter on a week-end ticket, with seven children to keep, and all your possessions gone to ‘my uncle.’ And i t isn’t as though you’d been starving him, Anne!” “ I wish I hadn’t dinnered him as I have been doin’!” the woman broke out. “But he’ll know the difference next week! And now, sir, I suppose you’ll be goin’ to that place again to-night?”
Anne jerked her thumb behind her over her left shoulder.
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“Suppose so, Anne. Can’t afford a night nurse, and the wife won’t look after him.” “Why don’t some one make her?” said Anne, frowning.
The Rector’s face changed.
“Better not talk about it, Anne. When a woman’s been in hell for years, you needn’t expect her to come out an angel. She won’t for-givehim, and she won’t nurse him — that’s flat.” “No reason why she should shovel him off on other people as wants their night’s rest. It’s takin’ advantage— that’s what it is.”
“ I say, Anne, I must read my letters. And just light me a bit of fire, there’s a good woman. July! — ugh! — it might be February.”
In a few minutes the bit of fire was blazing in the grate, though the windows were still wide open; and the Rector, who had had a long journey that day to take a funeral for a friend, lav back in sybaritic ease, now sipping his tea and now cutting open letters and parcels. The letter signed “ F. Marcoburg” in the corner had been placed, still unopened, on the mantelpiece facing him.
The Rector looked at it from time to time; it might have been said by a close observer that he never forgot it; but, all the same, he went on dipping into books and reviews, or puzzling — with muttered imprecations on the German tongue — over some of his letters.
“By Jove! this apocalyptic Messianic business is getting interesting. Soon we shall know where all the Pauline ideas came from — every man-jack of them! And what matter? Who’s the worse? Is it any less wonderful when we do know? The new wine found its bottles ready —• that’s all!”
As he sat there he had the aspect of a man apparently enjoying the comfort of his own fireside. Yet, now that the face was at rest, certain cavernous hollows under the eyes, and certain lines on the forehead and at the corners of the mouth, as though graven by some long fatigue, showed themselves disfiguringly. Yet the personality on which this fatigue had stamped itself was clearly one of remarkable vigour, physical and mental. A massive head covered with strong black hair, curly at the brows; eyes greyish blue, small, with some shade of expression in them which made them arresting, commanding even; a large nose and irregular mouth, the lips flexible and kind, the chin firm — one might have made some such catalogue of Meynell’s characteristics; adding to them the strength of a broad-chested, loose-limbed frame, made rather, one would have thought, for country labours than for the vigils of the scholar. But the hands were those of a man of letters — bony and long-fingered, but refined,
touching things with care and gentleness, like one accustomed to the small tools of the writer.
At last the Rector threw himself back in his chair, while some of the litter on his lap fell to the floor, temporarily dislodging one of the terriers, who sat up and looked at him with reproach.
“Now, then!” he said, and reached out for the letter on the mantelpiece. He turned it over a moment in his hand, and opened it.
It was long, and the reader gave it a close attention. When he had finished it he put it down and thought awhile, then stretched out his hand for it again and re-read the last paragraph:
You will, I am sure, realise from all I have said, my dear Meynell, that the last thing I personally wish to do is to interfere with the parochial work of a man for whom I have so warm a respect as I have for you.
I have given you all the latitude I could, but my duty is now plain. Let me have your assurance that you will refrain from such sermons as that to which I have drawn your attention, and that you will stop at once the extraordinary innovations in the services of which the parishioners have complained, and I shall know how to answer Mr. Barron and to compose this whole difficult matter. Do not, I entreat you, jeopardise the noble work you are doing for the sake of opinions and views which you hold to-day, but which you may have abandoned to-morrow. Can you possibly put what you call “the results of criticism”—and, remember, these results differ for you, for me, and for a dozen others I could name — in comparison with that work for souls God has given you to do, and in which He has so clearly blessed you? A Christian pastor is not his own master, and cannot act with the freedom of other men. He belongs by his own act to the Church and to the flock of Christ; he must always have in view the “little ones” whom he dare not offend. Take time for thought, my dear Meynell, — and time, above all, for prayer,— and then let me hear from you. You will realise how much and how anxiously 1 think of you.
Yours always sincerely in Christ,
F. Marcoburg.
“Good man — true bishop!” said the Rector to himself, as he again put down the letter; but even as he spoke the softness in his face passed into resolution. He sa*nk once more into reverie.
The stillness, however, was soon broken up. A step was heard outside, and the dogs sprang up in excitement. Amid a pandemonium of noise, the Rector put his head out of the window.
“Is that you, Barron? Come in, old fellow; come in!”
A slender figure in a long coat passed the window, the front door opened, and a young man entered the study. He was dressed in orthodox clerical garb, and carried a couple of books under his arm.
" I came to return these,” he said, placing them beside the Rector; “and also — can you give me twenty minutes?”
“Forty, if you want them. Sit down.”
[pgbrk] MY DEAR FELLOW ! NO WOMAN OUGHT TO MARRY UNDER NINETEEN OR TWENTY
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The newcomer turned out various French and German books from a dilapidated armchair and obeyed. He was a fresh-coloured, handsome youth, some ten years younger than Meynell, the typical public-school boy in appearance. But his expression was scarcely less harassed than the Rector’s.
“ I expect you have heard from my father,” he said abruptly.
“ I found a letter waiting for me,” said Meynell, holding up the note he had taken from the hall table on coming in. But he pursued the subject no further.
The young man fidgeted a moment.
“All one can say is”— he broke out at last — “that if it had not been my father, it would have been some one else — the Archdeacon, probably. The fight was bound to come.”
“Of course it was!” The Rector sprang to his feet, and, with his hands, under his coattails and his back to the fire, faced his visitor. “That’s what we’re all driving at. Don’t be miserable about it, dear fellow. I bear your father no grudge whatever. He is under orders, as I am. The parleying time is done. It has lasted two generations. And now comes war — honourable, necessary war!”
The speaker threw back his head with emphasis, even with passion. But, almost immediately, the smile which was the only positive beauty of the face obliterated the passion.
“And don’t look so tragic over it! If your father wins — and as the law stands he can scarcely fail to win — I shall be driven out of Upcote. But there will always be a corner somewhere for me and my books, and a pulpit of some sort to prate from.”
“Yes; but what about us?” said the newcomer slowly.
“ Ah! ” The Rector’s voice took a dry intonation. “Yes — well! — you liberals will have to take your part and fire your shot some day, of course — fathers or no fathers.”
“ I didn’t mean that. Where shall we be when you desert us — leave us to ourselves, without a leader?”
“I sha’n’t desert you — unless I’m turned out.”
“No; but you expose yourself unnecessarily!” said the young man, with vivacity. "It is not a general’s part to do that.”
“You’re wrong, Stephen. When my father was going out to the campaign in which he was killed, my mother said to him, as though she were half asking a question, half pleading— I can hear her now, poor darling!—‘John, it’s Tight for a general to keep out of danger?’ and he smiled and said, ‘Yes, when it isn’t right for him to go into it head over ears.’ However,
that’s nonsense; it doesn’t apply to me. I’m no general. And I’m not going to be killed!” Young Barron was silent, while the Rector prepared a pipe and began upon it; but his face showed his dissatisfaction.
“I’ve not said much to father yet about my own position,” he resumed; “but, of course, he guesses. It will be a blow to him,” he added reluctantly.
The Rector nodded, but without showing any particular concern, though his eyes rested kindly on his companion.
“We have come to the fighting,” he repeated, “and fighting means blows. Moreover, the fight is beginning to be equal. Twenty years ago — in Elsmere’s time — a man who held his views or mine could only go. Voysey had to go; Jowett, I am inclined to think, ought to have gone. But the distribution of the forces, the lie of the field, is now altogether changed. I am not going till I am turned out; and there will be others with me. The world wants a heresy trial, and it is going to get one this time.”
A laugh — a laugh of excitement and discomfort — escaped the younger man.
“You talk as if the prospect were a pleasant
one!”
“No— but it is inevitable.”
“It will be a hateful business,” Barron went on impetuously. “My father has a horribly strong will;- and he will think every means legitimate.”
“I know. In the Roman Church, what the Curia could not do by argument they have done again and again — well, no use to inquire how! One must be prepared. All I can say is,
I know of no skeletons in the cupboard at present; anybody may have my keys!”
He laughed as he spoke, spreading his hands to the blaze, and looking round at his companion. Barron’s face in response was a face of hero-worship, undisguised. Here, plainly, were leader and disciple — pioneering will and docile faith. But it might have been observed that Meynell did nothing to emphasise the personal relation; that, on the contrary, he shrank from it and often tried to put it aside.
After a few more words, indeed, he resolutely closed the personal discussion. They fell into talk about certain recent developments of philosophy in England and France — talk that showed them as familiar comrades in the intellectual field, in spite of their difference of age. Barron had but lately left Cambridge for a small Trinity living, richly laden with honours. Meynell — an old Balliol scholar — bore the marks of Jowett and Caird still deep upon him, except, perhaps, for a certain deliberate
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throwing over, here and there, of the typical Oxford tradition — its measure and reticence, its scholarly balancing of this argument against that. A tone as of one driven to extremities — a deep yet never personal exasperation — the poised quiet of a man turning to look a hostile host in the face — again and again these made themselves felt through his chat about new influences in the world of thought— Bergson or James, Eucken or Tyrell.
And to this undernote inflections or phrases in the talk of the other seemed to respond. It was as though behind the spoken conversation they carried on another unheard.
And the unheard presently broke in upon the heard.
“You spoke of Elsmere just now,” said Barron, in a moment’s pause, and with apparent irrelevance. “Did you know that Mrs. Elsmere is now staying within a mile of this place? Some people named Flaxman have taken Maudely End, and Mrs. Flaxman is a sister of Mrs. Elsmere. Mrs. Elsmere and her daughter are going to settle for the summer in the cottage near Forked Pond. Mrs. Elsmere seems to have been ill for the first time in her life, and has had to give up some of her work.”
“Mrs. Elsmere!” said Meynell, raising his eyebrows. “ I saw her once twenty years ago at the New Brotherhood, and have never forgotten the vision of her face. She must be almost an old woman.”
“Miss Puttenham says she is quite beautiful still — in a wonderful, severe way. I think she never shared Elsmere’s opinions?”
“Never.”
The two fell silent, both minds occupied with the same story and the same secret comparisons. Robert Elsmere, the rector of Mure-well, in Surrey, had made a scandal in the Church, when Meynell was still a lad, by throwing up his orders, under the pressure of New Testament criticism, and founding a religious brotherhood among London workingmen, for the promotion of a simple and commemorative form of Christianity.
Elsmere, a man of delicate physique, had died prematurely, worn out by the struggle to find new foothold for himself and others; but something in his personality and in the nature of his effort — some brilliant, tender note — had kept his memory alive in many hearts. There were many now, however, who thrilled to it, who could never speak of him without emotion, who yet felt very little positive agreement with him. What he had done or tried to do made a kind of landmark in the past; but in the course of time it had begun to seem irrelevant to the present.
“To-day — would he have thrown up? — or would he have held on?” Meynell presently said, in a tone of reverie, amid the cloud of smoke that enveloped him. Then, in another voice: “What do you hear of the daughter? I remember her as a little reddish-haired thing at her mother’s side.”
“Miss Puttenham has taken a great fancy to her. Hester Fox-Wilson told me she had seen her there. She liked her.”
“H’m!” said the Rector. “Well, if she
pleased Hester — critical little minx! ”
“You^nay be sure she’ll please me!” said Barron suddenly, flushing deeply.
The Rector looked up, startled.
“ I say?”
Barron cleared his throat.
“I’d better tell you at once, Rector. I got Hester’s leave yesterday to tell you, when an opportunity occurred — you know how fond she is of you. Well, I’m in love with her — head over ears in love with her— I believe I have been since she was a little girl in the schoolroom. And yesterday — she said — she’d marry me some day.”
The young voice betrayed a natural tremor. Meanwhile, a strange look'—a close observer would have called it a look of consternation — had rushed into Meynell’s face. He stared at Barron, made one or two attempts to speak, and at last said abruptly:
“That’ll never do, Stephen — that’ll never do! You shouldn’t have spoken.”
Barron’s face showed the wound.
“ But — Rector!”
“She’s too young,” said Meynell, with increased harshness, “much too young! Hester is only seventeen. No girl ought to be pledged so early. She ought to have more time — time to look around her. Promise me, my dear boy, that there shall be nothing irrevocable — no engagement! I should strongly oppose it.”
The eyes of the two men met. Barron was evidently dumb with surprise; but the vivacity and urgency of Meynell’s expression drove him into speech.
“We thought you would have sympathised,” he stammered. “After all, what is there so much against it? Hester is, you know, not very happy at home. I have my living, and some income of my own independent of my father.
Supposing he should object ”
“He would object,” said Meynell quickly. “And Lady Fox-Wilson would certainly object. And so should I. And, as you know, I am co-guardian of the children with her.” Then, as the lover quivered under these barbs, Meynell suddenly recovered himself. “My dear fellow! No woman ought to marry
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under nineteen or twenty. And every girl ought to have time to look around her. It’s not right; it’s not just — it isn’t, indeed! Put this thing by for a while. You’ll lose nothing by it. We’ll talk of it again in two years.” And, drawing his chair nearer to his companion, Meynell fell into a strain of earnest and affectionate entreaty, which presently had a marked effect on the younger man. His chivalry was appealed to —his consideration for the girl he loved; and his aspect began to show the force of the attack. At last he said gravely: “I’ll tell Hester what you say — of course I’ll tell her. Naturally we can’t marry without your consent and her mother’s. But if Hester persists in wishing we should be engaged?” "Long engagements are the deuce!” said the Rector hotly. “You would be engaged for three years. Madness! — with such a temperament as Hester’s. My dear Stephen! — be advised — for her and yourself. There is no one who wishes your good more earnestly than I. But don’t let there be any talk of an engagement for at least two years to come. Leave her free — even if you consider yourself bound. It is folly to suppose that a girl of such marked character knows her own mind at seventeen. She has all her development to come.”
Barron had dropped his head on his hands. “ I couldn’t see anybody else courting her —
without ”
“Without cutting in; I daresay not,” said Meynell, with a rather forced laugh. “I’d forgive you that. But, now, look here.”
The two heads drew together again, and Meynell resumed conversation, talking rapidly, in a kind, persuasive voice, putting the common sense of the situation — holding out distant hopes. The young man’s face gradually cleared. He was of a docile, open temper, and deeply attached to his mentor.
At last the Rector sprang up, consulting his watch.
“I must send you off, and go to sleep. But we’ll talk of this again.”
“Sleep!” exclaimed Barron, astonished. “It’s just seven o’clock. What are you up to now?” “There’s a drunken fellow in the village — dying — and his wife won’t look after him. So I have to put in an appearance to-night. Be off with you!”
‘I shouldn’t wonder if the Flaxmans were of some use to you in the village,” said Stephen, taking up his hat. “They’re rich and, they say, very generous.”
"Well, if they’ll give me a parish nurse, I’ll crawl to them,” said the Rector, settling himself in his chair and putting an old shawl over
his knees. “And, as you go out, just tell Anne, will you, to keep herself to herself for an hour and not to disturb me?”
Stephen Barron moved to the door, and as he opened it he turned back a moment to look at the man in the chair, and the room in which he sat. It was as if he asked himself by what manner of man he had been thus gripped and coerced in a matter so intimate and, to himself, so vital.
Meynell’s eyes were already shut. The dogs had gathered round him, the collie’s nose laid against his knee, the other two guarding his feet. All round, the walls were laden with books; so were the floor and the furniture. A carpenter’s bench filled the farther end of the room. Carving tools were scattered on it, and a large piece of wood-carving, half finished, was standing propped against it. Barron, who had been much abroad and seen many museums, knew very well that the carving was not particularly good. It was part of some choir decoration that Meynell and a class of village boys were making for the church, where the Rector had already carved with his own hand many of the available surfaces, whether of stone or wood. There was a curious originality in it, the originality of a man without training, with a certain imitative skill and a passionate love of natural things — leaves and flowers and birds. But it was full of faults; and there were many, Barron’s father among them, who thought it a mere disfiguring of the church.
For the rest, the furniture of the room was shabby and ugly. The pictures on the walls were mostly faded Oxford photographs, or outlines by Overbeck and Retsch, which had belonged to Meynell’s parents and were tenderly cherished by him. There were none of the pretty artistic trifles, the signs of travel and easy culture, which many a small country vicarage possesses in abundance. Meynell, in spite of his scholar’s mastery of half a dozen languages, had never crossed the Channel. Barron, lingering at the door, with his eyes on the form by the fire, knew why. The Rector had always been too poor. He had been left an orphan while still at Balliol, and had had to bring up his two younger brothers. He had done it. They were both in Canada now, and prospering. But the signs of the struggle were on this shabby house, and on this shabby, frugal, powerfully built man. Yet now he might have been more at ease; the living, though small, was by no means among the worst in the diocese. Ah, well! Anne, the housekeeper and only servant, knew how the money went — and didn’t go; and she had passed on some of her grievances to Barron.
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They two knew— though Barron would never have dared to show his knowledge — what a wrestle it meant to get the Rector to spend what was decently necessary on his own food and clothes; and Anne spent hours of the night in indignantly guessing at what he spent on the clothes and food of other people — mostly, in her opinion, “varmints.”
These things flitted vaguely through the young man’s sore mind. Then, in a flash, they were absorbed in a perception of a wholly different kind. The room seemed to him transfigured— a kind of temple. He thought of the intellectual life that had been lived there; the passion for truth that had burnt in it; the sermons and books that had been written on those crowded tables; the personality and influence that had been gradually built up within it, so that to him, as to many others, the dingy study was a place of pilgrimage, breathing inspiration; and his heart went out, first in discipleship, and then in a pain that was not for himself. For over his friend’s head he saw the gathering of clouds not now to be scattered or dispersed; and who could foretell the course of the storm?
The young man gently closed the door and went his way. He need not have left the house so quietly: the Rector got no sleep
that evening.
I I
The church clock of Upcote Minor was just striking nine o’clock as Richard Meynell, a few hours later than the conversation just recorded, shut the rectory gate behind him, and took his way up the village.
The night was cold and gusty. The summer this year had forgotten to be balmy, and Meynell, who was an ardent sun-lover, shivered as he walked along, buttoning a much-worn parson’s coat against the sharp air. Before him lay the long, straggling street, with its cottages and small shops, its post-office and public houses, and its occasional gentlefolks’ dwellings, now with a Georgian front plumb on the street, and now hidden behind walls and trees. It was evidently a large village, almost a country town, with a considerable variety of life. At this hour of the evening most of the houses were dark, for the labourers had gone to bed. But behind the drawn blinds of the little shops there were still lights here and there, and in the houses of the gentility.
The Rector passed the fine Perpendicular church standing back from the road, with its church-yard about it; and just beyond it he turned, his pace involuntarily slackening, to
look at a small gabled house surrounded by a garden and overhung by a splendid lime-tree. Suddenly, as he approached it, the night burst into fragrance, for a gust of wind shook the lime-blossoms and flung the scent in Meynell’s face; while, at the same time, the dim masses of roses in the garden sent out their sweetness to the passers-by.
A feeling of pleasure, quick, involuntary, passed through his mind — pleasure in the thought of what these flowers meant to the owner of them. He had a vision of a tall and slender woman, no longer young, moving among the rose-beds with a basket on her arm, a light dress trailing on the grass. The vision brought with it a sense of grateful affection, of comradeship, of quick and generous sympathy. Then, pleasure and sympathy were drowned in something else — some heavy anxiety — some tragic pitifulness.
“And she’s been happy lately — really happy — and at peace,” he thought ruefully. “Preston’s wife was a godsend. And she loves her work — and her garden. Her only anxiety has been for me; she lives in her few friends.”
His eyes lingered on the house. Presently, as the farther corner of it came into view, he saw a thinly curtained window with a light inside it, and it seemed to him that he distinguished a figure within.
" Reading — or embroidering? Probably at her work; she had that commission to finish. Busy woman!”
He fell to imagining the little room: the embroidery-frame, the books, and the brindled cat on the rug, of no particular race or beauty — for use, not for show, but full of character, like its mistress, and, like her, not to be readily made friends with.
"How wise of her,” he thought, "not to accept her sister’s offer! To keep her little house and her independence. Imagine her, prisoned in that house, with that family. Except for Hester — except for Hester!”
He smiled sadly to himself, threw a last troubled look at the little house, and left it behind him. Before him the village street, with its green and its pond, widened under the scudding sky. Far ahead, about a quarter of a mile away, among surrounding trees, certain outlines were visible through the July twilight. The accustomed eye knew them for the chimneys of the Fox-Wilsons’ house, owned now, since the recent death of its master, Sir Ralph Fox-Wilson, by his widow,, the sister of the lady with the cat and the embroidery, and mother of many children, for the most part an unattractive brood, peevish and slow-minded like their father. Hester was the bright, particular star
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in that house, as Stephen Barron had now found out.
Alack, alack! The Rector’s face resumed for a moment the expression of painful or brooding perplexity it had worn during his conversation of the afternoon with young Barron on the subject of Hester Fox-Wilson.
Another light in a window, and a sound of shouting and singing. The “Cowroast” — a “public" mostly frequented by the miners who inhabited the northern end of the village — was evidently doing trade. The Rector did not look up as he passed it, but in general he turned an indulgent eye upon it. Before entering upon the living, he had himself worked for a month as an ordinary miner, in the colliery whose tall chimneys could be seen to the east above the village roofs. His body still vividly retained the physical memory of those days — of the aching muscles and the gargantuan thirsts.
At last the rows of new-built cottages attached to the colliery came in view on the left; to the right, a steep hillside heavily wooded, and at the top of it, in the distance, the glimmering of a large white house, stately and separate, dominating the village, the church, the collieries, and the Fox-Wilsons’ plantations.
The Rector threw a glance at it. It was from that house had come the letter he had found on his hall table that afternoon, a letter in a handwriting large and impressive, like the dim house on the hill — the handwriting of a man accustomed to command, whether his own ancestral estate, or the collieries that had been carved out of its fringe, or the village spreading humbly at his feet, or the church into which he walked on Sunday with heavy tread and upright carriage, conscious of his threefold dignity as squire, magistrate, and church-warden.
“It’s my business to fight him!” Meynell thought, looking at the house, and squaring his broad shoulders unconsciously. “It’s not my business to hate him — not at all — rather to respect and sympathise with him. I provoke the fight, and I may be thankful to have lit on a strong antagonist. What’s Stephen afraid of? What can they do? Let ’em try!”
A smile, contemptuous and good-humoured, crossed the Rector’s face. Any angry bigot determined to rid his parish of a heretical parson might no doubt be tempted to use other than legal and theological weapons, if he could get them. A heretic with unpaid bills and some hidden vice is scarcely in a position to make much of his heresy. But the Rector’s smile showed him humorously conscious of an almost excessive innocence of private life. The
thought of how little an enemy could find to lay hold on in his history or present existence seemed almost to bring with it a kind of shamefacedness, as for experience irrevocably foregone— warm, tumultuous, human experience among the sinners and sufferers of the world. For there are odd, mingled moments in the lives of most scholars and saints — like Renan with Theophile Gautier — when such men inevitably ask themselves whether they have not missed something irreplaceable, the student by his learning, the saint by his goodness.
Here now was “Miners’ Row.” As the Rector approached the cottage of which he was in search, the clouds lightened in the east, and a pale moonshine, suffusing the dusk, showed, in the far distance beyond the village, the hills of Fitton Chase, rounded, heathy hills, crowned by giant firs. Meynell looked at them with longing and a sudden realisation of his own weariness. A day or two, soon, perhaps a week or two, among the fells, with their winds and scents about him and their streams in his ears — he must allow himself that before the fight began.
No. 8. A dim light showed in the upper window. The Rector knocked at the door. A woman opened — a young and sweet-looking nurse in her bonnet and long cloak.
“You look pretty done!” exclaimed the Rector. “Has he been giving trouble?”
“Oh, no, sir, not more than usual. It’s the two of them.”
“She won’t go to her sister’s?”
“She won’t stir a foot, sir.”
“Where is she?”
The nurse pointed to the living-room on her left.
“She scarcely eats anything — a cup of tea sometimes; and I doubt whether she sleeps at all.”
“And she won’t go to him?”
“ If he were dying, and she alone with him in the house, I don’t believe she’d go near him.” The Rector stepped in, and asked a few questions as to arrangements for the night. The patient, it seemed, was asleep, in consequence of a morphia injection, and likely to remain so for an hour or two. He was dying of an internal injury inflicted by a fall of rock in the mine some ten days before. Surgery had done what it could, but signs of blood-poisoning had appeared, and the man’s days were numbered.
The doctor had left written instructions, which the nurse handed over to Meynell. If certain symptoms appeared, the doctor was to be summoned. But, in all probability, the man’s fine constitution, injured though it had been by drink, would enable him to hold out
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another day or two. And the hideous pain of the first week had now ceased; mortification had almost certainly set in, and all that could be done was to wait the slow and sure failure of the heart.
The nurse took leave. Meynell was hanging up his hat in the little passageway, when the door of the front parlour opened, after being unlocked.
Meynell looked around.
“Good evening, Mrs. Bateson. You are coming upstairs, I hope, with me?”
He spoke gently, but with a quiet authority.
The woman in the doorway shook her head. She was thin and narrow-chested. Her hair was already grey, though she could not have been more than thirty-five, and youth and comeliness had been long since battered from her face, partly by misery of mind, partly by direct ill usage, of which there were evident traces. She looked steadily at the Rector.
“I’m not going,” she said. “He’s nowt to me. But I’d like to know what the doctor was thinkin’ of ’im.”
“The doctor thinks he may live through tonight and to-morrow night — not much more. He is your husband, Mrs. Bateson, and, whatever you have against him, you’ll be very sorry afterwards if you don’t give him help and comfort in his death. Come up now, 1 beg of you, and watch with me. He might die at any moment.”
And Meynell put out his hand kindly towards the woman standing in the shadow, as though to lead her.
But she stepped backward.
“I know what I’m about,” she said, breathing quickly. “He made a fule o’ me wi’ that wanton Lizzie Short, an’ he near killt me the last morning afore he went. An’ I’d been a good wife to him for fifteen year, an’ never a word between us till that huzzy came along. An’ she’s got a child by him, an’ he must go an’ throw it in my face that I’d never given him one. An’ he struck an’ cursed me that last morning—he wished me dead, he said. An’
I sat an’ prayed God to punish him. An’ he did. The roof came down on him. An’ now he mun die. I’ve done wi’ him — an’ she’s done wi’ him. He’s made his bed, an’ he mun lie on it.”
The Rector put up his hand sternly.
“Don’t, Mrs Bateson! Those are words you’ll repent when you yourself come to die. He has sinned towards you — but, remember! he’s a young man still, in the prime of life. He has suffered horribly, and he has only a few hours or days to live. He has asked for you already to-day; he is sure to ask for you to-night.
Forgive him! Ask God to help him to die in peace!”
While he spoke she stood motionless, impassive. Meynell’s voice had beautiful inflections, and he spoke with strong feeling. Few persons whom he so addressed could have remained unmoved. But Mrs. Bateson only retreated farther into the dreary little parlour, with its wool mats and antimacassars, and a tray of untasted tea on the table. She passed her tongue round her dry lips to moisten them before she spoke, quite calmly;
“Thank you, sir; thank you. You mean well. But we must all judge for ourselves. If there’s anything you want I can get for you, you knock twice on the floor — I shall hear you. But I’m not cornin’ up.”
Meynell turned away discouraged, and went upstairs.
In the room above lay the dying man — breathing quickly and shallowly under the influence of the drug that had been given him. The nurse had raised him on his pillows, and the window near him was open. His powerful chest was uncovered, and he seemed, even in his sleep, to be fighting for air. In the twelve hours that had elapsed since Meynell had last seen him he had travelled with terrible rapidity towards the end. He looked years older than in the morning; it was as though some sinister hand had been at work on the face, expanding here, contracting there, substituting chaos and nothingness for the living man.
The Rector sat down beside him. The room was small and bare — a little strip of carpet on the boards, a few chairs, and a little table with food and nourishment beside the bed. On the mantelpiece was a large printed card containing the football fixtures of the winter before. Bateson had once been a fine player. Of late years, however, his interest had been confined to betting heavily on the various local and county matches, and it was to his ill luck as a gambler no less than to the influence of the flimsy little woman who had led him astray that his moral break-up might be traced.
A common tale! — yet more tragic than usual. For the bedroom contained other testimonies to the habits of a ruined man. There was a hanging bookcase on the wall, and the Rector sitting by the bed could just make out the titles of the books in the dim light.
Mill, Huxley, a reprint of Tom Paine, various books by Blatchford, the sixpenny editions of “Literature and Dogma” and Renan’s “Life of Christ,” some popular science, volumes of Browning and Ruskin, and a group of well-thumbed books on the birds of West Cumbria — the little collection, hardly earned and, to judge
[pgbrk] `18o
THE CASE OF RICHARD MEYNELL
from its appearance, diligently read, showed that its owner had been a man of intelligence. The Rector looked from it to the figure in the bed with a pang at his heart.
All was still in the little cottage. Through the open window the Rector could see fold after fold of the chase stretching north and west above the village. The moorland ridges shone clear under the moon, now bare, or scantily plumed by gaunt trees, and now clothed in a dense blackness of wood. Meynell, who knew every yard of the great heath, and loved it well, felt himself lifted there in spirit as he looked. The bunchberries must just be ripening on the high ground — nestling scarlet and white amid their glossy leaves; and, among them and beside them, the taller, slender bilberries, golden green; the exquisite grasses of the heath, pale pink and silver and purple, swaying in the winds, clothing acre after acre with a beauty beyond the looms of men; the purple heather and the ling flushing towards its bloom; and the free-limbed scattered birch-trees, strongly scrawled against the sky. The scurry of the clouds over the purple sweeps of moor, the beat of the wind, and then, suddenly, pools of fragrant air sun-steeped — he drew in the thought of it all as he might have drunk the moorland breeze itself, with a thrill of pleasure, which passed at once into a movement of soul.
“My God — my God!”
No other words imagined or needed. Only a leap of the heart, natural, habitual, instinctive, from the imagined beauty of the heath to the Eternal Fountain of all beauty.
The hand of the dying man made a faint rustling with the sheet. Meynell, checked, rebuked almost, by the slight sound, bent his eyes again on the sleeper, and, leaning forward, tried to meditate and pray. But to-night he found it hard. He realised anew his physical and mental fatigue, and a certain confused clamour of thought, strangely persistent behind the more external experience alike of body and mind, like the murmur of a distant sea heard from far inland, as the bond and background of all lesser sounds.
The phrases of the letter he had found on the hall table recurred to him whether he would or no. They were mainly legal and technical, intimating that an application had been made to the Bishop of Maryborough to issue a commission of enquiry into certain charges made by parishioners of Upcote Minor against the Rector of the parish. The writer of the letter was one of the applicants, and gave notice of his intention to prosecute the charges named
with the utmost vigour through all the stages prescribed by ecclesiastical law.
But it was, rather, some earlier letters from the same hand — letters more familiar, intimate, and discursive — that ultimately held the Rector’s thoughts as he kept his watch. For in those letters were contained almost all the objections that a sensitive mind and heart had had to grapple with before determining on the course to which the Rector of Upcote was now committed. They were the voice of the “adversary,” the “accuser.” Crude or conventional as the form of the argument might be, it yet represented the “powers and principalities” to be reckoned with. If the Rector’s conscience could not sustain him against it, he was henceforth a dishonest and unhappy man; and when his lawyers had failed to protect him against its practical result — as they must no doubt fail — he would be a dispossessed priest.
“What discipline in life or what comfort in death can such a faith as yours bring to any human soul? Do, I beg of you, ask yourself this question. If the great miracles of the Creed are not true, what have you to give the wretched and the sinful? Ought you not, in common human charity, to make way for one who can offer the consolations, utter the warnings, or hold out the heavenly hopes from which you are debarred?”
The Rector fixed his gaze upon the sick man. It was as though the question of the letter were put to him through those parched lips. And, as he looked, Bateson opened his eyes.
“Be that you, Rector?” he said in a clear voice.
“I’ve been sitting up with you, Bateson. Can you take a little brandy and milk, do you think?”
The patient submitted, and the Rector, with a tender and skilful touch, made him comfortable on his pillows and smoothed the bedclothes.
“Where’s my wife?” he said presently, looking round the room.
“She’s sleeping downstairs.”
“ I want her to come up.”
“ Better not ask her. She seems ill and tired.”
The sick man smiled — a slight and scornful smile.
“She’ll ha’ time enough presently to be tired. You go an’ ask her.”
“I’d rather not leave you, Bateson. You’re very ill.”
“Then take that stick there, an’ rap on the floor. She’ll hear tha fast enough.”
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The Rector hesitated, but only for a moment. He took the stick and rapped.
Almost immediately the sound of a turning key was heard through the small, thinly built cottage. The door below opened, and footsteps came up the stairs. But before they reached the landing the sound ceased. The two men listened in vain.
“You go an’ tell her as I’m sorry I knocked her aboot,” said Bateson eagerly. “An’ she can see for hersen as I can’t aggravate her no more wi’ the other woman.” He raised himself on his elbow, staring into the Rector’s face. “I’m done for — tell her that.”
“Shall I tell her also — that you love her? — and you want her love?”
“Aye,” said Bateson, nodding, with the same bright stare into Meynell’s eyes. “Aye!” Meynell made him drink a little more brandy, and then he went out to the person standing motionless on the stairs.
“What did you want, sir?” said Mrs. Bateson, under her breath.
"Mrs. Bateson — he begs you to come to him! He’s sorry for his conduct — he says you can see for yourself that he can’t wrong you any more. Come — and be merciful!”
The woman paused. The Rector could see the shiver of her thin shoulders under her print dress. Then she turned and quietly descended the cottage stairway. Half way down, she looked up.
“Tell him I should do him nowt but harm. I ” — her voice trembled for the first time — “I doan’t bear him malice; I hope he’ll not suffer. But I’m not cornin’.”
“Wait a moment, Mrs. Bateson! I was to tell you that, in spite of all, he loved you — and he wanted your love.”
She shook her head.
“It’s no good talkin’ that way. It’ll mebbe use up his strength. Tell him I’d have got Lizzie Short to come an’ nurse ’im, if I could. It’s her place. But he knows as she an’ her man flitted a fortnight sen, an’ theer’s no address.”
And she disappeared. But at the foot of the stairs — standing unseen — she said in her usual tone:
“ If there was a cup o’ tea I could bring you, sir — or anythin’?”
Meynell, distressed and indignant, did not answer. He returned to the sick-room. Bateson looked up as the Rector bent once more over the bed.
‘‘She’ll not coom?” he said in a faint voice of surprise. "Well, that’s a queer thing. She wasn’t used to be a tough ’un. I could ’most make her do what I wanted. Well, never mind,
Rector, never mind. Sit tha down — mebbe you’d be wantin’ to say a prayer. You’re welcome; I reckon it’ll do me no harm.”
His lips parted in a smile — a smile of satire. But his brows frowned, and his eyes were still alive and bright, only now, as the watcher thought, with anger.
Meynell hesitated.
“ I will say the church prayers, if you wish it, Bateson; of course I will say them.”
“But I doan’t believe in ’em,” said the sick man, smiling again, “an’ you doan’t believe in ’em, noather, if folk say true! Don’t tha be vexed— I’m not sayin’ it to cheek tha. But Mr. Barron, ee says ee’Il make tha give up. Ee’s been goin’ roun’ the village, talkin’ to folk. 1 doan’t care about that — an’ a’ve never been one o’ your men,— not pious enough, be a long way,—but I’d like to hear — now as 1 can’t do tha no harm, Rector, now as I’m goin’, an’ you cawn’t deny me — what tha does really believe? Will tha tell me?”
He turned, open-eyed, impulsive, intelligent, as he had always been in life.
The Rector started. The inward challenge had taken voice.
"Certainly I will tell you, if it will help you — if you’re strong enough.”
Bateson waved his hand contemptuously. “I feel as strong as onything. That sup o’ brandy has put some grit in me. Give me seme more. Thank tha. . . . Dost tha believe in God, Rector?”
His whimsical, half-teasing, yet at bottom anxious look touched Meynell strangely.
“With all my life — and with all mystrength!” Meynell’s gaze was fixed intently on his questioner. The night-light in the basin on the farther side of the room threw the strong features into shadowy relief, illumining the yearning kindliness of the eyes.
“What made tha believe in him?”
“My own life—my own struggles — and sins — and sufferings,” said Meynell, stooping towards the sick man, and speaking each word with an intensity behind which lay much that could never be known to his questioner. "A good man put it once in this way: ‘There is something in me that asks something of me.’ If a man wants to be filthy, or drunken, or cruel, the something within asks of him to be, instead, pure and sober and kind. And perhaps he denies the something, refuses and tramples on it again and again. And then the joy in his life dies out, and the world turns to dust and ashes. Every time that he says no to the voice, he is less happy — he has less power of being happy. And the voice itself dies away — and death comes. But suppose he turns to the
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voice and says, ‘Lead me—I follow!’ And suppose he obeys, like a child stumbling. Then, every time he stretches and bends his poor weak will so as to give it what it asks, there is a strange joy; and the joy grows and grows. It asks him to love — to love men and women, not with lust, but with pure love; and as he obeys, as he loves, he knows — he knows that it is God asking, and that God has come to him and abides with him.”
“Tha’rt talkin’ riddles, Rector!”
“No. Ask yourself. When you fell into sin with that woman, did nothing speak to you, nothing try to stop you?”
The bright, half-mocking eyes below Mey-nell’s wandered a little — wavered in expression.
“It was the hot blood in me — aye, an’ in her, too. Yo’ cawn’t help them things.”
“Can’t you? When your wife suffered, didn’t that touch you? Wouldn’t you undo it now if you could?”
“Aye — because I’m goin’ — doctor says I’m done for.”
“No; well or ill, wouldn’t you undo it— wouldn’t you undo the blows you gave your wife, the misery you caused her?”
“Mebbe; but I cawn’t.”
“No —not in my sense or yours. But in God’s sense you can. Turn your heart; ask him to give you love — love to him, who has been pleading with you all your life — love to your wife, and your fellow men — love, and repentance, and faith.”
Meynell’s voice shook. He was in an anguish at what seemed to him the weakness, the ineffectiveness of his pleading.
A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed:
“Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr. Barron he calls tha an infidel. But he hasn’t read the books you an’ I have read. I’ll uphold yer!”
The dying man raised his hand to the bookshelves beside him with a proud gesture.
The Rector slowly raised himself. An expression as of some passion within, trying at once to check and to utter itself, became visible on his face in the half light.
“It’s not books that settle it, Jim. I’ll try and put it to you — just as I see it myself —-just in the way it comes to me.”
He paused a moment, frowning under the effort of simplification. The hidden need of the dying man seemed to be mysteriously conveyed to him — the pang of lonely anguish that death brings with it, the craving for comfort beneath the apparent scorn of faith, the human cry expressed in this strange catechism.
“Stop me if I tire you,” he said at last. “I don’t know if I can make it plain; but to me, Bateson, there are two worlds that every man is concerned with. There is this world of everyday life — work and business, sleeping and talking, eating and drinking— that you and I have been living in; and there is another world, within it and alongside of it, that we know when we are quiet — when we listen to our own hearts, and follow that voice I spoke of just now. Jesus Christ called that other world the kingdom of God — and those who dwell in it the children of God. Love is the king of that world, and the law of it,— Love, which is God. But different men, different races of men give different names to that Love — see it under different shapes. To us — to you and me — it speaks under the name and form of Jesus Christ. And so I come to say — so all Christians come to say — ‘I believe — in Jesus Christ our Lord.’ For it is his life and his death that still to-day — as they have done for hundreds of years — draw men and women into the kingdom — the Kingdom of Love — and so to God. He draws us to Love — and so to God. And in God alone is the soul of man satisfied — satisfied and at rest."
The last words were but just breathed, yet they carried with them the whole force of a man.
“That’s all very well, Rector. But tha’s given up th’ Athanasian Creed, and there’s mony as says tha doesn’t hold by t’other creeds. Wilt tha tell me as Jesus were born of a virgin? — or that a got up out o’ the grave on the third day?”
The Rector’s face, through all its harass, softened tenderly.
“If you were a well man, Bateson, we’d talk of that. But there’s only one thing that matters to you now — it’s to feel God with you — to be giving your soul to God.”
The two men gazed at each other.
“What are tha nursin’ me for, Rector?” said Bateson abruptly. “ A’m nowt to you. ”
“For the love of Christ,” said Meynell steadily, taking his hand — “and of you, in Christ. But you mustn’t talk. Rest a while.” There was a silence. The July night was beginning to pale into dawn. Outside, beyond the nearer fields, the wheels and sheds and the two great chimneys of the colliery were becoming plain; the tints and substance of the hills were changing. Dim forms of cattle moved in the newly shorn grass; the sound of their chewing could be faintly heard.
Suddenly the dying man raised himself in bed.
“I want my wife!” he said imperiously. “I tell tha, I want my wife!”
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It was as though the last energy of being had thrown itself into the cry — indignant, passionate, protesting.
Meynell rose.
“ I will bring her.”
Bateson gripped his hand.
“Tell her to mind that cottage at Morden End — and the night we came home there first — as married folk. Tell her I’m goin’— goin’ fast.”
He fell back, panting. Meynell gave him food and medicine. Then he went quickly downstairs, and knocked at the parlour door. After an interval of evident hesitation on the part of the occupant of the room, it was reluctantly unlocked. Meynell pushed it open wide.
"Mrs. Bateson! — come to your husband. He is dying!”
The woman, deadly white, threw back her head proudly. But Meynell laid a peremptory hand on her arm.
“ I command you — in God’s name. Come! ”
A struggle shook her. She yielded suddenly — and began to cry. Meynell patted her on the shoulder as he might have patted 'a child, said kind, soothing things, gave her her husband’s message, and finally drew her from the room.
She went upstairs, Meynell following, anxious about the physical result of the meeting, and ready to go for the doctor at a moment’s notice.
The door at the top of the stairs was open. The dying man lay on his side, gazing towards it, and gauntly illumined by the rising light. The woman went slowly forward, drawn by the eyes directed upon her.
“I thowt tha’d come!” said Bateson, with a smile.
She sat down upon the bed, crouching, emaciated, at first motionless and voiceless — a spectacle little less piteous, little less deathlike, than the man on the pillows. He still smiled at her, in a kind of triumph; also silent, but his lips trembled. Then, groping, she put out her hand — her disfigured, toil-worn hand — and took his, raising it to her lips. The touch of his flesh seemed to loosen in her the fountains of the great deep. She slid to her knees and kissed him, enfolding him with her arms, the two murmuring together.
Meynell went out into the dawn. His mystical sense had beheld the Lord in that small upper room; had seen as it were the sacred hands breaking to those two poor creatures the
sacrament of love. His own mind was for the time being tranquillised. It was as though he said to himself, " I know that trouble will come back — I know that doubts and fears will pursue me again; but this hour — this blessing — is from God!”
The sun was high in a dewy world, already busy with its first labours of field and mine, when Meynell left the cottage. The church clock was on the stroke of seven. He turned into the church, where a few straggling groups of men, on their way to the morning shift at the colliery, had preceded him. When he came out, he was greeted by many a friendly look and nod. It was known that the Rector had been sitting up with Jim Bateson, who was dying.
He passed down the village street, and reached again the little gabled house which he had passed the night before. As he approached, there was a movement in the garden. A lady who was walking among the roses, holding up her light skirts from the dew, turned and ran towards the gate.
“Come in! You must be tired out. The gardener told me he’d seen you about. We’ve got some coffee ready for you.”
Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment.
“What are you up for at this hour?”
“Why shouldn’t I be up? What’s a summer morning for? I have a friend with me, and I want to introduce you.”
Miss Puttenham, fresh and tall, in a morning dress of blue, opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her, among the roses, Meynell perceived another lady — a slender girl in a broad hat.
“Mary!” said Miss Puttenham.
The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy — the shyness of strong character rather than of mere youth and innocence.
"This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You’ve heard they’re at Forked Pond?” Alice Puttenham repeated, smiling, as she threw her arm round the girl. “I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I want you to know each other.”
“Elsmere’s daughter!” thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room, where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young face.
TO BE CONTINUED
[pgbrk] PAUL EHRLICH: THE MAN AND HIS WORK
BY
MARGUERITE MARKS
My dear Mr. McClure:
It affords me great pleasure to have you give the readers of your magazine an article about my work, and I can say that I am very much pleased with the manner in which Mrs. Marks has given an account of my studies. There are many bonds, scientific and personal, between me and your country, and I remember with pleasure my trip to America, and the friendship and mental stimulus that I found there.
C‘ year the Rockefeller Institute of the city of New York granted $10,000 to Professor Paul Ehrlich, to be used in scientific investigation in his famous Institute at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Germany. The year before, Professor Ehrlich received the Nobel Prize for medical research. The report of these gifts brought the name of the German investigator prominently to the attention of the general public; to the scientific world he had long been known for the originality and practical value of his many discoveries in the field of experimental medicine. But now he has attained world-wide prominence through the discovery of a drug which appears to be a specific and positive cure for syphilis. From all over the world doctors and patients are flocking to him, and the results already attained in the eight months that the drug has been used for human syphilis are almost unexampled in the history of medicine.
Professor Ehrlich’s place in contemporary medicine even before the announcement of this latest triumph may be inferred from the estimate of so competent a judge as Dr. Christian Herter,
Professor of Pharmacology in Columbia University, who said in a recent address*:
“Claude Bernard, Helmholtz, Pasteur, and Ehrlich are the unexcelled prototypes of investigators of life phenomena in medicine.” And again: “At the time when Pasteur was beginning his research on anthrax, a young student at the University of Strassburg, Paul Ehrlich, was laying the foundations for that uniquely fertile and versatile career of medical research which has made him the most original and picturesque of living investigators of medical science.”
It seems well that the life story of a man of whom such things can be said should be brought more clearly to the attention of the public, in particular since his latest achievement is of a character to make intimate and personal appeal to an enormous number of persons in every walk of life. In the following pages the full story of the chief discoveries of this remarkable investigator is told in untechnical language for the first time.
* Christian A. Herter; “ Imagination and Idealism in the Medical Sciences.” An address delivered to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, September 23, 1909, at the opening of the Medical School.
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Ehrlich an Indifferent College Student
Paul Ehrlich was born on March 14, 1854, in Strehlen, in the province of Silesia. His was a family of business men, but already in his paternal grandfather, who was actively interested in botany and physics, and who still lectured on these subjects when ninety years of age, there are to be found distinct traces of scientific talent. Another distinguished member of the family was the well-known pathologist, Karl Weigert, who was a cousin of Ehrlich’s.
Ehrlich went to school and passed through the “Gymnasium” in Breslau with a mediocre record. Then he studied medicine at Breslau, Strassburg, Freiburg, and Leipsic. It is unnecessary to mention the names of his professors, as he studied astonishingly little under any of them, and, unlike most men, certainly was not influenced by them. If Ehrlich was a poor student at school, he was a worse one at the University. He cut lectures regularly, and spent his time in experimenting and trying to work out ideas of his own. His professors seem to have recognized an unusual talent, for he was left unmolested to do as he pleased. At the end of the five-year term Ehrlich failed to pass his examinations; he remained at the University another year, during which his research work assumed so original and important an aspect that, on the strength of that, he was graduated.
Ehrlich’s Life Work a Logical Sequence
In his university days Ehrlich continually worked with dye-stuffs, in order to determine their effects upon the different tissues of the body, alone and in many combinations. In this way he became aware of the fact that different tissues respond in varying ways to the same dye-stuffs, and this was the origin of that theory of the relation between the distribution and the chemical constitution and effect of different chemical substances, which has followed him throughout his career. In spite of the fact that the range of Ehrlich’s discoveries spreads over the medical branches of histology, internal medicine, pathology, neurology, bacteriology, pharmacology, chemistry, and studies of the protozoa and immunity, his whole work presents a logical sequence.
His basic idea, briefly, is this: that each and every type of living cell (and all living organisms, whether animal or vegetable, are composed entirely of cells), including bacteria and other parasites, has a specific affinity — if you please, an individual taste or avidity — for some particular substance. A given drug, when taken into the body, is not equally distributed
throughout the body, nor does it equally affect the different tissues and organs.
Thus, to name some familiar instances, morphine and strychnine affect the nervous system; digitalis acts on the heart; pilocarpine on the secretory apparatus of the skin; curare on the muscular system, etc. Stated thus, in general terms, the theory that each tissue has a selected affinity for certain drugs is a commonplace of medical knowledge. But Ehrlich elaborated the theory till it took on new meanings, as we shall see presently; and, by experimenting along the line of his theory, he has been able, in two instances at least, to discover drugs that, when taken into the human system, will destroy certain virulent disease germs without injuring the body tissues in the midst of which these disease germs lurk. In so doing he has forecast the probably not distant day when a specific and certain remedy for every germ disease to which humanity is heir will be at the service of the medical profession.
The first work of Ehrlich which attracted world-wide attention, and which by itself would have sufficed to place him in the foremost rank of medical scientists, greatly extended our entire knowledge of the cellular elements of the blood, which forms so important a part of medicine to-day. Up to Ehrlich’s time blood had been studied only microscopically in its fresh state, and investigators had been able to distinguish the red blood-cells, and several different kinds of the white blood-cells, or leucocytes. So-called lymphocytes (one kind of leucocyte) (fig. 1, f) were, for example, distinguished from these cells possessing granular bodies (fine dustlike particles), which were then given the general name of pus-cells. Certain cells with large coarse granules, which Ehrlich later named eosinophiles (fig. 1, d), could also be distinguished from the other granular-cells by their light-breaking properties under the microscope.
Ehrlich first made dried preparations of blood, using the method that Koch had found advantageous in staining bacteria. A small drop of blood was spread as thinly as possible upon a thin glass slide; this was allowed to dry in the air and then stained. Once, quite by accident, having left some slides lying on an oven, which was later, without his knowledge, heated, he found the next day, when staining these preparations, that the cells were colored much more clearly, and that no amount of washing in water could remove them from the glass. This surprised him, and in trying to account for it he learned that the oven had been burning overnight.
He repeated the experiment, and found that the heat fixed or hardened the cells, and that the
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preparations made in this way far surpassed those made by the other method; and no other method that has since been tried gives such satisfactory results. These dried and fixed smears he stained with many different kinds of dye-stuffs, and found again that different parts of the body of the white blood corpuscles showed an election for different substances. Some of the granulations would stain with one dye-stuff, some with another, showing a distinct difference in coloring. After experimenting in this way for a long time, he succeeded in perfecting a staining solution which contained three different dyes, and which is known as the “Ehrlich triacid stain,” with which he was able to differentiate the normal white blood corpuscles into five distinct varieties. (See fig. 1.)
The Constituents of the Blood
The results of these studies, though highly important, are rather technical in character. Briefly, it is shown that certain of the white blood corpuscles originate in the spleen, certain others in the lymphatic system, yet others in the marrow of the bones; that the different types of corpuscles are present in normal blood in very definite proportions; and—what is most important — that these proportions become disturbed in a definite way under the varying conditions of disease. Hence the “blood tests,” with which every one is nowadays more or less familiar, in which observation of a drop of blood under the microscope affords, through
Normal Resistance
FIGURE No. 2—DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE RHYTHMICAL ACTION OF TOXINS The curved line represents the changing resistance of the organism to the poison After each injection resistance is lessened, but subsequently rises to successively higher points until very large doses have no poisonous effect
count of the different types of white blood corpuscles, a new and highly valuable aid in the diagnosis and differentiation of different diseases. To give a simple instance: We know that the white blood corpuscles which Ehrlich termed eosinophiles constitute about two to four per cent of the total number of leucocytes in normal blood, and that in certain worm diseases — for instance, hookworm disease — these particular cells increase to ten per cent or more. If, therefore, in examining a patient’s blood, eosinophiles are found in large numbers, attention is called immediately to the probable presence of these parasites.
To Ehrlich we are indebted also for the simple and precise method of recognizing tubercle bacilli when mixed, as they usually are, with other bacteria. Soon after the discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Koch (whose achievement is the more remarkable as he had at his command no differential stain), Ehrlich found that, when once the tubercle bacilli were heavily stained with fuchsine, a red dye-stuff, they did not give up the dye as easily as the other bacteria when treated with diluted acids. This discovery has been of untold value to all medical investigators and practitioners, as it has enabled them to be certain in their diagnosis.
Staining the Living Tissues of Animals
Ehrlich now sought to determine whether the selective affinity for different dye-stuffs which dead tissues manifested would be shown also by living tissues. His affirmative expectations were fully justified. On injecting into the blood of a live rabbit the solution of a drug known as methylene blue (a dye-stuff which he introduced into the laboratory as a stain for. bacteria, and later into therapeutics as a curative agent for malaria), he found that if the animal were killed several hours after the injection no trace of the dye-stuff could be found, except throughout the nervous system, which was colored deeply blue. This clinching experiment showed the elective affinity of different tissues for specific substances in the living animal in the clearest manner, and laid the foundation for the process known as intra-vital staining; it was proved that different cells or tissues can be stained while in the living state if once a dye-stuff is found possessing the necessary affinity.
This experiment produced no directly beneficial results; yet it laid the foundation for all modern knowledge of the elective action and specific affinity of chemicals upon which Professor Ehrlich’s practical triumphs in the conquest of disease are based.
[pgbrk] FIGURE No. I —BLOOD STAINED WITH EHRLICH’S TRI-ACID STAIN As seen under the microscope, showing red blood corpuscles (a) and different types of white blood corpuscles (b, bi, c, d, e, and f)
Ehrlich’s Work on Immunity
These experiments fortified Professor Ehrlich in the belief that he was on the right track. He now turned his attention to the all-important subject of immunity. The condition of immunity, as is well known, is that state of an animal organism in which it is capable of resisting disease. It is a purely specific condition; that is to say, a person once having had scarlet fever rarely has a second attack; the same is true of measles, yellow fever, smallpox, etc. But immunity to one of these diseases does not in the least protect against the others.
The general fact that an attack of an acute infectious disease prevents its subject against future attack had been observed from the earliest times. Specific knowledge of protective inoculation against smallpox dates from the time of Jenner (late eighteenth century); and numberless experiments in recent years had extended our knowledge of the problems of immunity as applied to many contagious diseases. But, as yet, no one had advanced a plausible hypothesis to explain the phenomena; and without a hypothesis of somewhat tangible character an experimenter in any field of physical science must grope his way rather darkly. Ehrlich sought and found a hypothesis which could and did offer sterling aid in guiding the experiments of himself and other investi-
gators, which he called the side-chain theory of immunity.
As a matter of course, Ehrlich’s hypothesis was based on experimental facts. We must examine these in some detail before we shall be prepared to understand the theoretical explanation itself. The first experiments (made in 1891) had to do with rendering mice immune to the deadly effects of certain vegetable poisons. The active principles of castor-oil and jequirity beans (known respectively as ricin and abrin) were selected almost at random. These poisons were fed to mice in very small quantities at first, and gradually in larger and larger doses. The normal animal could stand only a minimal amount, but one that had been given the gradually increasing quantities could stand a dose that would kill the normal mouse in a very short time. In other words, the mice could be made immune against the ricin and abrin poisons. This was not only the first demonstration that animals could be made resistant to vegetable poisons, but it was also the first time that any organism was quantitatively immunized; that is, the grade of immunity attained was absolutely known, as the pure drug was always given in known quantities. The imaginative mind of Ehrlich found valuable clues to more important things in these simple observations.
Soon after Behring published his discovery of the diphtheria anti-toxin, Ehrlich was able to
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show that the same phenomena occurred here as in the case of the immunity produced by feeding ricin and abrin.
How Diphtheria Anti-Toxin is Manufactured
To understand what follows, details of the process of manufacture of anti-toxins must be given. If diphtheria bacilli (the cause of diphtheria) are allowed to grow for some days in specially prepared bouillon which is known as a culture medium, they produce a poison which remains in this bouillon in solution and can be separated from the bacilli by pumping the fluid through a Pasteur filter, which is so fine that it inhibits the passage of all bacteria. After this filtering, a highly poisonous, bacteria-free fluid, known as the diphtheria toxin, is left.
The next step is to inject a sufficiently small quantity of this poison into a horse, which then becomes ill, but recovers in a few days. If the
-A
B
-R
C
FIGURE No. 3—DIAGRAMMATIC ILLUSTRATION OF EHRLICH’S LOCK-AND-KEY THEORY OF CELLULAR ACTION The cell C has a receptor, R, which will permit it to take up the particle A, but not the particle B
identical quantity were again injected into the same horse, it would have no effect; but, as the idea is to bring about a high state of resistance, a slightly larger dose is given. This process is continued until the animal is able to stand tremendous quantities. A large amount of blood is then drawn from a vein of the horse under the most cleanly (antiseptic) conditions This is allowed to stand until the blood coagulates, when the clear serum is separated from all the cells of the blood.
This clear serum contains the anti-toxin; and it is this which, when injected into a human being suffering with diphtheria, so rapidly cures the disease.
At first the process of injecting the horse was not often repeated, as it was not known that a stronger serum could thus be obtained. It was
Ehrlich who first believed that this could be done (with his ricin and abrin work as a basis for this belief) and who produced the first strong scrum. It had, before then, been necessary to inject large quantites of the anti-toxic serum (five to seven ounces) into a child suffering with diphtheria in order to cure it. With Ehrlich’s serum only a fraction of an ounce is necessary.
The Poison Acts Rhythmically
While working with these toxins with Brieger, Ehrlich discovered that the immunity produced by the injection of toxins does not continually, after the first injection, rise above the resistance which every normal animal possesses. Were we to picture it, we might say that the process of attaining immunity is accomplished in waves. In order simply to illustrate, let us say quite arbitrarily that the normal resistance of a given animal is 10. Immediately after the first injection, resistance, instead of rising as might be expected, will drop, let us say, to 3, and probably remain there for several days, at the end of which it will begin to climb and probably go to 14. If another injection is given at this point, the resistance of the animal will fall to 6, but will again rise in a few days, perhaps reaching 18; and this course will be followed in all the subsequent injections. (See fig. 2.)
This discovery laid the foundation for the practical technique of immunization. It showed that it is dangerous to inject more poison when the resistance of the animal has fallen below normal: in other words, a definite period of time must elapse before each successive injection. And this is the principle on which rests all of our latter-day vaccine therapeutics as introduced into medicine by Wright of London.
During this work Ehrlich also showed that immunity could be transferred; that is, if the mother animal were highly immunized to diphtheria, for example, her young would also be immune; or if young animals from a non-im-mune mother were allowed to drink the milk of an immune animal, they would also become immune.
Standardizing Anti- Toxins
As the diphtheria anti-toxin came more and more into use, Ehrlich saw the need of establishing some standard, not only in order to insure its purity, but also to make it possible, by having only good serum in use, for a proper idea of its worth to be obtained. After several years of the most painstaking work, Ehrlich finally established a standard which the German government adopted. Practically all
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FIGURES 4 to 9—DIAGRAMMATIC REPRESENTATION OF EHRLICH’S SIDE-CHAIN THEORY
The dark bodies represent the particles of a toxin, each consisting of a so-called haptophore portion, which can combine with the protruding receptor of a cell, and of a toxophore portion, which contains the poison. The successive figures represent the cell as developing receptors in great numbers, until they float in the blood and, by combining with the toxic particles, prevent them from reaching the cell
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of the other governments have since accepted the same standard, which is almost everywhere in use to-day.
Soon after the publication of this method, Ehrlich was given the direction of a government institute, founded in Steglitz, near Berlin, especially for the purpose of testing anti-toxins and for further investigations in this field. On account of the rapid growth of this branch of knowledge, it was found necessary in a very short time to enlarge the facilities of this institution. To this end, the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapeutics in Frankfurt-on-the-Main was founded, and Ehrlich was transferred there. Since its foundation the Institute has grown until now it contains, under Ehrlich, many other departments; but, although he himself has long since ceased to be personally interested in this work, the serum-examination department is still the most important; for the factories that produce the serum must pay for its examination, and by this means this department earns the greater part of the funds that support the entire Institute.
In America the government laboratory which has charge of the supervision of anti-toxins can purchase only in the open market samples of anti-toxin, after it has been sold by the factories to the different druggists and pharmacists, and possibly after injections have been given to children, so that, if the serum is impure, harm has already been done. But in Germany, according to the regulations which were suggested by Ehrlich, a government officer is present when the horse is bled, to secure the serum used in making the anti-toxin. He takes a sample of the anti-toxin and sends it to Ehrlich’s laboratory. Meanwhile a seal is placed upon the entire remaining quantity of that lot, which is left unbroken until the sample has been approved by the Institute. It is there tested first for the presence of bacteria, culturally and also by injection into guinea-pigs. This obviates all danger of bacterial infection. It is then tested to see that it does not contain too much carbolic acid, which the factories are allowed to add, up to one half per cent, in order to prevent bacterial contamination. This testing is done by injecting one half cubic centimeter of the serum into mice, which can stand only one half per cent. Should these mice die, the serum is rejected.
Since these sera are sold with a guaranty by the manufacturer to contain a given number of units, they are tested to determine whether the guaranty is correct. This is done by means of a standard serum. Ehrlich first tried to use the toxin itself as the standard; but as this soon proved to be most unstable, and with time lost
its strength, he decided to take for a standard the anti-toxin whose strength he could constantly maintain by a method that he devised. This standard, like all others, is an arbitrary one. Just as the standard meter is kept in Paris, so is the standard anti-toxin kept in Ehrlich’s laboratory.
Ehrlich took for his standard a strong antitoxic serum of which he had a large quantity. This he dried in bulk in a vacuum, and the dried substance was then transferred to smaller vacuum tubes in which it keeps indefinitely. Every two months a small tube of this dried standard serum is opened, and dissolved in a solution of glycerin and salt water, and a sample is sent to all the government laboratories and serum factories throughout the world.
One cubic centimeter (which is known as one immunity unit) of this serum solution contains sufficient anti-toxin to neutralize (render ineffective) one hundred minimal lethal doses of toxin, a minimal lethal dose being the smallest quantity which will kill all guinea-pigs of a certain weight within four days.
The importance of this standard, which insures not only the purity but also the efficacy of all diphtheria anti-toxin throughout the world, can hardly be overestimated. In 1906 the director of the United States Serum-Testing Laboratory, the Hygienic Laboratory of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, Dr. M. J. Rosenau, in a publication* explaining Ehrlich’s normal serum, took occasion to acknowledge the debt of gratitude which humanity owed him for having devised this standard, and also acknowledged the debt of the American public to Surgeon-General Walter Wyman for having had it introduced by law into the United States.
Cellular Activities Explained
All this, it will be observed, is thoroughly practical work, the results of which are perfectly tangible and quite independent of any theoretical explanation. But an imaginative mind like that of Professor Ehrlich is bound to seek the why of the facts it observes. The explanation was found in the new theories to which we have previously referred, and to which we are now prepared to give specific attention.
Almost from the start Professor Ehrlich had evolved an imaginary picture of the activities of the living cell, and he presently drew imaginary diagrams to illustrate his ideas, ultimately elaborating, with the aid of these diagrams, a theory that is exceedingly helpful in explaining the phenomena of immunization. The basal
* “ The Immunity Unit for Standardizing Diphtheria Anti-Toxin (Based on Ehrlich’s Normal Serum),” Bulletin No. 21, Hygienic Laboratory, Washington, D. C.
[pgbrk] c
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FIGURE No. 10—BLOOD CONTAINING THE GERM OF SLEEPING-SICKNESS, AS SEEN UNDER THE MICROSCOPE a, red blood corpuscles ; b, white blood corpuscles ; c, germ of sleeping-sickness
idea may be understood if we think of each type of cells of the living organism (muscle cells, nerve cells, gland cells, etc.) as having individual peculiarities of conformation that make it possible or impossible, as the case may be, for various substances floating in the blood to combine with them.
Perhaps a familiar illustration may be found if we compare the cells of each set of tissues to a particular type of Yale lock into which only a particular key will fit. Professor Ehrlich’s diagrams present the matter in this tangible light. If, for example, we imagine a cell like C in Fig. 3 possessing what we may (following Ehrlich) call a “receptor,” and we picture two chemical substances (keys, if you will) possessing different atom groupings A and B, it is obvious that A will be able to attach itself to the cell, but that B cannot do so, because the cell has not the proper receptor to accommodate it. In other words, A is a key that fits this particular lock, but B is a misfit.
Now, the elaboration of this lock-and-key idea seemed to Ehrlich to explain the actions of the bodily tissues both under normal conditions and under the influence of disease. For example, the nervous system of the rabbit, in the early experiments already cited, was stained blue by the methylene dye because the nerve cells had receptors suited to receive and hold the atoms of that particular substance. Contrariwise, the other tissues of the rabbit remained unstained, because their cells were not provided with this particular type of receptor.
If now we further conceive that each cell in the body possesses not merely one but many
receptors of different characters (see Fig. 6), each adapted to receive the atoms of a different substance, we begin to grasp the essence of Ehrlich’s theory. Under normal conditions these different receptors make possible the nourishment of the cell, through the taking in of the varied chemical substances that are supplied by the food. Under diseased conditions the receptors permit the taking in of sundry noxious compounds (toxins), to the detriment or destruction of the cell itself.
The Side-Chain Theory Developed
But how explain the fact that a cell which takes up a poison readily under normal conditions will finally (when the animal is immune) refuse to do so? That was the extension of the theory to which Ehrlich now turned. A clue is given by the experimental fact which Ehrlich, to his astonishment, discovered while studying the diphtheria toxin -—- that, although the property of combining with the anti-toxin remains always the same, the toxicity or poisonous quality of the toxin itself may become greatly altered. That is, if at a given time a toxin possesses a definite toxicity and can be neutralized by a given quantity of anti-toxin (which is stable), and this same toxin is again tested a few months later, it is found that it is now, when tested alone, very much less toxic (a much larger amount being needed to kill a guinea-pig in four days), but that to render it ineffective requires the same quantity of anti-toxin as before.
Ehrlich concluded from this phenomenon that each particle of the toxin is composed of
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two distinct parts: one part (which he named the haptophore group) is non-poisonous, but has the property of combining with certain receptors of the body cells; the other part (which he called the toxophore group) contains the poison, but cannot by itself combine with the cell. The only way, then, in which the toxin (carried in the toxophore group) can gain access to the cell, and thus exert its destructive influence, is through the medium of the haptophore group with which it is associated. Many workers have found that the toxophore group can be destroyed in various ways (by heating, the action of some chemicals, etc.); but it is much more difficult to destroy the haptophore group.
Ehrlich based his next conclusion upon a law of over-production formulated by Weigert; that is, that if a part of a cell is in any way injured, and the injury is not too great, it repairs itself, but the amount of repair always exceeds the amount of damage. Ehrlich pictures the mechanism of immunity as follows (and, in order to make it more easily understood, has devised the accompanying series of imaginary figures): the toxin enters the body in small quantities and combines with proper receptors by means of the haptophore group, after which the toxophore group works destructively upon the body of the cell. (See figs. 4 — 9.) The cell, seeking to repair itself, produces new receptors in greater numbers than it at first possessed. Therefore, when a second quantity of toxin enters the body, it again combines with these receptors, causing a still further production. (See fig. 6.) Through this now excessive production the receptors are pushed off from the cell and float free in the body fluids, principally the blood. (See fig. 7.) If the cells are sufficiently stimulated, a state is reached where they continually produce and throw off receptors, until the blood is filled with them. Now, even if a large quantity of toxin enters the body, it is caught up by these free floating receptors, and the toxophore group, being unconnected with any body cell, must float harmlessly in the blood until destroyed or until eliminated by the various excretory organs. In other words, the organism is immune to that particular poison. (See fig. 9.) In order to obtain a higher grade of immunity, the process of stimulation and receptor-formation must be continued for a long time. This theory fully explains the production of diphtheria and all other anti-toxins, on the assumption that the anti-toxic serum contains these free receptors or side-chains in large quantities.
For years after the publication of the side-chain theory Ehrlich busied himself in expanding it and, together with many co-workers, in
piling up experimental data in support of it. It has gained wide, though not universal, acceptance: but perhaps the reader may advantageously be again reminded that the validity of the theory itself is something quite apart from the indubitable facts on which the theory is based.
Experiments with Snake-Venoms
Reverting now to the realm of fact rather than of theory, we may note that many of the important results achieved by Ehrlich in the field of immunity have been attained through test-tube experiments, which he was the first to introduce into the field of immunity research. He showed that ricin has the power of coagulating the red blood corpuscles if mixed together with them in a test tube, and that this coagulation could be prevented by adding a small quantity of the serum of an animal which had been previously immunized against ricin. He was also able, by means of this method, to demonstrate and explain for the first time the manner in which numerous other blood poisons, especially snake-venom, affect the blood.
Snake-poison, taking that of the cobra as an example, contains one substance, known as neuro-toxin, which has a specific affinity for the nerves and paralyzes them; and another, known as hemorrhagine, which causes hemorrhages; and still another which was formerly thought to be the same as neuro-toxin, but which Ehrlich first showed by chemical analysis to be entirely independent of it. This is called haemolysin. He demonstrated that in order to dissolve the red blood corpuscles (which is the way the poison works destructively on the blood) this haemolysin must first combine with a phosphorus-like substance known as lecithin (which is normally found in the body, principally in the brain, nervous system, and red blood corpuscles), thus forming a new substance which has the power of dissolving the corpuscles. By means of test-tube experiments Ehrlich demonstrated that those red blood corpuscles that did not contain lecithin could not be dissolved and therefore could not be affected by the poison.
Ehrlich also discovered the isolysins (iso = self, lysin = dissolve; an isolysin is, then, something having the power to dissolve itself). He found that if the red blood corpuscles of one sheep were injected into another sheep, the serum of the second was able to dissolve the red blood corpuscles of the first, and also the red blood corpuscles of two or three out of ten other sheep. The fact that individual sheep differ thus in susceptibility shows that, although it has not been possible to discover by the finest
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existing methods any chemical difference between constituent parts of the body of the same species, such differences do exist. Until these differences are scientifically tested, our knowledge of the structure and function of cells will not be complete.
Ehrlich’s Discoveries Regarding Cancer
The problem of cancer next attracted Ehrlich’s attention, and he succeeded, during the short time that he worked in this field, in observing several important phenomena connected with the disease. It was shown first in his laboratory that the virulence of the tumor cells could be greatly increased by passage through a series of animals. Thus a tumor which at first infects fifty per cent of all mice may, after being often transplanted from one mouse to another, infect one hundred per cent. Its rate of growth, also, becomes increasingly rapid. Tumors are divided into several classes, according to the appearance of their constituent cells under the microscope. It had always been thought that these divisions were constant, but Ehrlich discovered that tumors of one kind, carcinoma, or true cancer, may, after many passages through mice, show all the characteristic appearances of the supposedly different kind of tumor called sarcoma. This was found several times here, and later in other laboratories both in Germany and America.
Ehrlich next formulated a theory which is known as that of atreptic immunity. This theory is that, in order for a cancer cell to grow, certain food-stuffs must be present in the animal body, and these food-stuffs are specific. This is shown by the fact that a mouse tumor will not grow when transferred to a rat (or vice versa), but will again begin to grow as soon as it is reinoculated into a mouse. This atreptic immunity is further demonstrated by the fact that if a mouse upon which a tumor is already growing is again inoculated in another part of its body with another tumor, the second tumor will not grow, because the first one has taken up all available specific food-stuffs.
A recent (1909) piece of work in this department, whose significance cannot as yet be determined, showed that the tumor growth in mice could to a great extent be controlled by certain diets. First of all, the smallest quantity of all kinds of food-stuffs (meats, fats, cereals, etc.) were found upon which a mouse could subsist for several weeks. These quantities were then fed to mice for a number of days. After this the mice were inoculated, and it was found that, whereas the tumor grew at once on mice whose diet consisted of meats and fats, it
did not grow on those fed with some of the cereals, such as rice. It was also observed that if mice that already had a tumor were fed with these minimum quantities, the tumor would cease growing, and, in those mice that were living on rice, in some cases degenerate. But, of course, the mouse would die in a few weeks from lack of properly balanced nourishment. While this line of work presents ground for future investigation, its importance should not be overestimated.
Although Ehrlich is confident that the cancer problem will eventually be solved,— and that through the medium of experiments on animals,— he realizes that it will require a very long period of time. As the opportunity was given him to undertake upon a large scale a line of investigation that he had long planned and in which he believed he could obtain quicker and more conclusive results, he practically left the field of cancer research and founded an entirely new science, that of specific chemical therapeutics. In other words, he sought a specific cure for each germ disease.
The difficulty, of course, is to find a remedy that will kill the germ without injuring the tissues of the individual in whose system the germ has found lodgment. Ehrlich believed that his antecedent studies had put him on the track of such specific substances. He was confident that a different poison must be found for each specific germ. What particular one should he first investigate? An answer was found in the fact that just at this time the sleeping-sickness was attracting the attention of the medical world by its appallingly rapid spread in Africa. As the causative agent of this disease is easy to transfer to lower animals, and therefore convenient to work with, Ehrlich decided to begin his experiments here.
The Scourge Called Sleeping-Sickness
Sleeping-sickness, that scourge which is now sweeping through equatorial Africa, has been known for over a hundred years. It was first reported in 1803 by Dr. Winterbottom in Sierra Leone, and was later recognized in the Congo and Senegambia, and seems to have been confined almost exclusively to the West Coast of Africa. Not until 1901, after the white man had opened up communication between different sections of the continent, did it assume epidemic form in Uganda, British East Africa. Authorities seem to agree that the disease came into Uganda about 1890, when some 10,000 Sudanese natives were brought down from the edge of the Congo by Emin Pasha. In the few
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years that have intervened since then, the disease has wrought terrible havoc among the natives, and has within the last few years also attacked the whites. Colonel Sir David Bruce,* who has an intimate knowledge of Africa and the diseases peculiar to it, says:
‘‘Civilization gives to the natives of Uganda peace, and at the same time introduces a disease which during the last three years has killed 100,000 of the population. For a long time it was considered that this disease was confined to negroes. Unhappily, this is not so. Several Europeans have now succumbed to the disease, as well as the natives of Persia and India.” Probably the most accurate mortality statis-
* Osier's “ Modern Medicine,” page 467.
tics are those published by Dr. M. Beck, a member of the German Commission under Professor Robert Koch. He says t that the Sese Islands (an archipelago of fifty small islands in Lake Victoria), before the breaking out of the disease in 1901, were inhabited by 35,000 people. In 1907 hardly 10,000 remained; 20,000 surely had died, and a few had wandered to the mainland. Of those remaining, over fifty per cent were found infected. From Uganda the disease spread to German East Africa, where a similar condition exists. To-day the whole of equatorial Africa is infected, and Bruce J says: “Large native populations in Central Africa
t “Arbeiten aus d. Kaiserl. Gesundheitsamt.M 1909, Bd. 31, Heft 1.
X Osier’s “ Modern Medicine,” page 460.
194
[pgbrk] PAUL EHRLICH AND HIS ASSISTANT, DR. MARKS, AT WORK IN EHRLICH’S LABORATORY AT FRANKFURT
are being swept away at this moment by this plague, and great tracts of country are rendered uninhabitable for man and the domestic animals.” The disease is declared by all who have studied it to be invariably fatal, and, according to Greig and Gray, as quoted by Bruce, between fifty and seventy-five per cent of the natives in Uganda have been found infected, which means that they will die within a few years if the sickness is allowed to run its course.
The Germs of Sleeping-Sickness Transmitted by Tsetse-flies
Sleeping-sickness (or trypanosomiasis) is caused by microscopic wormlike parasites (see
fig. 10) called trypanosomes. These parasites were first seen in 1841 by Gluge in the blood of frogs and fishes. They were described and first called trypanosomes by Gruby in 1843. These discoveries attracted but little attention until 1878, when Dr. Lewis, an English physician in India, observed similar bodies in rats. In 1880 Dr. Evans discovered a like parasite which was the cause of a disease deadly to horses, asses, camels, and elephants in India.
Livingstone, during his earliest travels through Africa, observed and described a disease which affected animals fatally. Even then the natives knew that the illness was caused by flies biting the animals, and that there existed distinct areas, known as fly-belts, infected by this dis-
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ease, which was called by the natives nagana. This has since been confirmed, and the fact has been established irrefutably by Bruce and others that the germ of sleeping-sickness is carried by the tsetse-fly (just as malaria and yellow fever are carried by mosquitos), and is spread in no other way. The fly that transmits the human form of the disease, or sleeping-sickness proper, is the Glossina palpalis; that which transmits the animal form, or nagana, is the Glossina morsitans. There is little difference between the two parasites, the flies being different species of the same genus. The disease spreads particularly during the rainy season, and on the coast or near rivers, lakes, and swamps, where insects breed.
At first it was thought that the tsetse-fly is but the mechanical carrier of the germs, and that it could infect a human being or animal only for forty-eight hours after biting one already infected. This was later found by Dr. Kleine of the German Commission to be incorrect, for the curious fact has been proved that the fly, though it cannot infect seventy-two hours after taking in the parasites, nevertheless, without again biting an infected person, can transmit infection after many months, having harbored the parasites during the whole time. It is thus demonstrated that the germ of sleeping-sickness goes through a life-cycle within the body of the fly, which is therefore a veritable host and not merely a mechanical agent.
Symptoms of Sleeping-Sickness
The course of this disease is an extremely slow one. The first stage is said to last a year or more, and the cause of the disease may be in the blood long before any symptoms whatever present themselves. The patient has occasional fever; indeed, a disease hitherto called Gambia fever has recently been recognized as the first stage of sleeping-sickness. It is said that the swelling of the lymphatic glands of the neck is a characteristic early symptom. This was known in 1803 to Dr. Winterbottom, who states that slave-traders, recognizing the symptom of a fatal disease, would not buy slaves who had this glandular enlargement. The patient feels well and strong, and is able to go about his usual occupations.
The second stage is indicated by a distinct change in the appearance of the patient. His expression grows heavy and dull; he becomes apathetic, lies around a great deal, and cannot exert himself. With the progress of the disease these symptoms become more marked: walking and speech become difficult and finally impossible. During the last week the sufferer lies in a
state of complete coma, from which the illness derives its name. Often, during the second stage of the disease, the brain becomes affected, and some of the patients try to run away into the forests or swamps, where they die of exposure or starvation. To prevent this, the relatives of a sufferer frequently chain him down until the time comes when he can no longer move.
Since the breaking out of this disease, almost numberless drugs have been tried without any satisfactory results. As arsenic was first used by Lingard and later by Bruce with some success in treating horses and cattle suffering with nagana, it was one of the drugs earliest employed in trying to cope with sleeping-sickness, and has proved to be, in certain changed conditions, the most valuable.
Ehrlich Seeks a Remedy
Ehrlich first started his work with dye-stuffs, and soon discovered a new one, trypan red, with which he could definitely cure mice that had been inoculated with the germs of sleeping-sickness. The curious fact was revealed that the substance which thus kills the germs within the body of the mouse has no effect upon germs of the same kind when brought in contact with them outside the body. When placed in a test tube containing even a strong solution of trypan red, the parasites live for many hours — quite as long, indeed, as they live in salt solution, which is the best medium for them outside the body. Ehrlich ascribed the power of trypan red to act upon parasites while in the body and not while in the test tube as an indirect action, explaining that the substance undergoes chemical changes in the animal body. This was an observation of the utmost importance, as it showed that mere test-tube experiments are not to be fully relied upon except when supplemented by experiments made on the living organism.
The sequel held another surprise, and a disappointment as well; for when trypan red was used on sleeping-sickness patients it was found inadequate to cure the disease. It does, indeed, possess the power to banish the trypanosomes from the blood for a time, but they always return. Trypan red has, however, recently been found by Professor Nuttall, of England, to be most efficacious in the treatment of the disease of cattle (Texas cattle fever) and dogs, prevalent in Africa and America, which is caused by a different parasite, the pyroplasmosis.
Trypan red having failed to fulfill its promise, Ehrlich continued his search in other directions. A drug called atoxyl, which is a combination of
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arsenic and analin (the latter being a coal-tar product), had been tested as a remedy for sleeping-sickness, first by Thomas of Liverpool on animals, and then on patients by Kopke, and was later used extensively by Koch, with results that were at first highly encouraging. With this drug apparent cures could be effected in a large number of cases, if the treatment were given early enough. More extended observation, however, showed that the cures were not permanent, and it is now known that the percentage of cases of sleeping-sickness that yield to atoxyl is a very small one, if, indeed, cures are ever effected by it. Moreover, the drug has after effects of an alarming character, as at least two per cent of those treated with it become totally blind, and a larger percentage suffer from impaired vision.
A Seeming Specific Found
Obviously, then, atoxyl itself could not be regarded as the remedy for sleeping-sickness which was so earnestly to be desired. Yet its observed effect on the germs was such as to suggest to Ehrlich that this drug might furnish a foundation from which to evolve a chemical that would accomplish the desired object of killing the germ without injuring the patient. Experimenting with this end in view,. Ehrlich first made the important observation that atoxyl is an entirely different substance from what Bechamp, its discoverer, had thought it. He proved that the combination between the analin and arsenic is a stable one, and that the drug can be chemically treated in a variety of ways which allow the making of numerous combinations. So nearly seven hundred substances, which are in reality only chemically altered atoxyl, were made and tried. Ehrlich also tested on animals over a thousand dye-stuffs, in order to determine which, when combined with arsenic, would be the most effective. In speaking of this work he likens himself to a general who, desiring to capture a fort at the top of a hill, would attack it, not from one but from every side.
Soon he found that those atoxyl derivatives that had the most effect worked indirectly, that is, only in the body. He concluded that the body had the power of "reducing” these substances,— in other words, of abstracting oxygen from them,— and that these reduction products were the ones that cured the disease. He therefore made in the laboratory numerous reduction products, and one was finally found (the 418th) which proved to be a specific. This Ehrlich called arseno-phenyl-glycin. It is a bright yellow powder which has to be kept in little vacuum tubes, as contact with the air alters it
chemically This drug cures all animals, even those that are apparently dying, when injected once. (It must be noted that animals have syphilis only when infected for experimental purposes.)
It is this which, after years of animal experimentation, is now being tried on human beings in Africa. This is a slow process, for the greatest caution must be exercised in using so powerful a drug, when it is not known how large a quantity men can stand. But private reports, made to Ehrlich by those actively engaged in the treatment of the disease with this substance, all go to show that at last a drug has been found which, when properly used, will definitely cure at least a percentage of patients. Dr. Strong in Manila has treated surra (nagana) in horses with arseno-phenyl-glycin, and reports excellent results. It is, then, not only man but also the domestic animals that are being benefited by Ehrlich’s discovery.
Professor Ehrlich, always conservative, when asked recently to make a statement of present conditions in Africa as regards the treatment of sleeping-sickness with this drug, said:
“Results are various, differing in different regions. In Togo [West Africa] the results are excellent, according to Dr. von Raven. It seems that after two injections of a relatively small dose a definite cure is effected. The reason for this is that the race of sleeping-sickness germs in Togo is a different one from that iti Central Africa, and is more easily influenced by the drug than' the latter.
“The results in the regions where the disease is most widely spread, as on the sea-coasts, are less satisfactory, up to now, because the parasites do not seem to be so easily influenced by arsenical preparations. Whether they can be destroyed by very large doses of the arseno-phenyl-glycin, or whether it will be necessary to employ other drugs in combination with the latter, the future alone can show.”
Interesting Side-Lights
Several interesting collateral discoveries have resulted from Professor Ehrlich’s experiments in quest of a remedy for the sleeping-sickness. For example, many substances were found, in the course of Ehrlich’s investigations, which, when greatly diluted, had the power to kill the germs in test tubes, but had no effect when injected into affected animals •— precisely reversing the conditions observed in the use of trypan red, as previously noted. This was, according to Ehrlich, because the substances possessed more affinity for the body (organotrope) than for the parasites (pnrasitotrope).
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Another discovery of the greatest importance was that disease germs themselves, if they survive, presently become immune to these curative drugs; that is, if a drug has the power of banishing the parasites from the blood only for a certain length of time, and is again injected on their return, they will again disappear, but will come back after a much shorter interval. When this has been repeated several times, a crop of trypanosomes is obtained upon which this given substance has no effect: that is, they are immune to it and to closely related chemical substances. This discovery greatly complicated the problem. Ehrlich now saw that it was necessary to find a chemical one injection of which would absolutely cure the disease; for, if more than one injection were needed, the parasites would become immune to it, and the patient would be worse off than if the illness had been left to run its normal course. Arseno-phenyl-glycin fulfills all these conditions.
Rockefeller Contributes $10,000 toward Ehrlich’s Work
At the very outset of this work it was seen that much time, money, and room would be required to carry it out.
In 1906 Mrs. Georg Speyer, the late widow of the renowned banker of that name, endowed an institute for chemical therapeutics for Ehrlich.
It is in this “Georg Speyer-H a us,” next door to the older institute, that most of the sleeping-sickness work has been accomplished.
As the efforts of Ehrlich to overcome sleeping-sickness were more and more meeting with success, he turned his attention to other similar parasitic diseases, notably syphilis.
It is interesting to recall that it was at this stage that Mr. John D. Rockefeller, learning of the contributions made by Ehrlich to medical science, authorized the board of directors of the Rockefeller Institute to place $10,000 at his disposal. So American influence of this practical kind may to some extent have facilitated the researches that resulted in what will probably be regarded in the future as by far the greatest of Professor Ehrlich’s triumphs the conquest of syphilis.
It is not necessary to give a detailed descrip-
tion of svphilis here. Although this disease has been known in Europe for over four hundred years, its causative factor was not known until 1905, when it was discovered by Dr. Schaudinn. This proved to be a thin spiro-chaeta, which, because it was so difficult to stain, he named Spirochaeta pallida (see fig. 11). This belongs to a large family of parasites, known as spirilla, which cause a variety of diseases in man and in many animals. Physicians have long since learned empirically that iodide of potash and mercury in different forms have a checking influence on the disease, though whether either of these drugs is capable of curing is still a debatable question.
A Cure for Syphilis
Ehrlich decided to find a drug by which with one injection he would be able completely to
RABBIT SEEMINGLY DYING OF SLEEPING-SICKNESS. PICTURE TAKEN JUST BEFORE INJECTION OF EHRLICH’S SPECIFIC
cure the disease. As he expected, those chemicals which affected the trypanosomes had no effect whatever on the spirochaeta. His previous work very much simplified the problem confronting him. It required only a short time for him to find (1909) a substance (another atoxyl derivative) which gives all experimental evidence of answering the purpose. One injection into any infected rabbit causes the spirochaetes to disappear immediately and permanently. The drug is named dioxvdiamido-arsenobenzol, but being the six hundred and sixth of the series, is popularly called “606.”
There are now over six hundred leading authorities all over the world testing “606” on
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human beings, with the most astonishing results. Among these are Professors Neisser of Breslau, Lesser, Wechselmann, Fraenckel, and Kraus of Berlin, and Pick and Van Norden in Vienna.
Ehrlich has records of 10,000 cases, all of which, except a minimal percentage, have been absolutely cured in an incredibly short period of time; those few failures were seemingly due to the fact that at the beginning it was not known how large a dose the human organism could stand, and consequently too small a quantity was given.
It is worthy of mention that in all the cases on record there has not been one where the eyes of the patient have been affected, a thing which was greatly feared, since “606” is an atoxyl derivative. Whether the cure is in all cases absolutely lasting can be determined only by years of painstaking observation.
THE SAME RABBIT ONE MONTH .LATER, AFTER HAVING ENTIRELY
RECOVERED
An announcement of paramount importance is that "606” will be introduced into America about November 1.
As the causative factor of relapsing fever, an acute disease found in eastern and southeastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, is morphologically closely related to the Spiro-chaeta pallida, the new substance has also been tried for this disease, with astonishing results, by Dr. Iversen in Russia. One injection of a small dose definitely cures relapsing fever in man. Finally, a small injection of this drug into chickens also cures a disease caused by a similar spirillum, which has devastated numerous farms in all parts of the world.
Personal Traits of Professor Ehrlich
There are several salient features of Professor Ehrlich’s mind that stand out as characteristic and individual. He is gifted with a remarkably quick perception: whatever is before his eyes he sees at once in its full significance. He reads only what interests him: in medical literature only what bears directly on the subject with which he is laboring, and by way of amusement principally light detective stories — American dime novels, for the most part (which, by the way, have been abundantly translated into German). In all his reading, just as in his work, Ehrlich has the gift of picking out the essential points with lightning rapidity. His method is first empirical and only subsequently constructive: as, for instance, in his work on sleeping-sickness, he first tried out hundreds of drugs, then picked out those that were in any measure effective, and upon these as a foundation he built until he reached the desired goal.
Ehrlich believes firmly in absolute concentration — concentrated work along one line and concentrated amusement in hours of recreation. Perhaps his greatest gift of all is his remarkable imagination. He has said of himself that his most powerful asset is his “chemical imagination,” which is unique. Although he has never studied chemistry much in the conventional way, and during his student days never attended his chemistry lectures, he-possesses an unrivaled knowledge of the properties and actions of organic chemicals (those derived from the vegetable and animal kingdom), especially the dye-stuffs.
Contrary to usual chemical methods, he never works quantitatively, and rarely with a definite end in view. To use his own words, his is a play-chemistry (Spiel-Chemie), and is simply used as a means toward an end: that of curing disease, and of explaining the phenomena of the action of chemicals upon the human body. In this connection, even the most fantastic ideas are worked out experimentally, for Ehrlich says that through his experience, wherein chance has played a considerable part, he has learned that
[pgbrk] A
FIGURE: No. I I— SPIROCHAETA PALI.IDA A, the germ of syphilis, seen under the microscope, in the midst of blood corpuscles
nothing is to be regarded as ridiculous or barren until it has been actually proved so.
Since Professor Ehrlich is still comparatively a young man, and has already opened up many new paths to knowledge and done much to alleviate the suffering of the human family, and as he is even now laying the foundation of a new science, there is every reason to expect still greater achievements from this extraordinary mind.
The following is a list of the positions Professor Ehrlich has held, the titles that have been bestowed upon him, and the honors he has won:
1878-1885: Assistant in the Medical Clinic of von Frerichs in Berlin.
1885-1887: Assistant in the Medical Clinic of Ger-hardt in Berlin.
1884: Received the title of Professor from the Prussian Government.
1887-1890: Furnished and maintained a private laboratory.
1887: Made Instructor (Privatdoccnl) of Internal Medicine by the University of Berlin.
1890-1895: Given a place for his own laboratory by Professor Robert Koch in his Institute in Berlin.
1890: Received the title of Professor Fxtraordinary from the University of Berlin.
1896: Became director of the Royal Institute for Serum-research and Serum-testing in Steglitz, near Berlin.
1897: Received from the Prussian Government the title of Geheimer Medifinalrat.
Since 1899: Director of the Royal Institute for Ex-perimental Therapeutics in Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
1900: Delivered Croonian Lectures in London.
1903: Received from the King of Prussia the "gold medallion for science" for the work on immunity.
1904: Received an honorary professorship from the University of Gottingen.
1904: Visited the United States and delivered lectures in several of the large Eastern cities. Received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Chicago.
Since 1906: Dfrector of the Georg Speyer-Haus in Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
1907: Delivered Harben Lectures in London, and received the title of Doctor of Science from the University of Oxford.
1907: Received the title of Gebcimer Ubcnncdi-linalral from the Prussian Government.
1908: Received the Nobel prize, with Metchnikoff, for the work on immunity.
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III
UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL FACTORY WORKERS BY SUE AINSLIE CLARK and EDITH WYATT
A
MONG the women workers who help to supply the enormous garment trade of New York with the innumerable yards of stitching it requires, the waist-makers have within the last year achieved, through organization. a better spirit of solidarity and hours less exhausting.
What are the chances in life of some of the other self-supporting girls and women who are working in factories, in the garment trade and other industries in New York? Besides the accounts of the waist-makers, the National Con-smners' league received, in its inquiry on this
point, specific chronicles from skilled and from unskilled factory workers, both hand workers and machine operatives — among others, packers of drugs, biscuits, and olives, cigarette-roll-ers, box-makers, umbrella-makers. hat-makers. glove-makers, fur-sewers, hand embroiderers, white-goods workers, skirt-makers, workers on men’s coats, and workers on children’s dresses.
As will be seen, the situation occupied and described by any individual girl may in a year or five years be no longer hers, but that of some other worker. So that the synthesis of these chronicles is presented not as a composite photograph of the industrial experiences in any
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one trade, but rather as an accurate kineto-scope view of the yearly life of chance passing factory workers.
For the purposes of record these annals may be loosely divided into those of unskilled and skilled factory, workers. This division must remain loose to convey a truthful impression. For the same self-supporting girl has often been a skilled and an unskilled worker, by hand, at a machine, and in several industries.
Emily Clement, an Unskilled American Worker
Discouragement at the lack of opportunity to advance was expressed by almost all the narrators of their histories who were engaged in unskilled factory work. Among them, Emily Clement, an American girl, was one of the first workers who gave the Feague an account of her experience.
Emily was tending an envelop-machine, at a wage of $6 a week. She was about twenty years old; and before her employment at the envelop-machine she had worked, at the age of fourteen, for a year in a carpet-mill; then for two years in a tobacco factory; and then for two years had kept house for a sister and an aunt living in an East Side tenement.
She still lived with them, sharing a room with her sister, and paying $3 a week for her lodging, with board, and part of her washing. She did the rest of her washing, and made some of her sister’s clothes and all of her own. This skill had enabled her to have for $5.20, the cost of the material, the pretty spring suit she wore — a coat, skirt, and jumper, of cloth much too thin to protect her from the chill of the weather, but stylishly cut and becoming.
In idle times she had done a little sewing for friends, for her income had been quite inadequate. During the twenty-two weeks she had been in the factory she had had full work for eleven and one half weeks, at $6; half-time work for eight and one half weeks, at $3; and two weeks of slack work, in each of which she earned only $1.50.
She had no money at all to spend for recreation; and, in her hopelessness of the future and her natural thirst for pleasure, she sometimes accepted it from chance men acquaintances met on the street.
$4-a-Week Russian Factory Worker Who Studied Shakespeare in the Original
Another unskilled worker of twenty, Sarina Bashkitseff, intended to escape from her monotonous work and low wage by educating herself in a private evening school.
For this she contrived to save $4 a month out of her income of $4 a week. Sarina packed powders in a drug factory from eight to six o’clock, with three quarters of an hour for lunch. She was a beautiful and brilliant girl, who used to come to work in the winter dressed in her summer coat, with a little woolen under-jacket to protect her from the cold, and a plain cheap felt hat, much mocked at by the American girls. Sarina scorned the mental scope of these girls; scorned to spend for dress, money with which she could learn to read “Othello” and “King Lear” in the original; and scorned to spend in giggling the lunch hour in which she might read in Yiddish newspapers the latest tidings of the struggle in Russia.
In the drug factory, and in her East Side hall bedroom, she lived in a world of her own — a splendid, generous world of the English tragedies she studied at night school, and of the thrilling hopes and disappointments of the Russian revolution.
She had been in New York a year. In this time she had worked in an artificial flower factory, earning from $2 to $2.25 a week; then as a cutter in a box factory, where she had $3 a week at first, and then $5, for ten hours’ work a day. She left this place because the employer was very lax about payment, and sometimes cheated her out of small amounts. She then tried finishing men’s coats; but working from seven-thirty to twelve and from one to six daily brought her only $3 a week and severe exhaustion.
From her present wage of $4 she spent 60 cents a week for carfare and $4.25 a month for her share of a tenement hall bedroom. Although she did not live with them, her mother and father were in New York, and she had her dinners with them, free of cost. Her luncheon cost her from seven to ten cents a day, and her breakfast consisted of 1 1/2 cents’ worth of rolls.
All that made Sarina Bashkitseff’s starved and drudging days endurable for her was her clear determination to escape from them, by educating herself. Her fate might be expressed in Whitman’s words, “Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.”
Whatever her circumstances, few persons in the world could ever be in a position to pity her.
Story op Marta Neumann, a Homesick Austrian Worker
Marta Neumann, another unskilled factory worker, an Austrian girl of nineteen, was also trying to escape from her present position by educating herself at night-school, but was drained by cruel homesickness.
[pgbrk] A GROUP OP GIRL WORKERS IN A NEW YORK PAPER-BOX FACTORY
SARINA BASHKITSEFF WORKED AS CUTTER IN A PAPER-BOX FACTORY, FIRST AT $3 A WEEK, THEN AT $5, FOR TEN HOURS’ WORK A DAY. HER STORY IS TOLD IN THE ARTICLE
Marta had spent all her youth, since her childhood at home,— four years in New York, — in factory work, without the slightest prospect of advancement. Her work was of the least skilled kind — cutting off the ends of threads from men’s suspenders, and folding and placing them in boxes. She earned at first $3 a week, and had been advanced to $5 by a 50-cent rise at every one of the last four Christmases since she had left her mother and father. But she knew she would not be advanced beyond this last price, and feared to undertake heavier work, as, though she had kept her health, she was not at all strong.
She worked from eight to six, with half an hour at noon. On Saturday the factory closed at five in winter and at one in summer. Her income for the year had been $237.50. She had spent $28.50 for carfare, $13 for a suit, $2 for a hat, and $2 for a pair of shoes she had worn for ten months. Her board and lodging with a married sister had cost her $2.50 a week, less in one way than with strangers. But she slept with part of her sister’s family, did her own washing
and her sister’s, scrubbed the floor, and rose every day at half past five to help with the work and prepare her luncheon before starting for the factory at seven.
Marta could earn so little that she had never been able to save enough to make her deeply desired journey back to Austria to see her mother and father. Although both their children were in the new country, her mother and father would not be admitted under the immigration law, because her father was blind.
Story of Mrs. Hallett, Earning $6 a Week After Working Sixteen Years
The lack of opportunity to rise, among older unskilled factory workers, may be illustrated by the experience of Mrs. Hallett, an American woman of forty, a slight, gentle-voiced little widow, who had been packing candies and tying and labeling boxes for sixteen years. In this time she had advanced from a wage of $4 a week to a wage of $6, earned by a week of nine-hour days, with a Saturday half holiday.
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However, as with Marta, this had represented payment from the company for length of service, and not an advance to more skilled or responsible labor with more outlook. In Mrs. Hallett’s case this was partly because the next step would have been to become a clerk in one of the company’s retail stores, and she was not strong enough to endure the all-day standing which this would require. Mrs. Hallett liked this company. The foreman was considerate, and a week’s vacation with pay was given to the employees.
Mrs. Hallett lived in an excessively small, unheated hall bedroom, on the fourth floor of an enormous old house filled with the clatter of the elevated railroad. On the night of the inquirer’s call, she was pathetically concerned lest her visitor should catch cold because “she wasn’t used to it.’’ She lighted a small candle toshowherthe room, furnished with one straight hard chair, a cot, and a wash-stand with a broken pitcher, but with barely space besides for Mrs. Clark and her kind, public-spirited little hostess. They sat, drowned at times in the noiseof the elevated, in almost complete darkness, as Mrs. Hallett insisted on making a vain effort to extract some heat for her guest from the single gas-jet, by attaching to it an extremely small gas-stove.
For this room, which was within walking distance of the candy factory, Mrs. Hallett paid $1.75 a week. Her breakfast of coffee and rolls in a bakery near by cost her 10 cents daily. She apportioned 15 or 25 cents each for her luncheon or dinner at restaurants. In her hungriest and most extravagant moments she lunched for 30 cents. Her allowance for food had to be meager, because, as she had no laundry facilities, she was obliged to have her washing done outside. Sometimes she contrived to save a dollar a week toward buying clothing. But this meant living less tidily by having less washing done, or going hungrier. During the last year her expense for clothing had been a little more than $23: summer hat, $1; winter hat, $1.98; best hat, $2; shoes (2 pairs at $2.98, 2 pairs rubbers), $7.16; wrap (long coat), $2.98; skirt (a best black brilliantine, worn two years), at $5.50, $2.75; underskirt (black sateen), 98 cents; shirtwaist (black cotton, worn every day in the year), 98 cents; black tights, 98 cents; 2 union suits at $1.25 (one every other year), $1.25; 6 pairs stockings at 25 cents, $1.50; total $23.56.
She said with deprecation that she sometimes went to the theater with some young girl friends, paying 25 cents for a seat, “because I like a good time now and then.”
These trade fortunes represent as clearly as possible the usual industrial experience of the
women workers in unskilled factory labor who gave accounts of their income and outlay in their work away from home in New York.
Experience of Yeddie ‘Bruker, a Hungarian IVhite-Goods Worker
The chronicles printed below, taken from establishments of different kinds and grades, express as clearly as possible the several features most common to the trade fortunes the workers described — uncertain and seasonal employment, small exploitations, monotony in occupation, and fatigue from speeding.
Because of uncertain and seasonal employment, machine operatives in the New York sewing industries frequently change from one trade to another. This had been the experience of Yeddie Bruker, a young Hungarian white-goods worker living in the Bronx.
The tenements of the Bronx appear as crowded as those of the longer-settled neighborhoods of Manhattan, the lower East Side, Harlem, Chelsea, and the cross streets off the Bowery, where so many self-supporting factory workers live. These newer-built lodgings, too, have close, stifling halls, and inner courts hung thick with washing. Here, too, you see, through the windows, flower-makers and human hair workers at their tasks; and in the entries, hung with Hungarian and German signs, the children sit crowded among large women with many puffs of hair and a striking preference for frail light pink and blue princess dresses. These blocks of Rumanian and Hungarian tenement districts, their fire-escapes hung with feather-beds and old carpets, and looking like great overflowing waste-baskets, are'scattered in among little bluff ledges, scraggy with walnut brush, some great rocks still unblasted, and several patches of Indian corn in sloping hillside empty lots — small, strange heights of old New York country, still unsubmerged by the wide tide of Slav and Austrian immigration.
In this curious and bizarre neighborhood, Yeddie Bruker and her sister lived in a filthy tenement building, in one room of an extremely clean little flat owned by a family of their own nationality.
Yeddie was a spirited, handsome girl of twenty-one, though rather worn-Iooking and white. At work for six years in New York, she had at first been a machine operative in a large pencil factory, where she fastened to the ends of the pencils the little corrugated tin bands to which erasers are attached. Then she had been a belt-maker, then a stitcher on men’s collars, and during the last four years a white-goods worker.
[pgbrk] ‘INQUIRING, TIRELESS, SEEKING WHAT IS YET UNFOUND;— BUT WHERE IS WHAT I STARTED FOR SO LONG AGO,
AND WHY IS IT STILL UNFOUND?’’
Walt Whitman.
[pgbrk] '
WORKING-GIRLS’ BUDGETS
In the pencil factory of her first employment there was constant danger of catching her fingers in the machinery; the air was bad; the forewoman was harsh and nagging, and perpetually hurrying the workers. The jar of the wheels, the darkness, and the frequent illnesses of workers from breathing the particles of the pencil-wood shavings and the lead dust flying in the air, all frightened and preyed upon her. She earned only $4 a week for nine and one half hours’ work a day, and was exhausting herself when she left the place, hastened by thb accident of a girl near her who sustained hideous injuries from catching her hair in the machinery.
Stitching Six Dozen Collars a Day at $4 a Week
In the collar factory she again earned $4 a week, stitching between five and six dozen collars a day. The stitch on men’s collars is extremely small, almost invisible. It strained her eyes so painfully that she was obliged to change her occupation again.
As an operative on neckwear, and afterward on belts, she was thrown out of work by the trade seasons. These still leave her idle, in her present occupation as a white-goods worker, for more than three months in every year.
In the remaining nine months, working with a one-needle machine on petticoats and wash dresses, in a small factory on the lower East Side, she has had employment for about four days in the week for three months, employment for all the working days in the week for another three months, and employment with overtime three nights in a week and an occasional half day on Sunday, for between two and three months. Legal holidays and a few days of illness made up the year.
In full weeks her wage is $8. Her income for the year had been $366, and she had been able to save nothing. She had paid $208 for her board and lodging, at the rate of $4 a week; a little more than $100 for clothing; $38 for ca-r-. fare, necessitated by living in the Bronx; $3 for a doctor; $2.60 to a benefit association which assures her $3 a week in case of illness; $5 for the theater; and $6 for union dues.
Her work was very exhausting. Evenly spaced machine ruffling on petticoats is difficult, and she had a great deal of this work to do. She sewed with a one-needle machine, which carried, however, five cottons and was hard to thread. It may be said here that the number of needles does not necessarily determine the difficulty of working on sewing-machines; two-needle machines are sometimes harder to run than five-or even twelve-needle machines, because they
are more cheaply and clumsily constructed and the material is held less firmly by the metal guide under the needle-point. It was not her eyes, Yeddie said, that were tired by the stitching, but her shoulders and her back, from the jar of the machines. Every month she suffered cruelly, but, because she needed every cent she made, she never remained at home, when the factory was open.
The Nagging Foreman
One of the most trying aspects of machine-speeding, in the sewing trades, is the perpetual goading and insistence of the foremen and forewomen, frequently mentioned by other workers besides Yeddie. Two years ago, in a waist and dress factory where 400 operatives — more than 300 girls and about 20 men—were employed for the company by a well-known sub-contractor, Jake Klein, a foreman asked Mr. Klein to beset some of the girls for a degree of speed he said he was unwilling to demand. The manager discharged him. He asked to speak to the girls before he went away. The manager refused his request. As Mr. Klein turned to the girls, his superior summoned the elevator man, who seized Klein’s collar, overpowered him, and Started to drag him over the floor toward the stairs. “ Brothers and sisters,” Klein called to the operatives, “will you sit by and see a fellow workman used like this?” In one impulse of clear justice, every worker arose, walked out of the shop with Jake Klein, and stayed out till the company made overtures of peace. This adventure, widely related on the East Side, serves to show the latent fire, kindled by the accumulation of small overbearing oppressions, which smolders in many sewing shops.
The Story of Sarah Silberman, an e Austrian Jewess, Self-Supporting from the Age of Fourteen
The uncertainty of employment characterizing the sewing trades fell heavily on Sarah Silberman, a delicate little Austrian Jewish girl of seventeen who finished and felled women’s cloaks.
She had always lived in poverty. She had worked in a stocking factory in Austria when she was a little thing of nine, and had been self-supporting ever since she was fourteen, machine-sewing in Vienna and London and New York.
She had been in New York for about a year, lodging, or rather sleeping at night, in the tenement kitchen of some distant cousins of hers, practically strangers. The kitchen opened on an air-shaft, and it was used not only as a kitchen, but as a dining-room and living-room.
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[pgbrk] SUE AINSLIE CLARK AND EDITH WYATT
207
For the first four months after her arrival Sarah earned about $5 a week, working from nine and one half to ten hours a day as a finisher of boys’ trousers. From this wage she paid $3 a week for her kitchen sleeping space and breakfast and supper. Luncheon cost her 7 cents a day. She had been able to buy so very little clothing that she had kept no account of it. She did her own washing, and walked to work.
She had never had any education until she came to America, and she now attended a night school, in which she was keenly interested. She was living in this way when her factory closed.
She then searched desperately for employment for two weeks, finding it at last in a cloak factory* where she was employed from half past seven in the morning until half past six or seven in the evening, with a respite of only a few minutes at noon for a hasty luncheon. Her wage was $3 a week. Working her hardest, she could not keep the wolf from the door, and was obliged to go hungry at luncheon-time or fail to pay the full rent for her place to sleep in the kitchen.
Sarah was very naturally unstrung and nervous in this hardness of circumstance and her terror of destitution. As she told her story, she sobbed and wrung her hands. In the next six months she had better occupation, however, in spasmodically busy shops, where the hours were shorter than in the cloak factory, and she managed to earn an average wage of $6 a week. She was then more serene; she said she had "made out good.”
During her six weeks of better pay at $6 a week, however, which so few people would consider “making out good,” she had suffered an especially mean exploitation.
She applied at an underwear factory which constantly advertises, in an East Side Jewish paper, for operatives. The management told her they would teach her to operate if she would work for them two weeks for nothing and would give them a dollar. She gave them the dollar; but on the first day in the place, as she received no instructions, and learned through another worker that after her two weeks of work for nothing were over she would not be employed, she came away, losing the dollar she had given to the firm.
Story of Katia, a Corset Operative Who Heard Grand Opera on an Income of $346 a Year
Another worker who was distressed by the dull season, and had witnessed unjust impositions, was Katia Markelov, a young operative on
* The income and outlay of other clockmakers will be separately presented.
corsets. She was a tiny, grave-looking girl of nineteen, very frail, with smooth black hair, a lovely refinement of manner, and a very sweet smile. Like many other operatives, she wore glasses. Katia was a good manager, and an industrious and clever student, a constant attendant at night school.
In the factory where she was employed she earned about $10 a week as a week worker, a skilled worker making- an entire corset, after it was cut and before it was trimmed. But she had only twelve full weeks’ work in the year; for two and a half months she was entirely idle, and for the remaining six and a half months she worked from two to five days a week. Her income for the year had been about $346.
Katia worked with a one-needle machine in a small factory off lower Broadway. Before that she had been employed as a week worker in a Fifth Avenue corset factory which may be called Madame Cora’s. Shortly before Katia left this establishment, Madame Cora changed her basis of payment from week-work to piecework. The girls’ speed increased. Some of the more rapid workers who had before made $10 were able to make $12. On discovering this, Madame Cora cut their wages, not by frankly returning to the old basis, but by suddenly beginning to charge the girls for thread and needles. She made them pay her 2 cents for every needle. Thread on a five-needle machine, sometimes with two eyes in each of the needles, stitches up very rapidly. The girls were frequently obliged to pay from a dollar and a half to two dollars a week for the thread sewed into Madame Cora’s corsets, and for needles. They rebelled when Madame Cora refused to pay for these materials herself. From among the three hundred girls, thirty girls struck, went to Union headquarters, and asked to be organized. But Madame Cora simply filled their places with other girls who were willing to supply her with thread for her corsets, and refused to take them back. Katia did not respect Madame Cora’s methods, and had left before the strike.
Katia spent $2.50 a week for breakfast and dinner and for her share of a room with a congenial friend, another Russian girl, in Harlem. The room was close and opened on an air-shaft, but was quiet and rather pleasant. She paid from $1.25 to $ 1.50 for luncheons, and, out of the odd hundred dollars left from her income, had contrived, by doing her own washing and making her own waists, to buy all her clothing, and to spend $5 for books and magazines, $7 for grand opera, which she deeply loved, and $30 for an outing. On account of her cleverness Katia was less at the mercy of unjust persons than some of the less skilful and younger girls.
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WORKING-GIRLS’ BUDGETS
'Two Sisters of Eighteen and Nineteen Who Brought a Family of Five Over from Russia
Among these, Molly Davousta, another young machine operative, was struggling to make payments to an extortionate ticket-seller who had swindled her in the purchase of a steamboat ticket.
When Molly was thirteen, her mother and father, who had five younger children, had sent her abroad out of Russia, with the remarkable intention of having her prepare and provide a home for all of them in some other country.
Like Dick Whittington, the little girl went to London, though to seek not only her own fortune, but that of seven other people. After she had been in London for four years, her father died. She and her next younger sister, Bertha, working in Russia, became the sole support of the family; and now, learning that wages were better in America, Molly, like Whittington, turned again and came to New York.
Here she found work on men’s coats, at a wage fluctuating from $5 to $9 a week. She lived in part of a tenement room for a rent of $3 a month. For supper and Saturday meals she paid $1.50 a week. Other food she bought from groceries and push-carts, at a cost of about $2 a week. As she did her own washing, and walked to work, she had no other fixed expenses, except for shoes. Once in every two months these wore to pieces and she was forced to buy new ones; and, till she had saved enough to pay for them, she went without her push-cart luncheon and breakfast.
In this way she lived in New York for a year, during which time she managed to send $90 home, for the others.
Her sister Bertha, next younger than herself, had then come to New York, and obtained work at sewing for a little less than $6 a week. Between them, in the following six months, the two girls managed to buy a passage ticket from Russia to New York for $42, and to send home $30. This, with the passage ticket, and two other tickets which they purchased on the instalment plan from a dealer, at a profit to him of $20, brought all the rest of the family into New York harbor—the girls’ mother, their three younger sisters of fifteen, fourteen, and eight, and a little brother of seven.
Five months afterward Mollv and Bertha were still making payments for these extortionate tickets.
In New York, the sister of fifteen found employment in running ribbons into corset-covers, earning from $1 to $1.50 a week. The fourteen-year-old girl was learning operating on waists.
The family of seven lived in two rooms, paying for them $13.50 a month; their food cost $9 or $10 a week; shoes came to at least $1 a week; the girls made most of their own clothing, and for this purpose they were paying $1 a month for a sewing-machine; and they gave $1 a month for the little brother’s Hebrew schooling.
Molly was seen in the course of a coat-makers’ strike. She wept because the family’s rent was due and she had no means of paying it. She said she suffered from headache and from backache. Every month she lost a day’s work through illness.
She was only nineteen years old. By working every hour she could make a fair wage, but, owing to the uncertain and spasmodic nature of the work, she was unable to depend upon earning enough to maintain even a fair standard of living.
The Cost of Worhing-Girls’ Shoes
A point that should be accentuated in Molly Davousta’s account is the price of shoes. No one item of expense among working-girls is more suggestive. The cost of shoes is unescap-able. A girl may make over an old hat with a bit of ribbon or a flower, or make a new dress from $i’s worth of material, but for an ill-fitting, clumsy pair of shoes she must pay at least$2; and no sooner has she bought them than she must begin to skimp because in a month or six weeks she will need another pair. The hour or two hours’ walk each day through streets thickly spread, oftener than not, with a slimy, miry dampness, literally dissolves these shoes. Long after uptown streets are dry and clean, those of the congested quarters display the muddy travesty of snow in the city. The stockings inside these cheap shoes, with their worn linings, wear out even more quickly than the shoes. It is practically impossible to mend stockings besides walking to work, making one’s waists, and doing one’s washing.
All Molly Davousta’s cares, her anxiety about shoes and her foreboding concerning seasonal work, was increased by her position of family responsibility.
Rita Karpovna, Who Went Without Luncheons to Pay Her Union Dues
In the same way, in the course of her seasonal work, family responsibility pressed on Rita Karpovna. She was a girl of nineteen who had come to America a few years before with her older brother, Nikolai. Together they were to earn their own living and make enough money to bring over their widowed mother, a little
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brother, and a sister a year or two younger than Rita.
Soon after she arrived she found employment in finishing men’s vests, at $6 or $7 a week, for ten hours’ work a day. Living and saving with her brother, she contrived to send home $4 a month. Between them, Nikolai and Rita brought over their mother and the little brother. But, very soon after they were all settled together, their mother died. They were obliged to put the little brother into an institution. Then Nikolai fell from a scaffolding and incapacitated himself, so that, after his partial recovery, his wage was sufficient only for his own support, near his work.
Rita now lived alone, spending $3.50 a month for a sleeping-place in a tenement, and for suppers $1.25 a week. Her luncheons and breakfasts, picked up anywhere at groceries or pushcarts, amounted, when she was working, to about 12 cents a day. At other times she often went without both meals. For in the last year her average wage had been reduced to $4.33 a week by over four months and a half of almost complete idleness. Through nine weeks of this time she had an occasional day of work, and for nine weeks none at all.
When she was working, she paid 60 cents a week carfare, 25 cents a month to the Union, of which she was an enthusiastic member, and 10 cents a month to a “Woman’s Self-Education Society.” The Union and this club meant more to Rita than the breakfasts and luncheons she dispensed with, and more apparently than dress, for which she had spent only $20 in a year and a half.
Some months afterward, Mrs. Clark received word that Rita had solved many of her difficulties by a happy marriage, and could hope that many of her domestic anxieties were relieved.
The chief of these, worry over the situation of her younger sister still in Russia, had been enhanced by her observations of the unhappiness of a friend, another girl, working in the same shop — a tragedy told here because of its very serious bearing on the question of seasonal work. Rita’s younger sister was in somewhat the same position as this girl, alone, without physical strength for her work, and, indeed, so delicate that it was doubtful whether her admission to the United States could be secured, even if Rita could possibly save enough for her passage money. The friend in the shop, hard pressed by the dull season, had at last become the mistress of a man who supported her until the time of the birth of their child, when he left her resource-less. Slack and dull seasons in factory work must, of course, expose the women dependent on their wage-earning powers, most of them
young and many of them with great beauty, to the greatest dangers and temptations.* Especially at the mercy of the seasons were some of the fur-sewers, and the dressmakers and milliners working, not independently, but in factories and work-shops.
Working Nine Hours a Day in a Fur Shop
Helena Hardman, an Austrian girl, a fur-sewer, had been employed for only twenty weeks in the year. She sewed by hand on fur garments in a Twelfth Street shop, for $7 a week, working nine hours a day, with a Saturday half holiday. The air and odors in the fur shop were very disagreeable, but had not affected her health.
At the end of the twenty weeks she had been laid off, and had looked unsuccessfully for work for seventeen weeks, before she found employment as an operative in an apron factory. Here, however, in this unaccustomed industry, by working as an operative nine hours a day for five days a week, and six hours on Saturday, she could earn only $3 or $4.
She paid $4 a week for board and a tenement room shared with another girl. She had been obliged to go in debt to her landlady for part of her long idle time, after her savings had been exhausted.
During this time she had been unable to buy any clothing, though her expense for this before had been slender: a suit, $18; a hat, $3; shoes, $3; waists, $3; and underwear, $2.50. She looked very well, however, in spite of the struggle and low wages necessitated by learning a secondary trade.
Shifting for a Livelihood in the Dull Season
The dull season is tided over in various ways. A few fortunate girls go home and live without expense. Many live partly at the expense of philanthropic persons, in subsidized homes. In these ways they save a little money for the dull time, and also store more energy from their more comfortable living.
On the horizon of the milliner the dull season looms black. All the world wants a new hat, gets it, and thinks no more of hats or the makers
* In the first report of the New York Probation Association, the statement is made that out of 300 girls committed by the courts during the year to the charge of Waverley House, 72 had been engaged in factory work. Of these many had been at one time or other employed as operatives. On questioning the probation worker, Miss Stella Miner, who had lived with them and knew their stories most fully, it was learned, however, that almost every one of these girls had gone astray while thev were little children, had been remanded by courts to the House of the Good Shepherd, where they had learned machine operating, and on going out of its protection to factories had drifted back again to their old ways of life. How far their early habit and experience had dragged these young girls in its undertow cannot, of course, be known. The truth remains that factory work, when it is seasonal, must increase temptation by its economic pressure.
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WORKING-GIRLS’ BUDGETS
of hats. On this account a fast and feverish making and trimming of hats, an exhausting drain of the energy of milliners for a few weeks, is followed by weeks of no demand upon their skill.
Girl after girl told the investigator that the busy season more than wore her out, but that the worry and lower standard of living of the dull season were worse. The hardship is the greater because the skilled milliner has had to spend time and money for her training.
Many of these girls try to find supplementary work, as waitresses in summer hotels, or in some other trade. A great difficulty here is the overlapping of seasons. The summer hotel waitress is needed until September, at least, but the milliner must begin work in August. To obtain employment in a non-seasonal industry it is often necessary to lie. In each new occupation it is necessary to accept a beginner’s wage.
Regina, a Fifteen- Year-Old Russian Who Earned $3 a Week and Lived on Bananas
Regina Siegerson had come alone, at the age of fifteen, from Russia to New York, where she had been for seven years. The first winter was cruel. She supported herself on $3 a week. She had been forced to live in the most miserable of tenements with “ignorant” people. She had subsisted mainly by eating bananas, and had worn a spring jacket through the cold winter. It seemed, however, that no hardship had ever prevented her from attending evening school, where her persistence had taken her to the fourth year of high school. She was thinking of college at the time of the interview. Regina was a Russian revolutionist, and keenly thirsting for knowledge. She talked eagerly to the inquirer about Victor Hugo, Gorky,Tolstoy,and BernardShaw. With no less interest she spoke of the trade fortunes of milliners in New York, and her own last year’s experience. She had worked through May, June, and July as a trimmer, making $11 in a week of nine hours a day, with Saturday closing at five. During August and September and the first weeks in October she had only six weeks’ work, as a maker in a ready-to-wear hat factory, situated on the lower West Side over a stable, where she made $10 in a week of nine hours a day.
Regina and a girl friend had managed to furnish a two-room tenement apartment with very simple conveniences, and there they kept house. Rent was $10.50 a month; gas for heating and cooking, $1.80; and food for the two, about $5 a week. As Regina did her own washing, the weekly expense for each was but $3.67, less than many lodgers pay for very much less comfort.
The greatest pleasure the girls had in their little establishment was the opportunity it gave them for entertaining friends. Before, it had been impossible for them to see any one, except in other people’s crowded living-rooms, or on the street.
Regina was engaged to a young apothecary student, whom she expected to marry in the spring. Like her, he was in New York without his family, and he took his meals at the two girls’ little flat with them.
Regina’s father, who was living in Russia with a second wife, had sent her $100 when she wrote him of her intended marriage. This, and about $40 saved in the six weeks of earning $10, were her reserve fund in the long dull season.
The inquirer saw Regina again a few days before Thanksgiving. She was still out of work, but was learning at home to do some mechanical china-decorating for the Christmas trade.
The Chronicle of an American Milliner
Among the milliners, several girls were studying to acquire not only a training in a secondary trade, but the better general education which Frances Ashton, a young American girl of twenty, had obtained through better fortunes.
Her father, a professional man, had been comfortably situated. Without anticipating the necessity of supporting herself, she had studied millinery at Pratt Institute for half a year. Then, because it was rather a lark, she had gone to work in New York. Most of her wage was spent for board and recreation, her father sending her an allowance for clothes.
After a year, his sudden death made it necessary for her to live more economically, as her inheritance was not large. The expenses of an attack of typhoid one summer, and of an operation the next year, entirely consumed it.
In the year she described, she had been a copyist in one of the most exclusive shops on Fifth Avenue. The woman in charge was exceptionally considerate, keeping the girls as long as possible. She used to weep when she was obliged to dismiss them, for she realized the suffering and the temptation of the long idle period.
However, the season had lasted only three or three and a half months at a time, from February 1 to May 15, and from August 18 to December 4. During the six busy weeks in the spring and the autumn, while the orders were piling up, work was carried on with feverish intensity. The working day lasted from eight-thirty until six, with an hour at noon for luncheon. Many employees, however, stayed
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until nine o’clock, receiving $i, besides 30 cents supper money, for overtime. But by six o’clock Frances was so exhausted that she could do no more, and she always went home at that hour.
In addition to her thirty weeks in the Fifth Avenue order establishment, Frances had two weeks' work in a wholesale house, where the season began earlier; so that she had been employed for thirty-two weeks in the year, and idle for twenty. She was a piece-worker, and she had earned from $8 to $14 a week.
The twenty idle weeks had been filled with continuous futile attempts to find anything to do. Application at department-stores had been ineffectual. So had answered advertisements. She said she had lost all scruples about lying, because, the moment it was known that she wanted a place during the dull season only, she had no chance at all.
Frances lived in one of the pleasantest and most expensive subsidized homes for working-girls, paying for board, and a large, delightful room shared with two other girls, $4.50 a week. Although she walked sometimes from work, carfare usually amounted to 50 cents a week. Laundering two sets of underwear and one white waist a week cost 60 cents. Thus, for a reasonable degree of cleanliness and comfort, partly provided by philanthropic persons, she spent $5.60 a week aside from the cost of clothing.
She dressed plainly, though everything she had was of nice quality. She said she could spend nothing for pleasure, because of her constant foreboding of the dull season, and the necessity of always saving for her apparently inevitable weeks of idleness. She was, at the time she gave her account, extremely anxious because she did not know how she was to pay another week’s board.
Yet she had excellent training and skill, the advantage of living comfortably and being well nourished, and the advantage of a considerate employer, who did as well as she could for her workers, under the circumstances.
Something, then, must be said about these circumstances — this widespread precariousness in work, against which no amount of thrift or industriousness or foresight can adequately provide. Where industry acts the part of the grasshopper in the fable, it is clearly quite hopeless for workers to attempt to attain the history of theant. Among thefactory workers, the waist-makers’ admirable efforts for juster wages was, as far as yearly income was concerned, largely ineffectual, on account of this obstacle of slack and dull seasons, whose occurrence employers are as powerless as employees to forestall.
These chronicles, showing the effect of seasonal work on the fortunes of some self-supporting operatives and hand workers in New York factories and workshops, concern only one corner of American industry, in which, as every observer must realize, there are many other enormous fields of seasonal work. These histories are nevertheless clear and authentic instances of a strange and widespread social waste. Neither trade organization nor State legislation for shorter hours is primarily directed toward a more general regular and foresighted distribution of work among all seasonal trades and all seasonal workers. Until some focussed, specific attempt is made to secure such a distribution, it seems impossible but that extreme seasonal want, from seasonal idleness, will be combined with exhausting seasonal work from overtime or exhausting seasonal work in speeding, in a manner apparently arranged by fortune to devastate human energy in the least intelligent manner possible.
THE STORMY HEART BY ANITA FITCH
WHEN I am dead perchance my clay may lie In some wild spot, unshielded of the wind And strewn with wreckage of the salty seas. My stormy heart would choose its stormy kind.
When I am dead perchance my soul may know The Thing to which my living soul was blind;
And so forget the foolish heart of me
Still with its playthings — with the wrecks and wind!
[pgbrk]
THE DUB
AJob~Hurvter’s
Love Story
by
Oscar Graeve
Illustrations by
Frederic Dorr Steele
Ldid not wait to say good-by to the other girls; she had not made friends with any of them in the few weeks she had worked for Garden and Company. She did not make friends easily, although she had often wished that she had the gift. After her hat and coat were on, she walked from the lockers through the main office, nodding farewell to three or four of the stenographers and clerks, but not stopping to speak.
She was sorry she had been discharged, but she was not worried. She felt quite confident of finding another position shortly. Lily was well equipped to fend for herself. Almost as long as she could remember she had been compelled to do so, and through these years of self-support she had been constantly perfecting the tools that brought her a livelihood. Besides, there was added consolation in the knowledge that her savings amounted to about five hundred dollars.
She walked down the dim hall. It was the time of day when daylight lingers as if waiting for the lights of man. On the way to the elevator she passed the seldom-used stairs. In their bend, half concealed, she made out a man sitting in a crouching position. Lily walked on, but, just as she was about to press the button for the
elevator, she determined to go back. It had come to her that the man was some one she knew.
She turned, and in a moment, climbing the few steps to the bend, stood before him. She was right; he was one of the young men who worked in the bookkeeping department. She had often furtively admired his young vitality.
He did not look up until she touched him. Then he started, lifting a shamed face and reddened eyes to hers. “What do you want?” he asked surlily.
“You laid off, too?”
He nodded and resumed his former position.
Lily waited a moment, and then said, “There’s no use going on like this about it.”
He looked up with a flicker of anger. “Oh, there ain’t, ain’t there? Much you know about it, butting into other people’s affairs! It don’t mean much to you, perhaps. Probably you just work to have spending money.” His eyes swept over her neat attire. “But me, all I’ve got is my week’s salary — all I’ve got in the world, and two weeks’ board due, and all my clothes looking like the devil. I’m down and out.”
Lily sighed. She thought it a hopeless case — she might as well be on her way — but she sat down near him, a step below.
“There’s plenty of other jobs,” she said.
“Not for me,” he answered, looking at her, and wondering a little at her interest. “I can’t seem to keep a job. I was just hoping this would be permanent. I was doing my best here — honest, I was! And they gave me the G. B.— 1 guess because I was incompetent.”
“It wasn’t that at all,” Lily declared warmly. “You’re not the only one that was laid off. How about me? I’m competent, and don’t you
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213
forget it! There were about six others, too — the ones that had been there the shortest time. And business being slow was the only reason.” “Yes, business being slow,” he repeated; “and then you're jollying me into thinking it’s a cinch to get another job.” He stopped, and then said suddenly, “Say, what’s your game, anyway?”
As he looked up into Lily’s face, she noted the weakness of the mouth and chin; yet she admired his straight, sharply carved features and his splendid, muscular throat. She wished she could help him — he so evidently needed help. And yet he angered her; she felt a desire to shake him; and if she were a man, she thought, she would not only shake him but swear at him. It seemed to be what he needed.
But she chose another course. She put her hand firmly on his shoulder. “Come along!” she said. “Somebody’s likely to see you here any minute. Let’s go outside; and as we go along we’ll talk it over.”
Outside, it was March. There was a little sunshine left, but the wind was cold. They walked across the City Hall Park until they came to two vacant seats on a bench near the fountain. “Let’s sit here,” said Lily.
They did not talk for a few minutes; each had grown a little shy of the other. Finally Lily asked: “What’s your name?”
“George Scott.”
“Well” (it seemed foolish to call him “Mister”), “well, George, what are you going to do about a new position?”
He had almost forgotten his troubles, but the question plunged him back into his depression. “Answer ads; see my friends; look around,” he said briefly.
“That’s all right,” she answered; “but it requires more than that. It needs — ” She gave him a quick side glance and then wondered if it were worth explaining. That brought a new idea.
“I’ll tell you what you do. Come to my house to-morrow morning, and we’ll answer the ads together. I’ll help you and you can help me.”
He brightened visibly. “That is nice of you. What time shall I come?”
From her hand-bag she took a card on which her name and address were printed; she scribbled “8.30” on it and handed it to him. “At that time; then we can have the parlor to ourselves. None of the other boarders are up Sunday mornings before ten.”
She shivered and stood up, holding out her hand. “Good-by until then, and — and don’t worry.”
He took her hand, pressed it hard, and left her without speaking.
George was on time the next morning, and they sat in the front parlor with a Sunday paper’s “want” columns spread over the table before them. Lily read the advertisements and George wrote the answers as she dictated. Working in this way, they answered eight advertisements for him and five for her.
Finally she threw down the paper and jumped to her feet. “That seems to be about all. Now, what do you bet that we don’t both get a position this same week?” she laughed.
George caught her enthusiasm. “Well, we ought to, if letters count for anything.”
They were silent. He fumbled at his coat lapel, while she lifted and replaced a vase on the mantel.
“Shall we go out for a walk?” he asked suddenly.
She swung around, smiling. “Oh, I can't go this morning. I have lots of sewing and things to do. Sunday is just as much a work-day for me as any other. If it wasn’t, goodness knows what I’d look like. But I’ll tell you what you do, if you want to,” she added. “Come about four o’clock this afternoon, and I’ll go.”
He was there again sharply at four; Lily was ready, and they started. It had grown mild overnight; the air was of the peculiarly soft, fragrant quality that foretells spring.
They had walked up to the park and part way back, when George said: “Can’t you take dinner with me? I know where we can get a fine meal for thirty-five cents. You’re doing so much for me, I’d like to have you.”
Lily slipped her hand through his arm. “And you broke and out of work,” she said. “Not much!”
But he urged her, and at last they compromised: Lily would go if she might pay for her own dinner. They crossed to Sixth Avenue, and on one of the meaner side streets found the restaurant, which, he assured her, was “elegant for the money.”
The meal seemed to bring them closer together; in a way, it put a new aspect on their relationship. Lily was no longer the dominating personality; it was George who shone forth. His ready talk and good looks both helped. But — perhaps for that very reason — Lily enjoyed herself immensely. She had seldom gone out with men; life, so far, had denied her a “beau.” She wondered what the other girls in the restaurant thought of George; she imagined that some of them envied her.
The time passed so quickly that in an incomprehensibly short time they were outside again. As they stood there, a man, flashily dressed and with bright, protuberant eyes, swung past; he glanced from George to Lily, then back again.
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“Hello, Georgie, my boy,” he sang out, raising his hat.
George waved his hand. “Hello, Bill.”
Lily waited a moment, and then asked, "Who’s that man, George?”
“Why, it’s a friend of mine; I used to go to school with him.”
“ I don’t like him. What does he do?” George evidently did not hear.
“What does he do, George?” she repeated. “He —he runs a pool-room.”
“Do you have anything to do with that?” she asked quickly.
He shook his head and answered, with a trace of sullenness, “Not lately.”
By that time they were walking down the street. When they turned into Sixth Avenue, George proposed a moving-picture show.
Lily agreed to go on the same terms on which she had consented to the dinner, and they walked up to Twenty-third Street, to a theater where a continuous bill of vaudeville and moving pictures was offered to the public for twenty cents.
Lily had beguiled many an otherwise lonely hour at moving-picture shows, but she had never enjoyed one as much as she did this. As George leaned a little toward her, she was conscious of his arm against hers. To go with some one was much nicer than going alone, thought Lily.
When the illustrated songs came, and the singer, with an air of frightened good-fellowship, invited the audience to join in the chorus, Lily and George both sang. “Let’s sing right out loud,” she said. "I’ve never dared to before, but I’ve always wanted to.”
Together they followed the words on the screen, and the pretty, lilting music haunted Lily’s heart ever after that night. “There’ll never be another girl like you — you—you!” (Lily wondered if George felt it as she did.) “And you I’ll always love, dear, for you’re true — true — true!”
Soon after that the continuous bill began to reroll from the act at which it had been when they entered. Lily and George, with some others, passed through the red-lighted “Exit” into the street, and George saw Lily home to the boarding-house on East Seventeenth Street.
“Will I see you again?” he asked rather forlornly, standing at the gate.
“Why, of course; I’m not going to lose track of you until you’ve got a good job.” She thought for a moment. “Suppose we meet at six o’clock Tuesday night at the restaurant and compare notes.”
With that agreement they parted.
Lily went upstairs to her tiny hall bedroom.
She locked the door, and then, without removing her hat and coat, sat down in the one chair. “ I wonder what I’m doing it for?” she said, her eyes round with musing.
Her thoughts flew back and forth over the events — they were events — of the night. How really handsome George was — how strong, how big! And yet he didn’t amount to much. He really knew very little, she thought reluctantly. He was inefficient — and she detested inefficiency. She had often thought that if she ever loved a man he must not only be strong and virile, but he must be capable and commanding; he must be a leader, even if he led only a gang of street laborers. But what right had she to think of love? Then she wondered if, by any strange distortion of fancy, George could think her pretty — she who all her life had cried a protest against her own unattractiveness.
With her head full of these musings, she got up and prepared for bed. “Well, I’ll get him a job, and then he’ll forget all about me,” she told herself, as she turned out the light. "But if he doesn’t forget,” valiant hope sang on, “what then?”
“Lily Ritter, you’re a fool!” she cried aloud, vehemently, and jumped into bed. It was her final summing up of the situation.
Tuesday night found Lily at the restaurant first. She had received three replies to her five letters, and was triumphant with the promise from one firm of a trial. She was to begin work in the morning. “Now, if only George has something,” she thought. But at that moment she saw him enter, and she knew immediately that he had not been as fortunate as she.
Nevertheless, as soon as he was seated opposite her, she said with assumed gaiety, “What’s the news?”
He shook his head. “ I got answers from four places, but nothing doing. I’ve got one more place to go to in the morning.”
Her small clenched hand came down on the table. “Now, look here, George! You’ve got to get that place— do you hear? You say to yourself, as you’re going in, ‘I’m going to have it,’ and feel that you are — look it — and you’ll get it. That’s my plan.”
He straightened his shoulders as she spoke. “Gee! I wish you could come along with me.” “Oh, you’ll get it all right, George. Remember, I expect you to.”
They arranged to meet again the next evening. All through her work that day Lily kept wondering how George was succeeding. “If these people knew what I was thinking all the time,
I see how my trial would end!” she admonished
[pgbrk] “LILY READ THE ADVERTISEMENTS, AND GEORGE WROTE THE ANSWERS AS SHE DICTATED"
herself, as her trained fingers flew oyer the keyboard. But when the end of the work-day came at half past five, she gathered, from what her new employer said, that already she had "made good.”
She rode in the subway to Fourteenth Street, and walked the few blocks to the little eating-place. It was George who was there first that night, and almost before Lily was seated he cried out to her radiantly: “ I got it, Lily! I got it!” In her pleasure, she placed her hand over his. "I’m so glad!” she said.
Both talked eagerly of their new positions until, toward the end of the meal, a constraint fell upon them. Each stole occasional glances at the other. Presently Lily said, “Will — will I see you again?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“I’ll be glad to have you call any night,” she said, trying to put it indifferently.
They parted when they reached Sixth Avenue;
George said he had an engagement with some friends. Lily went home alone.
“And he didn’t say when he’d come to see me,” she murmured, as she walked along. “I suppose this’ll be the end of it for me.” She knew she was not pretty; she knew she had not that charm with which other girls seemed to attract men so easily.
She tried to become accustomed to the thought that she would never see George again, and in doing so it suddenly burst upon her that, completely and irrevocably, she loved him; knowing his weakness and his faults, she loved him. It seemed incredible that in so short a time this love had become as vital a part of herself as her flesh and blood.
“He’s a dub!” she reasoned angrily. “Think of me loving a dub!”
By the time she reached home she had ceased to fight against this love; she had surrendered to it. She stood looking up at the stars — they
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THE DUB
seemed strangely near and brilliant to-night. “Love!” she whispered. “Love! And it’s come to me at last!”
That was Wednesday night. Thursday came, and Saturday; another week slipped by; but she neither saw nor heard from George. The following Saturday night she went to the restaurant where they had dined together. “It isn’t that I expect to see him there,” she told herself, and even as she said it she knew she lied. Presently he came in and saw her. He looked away quickly and made as if to go to another table. But suddenly he swung around and sank into the seat opposite hers without speaking.
“What — what’s the matter?” she asked. “I’m ashamed to even look at you,” he said, covering his eyes with his hand.
Lily did not say anything, but, feeling the direct gaze of her eyes upon him, he blurted out: “They let me go Wednesday night; said my work was not satisfactory.”
Now that Lily knew the worst, she summoned all her courage to his aid. “They’re not the only people you can work for, George,” she cried angrily. “We got that job easy; we can get another just as easy.”
He shook his head. “You could, Lily; but there’s something lacking in me. I’m in wrong.” Lily fought with his depression. After they left the restaurant, they walked along as far as the Sixties, and all the way she said at intervals, “Just keep a stiff upper lip, George,” or, “Something is sure to show up, and meanwhile you can count on me.”
They turned and walked back; and presently they came to the park on East Eighteenth Street, and found a bench.
“Here I am, a great, overgrown brute,” he said bitterly-—“feel the muscles of my arm, Lily.” Her fingers touched him lightly. “And I can’t make enough to keep myself. What’s the matter with me? What’s the good of keeping at it?”
After some persuasion, Lily made him promise to come to her boarding-house in the morning, and let her answer some advertisements for him.
But, although George received several replies to these letters, it seemed impossible for him to get anything. A week passed, and then another. Lily saw him almost every other night. Each time she managed to send him forth with some small share of new courage. But at times she could have wept with despair; at others she felt that she could hardly control her tongue from telling him that it was his own inefficiency that held him down; and yet, all the time, she had to restrain a desire to enfold him in her arms, to comfort him with soft touches of
her hands and lips. It seemed as if her love had grown until it would stifle her. “Think of me loving such a dub!” she repeated again and again, with fierce self-scorn; but it did no good.
At last there was an evening when George came to her and said, with a strange absence of triumph: “Well, I’ve got a job.”
She studied him from beneath her lowered eyelashes. "What is it, George?” she asked.
“I’m not going to tell you!” — this defiantly.
Lily said nothing. She adopted an indifferent tone. “Well, shall we go out for a walk?”
Suddenly he turned to her. “Oh, Lily!” he cried brokenly; then he controlled himself. “Yes, let’s go out,” he said.
It was April now. Instinctively they sought the quieter streets, walking along without speaking. Finally they came from the calm of a night-deserted business street into the glare and roar of the Bowery. “Where are we, anyway?” asked Lily.
George looked at a lamp-post. It was Canal Street. “Let’s go down to the bridge,” he suggested.
They were soon there. Midway, they stood leaning on the rail. Far beneath them, the dark waters glistened. George, looking up, found Lily’s eyes full upon him. He knew the reason.
“Remember that man we met one night in front of the restaurant?” he asked.
Lily remembered. “Yes; the one I didn’t like?”
“I went to see him the other day, and he offered me a job — a good job,” he added hurriedly; “twenty a week.”
“The man who ran thepool-room?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Oh, George!” she exclaimed, and the tone called a defense from him.
“I had to take it, Lily,” he said. “You’ve tried hard to make something out of me; but you couldn’t. What difference does it make if I do take it?”
She put her hand on his sleeve. “I can’t let you do this, George — I can’t. You can’t take it!” The words came hurriedly. “I’ll give you money until you get a position; but don’t take this.”
He dropped his arm, and her hand fell from it. He did not meet her eyes as he said: “It’s all settled.”
“What can I do?” Lily thought. She knew that if George took this position it would ruin him. His weakness and the constant temptations — the rottenness of the whole thing! She pictured him going down and down.
It was George who broke the silence by saying hesitantly, “I’ve often thought if I could get away from New York, if I could go West or
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even on a farm somewhere, I’d makegood. I’m in wrong somehow. You’ve helped me a lot, Lily, but even you couldn’t make a go out of it — here. This” — he lifted his strong arms — “don’t count for much in the city.”
Suddenly Lily knew that he was right. Out West—somewhere else — there would be a chance for him. Here he was “in wrong.” Well, she could send him West; she had the money — five hundred dollars; she’d give him half. But at that thought she stopped. What of her? She couldn’t send him away. It wasn’t as if he would come back to her. She couldn’t hold him — deep down within her, she knew that for the truth. If she sent him away, he would probably be successful, but it would be the end of him for her. “Oh, I can’t do it!” The cry came so clearly it seemed to her almost as if she had uttered it aloud. “Oh, I can’t!”
Then, passionately, as if she wished to keep in advance of her desires, she took his hand between hers. “ I can send you away, George,” she said. “I have the money, and you can have it.”
He looked at her curiously. “Lily — ” he began, and choked.
“Why are you so good to me? But — I can’t take it!”
“It’ll just be a loan.” She spoke in a way that seemed to stamp her words as true prophecy. “ I know, as well as I know that I’m standing here, that you’ll make good. I feel it! It’ll be a loan and you can repay me.”
He shook his head, but she continued to plead with him. Presently he began to talk hopefully; he began to plan for a new life; and Lily became the silent one. She listened with a dull pain at her breast, that grew and grew, so that she could have cried out with the agonyof it. She was afraid to look at George; she was almost afraid to speak to him. They stood for a long while; a policeman passed, gazing at them inquiringly, smiling, with a shrug of his shoulders. They started for home. As they passed the
Fox Building, the clock showed a quarter to twelve. They had been on the bridge for more than three hours! When they reached the street, they boarded a car, and in about fifteen minutes were before the house where Lily lived.
Hardly a word had been spoken on the way home. One or two glances at George’s face told Lily that he was still thinking of his future — his future without her.
“I’ll get the money to-morrow—it’s at a private banker’s,” she said; “and you can start Sunday. Good night.” She held out her hand without looking at him.
But he was still full of his plans. He started to speak of them again, but now the confidence of his first enthusiasm was over. Before long he said: “But suppose I don’t succeed, Lily? Suppose I lose your money — what then?”
“ Don’t get talking that rot, George,” she answered. “Of course you’ll succeed.”
“It’ll seem awful new — awful lonely, at first,” he continued. “Here I had you to help me,, and other friends. There I won’t even have Bill to offer me a position in a pool-room.” He took her hand and held it. “Say, Lily, why — why can’t you come, too?” She was trembling.
“What do you mean, George?” “Why can’t you come along as my wife and my pal? You can make something out of me, Lily. You can make me succeed. And, God knows, I need you!”
She did not speak for a moment. She knew why he asked her — simply because he was afraid to go alone.^ But finally she turned to him with “Oh, George, I think in some ways you’re an awful dub,” — she was sobbing,
“ but I do love you, and I —perhaps that is what I was made for — to help you. Besides, I think I need you just as much as you need me! So—”
“Yes?” he urged.
“So let’s go together.”
“‘SO LET’S GO TOGETHER’”
[pgbrk] MISS CAL
BY
ELIZABETH ROBINS
AUTHOR OF “COME AND FIND ME ’* AND “THE MAGNETIC NORTH" ILLUSTRATION (SEE FRONTISPIECE) BY F. WALTER TAYLOR
THEY were talking, one evening, at a London dinner-party about a girl who was coming later in the evening to sing. People were mildly curious about the nameless one — “Oh, quite unknown,” said the hostess; “a young American.”
But London knew what to expect at Lady St. Edmond’s. “A little music after dinner,” was the way the invitations ran when Paderewski was to play. To-night it was to be Kreisler and Tetrazzini and the Unknown.
“Where did you hear her?” somebody asked.
The lady in the smoke-colored gauze and the wonderful emeralds smiled as she confessed: “Like you, I shall hear her to-night for the first time.”
“Aren’t you rather nervous — considering who’s here?” demanded her brother-in-law.
All the eyes at our end of the table followed the direction of Lord Seale’s. With one accord they fastened on the man who sat between the hostess and myself. Foreigner though I was, I had not lived in London all these years without knowing something of the meaning of that instinctive appeal to the slightly bored, gently cynical, middle-aged man at my side. Eighteen years ago my first glimpse of Noel Berwick had revealed a tall, extravagantly slim man of thirty-one or -two, with delicate, indeterminate features and charming, if slightly supercilious, manners. To-day 1 knew that not his inherited high place in the English hierarchy, any more than the despotic power he had come to exercise in politics, not even the personal charm that his bitterest opponent could not deny — none of these causes had focussed the attention of a gathering like this upon the man sitting between the hostess and myself. His power of imposing fastidious, intensely circumscribed taste in art and letters had ruled this little great world for twenty years. He had made it the fashion to be “intellectual”—within limits. As one noted the sensitiveness of the instant response to his faintest playing upon the organ of social opinion, one remembered Oscar Wilde’s saying: “A man
who can dominate a London dinner-party can do anything on earth.” It is not and never was true, but the mot gives some measure of the combination of gifts required for such social ascendancy as Berwick’s.
People dreaded the faint irony of his reflective smile more than another man’s loud denunciation. A shrug of the stooped shoulders was committal to outer darkness. No need for him to cry: “So much for Buckingham!”— the head of the unfortunate was already weltering in the basket.
Before dinner, Lady St. Edmond had whispered in my ear: “Olive Hertford will be furious because she isn’t put next him. But she’s too exigeante. He’s tired — harassed. That horrible all-night sitting! Mind, no politics!” she said, shaking her pretty head till the long emerald and diamond earrings flew out and scattered splinters of light. “ He must be gently diverted.”
I was not over-pleased with my task. If, in common with all the world, I felt Noel Berwick’s charm, I resented his easy despotism. I resented other people’s assuming the supreme importance of saying to him “the right thing” and never praising the wrong. Well enough, I told myself, to remember that this was a party. All life was more or less “party” to Noel Berwick.
But now, seated at the table, with all these eyes following Lord Seale’s to my neighbor, I came under the spell of the common wonder as to how even Lady St. Edmond had dared ask an untried stranger to sing before this man.
“I am not in the least nervous,” she answered, “because Miss — a — the young lady was recommended by Mr. Berwick.”
I was intensely conscious that he would rather she had left that unsaid.
“Well, in matters musical,” said the Liberal whip who had taken me down, “we are all willing to follow Mr. Berwick.” The gibe fell flat on Tory ears.
Interest in the Unknown had enormously quickened. A question from the other side of the table elicited from the great man the languid information that he had heard the girl only once.
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“I spent some weeks in America last year,” he said, as though the two hemispheres had not chronicled the fact. " I escaped from Newport with a couple of friends who took me to the Adirondacks. Mountains, you know.” With a qualified approval he dwelt upon the scenery.
“But the girl, the singer!”—several voices reminded him that he was digressing.
“Ah, yes. It was during a little walking tour. We lost our way one day. We had to put up at a little mountain hotel of a highly primitive nature. There were two other people to share our belated meal. An oldish woman severely New England, and a girl. When we went out on the pee-yazzah (they call it pee-yazzah) to smoke, the two women went into the sitting-room. To our consternation, one of them began to play.” He lifted his fine, long hands half-way to his ears, and then dropped them. Our nerves twanged sharp in sympathy for his martyrdom.
“Fortunately, the younger woman called out to her to stop. If only in gratitude for that, the girl deserved—” He smiled; so did the company. “ But she succeeded in silencing the other woman only by saying: ‘I’ll sing for you without an accompaniment.’”
He paused, and seemed to be examining the perversities in color and in shape of the orchids that hung over the slim Venetian glass in front of him.
“Well — she sang,” he ended.
“Oh, oh, now play fair,” laughed the hostess. “This is how he told me: ‘There was a little silence and then — a voice. An enchantment.’ ”
The man’s eyes left the mauve and orange flecks on the unearthly flowers, and he glanced a little reproachfully at Betty St. Edmond. She had convicted him of enthusiasm.
“The voice was very true, and of a purity -—” He paused, and then : “It seemed to have had
some fair training, too,” he said in his languid way.
“Well, go on.”
“She came out on the pee-yazzah, of course?”
“No. They went upstairs. We were waked the next morning by the ministrations of a piano-tuner — wherever they’d unearthed him! When we came down she — the girl — was singing again.”
“And you lost the coach,” said Lady St. Edmond. Though she would never allow any one else to tease her lion, she did not mind doing it herself.
“What I chiefly remember,” he said airily, “is that we liked theway shetookour pleasure in her performance — when she opened the shutter and found us listening. She grew scarlet. And when one of us complimented her, she leaned out of the window to say: ‘You are English,
aren t you? Do you think I could sing in London some day?’”
‘And now she’s here. Very pretty. Ready to astonish the natives.”
“Too bad I sha’n’t hear her,” said the Liberal whip, rising and putting his napkin in a tousle on his chair. “You said you would allow me to tear myself away.” He bowed to the hostess, who dismissed him with a nod.
He paused behind Mr. Berwick’s chair to say: “So that I shall know it’s she when I hear her caroling at Covent Garden, what is the siren’s name?”
The sole notice Mr. Berwick took of the inquiry was palpably to lower his voice and turn to me with:
“We talked to her for several minutes, I remember. She told us she had been studying very hard in New York.”
“ How old was she?”
“I should have said about sixteen; but she said she was twenty — and quite sure she was born lucky. ‘Yes,’ we agreed, ‘with a voice like that.’ No, it wasn’t so much her voice. It was her friends. No girl alone in the world (she was an orphan, she said) — no girl ever had such friends. And she celebrated them — standing there in the window, looking — well, you’ll see her. ‘Generous, wonderful friends!’ Especially one!”
“The severe-looking chaperon?”
“Well, no. ‘She is a friend I’ve made myself,’ the girl said, as though apologizing for the work of an inexperienced hand. The lady was one of the teachers in the academy where Miss — a — the girl had studied. The ‘wonderful friends’ were of her father’s making. One in particular. A very prince. Out of devotion for her father, his friends had paid for her education — for everything, she said. She stood there with her head up — how they carry themselves, those raw American girls!” he exclaimed, and wondered how they learned it.
Nobody knew.
“Well, she poured out her innocent paean to those wonderful friends of her father’s. She had just had a letter from one of them to say, if she wanted to study abroad, she might. That, as I say, was last summer. Three weeks ago, during the Whitsuntide recess, she sent me a note, recalling herself.”
“Ah! the wonderful friend was as good as his word!”
“How do you mean?”
“He was sending her to London — to find more wonderful friends.”
“She had been in London eight months, studying under Marchesi. She had made strides. And she had been very happy, she said.
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Because she had got a medal? No — though she was glad to have a medal. Happy because she is young and ‘April’s here’? Not at all. She was happy because she had justified the hopes of ‘those kind, kind men’ who for her father’s sake had done so much for her. They will soon be relieved of the burden of Miss — a — of her support.” “Going to be married?”
“She has been singing,” Lady St. Edmond threw in, “for — what did she say was the name of the impresario? And he’s engaged her.” “Oh, we must make up a party and go and hear her.”
“Not this season, is it? Didn’t she say next?” Berwick asked Lady St. Edmond.
“Yes; but the impresario man must think well of her to do all he’s going to do.”
“Another wonderful friend!”
They laughed.
“He pays her a retaining fee, I believe,” said Mr. Berwick.
“Don’t forget the condition,” added the hostess.
“Ah, a condition!” said Lord Seale.
“Now, don’t be cynical, Bobbie. We must tell them the condition, Mr. Berwick, or else they mayn’t appreciate their good luck.”
It seemed to me that he tried to stop her. “The condition,” the lady went on, “is that she is not to let her voice be heard, even at a private gathering, before she makes her debut in grand opera.”
“Then you’ve got us here under false pretenses!”
“What! are we only to be allowed to see the way she carries herself?” There was an outburst of mock indignation.
“Wait till you hear!” she insisted. The long emerald earrings swung toward Noel Berwick. “Do tell them. It’s rather pretty of her. She must sing just once, she told the impresario,—just once,— for some one who had encouraged her.” The great man lifted one shoulder and smiled deprecatingly. “I did not remember, but it seems I encouraged her. She is going to-morrow to Leipsic for her final months of training. Tonight she is to sing for”— he inclined his head —“for Lady St. Edmond.”
“Ah, for Lady St. Edmond!”
In the rustle of laughter and comment the long earrings swung our way again. Under her breath: “She must change her ridiculous name,” said our hostess, with decision.
“Oh, of course,” agreed Mr. Berwick hurriedly.
“What is her name?” I asked.
“ Her name? — a”— he seemed to search his memory. Then, as he caught the eye of the man
opposite, a consideration of importance seemed to drive out the triviality: “I haven’t seen you since that maladroit speech Gerald made in the house on Tuesday.” The tone was a trifle brusque. “You’ll have to keep him better in hand.”
“Ah, Gerald! He’s the enfant terrible of the Lords. But nobody minds Gerald.”
“Don't believe it.” And my neighbor went on to outline the effect on the country of such an exhibition by a hereditary legislator at a moment so critical for the Upper House. For the next three quarters of an hour they told anecdotes about the harum-scarum young gentleman, who was known to everybody there and related to half the company.
During the stir made by the women’s leaving the dining-room, I said to the hostess: “What is the name of the American songstress?”
The sparkling face took on a look of malice as she said under her breath:
“Promise not to tell?”
“ Bury it,” I vowed.
Her eyes danced. “MissCal Hizer Tripp,” she pronounced with relish. I stared. She motioned that I blocked the way, and I turned. The long, shining table, the rows of men standing while the procession of women filed out — it all grew dim, but with a dimness that, instead of obscuring, strangely enhanced some of the implications in the familiar picture. Never had the unemphatic, delicate luxury of such a scene come more insistently to my senses. Never had women seemed so ethereal.
Cal Hizer Tripp!
Never a man so unreal as Noel Berwick — never flesh and blood so much a fetish as this totem-pole of a tall, thin aristocrat, talking now to the Lord Chief Justice about the imperial idea and the “people.” What did he know of the people? He feared them; he despised them. So did these human orchids trailing their delicate petals past, ivory, mauve, and jewel-strewn black. The low laughter and the soft voices, the shimmer and the rustle, went through the hall and up the great staircase.
Cal Hizer Tripp!
I followed; but for me the shining procession had vanished. I was north of 64, walking in another company, on the shore of the Bering Sea.
Cal Hizer Tripp!
The absurd name reeked of Nome.
It seemed to hold in its uncouth concatenation of vocables all the rawness, the lawlessness, the courage and the cowardice, the inexplicable allurement and the fierce repulsion, the enlightenments, strange, precious — all that memory linked with the great Arctic gold camp.
Cal Hizer Tripp!
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At utterance of that incantation the calendar was set back ten years. Nome was raging through its first summer after the news went broadcast that gold had been discovered in the sea sands and in the little river wandering through the tundra behind Anvil Rock.
Nome, the gathering-place of the nations, Mecca of the derelict, the dump-heap of the world. A strip of storm-swept coast, where forty thousand desperate beings had flung themselves, to fight like wild beasts, at first for gold, by and by for life — where thousands, rich and poor alike, slept shelterless on the shingle amid a tangle of useless machinery, of goods and gear and dead Siwash dogs — many a man, and woman, too, ready enough never to rise again. Nobody much disturbed by the knowledge that smallpox and typhoid were settling down on the demented camp. A more important matter that a man, after washing out a fortune, lying in his tent with a pistol on either side of him, might waken any night to find holes cut in his canvas, eyes looking through, a gun pointed, and a voice: “Move a hair and I’ll shoot.” Then, while the eyes watched and the murderous bore pointed, the pal or two would enter and quietly decamp with thousands of dollars’ worth of dust. No redress. Unless the loser were a cheechalker he never troubled to report his loss. Sheer waste of time! He set to work to rock out more dust or to dam the sand, washed over now so many times and running low in gold.
Cal Hizer Tripp!
Three murders and five suicides that week when I helped to bury her father.
Upstairs, we stood about the beautiful rooms and talked about the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition and the health of the Queen of Spain.
When the men came up, I moved toward Mr. Berwick.
“ I’ve discovered that I know something about your young American,” I said.
“Ah!”
It struck me that he welcomed the idea of somebody’s helping him to bear the responsibility of “knowing about” Miss Cal. And he took it so calmly, my knowing! An American myself— who had traveled in queer places — of course I would know. He was nearly capable, I felt, of a question like that I used to meet:
“From America, are you? Then perhaps you know my brother Jack?”
“Whereabouts is he?”
“ I forget the name of the town, but it’s somewhere near Texas.”
“She is quite right,” I said; “your little singer is right to speak well of her father’s friends.”
“Ah, you know the friends, too,” he said. The tone of languid relief stirred an old feeling in me. Not peculiar to me. A feeling that seizes many an American, and perhaps almost all travelers, from time to time: a sense of impatience with the contented ignorance of men who bide at home and presume to gauge the infinitely remote; an impulse not to spare the smug self-sufficiency of those who would rather govern “the people” than take the trouble to understand them.
“Yes,” I said; “I had some acquaintance, years ago, with her father’s and her ‘particular friend.’ Bill Dexter was his name.”
“Indeed.”
“He was a saloonkeeper.”
“A what?”
“Bill Dexter was proprietor of the Golden Sands Gambling Hell at Nome, the year of the great boom.”
He stared an instant. As he turned his face from me to the smoke-colored figure flashing her wonderful emeralds from group to group, he encountered the watchful, critical eyes of Betty St. Edmond — eyes that nothing escaped and nothing held. I thought I detected more than a shade of apprehension in the great man’s commonly imperturbable countenance.
How would Betty take it?
I said to myself: “She already takes in whether I am being ‘diverting’ or not. I am being disturbing. Another two minutes and she will rescue him.”
“Apart from her voice,” Noel Berwick was saying, in his aloof way, “my memory of the young woman is, I confess, a little vague. But certainly I got no impression of her being that sort.”
“What sort?”
“Perhaps you are mistaken.”
“You think life so rich as to squander on the world two American girls each with a voice and each called Hizer Tripp?”
The long hand made a motion of humorous agnosticism. “The name, I admit, is without parallel — in Europe. But she clings to it with a pertinacity that is not only comic. It argues a pride in such association as it undoubtedly has for her.” The thought reassured him. “She absolutely refuses to give it up!” he said. “Does she tell you she has been asked to?” “No, oh, no. Our hostess tells me. Betty wrote to her to suggest that a singer might adopt something more — more convenient for —well, for professional purposes. Her reply was, I understand, that the only thing she felt it possible to alter was ‘Cal.’ If that was held to be too palpably a nickname, she was ready to let her first name appear in full.”
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MISS CAL
“Caroline?” I suggested.
“Guess again.”
I remembered a lady called Tennessee. Cal might be California. No? Calphurnia, then? Again he shook his head. “ Unless Lady St. Edmond made it up, the name is Calvina. Yes — after her father. He was called Calvin in addition to — a — those other things: Hizer and Tripp. As Betty says, how people can be so rude! calling names like that. But Miss Calvina”— he returned to the problem — “what makes one (forgive my frankness) doubt your information is that she has an exalted reverence for the memory of her father. She is proud”— Mr. Berwick smiled the smile that made women adore him—“proud, poor child, to be the daughter of Calvin Hizer Tripp.”
Half way across the room, Lady St. Edmond saw the smile. She changed her course.
“Yes,” said I; “he had the gift of getting hold of people, had Mr. Hizer Tripp. He got hold of me.”
“Not at — the place with the absurd name.” “Nome? Yes, Nome.”
“ But Nome is somewhere in the Arctic regions, isn’t it?” In the very thick of his bewilderment, Mr. Berwick asked, smiling: “Do they spell it with a G?” Then, as I laughed, “I’m ready to admit,” he added, “it’s too far off to matter. Of course I’ve heard — we’ve all been told that you have been — out there.” His vague gesture assigned no limit to my eccentricity. “ But, now,”— he looked at me through his eyeglass and seemed disposed to believe I had been maligned,—“ I thought it improbable you had gone so far.”
“Oh, I went farther than that.”
“Than —but you didn’t really” — he seemed to appeal at once to my better nature in general and to my sense of honor in particular—“you didn’t go as far as Gnome?”
“Yes — the Hizer Tripps and I were there together.”
“Is it possible?”
“And Hizer Tripp is there still.”
“How do you know that?”
“ Because I helped to bury him.”
“You/”.
“ I shouldn’t say ‘helped.’ It was Bill Dexter who did the helping. I only assisted — in the French sense. But for Bill Dexter, Miss Cal’s father would have lacked more important things than burial. But for Bill Dexter, Miss Cal wouldn’t be singing to-night in the most exclusive house in London.”
The reminder seemed unpalatable. He glanced at Betty St. Edmond, and then he said suddenly: “I am keeping you standing. They can’t begin the music till the Tetrazzini comes
on after the opera. Let us go in there.” On the way he turned and said: “You don't seriously mean to tell me you knew personally the — a — the man who kept the— that place you spoke of?”
“I knew the man; and I knew the place.”
The face at my side conveyed not mere polite incredulity. It said plainly: “Of course I don’t believe you. But, if you like to spin me a yarn — well, it is one way of getting through the hour before the music begins.” He dropped his eyeglass, and slowly we made our way through the back drawing-room, past the open piano and the music-stands, past the regiment of gilt chairs set in rows, to a small white room hung with water-colors — all French except for a few of Sargent’s.
“She has done this very well,” he murmured, replacing his eye-glass and looking round. “It used to be rather trying. The old Dowager Lady St. Edmond had it upholstered in brick-red brocade and choked with Early Victorian art.” He smiled as he sat down. “She used, in her old-fashioned way, to call it the Red Saloon.”
“Did she?” I reflected. “There was more than one red saloon in Nome. But Miss Cal’s friend had the biggest and most popular.”
“‘Miss Cal’s friend,’” he repeated in an odd voice. He was scrutinizing my face more frankly than he had done in the drawing-room.
“Yes. Three quarters of the business of the camp was transacted at the Golden Sands. The crowd round it was often so dense you simply couldn’t hurry by.”
“You had to pass it!”
“Every day. I was as familiar with the look of it as I am with — well, say the House of Commons. More familiar. I didn’t look down upon the Golden Sands Saloon.” I hastily explained: “From the level of the wooden sidewalks I could see the long, narrow hall. I could see the sides of the end near the street, lined with shelves and a counter. Between the shelves and the counter were always men, in shirtsleeves, mixing drinks. Other men by the gold-scales, weighing out dust. In the open space, men in brown drill and high laced boots standing about smoking, talking about th6 strike up at Casadepaga, or the latest shooting over a jumped claim at Anvil Creek. The men weren’t jolly adventurers of romance, either. They were men who walked heavily and wore strained ‘Nome’ faces. And on either side were haggard, painted women, trying to be jolly at the bar.”
“Ah”—the great man crossed his legs; but he kept looking at me.
“If an aisle opened in the crowd, you’d see that a little way farther down, where the card-
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tables began, were the wheel of fortune and all the other mechanical devices for gambling. And where they stopped, at the lower end, was a piano. Sometimes a space would be cleared for dancing. Sometimes the whole lower half of the hall was dizzy with couples spinning, each in their own restricted space, like tops. And they danced without joy, as if it were part of the whole grim business that had to be run through. Sometimes you’d see a short-skirted girl dancing alone.”
“Now — you never saw ”
“Who?” I took a malicious pleasure in inviting him to pronounce the uncouth syllables.
“Why, Miss — a — the girl that’s coming here to-night.”
“Oh, I am speaking of ten years ago. Miss Cal was a child. But I saw, one day, a woman of thirty, in a bright pink skirt, dancing on the cards in the middle of a faro-table. The men lounging at the doors said she’d just lost four hundred and sixty-eight dollars. It seemed to put them in spirits to see a woman taking it like that. They applauded her. She got her money back, too, and a hundred to boot. I say ‘to boot’ advisedly. That’s just how she did it. By kicking the court-cards, one by one, into the face of a man who bet her fifty dollars a time she couldn’t hit him.”
“ You saw that?”
I laughed. “Oh, that was nothing. They said Miss Sametta did some ‘high-rolling’ when Bill Dexter was out on the creek looking after his lay. But Bill’s place wasn’t like the others. Bill’s joint was respectable.”
“His joint?”
I nodded and left it at that. “Miss Cal’s friend was well spoken of at Nome. The worst character in camp had a wholesome respect for Bill. I mustn’t let you undervalue Miss Cal’s friend. He was the famous Bill Dexter, of Dexter Brothers, you know.” I waited. “But perhaps their fame has not reached you.”
“No, I can’t say ”
“Well, the Dexters were well known down Arizona way. They were the men who got the best of Wells, Fargo. Perhaps you don’t even know Wells, Fargo. They’re a San Francisco express and banking company, the great bullion carriers of the Pacific. The Dexters used to pick off the guards as neatly as — as — Lady St. Edmond would gather a rose.”
“Pick them off? You don’t mean ”
“Yes, I do. And they’d get away—those Dexters would — with every dollar the coach carried.”
“Did the authorities accept that arrangement?”
“Not a sheriff in the West dared do more than
issue warrants that nobody noticed. After two or three robberies on a big scale and an inconvenient amount of bloodshed, the Wells, Fargo people found it hard to get men to undertake the risk of seeing the coach through. So they did a thing that would perhaps occur only to an American. They engaged Billy Dexter, at the salary of a Cabinet minister, to go out as guard to the gold he’d been making so free with.”
“How did it work?”
“Nobody ever molested anything Dexter was looking after. He ought to have been governor of a province.”
The maker of viceroys smiled.
“Well, he had the art of compelling people to accept his ruling. I’d like to give you an idea of Miss Cal’s friend — make you see why I agree with her that he’s no ordinary man.”
We were silent a minute.
“Perhaps you don’t know,” I went on quite gravely, “about the great Sharkey-Fitzsimmons fight?”
No, he was sorry he didn’t.
“Well, it would have helped you to understand the stuff Miss Cal’s friend was made of. They used to talk about that fight at Nome. The Pavilion in Frisco was packed, they say, with people keen as mustard to see those two champions stand up to each other. The stakes were heavy. Fitzsimmons made a magnificent showing. No man on earth but Bill Dexter would have dared go against the sentiment of that crowd. I don’t know whether it’s true,—
I am not trying to whitewash Bill Dexter,— but they say he’d been ‘fixed’ to the tune of ten thousand dollars. When he stood up to umpire, you could have heard a pin drop. And he had the nerve to throw the fight to Sharkey on a foul. The crowd would have torn any other man to pieces. Dexter faced down the growltng with those steel eyes of his. Nobody imagined it would be good for his health to make a protest. That’s Bill Dexter at a prize fight, or holding up a Wells, Fargo coach.
“ But, lounging in and out of the Golden Sands Saloon, he was a mild-looking person of thirty-seven or -eight, with a drooping corn-colored mustache and slow movements. His admirers say he’s killed fourteen men. His whole art, they tell you, lies in the way he gets out his pistol. Draws it like a flash of lightning, before the other fellow has time to remember there are such things as shooting-irons on the earth. But he never provokes a quarrel. And he won’t allow ‘gun practice’ round the Golden Sands bar.”
“Why,” came in the mellow accents of the great man, “why was a person of such accomplishments reduced to keeping a saloon?”
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MISS CAL
“Ah, you don’t understand American conditions. Most of the business of the West, and a good deal even in the East, is done in saloons. The proprietor is often an immensely influential person. Bill Dexter was.”
“What I am wondering is, how you happened to stumble across such a man.”
“ I didn’t stumble. I went straight. Since I was there, I wanted to know the people — not just look at them. Dexter was one of the best worth knowing people in Nome. He gave the key-note. A sort of—” I looked at the man before me and I didn’t quite dare to say “a sort of Arctic-circle Berwick.” But I had a feeling the great man got my meaning. “ If you could interest Dexter in a scheme it was sure to go through. Shrewd, critical — but his hand always in his pocket. And not by any means always after his revolver. Take Miss Cal’s father. When Hizer Tripp got to Nome, as Dexter said, all he had in the world was a small daughter, a wire-haired terrier, and one lung. He’d been sleeping on the beach ever since he landed, coughing his life out. He earned a little money running a gasoline engine for a gold-dredger. One day he came up to Bill’s to get a drink. He didn’t want the drink, but he wanted human society. He wanted news. Incidentally he wanted the free luncheon that went with the whiskey. When he finished he said he’d like some crackers to take back to his kid, and he put down another quarter. Plain to see he was dying. Always thinking about his kid. Dexter said ‘it got other people kind of into the same habit.’ I asked why he’d brought the child to such a place, if he cared for her. ‘The same reason he brought the dawg,’ Bill said. ‘Nobody else wanted ’em.’
“When a box of oranges or sweet crackers would be opened, Dexter used to look round for Hizer Tripp. ‘Here’s your chance,’ he’d say. Other people, too, got into the way of saying: ‘This’d do for Hizer Tripp’s gal.’
“ By and by he got so weak he couldn’t walk back and forth. ‘ Better go to bed for a day or two,’ Dexter said. Beds in Nome were worth ten dollars a night. Hizer Tripp shook his head. Dexter was selling floor-space in an outhouse for two dollars a man. ‘There’s a little room upstairs,’ he said. ‘You and the kid can have it till I get a good let.’ He sent some of his pals down to bring up Hizer Tripp’s valise, as well as the three other things. Well, he made that last journey leaning now and then on the child’s shoulder — a little thing with long tow plaits and a quiet face. I used to see her at the window of that room sewing, sometimes singing when the piano and the brass-throated women were still. The men used to listen. One day one
of them called up: ‘What you makin’, kiddie?’ ‘A crazy quilt,’ says she; ‘all the ladies give me ribbons and pieces of silk.’ 'A craiy quilt!’ They roared with laughter. They never had heard of such a thing, I suppose. ‘ Do for your father!’ one man shouted. He was more than half seas over. But the child said, ‘Of course it’s for father’—as innocent as milk. So she sat there and sewed and sang till the hour when all the cover her father needed was a foot of earth. Dexter said Hizer Tripp should have a decent burying, on account of the child. On account of the child, Mr. Berwick.”
He stroked his mustache.
“ Did they ask you to read the service?” he said.
I fell into his tone.
"You think there weren’t any parsons in Nome? Thick as blackberries. But Bill Dexter went and asked the services of a mere boy, who wasn’t a parson at all. But he had opened a hospital, and got a license from some church to preach and bury, and a license from his Maker to get very close to his fellows. He was the busiest man in Nome; but he said he’d do the business for Hizer Tripp. I had been hearing about all this from my miner friends, but I had my own problems to consider about that time.
“The hordes had kept on pouring in all the summer. Disorder and violence had increased so that the commander of the United States post declared martial law. But the worst abuses were beyond a cure by bayonet. Life was a nightmare. The hospital was filling up, and a pest quarter was established below the southern fringe of the camp. Half the population had been inoculated more than once with worthless virus which hadn’t taken. We were expecting that those of us who didn’t die would shortly be quarantined till the last boat had gone. That would mean being shut up in that place for nine months.
“We had a week of stormy weather. There was already a feeling of winter in the air that made one anxious, restless.
“The day of Hizer Tripp’s funeral was one of a succession of gray mornings. But this one brought with it a wind that came howling over the Bering Sea, piling up the water and sending it to overwhelm the beach shacks and wash tents and gold-extractors and thousands of feet of lumber far above the ordinary tide-line. There they lay in windrows on the tundra. Of the men who had brought those things so far to leave them at the mercy of wind and tide and thieves, some were lying there already on the little tongue of land north of Nome City. I remember thinking, as I stood there, it was as grim a place as you’d find on earth. Not a tree in sight. Not a bush nor a blade of grass down there on the
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Point. Too exposed even for the tundra moss to grow there. Just sand and loose scoriae and unhewn pieces of volcanic rock laid on the shallow graves; here and there a slab of wood. Hardly one was driven deep enough into the ground to stand firm a single summer. They leaned forlornly this way or that — apologetic for the failures they were there to record. Two men with gold-picks and shovels were digging Hizer Tripp’s grave. Digging, did I say? A few inches under the surface the ground was locked in the ice of ages. They picked out a little trench. The sea was booming and threatening, and now and then it sent up a huge white-crested breaker just to peer and find out what those silly cheechalk-ers were at. I couldn’t bear it. I turned my back on the water, and thought about this strange life I had come to know, and about the meaning behind it all. I stood there under the lead-colored sky, with my scarf whipping my face. It stung me. Other things, too. I wondered how many more of the people still on the beach, and at the creeks, and in the saloons — how many more were to end the story here.
“Hizer Tripp was far from my mind when I heard the shouting and the cursing. I turned round and saw a little steam-launch trying in vain to land in that boiling surf. I saw who was on board. Half a dozen men and a child and a dog. The launch was towing a dory. In the dory was a long box. What I was mainly conscious of was the captain’s awful language. The child must have heard strange things, but this was beyond everything. The air was sulphurous. The captain was cursing at the top of his powerful lungs all the time they were landing — all the time they were getting the ghastly cargo up on the Point. I was glad the little girl had hidden her face. Some one carried her through the surf, and the dog swam after. The Boy Preacher opened his book and led the way. The procession — I thought of it as we came upstairs to-night — it came across the Point to the newly hacked out trench. The men stumbled and floundered among the stones with the unpainted deal box on their shoulders. The little girl followed, with Bill Dexter and the dog. The child’s hair had come unbraided, and it whipped about in the wind. Her petticoats blew about, too, and showed her thin legs in rusty old shoes. I went and stood near her. So it happened that the sulphurous captain and I brought up the rear. I didn’t notice he had stopped cursing till I saw that he had taken his hat off. And then I saw he was crying. Not the dribbled crying of most grown-up people, but great, round tears like children’s tears. And little Cal took Bill Dexter’s hand, and we all sang ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee.’
"And that was how we buried Hizer Tripp.”
I had quite got over my wish to make Noel Berwick feel his ignorance of something I knew.
I had come to a place where I wanted more than anything that he shouldn’t think meanly of Miss Cal's friends — that he should recognize the humanity in them.
“And the child?” he said, when I had been silent a moment.
“ I wanted her to come with me. She clung to Bill Dexter. He lifted her up on his shoulder and took her away before they put the heavy pieces of rock on the new grave. Well, the same day happened to bring a crisis in another matter, and I had my hands full for the next twenty-four hours. I not only forgot the Hizer Tripps:
I forgot matters closer to my business and my bosom.
“The first I knew of the lifting of the threat of quarantine was when I overcame my reluctance to enter the Golden Sands Saloon two days after the funeral. I marched in, feeling very daring, not to say abandoned. Bill Dexter was playing poker with some pals. He put down his cards and came toward me, his big diamond horseshoe flashing. He took off his hat and bowed — the sort of bow that is called ‘old school.’ Not badly done. I think he knew I had been told about the men he’d murdered, for he wore an air of modest pride. I said I had come to ask after Hizer Tripp’s little girl.
“‘She’s all right,’ Dexter said.
“I had been covertly glancing down the saloon, afraid I should catch sight of her. The tobacco smoke was so thick that even the men congregated at the bar and standing about in groups near the door looked vague and dreamlike. The whipper-in was going up and down, elbowing his way and calling out, ‘Come and have game o’ roodge-ee-nore. Craps, then, or black jack. Yes, this way the little hosses.’ He had got to the door now, and he called out to the men hanging aboutoutside: ‘Come and try yourluck, gentlemen. Come in a minute, anyhow, and have a look at Miss Sametta’s noo dance.’ I caught a glimpse of her down at the end of the hall, and I felt pretty low in my mind.
“‘I am glad the child is all right,’ I said. ‘I thought perhaps she’d like to come and have supper with me.’
“‘Guess she can’t do that,’ Dexter said. I asked why not. ‘She ain’t here,’he said. When I asked where she was, he hitched his head.
“‘Not on the water-front alone! Oh, Mr. Dexter!’ I said. ‘It’s too bad.’
“‘Guess she’s all right,’ he drawled. ‘We shipped her off on the North Star a couple of hours ago.’
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MISS CAL
“My first thought was, ‘Then the boats are running again! Thank God!’
“‘So Hizer Tripp’s little girl’s gone home!’ “‘She ain’t got any home,’ he said.
“‘Where is she going, then?’
“‘To school,’ said Dexter.
“‘Oh, then, Hizer Tripp left something?’ “‘Bills. But he’d set his heart on the kid goin’ to school. So we took up a subscription, and she’s gone.’
“I stared. ‘What school?’
“‘A school that Cherokee Bob found this mornin’. Here.’ He picked up a tattered newspaper off the bar, and put a finger on a marked advertisement in a two-months-old San Francisco Examiner. I looked and saw ‘The Santa Clara Seminary for Young Ladies.’
“Dexter watched me narrowly. 'Reads all right,’ he said.
“‘Yes,’ I said; ‘just the thing.’
“ ‘She didn’t want to go, though,’ he said—a little proudly, I thought. ‘But we’d promised her father.’
“Some one had started the pianola on a rag-time waltz. Miss Sametta and two other women came up the length of the bar-room, asking the men to dance. Soon there was a whirling at the end of the bar, and a stamping of feet under the tables and back against the wall —of feet that didn’t dance but kept the time, and of feet that danced but didn’t keep the time. A fine, light dust was rising out of the boards and mixing with the tobacco smoke.
“I asked Dexter if he knew Hizer Tripp before he came there. The question seemed to surprise him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I kind o’ took to the cuss, he was so damned unreasonable.’ Then I said something about Hizer Tripp’s having good luck at the Golden Sands, whatever other people had found there. He looked at me sharply and said: ‘ Don’t you make any mistake: we play a square game at the Golden Sands.’
“ ' I think you do,’ I said humbly.
“‘Besides, Hizer Tripp was an Elk,’ Dexter said.”
I explained to the Londoner that the Elks were a benevolent brotherhood, a sort of Americanized freemasonry. The members wear an elk’s head for a badge, and they look after widows and orphans. “ Meanwhile,” I went on, “ Dexter, with his best air, was conducting me to the door. Miss Sametta’s partner had brought her up to the bar and ordered drinks. Miss Sametta was one of the youngest women in Nome. She had come up in my boat, not six weeks ago. Already she looked ten years older, her mouth hard,hermannerdevil-may-care. In avoid-ing her eyes, mine went to the wall over her head. ‘What’s that?’ I asked Dexter; and he stopped.
“‘That? Why, that’s the crazy quilt. Miss Sametta, here, started givin’ her ribbons and bits of things, and the kid made a crazy quilt.’ “ ‘And she gave it to you?’ I said. ‘I’m glad you give it a place of honor.’
“‘It’s put there so’s folks can see it’s a bang-up quilt. We’re goin’ to raffle it.’
“ I said I hoped he’d get a good price for it and indemnify himself for some of his loss on the room. He stared at me a moment with an expression I didn’t like; it was too like contempt.
“‘We’re rafflin’ it for the kid,’ he said. And all I could say was ‘Oh!’
“When we got to the door, and the loafers made an aisle to let me out, I stopped and held out my hand. Dexter looked a little confused as he shook it. He muttered something about ‘people in Nome appreciatin’ the work in that quilt.’ The ten-dollar chances had gone like hot cakes. ‘Miss Sametta’s taken two.’”
“So this is where you are!”
I looked up to see Lord Seale hurrying in. “You’re a nice sort of patron! Here’s the prima donna, with a music-roll and a duenna all complete, looking over Betty’s head and asking, ‘Isn’t Mr. Berwick coming?’ ”
We went back to the drawing-room. I caught fragments on the way: “Rather school-girly.” “Too delicate — that sort of good looks —to show up. I shouldn’t wonder if she was quite insignificant on the stage.”
Craning my head, I got my first glimpse of her. A tall girl in a high-necked frock of thin muslin — a face nearly as white as the frock. And yet, somehow, she looked perfectly well. Her eyes were light, too, and the only definite color about her was in her lips and her golden eyebrows. Her fine, straight hair was that sort of white-gold seldom seen out of Scandinavia. The instant she saw Berwick, she smiled and color came into her cheeks. She was beautiful then. But when she had said, “ How do you do, Mr. Berwick?” she stood quite silent, looking like a contented child. He made one or two remarks, but it was “yes” or “no” with her.
“She doesn’t need to be clever,” was the com-mentof a man behind me, “with afacelike that.”
I came forward to speak to her, but Mr. Berwick drew out his watch and said in an odd, rather fussy way, “Time the Tetrazzini was here.” And then we heard she was on the stair. So Mr. Berwick led Miss Cal to the reserved seats in the front row. I had the queerest feeling that he was somehow protecting Miss Cal from me.
The Tetrazzini sang with her usual effect, and they came for Miss Cat. " Where is Mrs. Reader? ” she said, standing up and looking round.
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227
When theTetrazzini group moved away, there was Mrs. Reader on the piano-stool, straightening out the music — a grenadier of a woman. The girl took up her position by the accompanist and began a German ballad about Klar-chen. I didn’t try to listen to it. I was thinking about the last time I’d seen the singer. I kept seeing the deal coffin in the dory, buffeted about by the surf— kept seeing the child in the ugly little dress she had outgrown, and the rusty boots, following after the men as they staggered over the volcanic rocks. I heard the curses, and the roaring of the surf. I remembered the sting in the wind, the desolation of the place and hour. And, quite suddenly, it all faded. I had the most vivid sensation of standing in the summer rain. It was tinkling all about me in a wood. I could smell the fresh scents coming up out of the earth and the grasses. The air was full of birds, flying low and calling, calling, as they do when rain comes suddenly and takes them unaware. They went in a level flight through flowering branches, singing, calling. The raindrops they shook off in a shower seemed to fall to music. Then the sun came out of the cloud, and the wood was glorified.
I felt a sense of jar at a sudden discordant noise — and I looked round and saw that everybody but me was applauding Miss Cal.
She sang again. I heard some one say: “It’s the kind of voice that comes into the world once in a generation or two. A voice that gives you back your youth.”
Mr. Berwick had gone and thanked her in a gentle, quiet way that I could see pleased her more than the extravagances she had to listen to. But, when I tried to get near enough to be introduced, he refused to catch my eye. Was he afraid of my embarrassing her —• of my recalling people and impressions best forgotten?
Something made me press forward and hold out my hand.
“It is a long time since we met,” I said.
She took my hand and looked at me out of those light-blue eyes of hers. “I’m afraid I
don’t remember ”
“Of course you don’t. It is ten years ago.” “Ten years? But ten years ago”—she thought an instant. “ I was at Nome ten years ago.”
“So was I.”
“You were? Oh!” She seized my hand again, and again that transfiguring color swept across the whiteness of her face. “ Did you know us? My father and me?”
“No, I only saw you,” I said.
“Oh, do let us go somewhere”— she looked about breathlessly—“and talk about it. I never meet anybody who knows about Nome.”
Mr. Berwick’s cool voice broke in on her enthusiasm, saying we must listen to Kreisler. Miss Cal looked reproved. She bit her lip. Then Mrs. Reader marched up, and said it was late and Miss Cal must go home; there was the long journey before her to-morrow. So we went out and stood in the hall, Mr. Berwick and Miss Cal and I, while Mrs. Reader went and got the cloaks.
“Oh, do let us talk about Nome just for a minute,” Miss Cal whispered. “Did you
know ”
“That is the same lady, isn’t it, ”— Mr. Berwick looked after the uncompromising form stalking down the passage,—“the same lady who was with you last summer?”
“Yes; she’s been with me ever since I left school. She is very nice and immensely accomplished; but I don’t really need her. It’s only
to please my friends ”
“Ah — h’m — yes,” said Mr. Berwick. “They don’t know how independent girls are nowadays. They are a little old-fashioned, I guess. Specially Mr. Dexter. He always seems to want Mrs. Reader to come along everywhere I go.” She turned to me. “ Do tell me if you knew Mr. Dexter? Really? Oh, it’s so exciting to think you know my friends. Did you meet Mr. Smith, too? Yes? He had a red beard, I remember. And Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Schindler ----”
“Do you see much of them nowadays?” I asked.
“No. That’s the only thing that isn’t heavenly kind about them. They’ve never been to see me.”
“You’ve never seen any one of them since the Nome days?”
“Never once. It is a little bad of them,” she conceded. " But they live a long way off. And I’m sure to see them some day. When I’ve deserved it!” She smiled at Berwick as much as to say “You understand.”
“ But you get letters,” Mr. Berwick suggested, converted now to the topic.
“Oh, yes; every month. Or, at least,” she said, speaking by the card, “ I have a check every month.” Then she told me how these gentlemen — all “such great friends” of her father’s —- how they had given her her education. “They are very busy people; I think they have banks and railroads to see after. I can’t expect them to use up their time writing to a girl.”
“Do they take turns?”
“Turns?”
“In writing you — or in sending — a ”
“No; it’s always Mr. Dexter who does the writing. But, when I ask about the others, he
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FLORENCE WILKINSON
sends me back messages from them all — Mr. Smith and Mr. O’Brien and Mr. ”
“I used to think Mr. Dexter the most interesting,” I said. " Does he write interesting letters?”
“ I love them; but they are always very short little letters,” she said wistfully. “Even when I send my photograph (I’ve always done that every birthday), he has never said I’d grown, or anything.”
Mrs. Reader was stalking along under a burden of cloaks. We disembarrassed her and helped Miss Cal to find her sleeves. She smiled at me over her shoulder. “It’s been such a pleasure to me to talk to some one about the old times.”
“It has all grown very vague to you, I should think.”
“Oh, not at all. I remember everything — oh, but distinctly.”
“You were very young,” I said.
She seemed not to like my tone.
“I haven’t forgotten a thing!’’ she protested, —“except your face. There were so many nice ladies at Nome, weren’t there?”
I admitted that our niceness and our numbers excused her failure to particularize. “Oh, it was a wonderful experience. The journey up — and the fun we had camping on the beach. Only, poor father didn’t enjoy that part very much.” She shook her pale-gold head. “No; I like best to think of him in that nice little room at Mr. Dexter’s. I used to sit at the window,” she explained to Berwick, as we moved toward the stairs, “and sew bits of silk the ladies gave me.” She looked back at me. “ Did you give me bits of silk, too?”
“No; I’m afraid ” But she didn’t hear
me out.
“I used to watch the people going by the window, and listen to the pianola in the big room below. Mr. Dexter had heaps of friends. Everybody used to come to Mr. Dexter’s. He used to tell father and me about them. Some of them had their money stolen on the beach, and some couldn’t find their mines. Ever so many of those people had lost everything in the world. But, gracious! they were plucky. They’d try to keep up their spirits with singing and playing games. Quite childish games. One, I remember, was called the ‘wheel of fortune.’ And the one called ‘little horses’ I longed to play myself. Only I never could leave my father! I used to be so sorry for that. Rather naughty about it, I remember. But I’m glad, now, that I never left poor father.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Berwick; “I think you may be glad.”
The April brightness was shining again in her face as she turned to metoshake hands. “Thank you so much for remembering father and me. It has made it perfectly beautiful, seeing somebody who knew us at Nome. If only”—she put it to me —“wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Mr. Dexter had been here to-night, too?”
I agreed that it would, indeed, have been “wonderful” if he had been.
“Good-by,” she said to Mr. Berwick. "Thank you a thousand times for being so kind to me.
I —” She hesitated, standing there, all white and golden in the light, at the top of the stair. And then you saw in her face that she had found Noel Berwick’s reward. “I shall write Mr. Dexter all about you,” said Miss Cal.
THE THINGS THAT ENDURE BY FLORENCE WILKINSON
WHAT wish you, immortality?.
Then of frail visions become the wooer.
Stone cities melt like mist away,
But footsteps in the sand — endure.
Assyria was mowed down like grass.
Queen Ptah a thousand slaves would give To buy her body from the tomb.
Yet one slave’s laugh — shall live.
Words sown upon the air float forth,
Immortal voyagers.
The solid mountain shall dissolve,
But not that look of Hers.
[pgbrk] The Trial and Death of Ferrer
and
William Archer
PART II
FERRER was captured: how was he to be tried? On that everything depended.
A leading Catholic paper, El Uni-verso, in an article published immediately before the capture, manifested grave apprehensions lest he should once more, as in the Madrid trial of 1907, slip through the fingers of a civil tribunal. These civil tribunals, it remarked, were in the habit of “insisting on clear, precise, and decisive proofs of guilt”; and it pointed out the superior convenience of military and naval Courts of Honor, which “need not subject themselves to concrete proofs, but are satisfied with a moral conviction, formed in the conscience of those who compose them.”
The alarm of El Universo was groundless. It had apparently forgotten the Ley de Jurisdicci-ones (Law of Jurisdictions), passed a few years ago by a Liberal ministry, with the aid and countenance of the Conservatives. Under this remarkable act, every offense that concerns the army, the fatherland, or the flag is to be tried by a military court and under military law. That is to say, one of the parties in the case is to sit on the bench and try the other party. If I am rightly informed, the law was specially designed to enable the army to chastise promptly and effectually the audacity of certain journalists who had attacked it. But it was very easy to make the riots a “military rebellion” and to bring everything connected with them under the Law of Jurisdictions. Nor can it be said that this was a straining of the law. As the whole trouble had grown out of the system of conscription and the calling out of the reservists, it certainly was a matter “concerning the army.” There was no illegality, then, in handing Ferrer over to military justice.
What is the procedure of a Spanish military tribunal? The rules that govern it are set forth (not quite fully or frankly, however) in the appendix to the official version of the Ferrer trial (“Process,” p. 67).
The Juicio Ordinario is called “ordinary” in contradistinction to the Juicio Sumarisimo, or drumhead court martial, which disposes of you with the least possible ceremony. The “Ordinary Process” falls into three parts — the Sumario, Plenario, and Vista Publica. For the first two terms I do not think there is any English equivalent. The Sumario is practically what the French call the instruction — the private examination of the prisoner and of witnesses by the juge d’instruction, or examining magistrate — of course in this case a soldier. The first rule of the Sumario has certainly much to commend it:
Before proceedings can be directed against a person, there must appear some charge against him [Article 421].
The only other rule that calls for special notice is this: “Domiciliary searches must be conducted in the presence of those interested, or of a member of the family, or of two witnesses [Article 511].” We have seen how this rule was observed at Mas Germinal.
When we come to the second stage of the process, the first rule that meets us is as follows: “The Plenario is public [Article 540].” If this means anything, it means that there is a public session of some sort; and we find that, at the Plenario of another case, an audience was present, for a statement attributed to one of the witnesses called forth “great laughter among the public.” But in the case of Ferrer I cannot discover that any public session was ever held before the final Vista Publica. The second rule
229
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is: “The accused himself names his Defender [Article 453]”; but it is not mentioned that he is required to choose his Defender from a list of officers which is handed to him. Note, too, that during the Sumario, while the evidence is being taken, he has no Defender or adviser of any sort. In the Plenario he may demand, and the examining commandant may, at his discretion, permit, a “ratification of the witnesses,” which I take to imply a reexamination; but there seems to have been nothing of the sort in Ferrer’s case. The Defender, it would appear, never saw a single witness, much less had any opportunity for cross-examination. Ferrer himself, during the period of the Sumario, was “confronted” with four of the witnesses,—four out of fifty or sixty,— but the proceedings were confined to affirmation on their part and denial on his. Of anything like cross-examination there is no trace. Ferrer had, very likely, no skill in that peculiar art; and, had he possessed skill, there is nothing to show that he would have been allowed to exercise it.
We proceed now to the Vista Publica-—the public trial. The court is a “council of war,” composed of a colonel (the President) and six captains. They are assisted by an Assessor—an officer who is supposed to be at the same time something of a lawyer. First the report, or dossier, of the examining commandant (juge d’instruction) is read; then come
The examination by the Fiscal, Assessor, Defenders, President, and members of the Council, of witnesses and experts, and the recognition of objects and documents; the accusation and the defense are read; . . . and, lastly, the accused speaks, to set forth whatever he may consider opportune.
So runs the order of procedure, as officially stated; and in practice there was only one detail omitted—the examination of witnesses. With this trifling exception, all went according to rule. The portfolio of evidence was read; the Fiscal (prosecutor) read his commentary on the evidence, and demanded the conviction of the accused; the Defender read his reply, which he had been allowed only twenty-four hours to prepare; and, finally, the accused said a few words. Then (strictly according to rule) the court met in secret session, and the Assessor read his report, which was, in fact, another speech for the prosecution, unchecked by the presence of the accused or his Defender. Then the court (still in secret) passed its sentence, which was forwarded for approval to the Captain-General of Catalonia, accompanied by the report of an officer termed the Auditor—a third indictment in which all sorts of fresh matter is introduced. It is these three indictments that
the Government publishes under the title of “Ordinary Process . . . Against Francisco Ferrer.” The speech for the defense is tactfully omitted.
Having noted the structure of the machine in which Ferrer was caught, let us now try to follow its workings. Up to the opening of the actual trial (Vista Publica), the letters of Ferrer himself are our chief authority; but no attempt has been made to contradict his statements as to the way in which he was treated.
Ferrer in Prison
After his brief interview with the Governor, he was passed on to the central police station, and there stripped and subjected to the Bertillon system of measurements, etc. This done, not a single stitch of his clothing was returned to him, but he was rigged out from head to foot in “reach-me-down” garments ridiculously too small for him, with what he calls an “apache” cap. The underlings among his jailers were themselves surprised at this unexampled proceeding. He remonstrated against it in vain, and made public protest at his trial. Can we believe that the authorities deliberately sought to prejudice him by making him look grotesque? It is almost incredible; and yet, what else can have been their motive? It was not economy, for the maneuver cost the Treasury (by Ferrer’s own estimate) at least fourteen francs. He went to his death in his fourteen-franc suit.
Arrived at the Carcel Celular, he was not only incommunicated (that is to say, placed in secret confinement), but he was assigned a cell — he, an untried man — of the class devoted to riguroso castigo, or rigorous punishment. This is his description of it, in a letter to his friend Heaford:
They put me in a repugnant cell, fetid, cold, damp, without air or light, in the underground region of the prison, where so rotten an atmosphere prevails that in descending to it you can’t help turning your head away. In this cell (8 feet by 13) there is a plank bed, a palliasse, a counterpane, and a sheet —all filthy, disgusting. A pan for refuse and a jar of drinking-water. Impossible to sleep on account of the cold and the little animals of all sorts which swarmed, and which, on the first night, attacked me at every point,
I took the precaution afterwards of leaving crumbs of bread in the four corners, so that the beetles left me in peace; not so the other beasts. For food, soup twice a day, always the same, made with chick-peas (garbanzos) in the morning, and with haricots in the evening, served in such darkness that it was very difficult to pick out the lumps of rancid bacon which almost made me sick. It needed a good stomach like mine to resist this, and a strong will not to be cast down. I asked for a basin and water so as to be able to wash at least my hands and face. My request was granted after six days. I asked for soap, but as the police had kept all my money I could not get any,
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231
until I protested so much that at last the Governor of the prison, Don Benito Nieves, a charming person, gave me a piece of his own, and then made me a present of a cake. To combat the cold and the tedium of not being able to read, or talk, or see any one, I paced up and down my cell, like a wild animal, until I perspired. When I saw that my incommunication was not soon to end, I asked, on September 11, for a change of linen (1 had been in prison since the 1st), for 1 could not endure to live in such filth, upon me and around me. They gave me clean linen on the 23d!
This letter is important in more ways than one. It not only shows the quiet heroism of the man, and the spirit of rancor in which he was treated: it also gives us a glimpse of a Spanish prison which is not without significance when we find that the most important — almost the only important—witnesses for the prosecution were arrested for complicity in the disturbances, and were released on giving their evidence. To put a man in such a cell as this is almost equivalent to the application of peine forte et dure; and what is the worth of evidence so extracted?
To close the subject of Ferrer’s treatment in prison, I may say that this letter to Mr. Hea-ford was written on October 5, when the “incommunication” was over and he was placed in a more habitable cell. Nevertheless, it ends:
The rest another time, my dear friends. I am tired now, and my little friends of the cell are beginning to take unfair advantage of the peace in which I have left them for so long. They are even coming to see what I am doing on this paper. ... I forgot to tell you that they refused to give me back a toothbrush which I had with me, two pocket handkerchiefs, or, in fact, anything belonging to me.
Ferrer, said El Universo, had been handed over to the austera severidad of the military tribunals. Was it part of that austere severity to prevent him from brushing his teeth?
A Commandant in a Hurry
In the evening of the day of his arrest (September 1), he underwent his first examination, at the hands of Commandant Vicente Llivina. This officer, says Ferrer in his letter to Heaford, “seemed to me a very honorable and unprejudiced man, desirous of knowing the truth and nothing but the truth. I never saw him again.” Llivina, as we have seen, was the commandant told off to get up the case against the “instigators, organizers, and directors” of the riot. It was he who had, by advertisement, summoned Ferrer to appear before him. Up to this point, the prosecution of Ferrer had been conjoined with four other prosecutions — against Emiliano Iglesias, Luis Zurdo, Trinidad Alted, and Juana Ardiaca — under the care of Llivina. But now
Ferrer’s case was disjoined from the group, and handed over to another examining commandant, Valerio Raso by name. What was the reason of this transference? A comparison of dates may help us to divine it. The four cases left under Llivina’s charge were not brought to trial until March 4, 1910, when passion had fairly worked itself out. Three of the accused were then acquitted, and the fourth sentenced to imprisonment for life. Ferrer, on the other hand, was brought to trial within thirty-nine days of his arrest, and executed four days later. Yet, with all this expedition, he was scarcely out of the way before the date fixed for the reassembling of the Cortes. He was shot on October 13; the Chambers met on October 15. If there be no significance in this juxtaposition of dates, Senor Maura’s Government was the victim of a singularly unfortunate coincidence.
Ferrer’s first meeting with Valerio Raso took place on Monday, September 6, when the commandant had him microscopically scrutinized from head to foot by two doctors, to see whether they could find any scar, scratch, or burn on his person. He believed that, if they had discovered anything of the kind, he would have been summarily shot. Probably he was wrong in this. "A rumor was current that he had been wounded in the riots, and that his wound had been dressed in a drug-store at Badalona, a town between Barcelona and Mongat. The search for a cicatrice was no doubt intended to test the value of this evidence; and, none being found, the evidence simply disappeared from the record. For the moment, the commandant contented himself with this corporeal examination. Three days later, on the 9th, he administered his first interrogatory; and on the 19th his second and last. The date of the “confrontations” we do not know. On October 1, Raso reappeared to announce to Ferrer that his dossier was completed, that his “incommunication” was relaxed, and that he would be tried “one of these days.” Ferrer protested that he had still many declarations to make; the commandant replied that nothing more could be admitted, "military law not being like civil law.” He also presented a list of officers from among whom Ferrer must choose his Defender. Knowing none of them, he selected Captain Francisco Galceran Ferrer,* on account of the chance resemblance of names. Captain Galceran has confessed that he accepted the charge very unwillingly, being strongly prepossessed
* Ferrer is one of the commonest of Spanish names, being, in fact, I take it, the equivalent of Smith. The frequency of double names arises from the habit of adding the mother’s name to the father’s. The father’s name is placed first, and is the actual surname. Ferrer noticed, not only that two of Galceran’s names were the same as his own, but that all the initials were the same: in the one case, F. F. G., in the other case, F. G. F.
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against Ferrer on account of his anti-militarism; but an hour’s talk with the prisoner made him his undaunted champion.
The Exiles and Their Evidence
Meanwhile Soledad Villafranca was eating her heart out at Teruel, in total ignorance of what was passing at Barcelona. She and some of her comrades in exile were the persons who could best speak as to Ferrer’s employment of his time during the week of revolt; and they naturally expected, day after day, to be called upon for their evidence. This expectation was encouraged (unofficially, of course, and very likely in good faith) by their jailers. A member of the Palace police from Madrid, who had been specially told off to keep watch over Mme. Villafranca, bade her wait patiently and the summons would come in due time. She and her comrades were not reassured on finding that two anarchist documents, said to have been discovered among Ferrer’s papers, were going the round of the press, with the natural result of still further prejudicing the public mind against him. This is, indeed, one of the darkest features of the whole affair. The Sumario, or collection of evidence, is by rule and custom absolutely private; yet here were two documents, on the face of them most compromising, allowed to leak out, and passing from newspaper to newspaper. In one of the documents, moreover, as communicated to the press, a word of some importance was misquoted. When the document was cited by the Assessor (“Process,” p. 33), it appeared that one of the paragraphs ended with the phrase, “Viva la anarqma!” But in the version sent to the newspapers the word dina-mita was substituted for anarqma. These slips of the pen are a little unfortunate when a human life is at stake.
Another straw which showed how the wind was blowing was the announcement on September 25 of the rewards accorded by the Government to the men who had arrested Ferrer. The Mayor of Alella was made a Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic; two of the somaten (vigilance committee) became Cavaliers of the same order, and were presented with a uniform and complete equipment, including a Mauser rifle “with a plate commemorating the date of the arrest”; while to the watchman and one or two others who assisted in the arrest were accorded medals of Isabella the Catholic and six hundred dollars apiece in cash. Am I wrong in considering this a quite amazing incident? Seven or eight villagers have arrested one solitary man, who made no resistance, being armed with nothing more formidable than a
hand camera; and, while that man is awaiting his trial, the Government goes out of its way to distribute lavish rewards among the heroic captors! Could any better means be imagined of announcing a confident foreknowledge of the prisoner’s doom?
Weary at last of waiting for a call that never came, the exiles of Teruel on September 28 addressed a letter to the examining commandant, expressing their surprise at not having been summoned, and demanding to be heard. The letter was signed by Soledad Villafranca, Jose Ferrer, Alfredo Meseguer, Cristobal Litrdn, and Mariano Batllori. On September 30, Don Valerio Raso replied that on the previous day the case had been “elevated to Plenario,” and that, consequently, no more evidence could be taken. “ I am much surprised,” he added, “that, if you had anything to say, you should not have done so before, in the twenty-eight days which had elapsed before you wrote.” As no one seems to know in what consists the mysterious operation of "elevating” a case “to Plenario,” it is impossible to disprove Don Valerio’s assertion. It may be said, however, that the “elevation” was not made known to Ferrer himself until October 1, and that, even after that, Mme. Villafranca’s mother was called upon to give evidence. The rules of the Plenario, it is true, do not permit the appearance of fresh witnesses, except in the case of “common offenses” as distinguished from “military offenses”; but they do not explain why, in dealing with military offenses, the court should deny itself a means of getting at the truth, which it is free to employ in other cases. At any rate, as the evidence of Ferrer’s friends was rejected on this paltry plea of time, it was a little unkind of the Fiscal to make it a point against him that there were no witnesses to speak in his favor ("Process,” p. 21).
The Trial
At a quarter to eight on the morning of Saturday, October 9, the Council of War assembled at the Model Prison for the trial of Francisco Ferrer. The prisoner was not, as has been stated, brought before the court in fetters. That report arose from a misprint in the Times. There were about twenty (not two hundred) journalists present, and an audience of privileged (and no doubt “well-thinking”) persons. Ferrer tried at the outset to say a word of apology for the ridiculous attire in which he was forced to present himself, but he was cut short by the President.
We do not possess a full report of the dossier recited by the examining commandant; but there can be no doubt that everything that could
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233
possibly tell against the prisoner was recapitulated and underlined in the “Fiscal accusation,” which has been published in full (“Process,” pp. 5-28).
The Fiscal, Don Jesus Marin Rafales, opened with a rhetorical description of the riots and outrages, quite in the style of that quoted from the Correspondencia (see the November number, page 54), and almost as exaggerated. Before saying a word to connect Ferrer with these events, he appealed to the professional and personal resentment of the judges, “all or almost all” of whom, he said, had taken part in the repression, and had been exposed to its dangers. He spoke of “the fire to which you were subjected from barricades and housetops.” He denounced the rioters as “drunk with blood,” forgetting that nine tenths of the blood shed was that of the populace, shot down by the police and soldiers. In short, he neglected no means of awakening the passions of the soldier judges, if perchance they had fallen asleep. At the same time, he explicitly declared:
In this case we are not investigating the burning of a particular convent, nor the explosion at this or that given point, nor the cutting of this or that telegraph wire, nor the construction of this or that barricade, nor this or that overt act of war. No! we are following up the revolutionary movement in its inmost entrails; we are investigating the causes that gave it life, and seeking the agency which prepared, impelled, and sustained it.
In less ornate terms, the Fiscal confessed that they could not bring home to the prisoner a single act of violence.
He then devoted a few minutes to arguing that the events of July constituted a “military rebellion” as by law defined; and, that being satisfactorily established, he went on to an analysis of the evidence. It is this analysis which we must now analyze.
The evidence falls under four distinct heads:
1. Unsupported opinion and hearsay.
2. Statements which may or may not be true, but which prove nothing.
3. More or less relevant accusations, the truth or falsehood of which is worth examining.
4. Documentary evidence — two revolutionary papers purporting to have been found at Mas Germinal.
1. Unsupported Opinion and Hearsay
Under this head I cannot do better than summarize a single paragraph of the Fiscal’s speech:
Lieutenant-Colonel Leoncio Ponte of the Guardia Civil points to Ferrer as taking active part in the movement of Masnou and Premia.
It is not pretended that Lieutenant-Colonel Ponte saw him doing so, or speaks otherwise than from hearsay.
Jimenez Moya, "a witness above suspicion, since, on account of the exaltation of his ideas, he is at present banished to Majorca, makes the charge more concrete, saying that, in his opinion, the rebellion started from the Solidaridad Obrera .. .and pointing to Ferrer and his
companions of the Antimilitarist League as its directors.” [The Fiscal does not add, what we learn from Captain Galceran’s speech, that the declaration of this witness ends with the avowal that “he knows nothing positive, since he was absent from Barcelona from the 15th of July onwards.”]
Verdaguer Callis “affirms that, according to intelligence which he has no means of verifying, hut which he believes to he exact,” the events were “impelled and guided by Ferrer Guardia.” Emiliano Iglesias believes that the Solidaridad Obrera spent more money than it possessed. [Ferrer had, about a year previously, lent the Solidaridad Obrera one hundred and eighty dollars which it required to meet the expenses of moving into new premises. Beyond this no one proved or attempted to prove any financial relation between Ferrer and the society.]
Baldomero Bonet, arrested on a charge of convent-burning, believes that the Solidaridad Obrera was at the bottom of the events, and, as it does not abound in funds, participates in the general idea that it was subventioned by Ferrer. On a second examination, "he confirms his belief, since he cannot understand that any other element could have caused the events.”
“The same current against the Solidaridad Obrera and Ferrer is maintained in the declaration of Modesto Lara.”
Garcia Magallon relates a conversation with a journalist named Pierre,* who told him that he had heard it said that the events were promoted by the Solidaridad Obrera under the direction of Ferrer.
Puig Ventura “believes that Ferrer was at the bottom of it all.”
Casas Llibre formed the opinion that Ferrer was the “directing element.”
Alvarez Espinosa “abounds in the same opinion,” and believes that Ferrer was “the true instigator and inspirer of the events.”
The last three witnesses we shall encounter again, and shall have to consider the value of their evidence on matters which actually came within their knowledge. Here they are only,
* I have seen a letter from this Pierre, protesting that he never said anything of the sort; but this protest scarcely increases the manifest worthlessness of the evidence.
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like all the rest, expressing opinions and beliefs for which they do not even allege the smallest solid foundation. Thus we have ten witnesses, one of whom, Iglesias, said nothing about Ferrer, two “pointed to” him, three “believed” that he was at the bottom of the revolt, two “formed an opinion” to the same effect, one related a report “which he had no means of verifying,” and one repeated what some one else told him that he had heard some one else say. Meanwhile, there were in the jails of Barcelona more than a thousand prisoners accused of participation in the riots, and in the rest of Catalonia at least a thousand more, not one of whom could be found to have received orders from Ferrer, or arms, or money, or to have had any direct or indirect knowledge of him as organizer or chief of the revolt.
A group of five witnesses cited by the Fiscal in the same paragraph deserves somewhat different treatment. They are villagers of Premia — Don Juan This and Don Jaime That. Three of them declare generally that “after” the visit of Ferrer to Premia on Wednesday the 28th events in that locality “assumed a grave character”; a fourth asserts that the change took place “immediately on his arrival,” while the fifth fixes it at “an hour after his departure.” Now we shall see anon that Ferrer spent a very short time in Premia, that a most important witness, Puig Ventura (called Llarch), was in his company all the time, and that, except for what he is alleged to have said to Puig, Casas, etc., he clearly held no communication with a soul in the village. Thus, while the evidence for any considerable change in the course of events is of the vaguest, one of the Prosecution’s own witnesses proves that there was no connection between Ferrer’s visit and whatever change there may have been.
A Shadowy Host of “Agents”
But we are by no means at the end of hearsay evidence and the expression of mere opinion. It is stated that a man named Sola was frequently seen during the days of the disturbance at the Fraternidad Republicana of Premia, and one Juan Alsina is “morally certain” that he received instructions directly from Ferrer. There is no evidence whatever as to his having done or attempted anything illegal; but, on the ground of one witness’s “moral certainty” that he was an emissary of Ferrer, this is gravely set forth as an incriminating circumstance. Again, one Puig Pons speaks of the appearance at Premia of a party of thirty men whom he “believes” to have been recruited by Ferrer. He does not know this personally; but when he
asked the bystanders who these men were, the answer was, “They are the stone-cutters whom Ferrer is said to have sent.” Moreover, a good deal of vague village gossip is reported as to cyclists and persons driving a tartana, or one-horse cart, who were supposed to be agents of Ferrer; but no one is produced who actually saw these “agents”; much less any one who saw them do or heard them say anything illegal; least of all any evidence to connect them with Ferrer.
But the finest example, perhaps, of this class of evidence is afforded by a witness named Pedro Pages, who “reports that he read in La Almudaina, a newspaper of Palma [Majorca]," a story about some workmen having patrolled the coast road, saying that they did so under the orders of Senor Ferrer. A newspaper paragraph is not usually considered the best of evidence; but Don Pedro Pages did not even produce the paragraph — he only remembered to have read it.
A point of transition between pure hearsay and evidence of some apparent validity is afforded by the incident of the town hall at Masnou. Salvador Millet relates, “from information received (segun referencias),” that on the 27th or 28th groups of rebels presented themselves at the said town hall, and from the balcony “harangued the multitude,” saying that they did so in the name of Ferrer, “who could not be present, as he was detained in Barcelona on the business of the revolution.” This is the usual vague hearsay; but in this case there is actually one witness, Esteban Puigde-mon, who declares that from the door of his house, hard by the town hall, he heard one man make a speech and say that he came to represent Ferrer. Well may the Fiscal introduce Don Esteban in italics as a testigo presencial, or witness who was on the spot. Such witnesses are rarities in this part of his brief.
Esteban, indeed, is more than a rarity; he is unique. We shall come presently to witnesses who purport to relate what Ferrer actually said to them at Masnou and Premia; but there is nothing in their evidence that shows him acting as organizer or director of the occurrences in that region. The attempt to exhibit him in that light — “irradiating rebellion,” as the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court put it, from his headquarters at Mas Germinal — rests absolutely and entirely on the hearsay evidence we have just examined. Of the host of agents with whom popular rumor credited him,—cyclists, stonecutters, miscellaneous workmen, indefinite “rebels,” etc.,'—not one is produced. There is no direct testimony to his having issued a single order or paid any one a single peseta. There
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is only one testigo presencial, who heard some unknown person “harangue a multitude,” and say that he acted on behalf of Ferrer. What has become of the “multitude”? If the incident really occurred, surely a few more of that crowd might have been found to testify to it. And, even if it did occur, can Ferrer be held responsible for what an unidentified “rebel” may have said? This whole part of the case merely proves — what we learn in other ways as well — that the ignorant peasants of the district had been indoctrinated with wild ideas as to the maleficent power of their heretic neighbor at Mas Germinal.
2. Statements That Prove Nothing
We have now to return to Barcelona, and to Ferrer’s doings on the 26th — the day of the strike. We have already noted that, in his own account of that day, he omitted a good deal, probably in fear of compromising his friends. Let us now see whether there was anything criminal — anything displaying him in the character of “author and chief of the revolt”— in the incidents that he omitted.
There is no attempt to show the “author and chief” in any way concerned with the events of the day until three o’clock in the afternoon. At that hour—between his luncheon and his appointment with the engraver — he went to the Casa del Pueblo, a workmen’s restaurant and recreation-place, in search of his secretary, Litran. In the cafe he saw an old Republican, Lorenzo Ardid, whose evidence is thus reported by the Fiscal:
Ferrer entered and saluted him, saying that he would like to speak to him privately. Ardid replied, “When you please”; and Ferrer then asked him, “What do you think of the events of the day?” The witness answered, “It is all over: it is only a sort of protest, which cannot go any further.” Then Ferrer repeated, "You think it cannot go any further?”—-upon which he answered with energy, and Ferrer became silent. Ardid then turned his back to him and said to one of the company, “Tell that gentleman that he had better .go away quickly by the side door”— which Ferrer at once did.
Ardid has since declared that this is a perverted version of his evidence; but, taking it at its face value, what is there in it? A passing remark on the situation. The Prosecution apparently seeks to suggest that in Ferrer’s exit there was some sort of conscious guilt; but Ardid declares that he explained this in his evidence. The fact was that Ferrer had fallen out with the Radical-Republican party, which has its headquarters at the Casa del Pueblo, and Ardid heard, or thought he heard, a menacing hum in the crowded cafe which showed that
his presence there was resented. As we have abundant proof of the momentary feud between Ferrer and the Lerrouxists, this explanation of the matter is entirely credible.
From a rational point of view, the sole importance of the incident arises from the fact that Ferrer appears to have denied having been at the Casa del Pueblo or seen Ardid, and only to have retracted his denial on being confronted with the witness. I have satisfied myself, from the position and character of the Casa del Pueblo, that Ferrer can scarcely have forgotten the fact of his having been there. Here, then, is a single case in which he seems to have made a positively untrue statement.* And why? In all probability, because he feared to compromise this very Ardid, who, as a matter of fact, was arrested in connection with the riots. The commandant probably questioned him about the Casa del Pueblo without letting him know that Ardid was to figure as a witness against him; and Ferrer was probably on his guard not to make any admission that could possibly be used against the old Republican campaigner.
Oddly enough, the Fiscal accepts, without attempting to cast doubt upon it, the statement that Ferrer intended to return to Mongat by the six o’clock train — an intention which cannot but seem surprising in the head of the revolt, especially as it implies that the organizer-in-chief did not know that the railway line was to be cut. When Ferrer left the station, he was seen by “the agent of vigilance, Don Angel Fernandez Bermejo, intrusted with the duty of shadowing him” mingling with seditious groups on the Plaza de Antonio Lopez, again near the Atarazanas barracks, and yet again on the Rambla. When one of the groups was dispersed by a charge of the police, he lost sight of Ferrer, but then saw him again going into the Hotel Internacional, where, as a matter of fact, he dined. The sole importance of this evidence is to show that Ferrer was shadowed. He could scarcely move about the streets without getting into “groups,” and he would naturally exchange a few observations with this man and that. Of anything pointing to leadership the spy has no word to say.
It was very likely at the same time, though they place it a little earlier, that two soldiers saw a man in a blue suit and a straw hat in a group of people on the Plaza de Antonio Lopez. When they requested him to move on, he pointed to a poster on the wall proclaiming the state of siege, and said, “May one not read
* The following rule of the Sumario may be worth citing in this connection: “The accused makes his declaration without being placed under oath.”
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that?” This seems an innocent and even laudable desire; yet the Fiscal singles out the incident as being of “notable intrinsic importance,” and is triumphant when the soldiers identify Ferrer “three times”* in a group of prisoners. Very probably the man was Ferrer, who was certainly in that part of the town about that time; but where is the “intrinsic importance” of the fact? Shortly afterward, the Fiscal tries to give it extrinsic importance by citing the evidence of two officers who, on the '28th, arrested some persons armed with new Smith revolvers, who said the pistols had been given to them by a man they did not know, wearing a blue suit and a straw hat. How many men in Barcelona wore blue suits and straw hats? And what had become of the arrested revolver-men? If one or two of them had identified Ferrer as the distributor of the weapons, their evidence would have been worth all the rest put together.
The Barber of Masnou
Now appears on the scene a curious and rather important figure. As Ferrer was sitting, about half past nine o’clock, in the cafe under the Hotel Internacional, where he had dined, he saw passing a youth named Francisco Domenech, assistant in a barber’s shop at Masnou, and secretary of the Republican Committee of that village. Ferrer called him in, and, learning that he proposed to walk home that night, suggested that they might go together. From the cafe, says Domenech, they went to the office of the Lerrouxist (Republican) paper El Progreso, to learn “what the comrades were going to do”— an odd inquiry for the “author and chief” to make. Thence they went to a cafe, where Ferrer met some of his friends and nothing particular happened; and presently they returned to the office of El Progreso. Ferrer went in alone, and on coming out he remarked, according to Domenech, that neither Iglesias nor others had been willing to sign a document which he had brought with him, an address to the government demanding the cessation of embarkations for Melilla, and threatening, in case of refusal, to make a revolution, the signatories placing themselves at the head of the people. Iglesias had said that the strikers had better return to work, and had asked what forces he counted upon for the course proposed.
Now, Iglesias denies that he saw Ferrer that night. It is true, however, that some such document had been drawn up by Moreno; and
* In this and another case of identification, the “three times” are specially insisted on. But surely any one who can identify a man once can do so three times.
it is true that, had the project gone forward, Ferrer would have signed it. But it is not true that the design was his, that he carried the document around, or that he took any leading part in the negotiation. In so far as Dome-nech’s testimony points in that direction, it is false. Domenech may have misunderstood, or his evidence may have received a little twist in the reporting. We shall see before we have done with Domenech that there was no possibility of testing or rectifying his statements.
From the office of El Progreso Ferrer and Domenech set forth to walk home. Their way lay through the Calle de la Princesa, and in that street they met Moreno. Ferrer told him that there were representatives of the Solidaridad Obrera at the office of El Progreso, trying if they could come to an understanding with the Radicals, and suggested that Moreno should go and see what was happening. He replied: “They [presumably the Radicals] are already compromised”; and added, according to Domenech, “Woe to whoever fails us, for we will do with him as they do with traitors in Russia!”
Then Ferrer and the little barber walked on together, parting at Mongat between four and five in the morning. We shall meet our friend Domenech again a little later.
In all these incidents of the 26th, is there a single one that shows Ferrer taking a directing part in the disturbances? I submit that the evidence, even accepting it at its face value, is wholly inconsistent with such a view. He is an interested onlooker, no more; and after six o’clock he is an onlooker only because the trains are not running, and he prefers (as he said to Litran) to take his eleven-mile walk in the cool of the early morning. We find him willing to join in sending a threatening address to the government; and if that willingness be a punishable offense, he deserved whatever punishment the law assigns to it. But between that and being author and chief of the rebellion there is all the difference in the world. Had he had any guilty consciousness, he would scarcely have been at pains to attach a witness to his every footstep. Domenech asserts, no doubt with truth, that he and Ferrer were the merest acquaintances. Why should Ferrer, had he been organizing and directing the rebellion, have put his life in the hands of a casual barber’s assistant?
3. Relevant Accusations: The Catholic Journalist
It is almost a relief to come upon two accusations to which a certain weight would doubtless have been attached in a competent court of
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law. One is the unsupported assertion of a single man; the other rests on the testimony of several witnesses.
Don Francisco de Paula Colldefons,* a journalist on the staff of various clerical papers, asserted in one of them, El Siglo Futuro, as early as August 8, that he saw Ferrer “at the head of a group (capitaneando un grupo) in front of the Liceo Theater on the Rambla.” When he appeared before the examining commandant, however, his statement became considerably less positive. This is how the Fiscal reports it:
The said gentleman affirms that on Tuesday, the 27th, between seven-thirty and eight-thirty in the evening, he saw a group, in the Rambla, in front of the Liceo, captained (mark that well) captained by a person who seemed to him to be Francisco Ferrer Guar-dia, whom he knew only from a photograph; but he acquired the conviction that it must be he from hearing the passers-by say so. The group passed down the Calle del Hospital. Furthermore, . . . the witness identified Ferrer three times in a circle of prisoners as the man he had seen in that situation.
Clearly, this evidence is worth looking into.
What weight can we attach to the identification? The witness who knew Ferrer from photographs would, of course, refresh his memory of these photographs before proceeding to the identification, so that it is scarcely surprising that he should recognize his man. Moreover, we have seen that the authorities had been careful to dress Ferrer in a ridiculous garb, which would make him stand out from any group of ordinary prisoners, and insure attention being drawn to him. The identification, then, amounts to nothing.
Now as to the actual incident: It took place “between seven-thirty and eight-thirty in the evening”; yet it does not seem to have occurred to any one to inquire by what light Colldefons recognized a man whom he knew only from photographs. I have satisfied myself that at seven-thirty on July 27 it would be barely possible to see a man’s features by the evening light at the spot indicated; at seven-forty-five or later it would be quite impossible. But what about electric light? I have been unable to find any conclusive evidence as to whether the electric lamps were or were not lighted on the Rambla that evening. The probability is that they were not. In any case, the light must either have been very dim, or else artificial and deceptive. The fact that this point was wholly neglected shows the danger of relying upon witnesses who cannot be cross-examined. Furthermore, no one has inquired what Senor Colldefons meant when he
* I believe this is the correct form of the name, though it sometimes appears as “ Colldeforns ” and “ Colldefrons.”
said that the man in question was “captaining” the group. What were the signs and tokens of his captaincy? On this point, too, a little cross-examination would not have been amiss.
What, now, was the probability of Ferrer’s being in Barcelona on the evening of the 27th? The authorities had carefully refused to admit the evidence of Ferrer’s family, who positively assert that he never quitted Mas Germinal that day. But, even with this testimony ruled out, what do we know? We know that he reached home on foot about five on the Tuesday morning; and we know that all public means of communication by which he could have returned to Barcelona that day were interrupted. Can we conceive that, at two or three on the Tuesday afternoon, he started in the blazing heat to walk eleven dusty miles into Barcelona, in order to “captain a group”? Or, if he took some private conveyance, can we conceive that, in that thickly peopled region of gossiping villagers, no evidence of the fact should be forthcoming? He must not only have gone to Barcelona, but he must have returned before ten the next morning, when he went, as usual, to be shaved at Masnou. Is it conceivable that there should be absolutely no evidence as to his means of transit either way? that not a living soul should have seen him outside of Mas Germinal, save Don Francisco de Paula Colldefons? Where was “the agent of vigilance, Don Angel Fernandez Bermejo, intrusted with the duty of shadowing him”? He was not a man unknown in Barcelona, nor one whose comings and goings were apt to be unmarked. If he was “captaining a group,” he must have made himself at least moderately conspicuous; yet, out of the thousands who were in the streets that night, the one discoverable person who recognized him was a Catholic journalist who did not know him!
And this Catholic journalist who did not know him is the one witness who even purports to present him in the light of a chief or director, not of the revolt, but of a particular grupo de revoltosos.
The Village Republicans
Vastly more serious is the evidence of the village Republicans of Masnou and Premia de Mar. If we can believe it, we must hold Ferrer guilty of an indiscretion which was doubtless liable to some punishment, though it was immeasurably different from the crime of being “author and chief of the revolt.” But can we believe the evidence?
This is how it runs: On Wednesday the
28th, Ferrer, as was his custom of a Wednesday morning, presented himself at the barber’s shop
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at Masnou, where Domenech was employed. According to Domenech, he sent for one Juan Puig Ventura, nicknamed Llarch, or “tall,” the President of the Republican Committee. On Llarch’s arrival, Ferrer proposed to him that he should go to the Ayuntamiento, or town hall, and there proclaim the Republic. So far, Domenech; but Llarch himself goes further and says that Ferrer urged him “to begin by inciting people to sally forth and burn churches and convents.” Llarch replied that he did not see how that would advance the Republican cause; to which Ferrer answered that he cared nothing about the Republic, but was simply bent on revolution. He then proposed that Llarch should accompany him to Premia, which that gentleman, though shocked at his suggestions, agreed to do. At Premia they met the Alcalde, or Mayor, to whom Ferrer made similar proposals. Then, on their way back to Masnou, they met a group of young men coming from Barcelona, who told them what was going on,* whereupon Ferrer said, “Good! Good! Courage! It must all be destroyed!”
The Alcalde himself, Don Domingo Casas, and the acting secretary of the Ayuntamiento, Alvarez, are quoted as emphatically confirming the statement that Ferrer proposed the proclamation of the Republic, and the Deputy Alcalde, Mustards, seems to have told the same story. Finally, Francisco Calvet, waiter at the Fraternidad Republicana of Premia, relates that at half past twelve on the day in question Llarch appeared at the cafd with another person whom he (Calvet) did not know:
“Presently arrived Casas, Mustares, and Alvarez; and then the unknown said: ‘I am Ferrer Guardia.’” The witness adds that this produced a startling effect on those present, and especially on himself, on account of all the evil he had heard of that person; and that then Ferrer added, addressing the Alcalde, “I have come to say to you that you must proclaim the Republic in Premia.” The Alcalde replied, “Senor Ferrer, I do not accept these words”; upon which the accused answered, “How should you not accept them, since the Republic is proclaimed in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and other capitals?”
These allegations, I confess, seem to me by far the strongest part of the whole case for the prosecution. On examination, we find reason to discount them heavily; but I am inclined to think that there must be a residue of truth in them.
* If the evidence of Colldefons were true, this would be no news to Ferrer, who must himself have returned quite recently from Barcelona. Again, if the evidence of both Colldefons and Llarch were true, it would be strange that Ferrer should have said nothing to Llarch as to his having taken part in the scenes of the “tragic night" in Barcelona.
What is Ferrer’s own account of the matter? We have it in the long letter to Charles Malato, written on October 1. He says that the barber’s shop at Masnou rapidly filled with people who wanted to question him about the events at Barcelona; for the report had got abroad that he was connected with them. He told them that he was as anxious as they for news, since he wanted to attend to his publishing affairs as soon as business was resumed. J ust then a small steamboat came along the coast from Barcelona, and seemed to be going to put in at Premia; whereupon he proposed to Llarch, who had just been telling how he had quieted a riotous crowd, that they should walk on to Premia and learn what news the steamer brought. But she did not, after all, put in at Premia; so they very soon returned, Llarch to Masnou, Ferrer to Mongat. During the five or ten minutes they spent in Premia, they were surrounded by people asking for news—“as we, in turn, asked them.” “It appears,” Ferrer continues, “that the Republican Mayor of Premia was among the group; and he now declares that I proposed to him to proclaim the Republic, and to burn the convent and the church; which is as false as Llarch’s assertion to the same effect. The judge confronted me with these two canailles, who stuck to their assertions in spite of my protests, reminding them that we exchanged only the phrases that every one was exchanging in those days: What is going on? What is the news from here, from there? What are people saying? ”
At the confrontations, Llarch is reported as having said “that he was sure Ferrer would abound in explanations and denials, but that he nevertheless maintained what he had stated”; while the Alcalde said, “One who denies the truth, as you do, is capable of denying the light of the sun.”
Six Just Men
We have, then, six witnesses — Domenech, Llarch, the Alcalde, Mustares, Alvarez, and Calvet — who all aver that Ferrer urged the proclamation of the Republic, two of them adding that he also incited to convent-burning. This is unquestionably pretty strong evidence. But there are one or two remarks to be made as to the credit of the witnesses.
Domenech, to begin with, having given his evidence, was got out of the country with all despatch. His own account is that “friends” gave him money, and that he started for South America on the 16th of August. The “friends” are stated to have been the Barcelona Committee of Social Defense, an ultra-Catholic organization, which bought him off his military
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service and gave him three hundred dollars with which to clear out. This assertion was made, in somewhat veiled terms, by Captain Galceran, in his speech for Ferrer’s defense; and I have not seen it denied. At all events, I have it from Senor Domenech’s own lips that “friends” made it possible for him to absent himself for three or four months — until, in fact, Ferrer was satisfactorily dead. Hisevidence, then, though costly, can scarcely be called valuable.
Of the other five, three at least — Llarch, the Alcalde, and Alvarez (I am not quite sure about Mustares)— were arrested on the charge of having taken part in the disturbances, and were liberated, without trial, after giving their evidence. This is, on the face of it, not quite reassuring. And, when one realizes the whole position,— the panic that prevailed; the denunciations flying around; the jails (and such jails!) full of prisoners; and always on the horizon the grim silhouette of Montjuich, with its tradition of torture,— one is not inclined to wonder overmuch if these poor villagers (a butcher, a blacksmith, etc.) were tempted to give to their evidence just the little twist that the authorities so ardently desired. We may remember, too, that at the time when the first investigations were made (it must have been early in August, since Domenech departed on the 16th) it was universally believed that Ferrer was safely out of the country. What more simple and harmless than to shift on to his shoulders any little indiscretions into which one might have been betrayed?
On the other hand, I am inclined to regard the waiter, Calvet, as an honest witness. He was not (I believe) arrested, and he had nothing to fear except, perhaps, loss of favor with the Committee of the Fraternidad Republicana. It will be noted that he says nothing about convent-burning. Moreover, I confess to feeling that Ferrer, in the letter above quoted, protests a little too much. It is hard to believe that he and Llarch walked from Masnou to Premia and back again (about five miles in all) without exchanging some definite views on the situation. Ferrer’s version of all that passed during these two hours is altogether too colorless and non-committal. The probability is, I think, that there was a good deal of general discussion as to the prospects of the revolt. Barcelona was entirely cut off from the rest of the world, and it is certain that wild rumors Were afloat as to the success of the movement in other cities. The question whether, and when, it would be safe to proclaim the Republic, would almost certainly be canvassed among these Republicans; and it is possible that Calvet, going to and fro about his business, may have heard
phrases which, somewhat modified by after suggestion, assumed in his mind the form in which he stated them. Nor can one regard it as quite improbable that, looking at the columns of smoke rising over Barcelona, Ferrer may have expressed a malign glee. In this there is nothing inconsistent with his declaration to the examining commandant that “he was opposed to what happened in the week of disturbances.” I do not wish to see any wrong done to my dearest foe, and I would not raise a finger to injure him; but if, by chance, he gets into trouble — well, I do not pretend to be inconsolable.
The story of the villagers, then, may very likely be founded on fact, though wildly distorted by their panic-stricken eagerness to save their own skins. Supposing it, however, to be literally true, can we find in it any proof that Ferrer was the author and chief of the revolt? On the contrary, it shows him, on the day when the revolt reached its height, strolling through insignificant villages, thirteen to fifteen miles from Barcelona, and making pitifully ineffectual attempts to lure certain law-abiding citizens aside from the paths of virtue in which their feet are fixed. It is quite extraordinary how badly he chooses his men, and how he is rebuffed at every turn by their unflinching loyalty to Church and State. Strange that these pillars of the commonwealth should actually have been imprisoned for sedition! Their story, if we accept every syllable of it, would show Ferrer liable to whatever punishment the law assigns to an uttterly abortive attempt to stir up a local sedition; but even the Spanish Military Code does not make this a capital offense.
4. Documentary Evidence
Space forbids me to enter at large into the somewhat complex question of the “documentary proofs.” They consisted of two papers, one of which Ferrer admitted to be genuine, while he declared that he had never set eyes on the other. The genuine paper (there is good reason to believe that it came before the court in a seriously garbled form) was a circular which he had drafted in 1892, had never issued, and, in fact, had never thought of again. The policy embodied in it was one which he had in the meantime utterly abandoned, both in theory and practice, as his correspondence from 1900 onward conclusively proves. The second paper was an old-looking type-written document in two parts, purporting to be an anarchist proclamation, though suspiciously like the work of an agent provocateur. It was said to have been found during the practically uncontrolled search at Mas Germinal of August 27 to 29; and
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two experts in handwriting, inspecting three letters (a t, a b, and an a) put in with a pen, declared that they might be in Ferrer’s hand, though they could not say so positively. The weakness of the attribution is flagrant; and even if we believe Ferrer to have had anything to do with the document, it had no reference whatever to the events of Barcelona, but clearly appeared, on internal evidence, to have been written between 1900 and 1902. Yet all three accusers (the Fiscal, the Assessor, and the Auditor) dwell on these documents as conclusive proofs of guilt.
Verdict and Execution
The result is known to all the world. On Saturday the 13th the Council of War, having in a single morning heard all the evidence and pleadings in the complex cause, devoted the afternoon to hearing, in secret session, the Assessor’s indictment, and then, in secret, passed sentence of death. The Auditor had then to write his report upon the sentence before sending it up to the Captain-General; and the Captain-General had to send it, fortified with his approval, to the Government in Madrid. Spain is sometimes thought to be a country of dilatory habit; but here the promptitude of all concerned was nothing less than miraculous. The Auditor wrote this didamen of 7,500 words in a single day, Sunday the 10th — a very remarkable feat; and in two more days the Captain-General and the Government had satisfied their consciences of the justice of the sentence. About three in the morning of the 11th Ferrer was removed from the prison to Montjuich: a step which showed that his fate was already sealed. On Tuesday evening a cabinet council was held in Madrid, ending at about half past eight; and, almost at the same hour, Ferrer was taken to the office of the governor of the fortress, where the examining commandant, Valerio Raso, read to him the sentence of death. He was then conducted, en capilla, into a mortuary chapel, where he was surrounded all night by priests of various orders, pressing upon him their ministrations. These he declined without asperity, and occupied the greater part of the night in dictating to a notary a long and ’careful will. At a little before nine in the morning of Wednesday the 13th he was led out into the trenches of Montjuich and shot.
His worst enemies admit that he faced death with serene courage. He asked to be allowed to stand, instead of kneeling, and to have his eyes unbandaged. The first part of this request was granted, but the second was refused on the ground that “traitors are not permitted to
see their executioners.” On facing the firing-party, he cried: “Aim well, my sons! It is not your fault. I am innocent. Long live the Escuela—” Three bullets in the brain cut short the phrase. By especial favor, his mother and nephew were permitted to see his horribly disfigured remains before they were consigned to the common burial-ground.
When the Cortes met, two days later, the Ministry could point not only to a chose jugee, but to fait accompli.
The Case Summed Up
Excepting some of the villagers and one or two subordinate policemen,* I doubt whether any one concerned in the affair acted in deliberate and conscious bad faith. It is quite unnecessary to suppose so. We have all the materials for a judicial crime, in a law carefully designed to give the accused no chance, administered by a band of puzzle-headed and prejudiced soldiers. Lawyers’ law is not always synonymous with justice, but it is always preferable to soldiers’ law. I have given sufficient specimens of the sort of evidence gravely propounded to and accepted by the Council of War; but no one who has not studied in detail the dictamina of the Fiscal, the Assessor, and the Auditor can fully estimate the sheer stupidity of these gallant officers.
I reject, then, the theory of any criminal conspiracy against Ferrer. Malignant stupidity, coupled with the absence of the most rudimentary sense of fair play, is sufficient to account for all that occurred. But certainly it has a good deal to account for: the arbitrary banishment of all Ferrer’s friends; the studied neglect to call for their evidence; the pettifogging refusal of that evidence when offered; the wantonly harsh treatment of the untried prisoner; the abstraction of .his clothes and personal property; the publication (in papers under strict censorship) of compromising documents which, whether genuine or not, should never have left the secret portfolio of the examining commandant; the rewards ostentatiously showered on the heroes who had arrested an unarmed and unresisting man; the violent haste with which, from the moment the “incommunication” was relaxed and the Defender chosen, the whole complex case was rushed to its conclusion; the eager acceptance of every second-hand whisper to the detriment of the accused, and the rejection of every favorable testimony to character;
* Ferrer accused the police of having attempted to suborn his farm-servant to give evidence against him. As a matter of fact, they tried to bribe the man to betray his master’s hiding-place— a legitimate proceeding, from their point of view. On the other hand, I think there is little doubt that they “found” the typewritten document—where they had placed it.
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the neglect of even the scanty opportunities provided by the law for the public examination of witnesses; the spiriting away of one important witness, and the release without trial of others — all this would give the case a dark and sinister complexion even if the evidence were ten times stronger than it is. But this is not villainy, not Jesuitism; it is plain, downright stupidity. Having an iniquitous law readymade to their hands, his enemies could have shot Ferrer quite as comfortably if they had observed the law in every detail, had treated him with scrupulous consideration, and had left his captors unrewarded. The haste alone was necessary, lest, when the Cortes met, awkward questions should be asked. But the haste was the greatest stupidity of all, for it meant the suicide of the Ministry. The Cortes assembled on October 15. Three days later the Liberal leader, Senor Moret, delivered a crushing attack on the Government of Senor Maura; and though Maura and La Cierva, the Minister of the Interior, made a fierce fight, three more days sufficed to drive them from office. They resigned on October 21, just eight days after the death of Ferrer. It is true that the Liberal attack was based on their general mismanagement, the alternate impotence and violence of their conduct, rather than on the Ferrer case in particular. Senor Moret, when challenged to say whether he himself would have pardoned Ferrer, made no answer. It was difficult to answer a question which assumed Ferrer's guilt; for if he was guilty he deserved no pardon. But, whatever the attitude of the Liberals toward Ferrer, there is not the least doubt that the execration of Europe, with which in those days the air was ringing, was the main factor in Maura’s fall. The Government were forced to admit Moret’s contention that “their unpopularity at home and abroad was a danger to the country.”
I am not at all sure that, had Ferrer been fairly tried under reasonable rules of evidence, he would have got off scot-free. He was certainly not the “author and chief of the revolt”; that accusation was a monstrous absurdity; but it is not quite clear that his irrepressible sympathy with every form of revolt may not have led him into one or two indiscretions. What is perfectly clear is that it was not the crumbs of good evidence against him that led to his condemnation, but the mountain of bad evidence, to most of which a rational court of law would have refused to listen for a moment. The ultimate truth, when we get to the roots of things, is that he fell a victim to a simple equivocation — a play upon words. His accusers, his judges, all the witnesses against him. from the villagers
of Premia up to the Fiscal of the Supreme Court (who was practically, though not formally, cited as a witness), were profoundly convinced that he was morally responsible for the revolt — that he was, through his opinions and teachings, the moral “author and chief” of the “Revolution.” But the law had unfortunately omitted to make such “moral” authorship a capital crime, so it was necessary to allege efficient and actual authorship as well. Constantly and quite plainly we see the minds of witnesses end advocates shifting from the one ground to the other, and back again. The most flagrant instance, perhaps, occurs in the dictamen of the Auditor,*" (“Process,” p. 56); but the insidious fallacy is traceable on almost every page of the official documents, to say nothing of the writings of conservative and clerical apologists for the sentence. Many of these, indeed, practically abandon any other plea than that of “moral” responsibility.
Is it a just plea? Can it be maintained that the five years’ activity of the Escuela Moderna and its sucursales, together with the publication of certain scientific and educational manuals, contributed appreciably to the popular frame of mind displayed in the revolt? Barcelona had been a turbulent city, and a hotbed of acratism and anti-clericalism, long before Ferrer began his educational work. The influence of that work it is impossible to measure precisely; but it was, in all probability, a mere drop in the bucket. At any rate, it is a gross absurdity to seek in the Escuela Moderna the mainspring of the revolt.
Ferrer was not a great educator; he was not a great man. His thought was crude; his methods were crude. Quite amazing is the poverty of resource which can combat such thought and such methods only with the gag and the garotte. But, while he was intellectually mediocre, his persecutors contrived to reveal in him a genuine moral greatness. His idealism was ardent and sincere, his courage was high and unflinching; and these qualities are not so common that we can deny their possessor a certain greatness. The man who wrote his letters from prison, and who faced an unmerited doom with such simple serenity, is certainly not the least among the victims of obscurantism, the martyrs of progress.
Both in Spain and out of it, Ferrer has very commonly been called “the Spanish Dreyfus.” The resemblances between the two “affairs” are, indeed, unmistakable. In each case we see militarism, inspired by clericalism, riding rough-shod over the plainest principles and practices of justice. The victim in each case is a personage hated by the Church — in
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France a Jew, in Spain a free-thinker. If my reading of the Ferrer case is right, there was not so much active and deliberate villainy at work in it as there was in the Dreyfus case; but, on the other hand, the determination to convict, with or without evidence, was even more manifest in the Spanish authorities than in the French. The character of Ferrer was interesting in itself, whereas Dreyfus, apart from his calamities, would never have been heard of. But the great difference between the
cases lies in the fact that the Spanish Government had the courage of its fanaticism and killed its man. Perhaps it took warning from the Dreyfus case and determined to seek security in the irreparable. It is true that no argument, no revision, can undo the work of that October morning in the trenches of Montjuich; but it may be doubted whether Don Antonio Maura may not find the ghost of Ferrer more formidable than the living man could ever have been.
THE PRESENT STATUS OF POLYGAMY IN THE UNITED STATES
MOST people outside of the Rocky Mountain States think that Mormon polygamy is a thing of the past — that it was killed by the manifesto against it issued in 1890 by Wilford Woodruff, at that time President of the Mormon Church. Extensive investigations recently made by McClure’s Magazine, however, show that polygamy is still practised in the Mormon States on a considerable scale. , Burton J. Hendrick, of the McClure staff, has gone thoroughly over the ground — he has traveled through the Mormon towns in Utah, talked with scores of people, and derived his information largely from Mormon sources. Everywhere he finds that not only are the old polygamous relations that existed before 1890 still maintained, but that hundreds of young men and women — young people in their twenties and thirties — have contracted plural marriages. More important, these “new polygamists,” as the people of Utah call them, receive special favors at the hands of the church — many of them hold the highest ecclesiastical offices, are teachers in the church educational institutions, and are prominent in business and social life.
Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this revival of polygamy is that it places Utah in the position of having violated its solemn pledges to the nation. In 1884 the Federal Government entered upon a rigorous campaign for the extirpation of polygamy. It cast hundreds of Mormons into prison, disincorporated the church on the ground that it was a law-defying and treasonable organization, confiscated its property, and refused to naturalize Mormons as
American citizens. These rigorous measures brought the church to terms, and in 1890 it published its manifesto abandoning for all time the practice of polygamy. The President of the United States, on this evidence of repentance and good intentions for the future, granted amnesty for all offenses committed against the anti-polygamy laws, and the Government restored the escheated property. Congress also did what it had refused to do for fifty years — admitted Utah as a State. This last act radically changed the situation. So long as Utah was a Territory, the Federal Government could control polygamy; once a sovereign State, however, the people of Utah themselves became supreme. As the State is two-thirds Mormon, this means that the Mormon Church itself controls the law-making and law-enforcing machinery. From 1890 until 1895, when statehood was acquired, the Mormons observed their own manifesto against polygamy, for they were upon their good behavior; almost immediately after statehood, however, the old polygamous system was revived. The word went through the State, "Live your religion”; the old polygamists began living openly again with their plural wives, and new plural marriages were once more secretly performed all over Mormondom. This polygamous cult is now spreading into adjoining States—Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, and into old Mexico and Canada. The “Mormon Problem” is thus by no means yet solved.
Mr. Hendrick will tell this whole story in two articles, the first of which will appear in January.