The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scrap Book. Volume 1, No. 2

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Title: The Scrap Book. Volume 1, No. 2

Author: Various

Release date: April 24, 2010 [eBook #32119]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Christine D and

the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCRAP BOOK. VOLUME 1, NO. 2 ***

THE SCRAP BOOK.

Vol. I.

APRIL, 1906.

No. 2.

A MARVELOUS RECEPTION.

Nothing is a success until it is a proved success. The ideas that seem best frequently turn out the worst. If it were not for this fact, a fact with which we are thoroughly familiar, we should feel that we have in THE SCRAP BOOK the hit of a century. Indeed, it is difficult not to let ourselves go a bit, even now, and talk about this new creation in magazine-making in a way that would sound like high-pressure fiction.

Six weeks ago THE SCRAP BOOK was nothing but an idea. It had had a good deal of thought in a general way, but nothing effectually focuses until actual work begins. Filmy, desultory thought, in cloudland, counts for little.

In the early conception of THE SCRAP BOOK it was as unlike this magazine as a mustard-seed is unlike the full-grown tree. Rebelling as I did, and still do, at the restraints of the conventional magazine, and realizing the added strength that should come from the rare old things and the best current things—the scrap bits that are full of juice and sweetness and tenderness and pathos and humor—realizing all this, I undertook to incorporate in MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE a department which I intended to call THE SCRAP BOOK.

I had special headings and borders drawn for this department, with a view to differentiating it from other parts of the magazine. I had sample pages put in type, and more or less work done on the department. But it did not fit MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, and MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE gave no scope for such a section. It was atmospherically antagonistic to a magazine which consisted wholly of original matter. This was the beginning of THE SCRAP BOOK—the thought nebula.

It was as late as the middle of January when I came to my office one morning and startled our editorial force by saying that THE SCRAP BOOK would be issued on the 10th of February. Up to this time no decisive work had been done on it. As I stated in my introduction last month, we had been gathering scrap books from all over the world for some time, and had a good deal of material classified and ready for use. It was an accepted fact in the office that THE SCRAP BOOK would be issued sooner or later. Indeed, the drawing for the cover was made more than a year ago. But no one on the staff, not even myself, knew just what THE SCRAP BOOK would be like or when it would make its appearance.

With a definite date fixed for the day of issue, however, and that date only about three weeks away, intense work and intense thought were necessary, and from this thought and work was evolved THE SCRAP BOOK as we now have it. From the first minute, as it began to take shape, it became a thing of evolution. Enough material was prepared, set up, and destroyed to fill three issues of THE SCRAP BOOK, and display headings were changed and changed—and a dozen times changed—to get the effect we wanted.

As it was something apart from all other magazines, we had no precedents to follow, no examples to copy, either in the matter itself, the method of treating it, or the style of presenting it. Our inspiration in producing THE SCRAP BOOK was mainly, and almost wholly, our conception of what would appeal most forcefully to the human heart and human brain—to all the people of all classes everywhere. This, supplemented by our experience in publishing, was our guide in evolving this magazine.

I have told you this much about the beginning and the development of THE SCRAP BOOK because such information about the beginning of anything of any consequence appeals to me individually, and I think generally appeals to all readers. If THE SCRAP BOOK, therefore, is to make an important place for itself in the publishing world, as certainly looks probable at this time, it will perhaps be worth while to have the story of its inception and evolution.

While I have created in THE SCRAP BOOK a magazine for the public, as I interpret the public taste—and this is always my purpose in anything I publish—I find that in THE SCRAP BOOK I have unconsciously created a magazine for myself. I mean just this, that for my own reading THE SCRAP BOOK as it is, and THE SCRAP BOOK in its possibilities, has all other magazines, every phase and kind of magazine the world over, beaten to a standstill.

And why? Simply because THE SCRAP BOOK in its scope is as wide as the world. It has no limitations, within the boundaries of decency and good taste. It has as broad a sweep in the publication of original articles and original fiction and original everything as any magazine anywhere. It has, in addition, in its review phases, recourse to the best current things throughout the world—the daily press, the weekly press, the magazines, the pulpit, and the platform. And best of all, it has the vast storehouses of the centuries to draw from—the accumulation of the world's best thoughts and best writing.

FRANK A. MUNSEY.

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While.

The Presidents of Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell Discuss Questions Bearing on the Practical Training of the Young Men of America—Maeterlinck Calls New York a City of Money, Bustle, and Noise—John Morley Offers Some Valuable Suggestions on the Reading of Books—Edward S. Martin Praises City Life—Ex-President Cleveland Speaks of the Relation of Doctor and Patient—And Other Notable People Express Themselves on Matters of Current Interest.

Compiled and edited for THE SCRAP BOOK.

IS THE RICH YOUNG MAN HANDICAPPED?

President Eliot, of Harvard, Tells of

the Blessings of Poverty and the

Penalties of Great Wealth.

Is wealth a hindrance to a young man starting out in life? Men who have built their own fortunes are almost unanimous in answering yes. To have nothing to begin with means, they say, illimitable opportunity, and opportunity is the great developing factor; poverty means the stimulus of real need, which impels men to take advantage of opportunity. To quote the present Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Walter V. Morgan:

The best thing that can happen to a young man is to be poor. Extreme poverty may sometimes hamper a youth's progress, but, in my opinion, he is far more likely to make his way in the world if he starts with the proverbial half-a-crown in his pocket than with a thousand-pound note.

Riches carry their own penalty. President Eliot, in a recent address before the student body at Harvard, said:

The very rich are by no means the healthiest members of the community, and to escape the perils of luxurious living requires unusual will-power and prudence.

Great capital at the disposal of a single individual confers on its possessor great power over the course of industrial development, over his fellow men and sometimes over the course of great public events, like peace or war between nations. It enables a man to do good or harm, to give joy or pain, and places him in a position to be feared or looked up to.

There is pleasure in the satisfaction of directing such a power, and the greater the character the greater may be the satisfaction. In giving this direction the great capitalist may find an enjoyable and strenuous occupation. For a conscientious, dutiful man a great sense of responsibility accompanies this power. It may become so powerful as to wipe out the enjoyment itself.

The most serious disadvantage under which the very rich have labored is the bringing up of children. It is well-nigh impossible for a very rich man to develop his children from habits of indifference and laziness. These children are so situated that they have no opportunity of doing productive labor, and do nothing for themselves, parents, brothers, or sisters, no one acquiring the habit of work. In striking contrast are the farmer's children, who cooperate at tender years in the work of the household.

Among President Eliot's hearers were many young men to whom the blessings of poverty were unknown.

TO TEACH TRADES TO YOUNG WORKERS.

Dean Balliet Emphasizes the Importance

of Trade-Schools in the Adjustment

of Our Economic Problems.

A box of tools, and not a bundle of books, will be the burden of many a school-child, if the trade-school system becomes firmly established. In Germany the public trade-schools have proved very effective. In the United States there has been an encouraging seven-year experiment at Springfield, Massachusetts, and two schools have recently been established in New York City.

The trade-school differs from the manual training-school. Manual training is educational. "It develops the motor and executive sides of a child's nature," to quote Dean T.M. Balliet, of the School of Pedagogy in New York University. Also it fits young men for higher technical training. The trade-school, on the other hand, teaches young people how to work at actual wage-paying trades—how to be plumbers, electrical fitters, carpenters, masons, ironworkers.

Dean Balliet, having made an exhaustive study of the system, not long ago gave the following answer to an interviewer from the New York Tribune who asked what the trade-school meant:

The aim must be entirely practical, but not narrowly so. Students must be trained to perform specific kinds of skilled labor which has a commercial value. But the learning of a trade must include the scientific principles underlying it, and must not be confined to mere hand-training. In the case of the mechanical trades, instruction in drawing, in physics, and in mathematics applicable to the trade must be included.

Trades frequently change, and the invention of a new machine may make a trade suddenly obsolete. Instruction must, therefore, be broad enough to make workmen versatile and enable them to adjust themselves to these changes. The apprentice system is gone. In a shop a man can at best learn only a small part of his trade, and that only the mechanical part. Shop-training, even where it is still possible, is too narrow to make a man versatile. If the one machine which he has learned to run becomes obsolete he is stranded. We need trade-schools for just such men, to enable them to learn the whole of their trade and to receive instructions in the principles underlying it.

Years ago men read medicine in the office of physicians; now they go to a medical school. Lawyers read law in an office only; now they attend law schools. In like manner the learning of a trade in the shop is rapidly becoming obsolete, and trade-schools must take the place of the shop. The fact that some things can be learned only in the shop is no argument against the school. There are things in the training of a lawyer which can be learned only in an office.

A COLLEGE CAREER—IS IT WORTH WHILE?

President Butler, of Columbia, Points

Out That Self-Made Men Wish

Their Sons to Go to College.

Business men are sometimes contemptuous toward the young college graduate's bumptiousness and lack of practical knowledge. Educators, on the other hand, give a strong argument, backed by statistics and corroborating detail, to prove that a college education is the best foundation in all the work of life. The subject has been discussed probably since men of education first left the cloisters and went out into the world.

President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, presents this brief for the college man:

No doubt there are many who believe a college education is a hindrance to the necessary business wisdom of the age. There are merchants down-town who will tell you how they started at ten or fourteen to sweep out the office and rose, by virtues and industry, to become members of the firm. This is true. But you follow the career of the office-boy who began his utilitarian studies with a broom, and the college boy who began with his books, and you will find that when the office-boy reaches thirty he is still an employee, whereas the college graduate is probably at that age his employer.

Statistics show that out of ten thousand successful men in the world, taken in all classes of life, eight thousand are college graduates. Look at the tremendous increase of educational effort all over the United States in the last few years. Why, I have parents come to me with tears in their eyes and ask me to tell them how they can get their boys through college with only the small sum of money they can afford to do it with. Even your self-made man isn't satisfied unless his son can go to college.

ATHENIAN CULTURE IS AMERICA'S NEED.

President Schurman Would Like to See

Here a Little More of "The Glory

That Was Greece."

Jacob Gould Schurman, president of Cornell University, has taken to heart the contrast between American culture of to-day and the culture of the ancient Greeks. In an address before an association of teachers last February, he charged that while our people "knows something of everything," its knowledge is "superficial, inaccurate, chaotic, and ill-digested." Furthermore, he says that we are indifferent to esthetic culture and suspicious of theory, of principles, and of reason.

These are serious, fundamental charges. But let us hear President Schurman's fuller statement of his case:

If the American mind is to be raised to its highest potency, a remedy must be found for these evils. The first condition of any improvement is the perception and recognition of the defects themselves.

I repeat, then, that while as a people we are wonderfully energetic, industrious, inventive, and well-informed, we are, in comparison with the ancient Athenians, little more than half developed on the side of our highest rational and artistic capabilities.

The problem is to develop these potencies in an environment which has hitherto been little favorable—and to develop them in the American people, and not merely in the isolated thinker, scholar, and artist.

If no American city is an Athens, if no American poet is a Homer or Sophocles, if no American thinker is a Plato or Aristotle, it is not merely because Americans possess only a rudimentary reason and imagination and sensibility, but because, owing to causes which are part of our national being—causes which are connected with our task of subduing a continent—the capacities with which nature has generously endowed us have not been developed and exercised to the fulness of their pitch and potency.

Our work in the nineteenth century was largely of the utilitarian order; in the twentieth century we are summoned to conquer and make our own the ideal realms of truth and beauty and excellence which far more than material victories constitute the true greatness of nations.

Pedagogic methods might be employed to stimulate American culture. President Schurman suggests that in the common schools greater emphasis be laid upon art and literature. There remains, however, as he points out, something greater than the intellectuality of the Greeks, and that is the ethical consciousness of the Hebrews.

Noble and exalted and priceless as reason and culture are, there is a still higher end of life both for individuals and nations. That end, indeed, was very inadequately conceived by the Greeks. In the creative play of reason and imagination, in their marvelous productions of speculation, science, and art, in their exaltation of mind above sense and of spirit above matter, in their conception of a harmonious development of all the rich and varied powers of man—in all these the Greeks have left to mankind a legacy as priceless as it is to-day vital and forever imperishable.

But the Greeks, even the Greek philosophers, even the "divine Plato," have not given us enough to live by. It was the Jews, the outcast, oppressed, and much-suffering Jews, who first sounded the depths of human life, discovered that the essential being of a man resides in his moral personality, and rose to the conception of a just and merciful Providence who rules in righteousness the affairs of nations and the hearts and wills of men.

If even our literary men now tell us that conduct is three-fourths of life, it is because Hebraism and the Christianity which sprang from Hebraism have stamped this idea ineffaceably upon the conscience of mankind. The selfishness and sensuality in us may revolt against the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, but the still small voice of conscience in us recognizes their authority and acknowledges that if they had might as they have right, they would absolutely govern the world. The most, the best, of greatness is goodness. The greatest man on earth is the man of pure heart and of clean hands.

NOTABLE NEGLECT OF INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

A Plea for Arts and Crafts as the Logical

Basis of a National Development

of the Fine Arts.

In line with President Schurman's criticism of American culture is the plea by Charles de Kay, the New York art critic, for more attention to the industrial arts. His argument is that out of the arts and crafts the fine arts naturally develop; that out of the artist-artisan comes the highest class of artist, as, for example, Augustus Saint Gaudens, who began as a cameo cutter. To ignore the industrial arts is, so to speak, to leave out of count that solid middle class upon which alone the aristocracy of art can safely rest. Writing in the New York Times, Mr. de Kay says:

Plainly enough there is a field scarcely plowed at all in the arts and crafts. These arts in the Middle Ages, and latterly in Japan and India, absorbed and absorb the energies of the cleverest hands and brightest minds; but in America and England to-day are neglected for the fine arts, because the rare prizes in the latter, whether of fame or of wealth, dazzle the imagination.

Fashion rather than taste has set easel paintings so absolutely in the forefront that with most people this represents art in its entirety, and though the appreciation of the minor arts of Japan has opened the eyes and enlisted the sympathies of thousands, this one-sided view of art holds on; so encouragement of native arts and crafts is slack and uncertain.

Yet a democracy like ours, while the most difficult of all communities to rouse to a vivid sympathy with the industrial arts, owing to cheap processes and the influence exerted by traditions that began in aristocratic lands, is of all others that community where they are needed most.

The huge engine of the public schools is forever milling over the raw material of the Union, educating the native children, assimilating to the commonwealth the young people of immigrant stocks. The higher education of taste and refinement ought to go hand in hand, but it is sadly deficient.

No one should expect that the public-school system could add this to a task already appalling for its size and complexity. It can be coped with only by organizations apart from the existing schools, which might attempt for the youthful artisan what the art schools attempt for the training of architects, sculptors, and painters.

It is the fate of democracies to waste energy and attack each problem by the wrong side. Commend us to a democracy to put the cart before the horse every time! In the arts we have been doing this imbecile trick steadily, persistently, for a hundred years, trying to foster the fine arts while our minor arts and crafts are too contemptible for criticism.

Is it not about time to show that even a democracy can learn something? Certainly if we can convince this community that the most crying need is a thorough regeneration of the industrial arts, the object will be attained. For though democracies are often clumsy, when they once strike the right path they rush forward to the highest places with a speed and an irresistible force no other communities attain.

BELGIAN DRAMATIST CRITICIZES NEW YORK.

Money, Bustle, and Noise Are the Principal

Things Named as Characteristic

of Our Young Nation.

Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist and mystic philosopher, is by no means dull in his appreciation of practical conditions. People who know him say that he is not in the least lackadaisical or spiritually remote, but is simple and frank and full of interest in every-day occurrences. A short time ago he was asked to express his opinion of America. He replied—to quote from the Theater Magazine:

I should be afraid to live in a city like New York. I understand that money, bustle, and noise are its chief characteristics. Money is useful, of course, but it is not everything. Bustle and noise, also, are necessary adjuncts of human industry. But they do not add to man's comfort nor satisfy his soul's cravings.

America is too young a nation to seek the beautiful. That may come when you Americans grow weary of being rich. Then you will, as a nation, cultivate art and letters, and—who knows?—one day you will surpass the Old World in the splendor of your buildings, the genius of your authors. You are a great people, but your highest powers are still slumbering.

At present you are too busily occupied in assimilating the foreigner, too busily engaged in affairs purely material, to leave either time or taste for either the beautiful or the occult. When America does take to beautifying her own home she will astonish the world.

WHAT "PUNCH" HAS MEANT TO ENGLAND.

London's Famous Funny Paper is Really

Funny to Those Who Know How

to Appreciate Its Jokes.

Sir Francis C. Burnand has resigned the editorship of London Punch after a service of twenty-three years. It is hard to think of him as old, but, being in his seventieth year, doubtless he had begun to find the cares of his position somewhat irksome.

Eminent as was his fitness for the editorship he held so long, he started out in life with no notion of becoming a humorist. Amateur dramatic performances took much of his time at Cambridge. After leaving the university, he became a barrister. Converted to the Roman church, he studied for the priesthood, but abandoned this prospective future in order to devote himself to the stage. Though he did not become an actor, he wrote many stage pieces—plays, librettos, etc.; at the same time he was writing jokes for the humorous papers, and when he was twenty-five years of age he became a regular contributor to Punch. Says the New York Evening Post:

The resignation of Sir Francis C. Burnand, for twenty-five years editor of London Punch, reminds one how little it has been subject to the vicissitudes of journalism. As if by fore-ordination, the admirable parodist, Owen Seaman, takes the head of the historic table, and Punch will, if anything, be more Punch than ever. Others may change, but Punch retains a kind of Olympian uniformity. From its first number, sixty-five years ago, to the last, its outward appearance and inward savor are practically identical. England has been in conspiracy to provide it with talent.

During the editor's term of office the paper lost such artists as Charles Keene, Du Maurier, and Sir John Tenniel; but it also saw the rise of Mr. Linley Sambourne's forceful caricature, of Mr. Raven-Hill's delightful rusticities, of the nervous and most expressive art of the lamented Phil May. In fact, barring an inclination to overindulgence in rather trite doggerel, Punch's jorum has rarely been more tasty than in the past quarter century. Its only serious rival in the comic field has been Fliegende Blätter.

There is, of course, the prevailing American view that Punch is dull. Dull it is, in the sense that the best fun of the most jocose family may be merely tantalizing to the outsider. A nudge to the initiated may be sufficient to recall jokes proved by a thousand laughs; the uninitiated needs a clue. Now, Punch's family is London—a family whose acquaintance is tolerably worth while—and probably no one who has not imaginatively made himself familiar with the mood of London has any business with Punch at all. It is the homesickness for London that extends the subscription list to the bounds of the empire; it is the desire to know what London thinks of itself, of the provinces, of the world, that makes readers for Punch in every land. It represents London in the mood of intellectual dalliance as thoroughly as Fliegende Blätter does non-Prussian Germany. This representative quality gives to these two comic papers something of the solemnity of institutions.

THE OLD JOURNALISM COLORED BY THE NEW.

Norman Hapgood Declares that Yellow

Journals Have Shaken the Newspapers

Out of Their Old Rut.

"Yellowness," in the newspaper sense, means sensationalism; sensationalism means exaggeration; exaggeration means wrong proportion and the distortion of truth. On the other hand, it is pointed out that yellowness means interest; interest means closer attention from a larger audience; the larger audience means wider editorial influence.

Aside from the main arguments for and against yellowness, there are noticeable effects which the new journalism has had indirectly upon the old. Speaking recently before the League for Political Education, in New York City, Norman Hapgood, the editor of Collier's Weekly, attributed the increased boldness and popular tone of the conservative newspapers to the influence of yellow journalism:

Yellow journalism has its faults, but it was the first to shake the newspapers out of the old rut and give them new vigor. Before the advent of this class of journals there was no organ among the conservative press to speak down to the people. It was the consequence of a growing democracy and had for its purpose the establishment of a press wherein the laboring classes would have expression.

HOW TO ASSIMILATE THE BEST IN BOOKS.

John Morley, the English Statesman and

Scholar, Tells the Secret of Making

One's Reading Pay.

When a man knows books as thoroughly as John Morley knows them, his opinions as to what and how to read are worth having. Mr. Morley has revised and put together as an article for The Critic several of his extemporaneous addresses on books and reading. From this article the following paragraphs have been culled and condensed with care to select those passages which contain practical advice for people who desire to make their reading count for something:

The object of reading is not to dip into everything that even wise men have ever written. In the words of one of the most winning writers of English that ever existed—Cardinal Newman—the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and expression.

Literature consists of all the books—and they are not so many—where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. Poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, the character-writers, the maxim-writers, the great political orators—they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know man and to know human nature.

What I venture to press upon you is that it requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or woman—unless household circumstances are more than usually vexatious and unfavorable—to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day for good and disinterested reading. Some will say that this is too much to expect, and the first persons to say it, I venture to predict, will be those who waste their time most. At any rate, if I cannot get half an hour, I will be content with a quarter.

Multiply the half-hour by three hundred and sixty-five, and consider what treasures you might have laid by at the end of the year, and what happiness, fortitude, and wisdom they would have given you during all the days of your life.

You may have often heard from others, or may have found out, how good it is to have on your shelves, however scantily furnished they may be, three or four of those books to which it is well to give ten minutes every morning, before going down into the battle and choking dust of the day. Perhaps it matters little what it may be so long as your writer has cheerful seriousness, elevation, calm, and, above all, a sense of size and strength, which shall open out the day before you, and bestow gifts of fortitude and mastery.

If a man is despondent about his work, the best remedy that I can prescribe to him is to turn to a good biography; there he will find that other men before him have known the dreary reaction that follows long-sustained effort, and he will find that one of the differences between the first-rate man and the fifth-rate lies in the vigor with which the first-rate man recovers from this reaction, and crushes it down, and again flings himself once more upon the breach.

A taste for poetry is not given to everybody, but anybody who does not enjoy poetry, who is not refreshed, exhilarated, stirred by it, leads but a mutilated existence. I would advise that in looking for poets—of course after Shakespeare—you should follow the rule of allowing preferences, but no exclusion.

Various mechanical contrivances and aids to successful study are not to be despised by those who would extract the most from books. The wise student will do most of his reading with a pen or pencil in his hand. He will not shrink from the useful toil of making abstracts and summaries of what he is reading.

Again, some great men—Gibbon was one, and Daniel Webster was another, and the great Lord Stafford was a third—always before reading a book made a short, rough analysis of the questions which they expected to be answered in it, the additions to be made to their knowledge, and whither it would take them.

Another practise is that of keeping a commonplace book, and transcribing into it what is striking and interesting and suggestive. And if you keep it wisely, as Locke has taught us, you will put every entry under a head, division, or subdivision. This is an excellent practise for concentrating your thought on the passage, and making you alive to its real point and significance.

ARE WE SURFEITED WITH WIT AND HUMOR?

Jerome K. Jerome Says that the American

Sense of Humor Has Been Overfed

by Brilliant Humorists.

More great humorists have arisen in the United States during the last seventy-five years than in any other country. Among the professionals are, or have been, Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, Petroleum V. Nasby, Mark Twain, and George Ade. Who of these have been and who still are there is no need of saying. But certainly the constellation is brilliant with these names alone, though the lesser stars have been many.

Have we had too much humor? Are we sated? Jerome K. Jerome, after several months of personal observation, answers yes. Near the end of his recent tour of the country he said:

It seems to me that the American people have been surfeited with humor. So many brilliant men have written their jokes for so long that they have become jaded. I thought at first that the American sense of humor was radically less subtle than ours in England, but now I know better. It is simply overfed.

Mark Twain is, I think, the only living humorist of the old American school, and he, like Falstaff, is growing old. But the subtle touch that England likes still and America liked once is still his. You laugh with him now, I think, more from a sense of duty than a sense of the ridiculous. You have grown tired and need coarser fare to stimulate your appetite. And I've discovered the cause of it, too. It is the comic supplement of the Sunday papers.

The New York World takes exception to Mr. Jerome's remarks, and answers him as follows:

In the name of Punch and the Prophet, figs! The history of American humor is a chronicle of development to a present pitch of refinement and subtlety with which the work of the earlier humorists suffers by comparison. It is the history of the evolution of the pun into the witticism.

Could Petroleum V. Nasby get a hearing to-day? Or the Danbury News Man, or "Peck's Bad Boy"? Would not a Burdette writing for the more exacting twentieth-century perception find his occupation gone? Even an Artemus Ward and a Josh Billings appealing to latter-day readers would perceive the essential need of a purification and refinement of method if they were to hold their audience under anything like the old spell.

Progress from broad lines approaching buffoonery to delicacy, from the obvious and the apparent to the elusive, is observable in all humorists who hold their public. It was seen in Eugene Field. It is discernible in Mark Twain, whom Mr. Jerome cites as a survival of the "old American school." Between "The Innocents Abroad" and "Pudd'nhead Wilson" and "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" is all the contrast of the changed taste of a new generation. Falstaff is not now the fashion.

WOMAN'S REAL PLACE IN LITERARY WORK.

An Unkind Frenchman Says That Her

Limitations Must Always Keep

Her in a Secondary Role.

We have often been told by Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman that woman, as a type, ranks higher in almost every respect than man; and there are many people of both sexes who agree with her. Nevertheless, the champions of feminine superiority may find it hard work to shout down the glorifiers of masculine achievement.

Here is a Frenchman, Georges Pellisier, a literary critic, who argues that woman cannot write great literature, because she is intellectually as well as physically inferior to man. He assigns to her the secondary literary rôle of acting as mistress of the literary salon—a position which, he thinks, has a valuable influence. He expresses his views as follows, in La Revue (Paris), the translation being that of the Literary Digest:

Philosophy, criticism, and history are beyond her mental scope, and I know of none who has made a lasting impression in these domains. Philosophy requires a force of abstraction and a power of application rarely possessed by women, the power of reflection being, with them, as one of the greatest of them has admitted, "rather a happy accident than a peculiar or permanent attribute." Naturally impulsive, they fail to follow out the logic of their ideas.... In the domain of criticism woman is too much the slave of first impressions, or preconceived notions, which must be admitted, however, to be generally very vivid and often very just.

Her personal preferences, nevertheless, obscure her views and misguide her opinions, while she lacks almost wholly the faculty of weighing her judgments.... A proper study or understanding of history is impossible without the philosophic and the critical faculties, and, above all, a disinterested love of truth. Woman colors events according as passion or sentiment sways her. The real historian must totally efface both himself and his bias; and this, woman, of her nature, is incapable of doing....

There remain to her the drama, poetry, and the novel. In dramatic art, no woman has produced anything of lasting note, the reason being that the dramatist must, perforce, be without egotism and be capable of detaching the Ego from the action of the play—a thing impossible in woman.

In poetry this critic allows to woman but "the shadow of a name"; for few women, he argues, have written verse that endured. "The principal defect she evinces in poetry," he says, "is a lack of artistic execution." Woman's best work, he thinks, has been done in romance, though he refuses to class any woman with the master-novelists. Even this small credit he awards grudgingly and carpingly. He cannot ignore success, but he tries to belittle it.

Apart from the fact that they may indulge in solecism and anachronism without being severely called to task by the critics, their composition is faulty. Even Georges Sand was not above suspicion. There is palpable in their novels an incoherent notion of logical plot, while their imagination is subjected to no salutary discipline. Their work lacks vigor, and in its weakness, not an unattractive quality in woman herself, there is something commonplace that is not redeemed by elegance. Above all, woman's temperament recoils from a depiction of the stern reality of life.... She has no sense of proportion, and for her the beautiful and the pretty are interchangeable terms.

RACE SUICIDE MAY PROVE A BLESSING.

Welfare of the Offspring Is Much More

Important Than Their Number, Says

This Cincinnati Professor.

Dr. Charles A.L. Reed, of the University of Cincinnati, has published an address on "The American Family," in which he makes this strong statement: "We see in a declining birth-rate only a natural and evolutional adjustment of race to environment—an adjustment that insures rather than menaces the perpetuation of our kind under favoring conditions." Thus he argues that "race suicide" may prove a blessing, since, as a matter of fact, it implies an intelligent regard for the rights and necessities of children rather than an aversion to motherhood:

If reduced to its last analysis, it does not indicate a loss, but rather a development, if not an actual exaltation of the maternal function. American women recognize, subconsciously, possibly, certainly not in definite terms, but they nevertheless recognize, the force of the law enunciated by Mr. Spencer that whatever conduces to the highest welfare of offspring must more and more establish itself, since children of inferior parents reared in inferior ways will ever be replaced by children of better parents reared in better ways.

A much greater danger, according to Dr. Reed, is overpopulation. As influences inimical to the American family he classes "everything that tends to the early and wide dispersion of its members," such as—

The development of residential schools, the extension of far-reaching transportation facilities, the diversification of industries, the industrial employment of women, the popularization of hotels and apartments for residential purposes, and, finally, the development of clubs for both men and women at the expense of the home.

WORTH WHILE TO LIVE IN A LARGE CITY.

The Real Blessings of Urban Life Have

Been Too Much Neglected By

the Apostles of the Country.

City life has been more or less maligned—unintentionally. Unhealthful crowding, lack of the inspiration of outdoor life, and greater immorality are the principal charges. Lately, however, people have begun to believe that the city is little if any more immoral, proportionately to its inhabitants, than the country; that the absence of outdoor life has compensations, especially when one can spend part of the year in the country; that most of the dangers of crowding can be averted by improved sanitary methods and a greater number of parks. Edward S. Martin, writing in Appleton's Magazine, states the case attractively:

After all, there is an unrivaled attraction about human society, and it is considerably wholesome. It takes superior people to thrive on solitude even with quiet thrown in. Feebler folk have been known to regenerate even in the blessed country. It is no more possible in these days to stop the country people from coming to town than to stop the rivers from flowing to the sea.

The cities offer the best opportunities to the people who are qualified to improve them. The cities are the great markets for talent and skill, as well as for commodities. They would be badly off if the energy that makes them hum were not perpetually re-enforced out of the great country reservoirs. The country would be a worse place if the superfluous vigor that is bred there had not the cities in which to spend itself.

To get to some town is the natural and legitimate aspiration of a considerable proportion of the sons and daughters of American farmers. But as the waters that run to the sea are carried back by the process of evaporation, so there must be, as our cities grow greater, a return current out of them countryward for the people for whom town life is no longer profitable, and whose nerves and thews need nature's medication.

There is such a current as it is. People who get rich in town promptly provide themselves with country homes, and spend more and more of the year in them as their years increase and their strength declines. But for the people who don't get rich, the combination, or the transition, is not so easy. A due proportion of the people who are game to stand more noise, canned food, and struggle in their lives, and who ought to get to town, will get there.

The other process—to get back into the country the families, and especially the children, who have had more continuous city life than is good for them—needs a good deal of outside assistance, and gets some, though not yet as much as it requires.

MAKING MONEY IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY.

John D. Rockefeller Recounts His Own

Early Struggles and Shows to Young

Men the Virtues of Economy.

It may be, as sometimes has been said, that more is to be learned from the mistakes of other men than from their successes. If that be true it is because the reasons for their mistakes can hardly be concealed. Whether or not successful men betray the secrets of their successes, however, usually rests with themselves. In studying success, it is the occasional intimate disclosure that bears value rather than the superficial record.

John D. Rockefeller has addressed to the Bible class over which his son presides a pamphlet entitled "First Ledger of a Successful Man of Affairs." In it he tells of the ledger he kept as a young man, in which all his receipts and expenditures were most carefully recorded; and starting with this reminiscence he gives his advice to the young men of to-day. He begins with the dictum that "it is a religious duty to get all the money you can"—that is, "honestly and fairly"—and he sings the virtues of rigid economy. Speaking of his own efforts to "get a footing," he says:

If you all feel as I did when I was just starting in, I feel sorry for you. But I would not be without the memory of that struggle. And, discussing the struggle for success, what is success? Is it money? Some of you have all you need.

Who is the poorest man in the world? I tell you, the poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money, nothing else in the world upon which to devote his ambition and thought. That is the sort of man I consider to be the poorest in the world. Money is good if you know how to use it.

Now, let me give you a little word of counsel. Keep a ledger, as I did. Write down in it all that you receive, and do not be ashamed to write down what you pay out. See that you pay it away in such a manner that your father and mother may look over your book and see just what you did with your money. It will help you to save money, and that you ought to do.

It is a mistake for any man who wishes for happiness and to help others to think that he will wait until he has made a fortune before giving away money to deserving objects.

LET DOCTORS TELL WHAT THE MATTER IS.

A Plea by Grover Cleveland for a Greater

Degree of Confidence Between

Physician and Patient.

Our only living ex-President, Mr. Cleveland, gave a bit of advice to the doctors a few weeks ago. Speaking before the New York State Medical Society, in session at Albany, he pleaded the rights of the patient to know what his physician was doing to him. He humorously represented himself as attorney for the great army of patients in their appeal to the powerful minority of doctors:

In all seriousness I desire to concede without the least reservation on behalf of the great army of patients that they owe to the medical profession a debt of gratitude which they can never repay, on account of hard, self-sacrificing work done for their benefit and for beneficent results accomplished in their interest.

But at the same time we are inclined to insist that while our doctors have wonderfully advanced in all that increases the usefulness and nobility of their profession, this thing has not happened without some corresponding advance in the intelligent thought and ready information of their patients along the same lines.

We have come to think of ourselves as worthy of confidence in the treatment of our ailments, and we believe if this was accorded to us in greater measure it would be better for the treatment and better for us. We do not claim that we should be called in consultation in all our illnesses, but we would be glad to have a little more explanation of the things done to us.

FOOD AS A PRIME FACTOR OF CHARACTER.

What We Eat May Be More Important

Than Where We Live or Who

Our Parents Are.

Food makes the man; not heredity, not environment. Thus speaks John Spargo, socialistic lecturer and author. The badly fed or underfed baby quickly departs from the normal; imbecility, crime, pauperism all are directly or indirectly due to the lack of food or its poor quality during the plastic years.

Without accepting the doctrine that food is the sole factor in evolution, some profit may be drawn from a more extended statement of Mr. Spargo's views given in the New York World:

The nervous, irritable, half-ill children to be found in such large numbers in our public schools represent poor material. They are largely drawn from the homes of poverty, and constitute an overwhelming majority of those children for whom we have found it necessary to make special provision—the dull pupils found year after year in the same grades with much younger children.

In a measure the relation of a child's educability to its physical health and comfort has been recognized by the corelation of physical and mental exercises in most up-to-date schools, but its larger social and economic significance has been almost wholly ignored. And yet it is quite certain that poverty exercises the same retarding influences upon the physical training as upon mental education.

There are certain conditions precedent to successful education, whether physical or mental. Chief of these are a reasonable amount of good, nourishing food and a healthy home. Deprived of these, physical or mental development must necessarily be hindered. And poverty means just that to the child. It denies its victim these very necessaries with the inevitable result—physical and mental weakness and inefficiency.

Important as are the factors of proper housing and sanitary and hygienic conditions—matters which have occupied an ever-increasing amount of attention on the part of public officials as well as philanthropists in recent years—it is now generally confessed by science that, important as they are in themselves, they are relatively unimportant in the early years of child life.

"Sanitary conditions do not make any real difference at all," was the testimony of Dr. Vincent before the British Departmental Committee. "It is food, and food alone." That the evils of underfeeding are intensified when there is a unhygienic environment is true, but it is equally true that defect in the diet is the prime and essential cause of the excessive death-rate among the children of the poor, and of those infantile diseases and ailments which make for defective adults, moral, mental, or physical, should they survive.

DR. W.S. RAINSFORD A FORCEFUL FIGURE.

Fearless Utterances of the Rector of a

Famous Institutional Church in

New York.

Militant Christianity has for many years had no more energetic champion than the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford, rector of St. George's Church, New York City. When he took charge of the church in 1883, as a young man thirty two-years of age, its congregation had greatly fallen off. In twenty-two years of untiring work he built up the parish until it contained more than seven thousand members, included in a varied system of parochial activities.

Dr. Rainsford, who has resigned his charge owing to ill-health, used to be a man of great physical vigor, a fact which emphasizes this suggestion of the New York Sun's:

The physical exhaustion which sent Dr. Rainsford abroad and now compels his retirement from duties so arduous seems to be a calamity afflicting clergymen more than other professional men and men of affairs. Is this because the emotional strain is so much greater in the case of a clergyman?

Dr. Rainsford—who was born in Ireland and educated in England—was fearless in his pulpit utterances. In one sermon he said:

It is vain to cry out against a thing that a vast proportion of mankind believes is not wrong. You can't make an Irishman believe it is wrong to have beer with his dinner; you can't make an Englishman believe it. And perhaps that is why I do not believe it is wrong to have it with mine.

LESSONS THAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM BIRDS.

A Careful Study of the Turkey Buzzard

May Teach Us the Secret of Flight,

Says John P. Holland.

John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine war-ship, said some very interesting things at a recent banquet. The element that occupies his attention is not air, but water. He dreams of a time when his shark-like boats will make war on the sea a thing of the past. Yet he also has hopes of air-ships. His advice to Professor Bell was to forget about his kites and other artificial devices, and to study the turkey buzzard, which knows more about flying than all the colleges on earth.

The thing that beats you all, said Mr. Holland, is the humble turkey buzzard. There is an incomprehensible mystery which it is for mighty man to solve—how that bird can soar, circle, and sweep over a radius of half a mile without an apparent movement of its wings. Solve that mystery, and man will conquer the air.

It is not surprising that two men so practical as Professor Bell and John P. Holland are joining the ranks of the air-ship enthusiasts. The air-ship is not altogether a thing of the future. It is here now. Last month the French government bought a couple for military purposes. The Wright brothers, in Dayton, Ohio, have flown twenty-five miles on their machine and carried with them a load of pig-iron besides. And at the recent automobile exhibitions in New York, two flying-machines were put on exhibition and sold.

Both Bell and Holland were called fools and dreamers thirty years ago, because they believed it possible to send words along a wire and travel under the sea. To-day they are regarded as practical men of affairs—wealthy and honored. It is a striking fact that both of these veteran inventors are looking for bigger things from the future than those which they dug from the past. The air-ship age, they say, is at hand, and the human race may get ready to fly.

CHINA IS SEEKING WESTERN LEARNING.

Eminent Oriental Commissioners Travel

Through the United States to Study

Our Prosperity.

Their excellencies Tuan Fang and Tai Hung Chi, imperial Chinese commissioners, came to the United States with open eyes to learn the advantages of Western civilization. The fact of their coming was in itself significant evidence of an existing state of affairs in China which the Chinese minister to the United States, Sir Chentung Liang Cheng, explained in the following words:

It has been a fervent wish that China would wake from her sleep and join in the march of modern progress. The day of her awakening is at hand. The unrest of our people proves it. Large bodies move slowly, but when they begin to move they gain momentum; and when China gets started in the channels of progress it will be impossible to stop her. She has always looked to the United States in every crisis of her national career. I have no doubt that the result of the coming of the Imperial Commission will bring the two countries into closer relations.

This little speech was delivered a few weeks ago at a banquet in New York, where a number of representative Americans were gathered to meet the visitors. Tuan Fang spoke the same evening—using the Chinese language, his remarks being translated by his secretary, Alfred Sze, who is a graduate of Cornell University, class of 1901.

This translated address included the following passage:

Since our arrival in this country we have had every opportunity to see the material side of your great nation. All business and manufacturing establishments have thrown their doors wide open to us, and afforded us ample facilities to look into the American way of doing things.

Your government has likewise given us the same unrestricted facilities, for all of which we are very, very grateful. It is needless to say that we are deeply impressed with the vast resources of the country and the marvelous energy of its people. We are pleased to note, however, that in the midst of this wonderful material expansion you have not lost sight of the moral upbuilding of the country. We are, therefore, glad to meet here this evening representative Americans who are engaged in this beneficent labor.

This commissioner, Tuan Fang, is a considerable man in his own country. As viceroy of two important provinces—Fu-Kien and Che-Kiang—his influence is far-reaching. What he said about his experiences in the United States was, perhaps, not so important as his definite tribute to American missionaries. The missionary is often charged with arousing hostility by violating native customs; but the viceroy said:

We take pleasure this evening in bearing testimony to the part taken by American missionaries in promoting the progress of the Chinese people. They have borne the light of Western civilization into every nook and corner of the empire. They have rendered inestimable service to China by the laborious task of translating instructive books into the Chinese language.

Truly, after listening that evening to these representatives of cultured China, the hearers could share the feeling of John W. Foster, the toastmaster on this occasion. Mr. Foster, one of the ablest of American diplomats, said:

When I meet a Chinese gentleman I have the impulse to stand uncovered in his presence and to make a profound bow, out of respect to his great empire and race, antedating in their existence and civilization all others of which we have any record, with achievements unsurpassed in literature, in philosophy, in art, and in useful inventions.

Love-Letters of the Great.

Passion, Tenderness, Sweetness, Reverence, All the Deep Tones of Love,

Make Beautiful the Letters Written by Various

Great Men to Their Wives.

Men of genius and power—kings, commanders, poets, painters—belong not to themselves, but to the world. Greatness destroys privacy; and many a person of note has lived to see described in print the most minute of his little, unsuspected peculiarities. This invasion of the right to be let alone is inevitable. Even love-letters do not escape.

It is only a few years since the love-letters of the Brownings—Elizabeth Barrett and Robert—were given to the world. As models in the expression of deep and tender affection it will be long before they are displaced. Yet specimens of the love-letters of other eminent men and women are full of tenderness, passion, reverence.

QUEEN VICTORIA'S ROMANCE.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, having occasion to make a trip to Europe, wrote to the queen:

MY OWN DARLING: We got over our journey thus far rapidly and well, but the tide was so unmannerly as to be an hour later than the time calculated, so that I cannot sail before three. I have been an hour here, and regret the lost time which I might have spent with you. Poor child! you will, while I write, be getting ready for luncheon, and will find the place vacant where I sat yesterday. In your heart, however, I hope my place will not be vacant.

I at least have you on board with me in spirit. Try to occupy yourself as much as possible. You are even now half a day nearer to seeing me again; by the time you get this letter it will be a whole day; thirteen more and I am again within your arms. To-morrow Seymour will bring you further news of me. Your most devoted

ALBERT.

LEIGH HUNT AND HIS MARIANNE.

Leigh Hunt carried his versatility into his love-letters to Miss Marianne Kent, his future wife. Below is an example written when he was nineteen:

MY DEAREST MARIANNE: I am very uncomfortable; I get up at five in the morning, say a word to nobody, curse my stars till eleven at night, then creep into bed to curse my stars for to-morrow; and all this because I love a little black-eyed girl of fifteen, whom nobody knows, with all my heart and soul. You must not suppose I love you a bit the better for being fifty miles out of my reach in the daytime, for I travel at a pretty tolerable pace every night and have held many a happy chat with you about twelve or one o'clock at midnight, though you have forgotten it by this time.

Here follows a stanza of poetry, after which he proceeds:

You see, lovers can no more help being poets than poets can help being lovers. I shall see you again and will pay you prettily for running away from me, for you shall not stir from my side the whole evening. If you are well and have been so at Brighton, you are everything I could wish you. God bless you and yours. You see I can still pray for myself. Heaven knows that every blessing bestowed on you is a tenfold one bestowed on your

H.

THE KINGLY LOVE OF CHARLES I.

In a way which proved him an adept in the art, Charles I wrote to the Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France, when she was coming to join him:

DEAR HEART: I never knew till now the good of ignorance, for I did not know the danger thou wert in by the storm before I had assurance of thy happy escape, we having had a pleasing false report of thy safe landing at Newcastle, which thine of the 19th of January so far confirmed us in that we were at least not undeceived of that hope till we knew certainly how great a danger thou hast passed, of which I shall not be out of apprehension until I have the happiness of thy company.

For indeed I think it not the least of my misfortunes that for my sake thou hast run so much hazard. But my heart being full of admiration for thee, affection for thee, and impatient passion of gratitude to thee, I cannot but say something, leaving the rest to be read by thee out of thine own noble heart.

CHARLES R.

NAPOLEON TO HIS FIRST LOVE.

Napoleon Bonaparte, in a passionate letter to Josephine, said:

I have received your letter, my adorable friend. It has filled my heart with joy. I hope that you are better. I earnestly desire that you should ride on horseback, as it cannot fail to benefit you.

Since I left you I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you. Incessantly I live over in my memory your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solicitude. The charms of the incomparable Josephine kindle continually a burning and a glowing flame in my heart. When entirely free from all harassing care, shall I be able to pass all my time with you, having only to love you and to think only of the happiness of so saying and of proving it to you? I will send you your horse, but I hope you will soon join me.

I thought I loved you months ago, but since my separation from you I feel that I love you a thousandfold more. Each day since I knew you have I adored you yet more and more. Ah! I entreat you to let me see some of your faults; be less beautiful, less graceful, less affectionate, less good, especially be not overanxious, and never weep. Your tears rob me of reason and inflame my blood.

Believe me that it is not in my power to have a single thought that is not of you, or a wish that I cannot reveal to you. Quickly reestablish your health and join me, that at last before death we may be able to say "We were many days happy." A thousand kisses, and one even to Fortuna, notwithstanding his spitefulness.

BONAPARTE.

THE FIDELITY OF WASHINGTON.

The following letter from George Washington to his wife is a beautiful example of love that was as fresh after twenty years as at the first, and illustrates perfectly the sane balance of his great mind:

My Dearest Life and Love: You have hurt me, I know not how much, by the insinuation in your last that my letters to you have been less frequent because I have felt less concern for you. The suspicion is most unkind. Have we lived almost a score of years in the closest and dearest conjugal intimacy to so little purpose that on the appearance only of inattention to you, and which you might have accounted for in a thousand ways more natural and more probable, you should pitch upon that single motive which alone is injurious to me?

I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I wished and as I ought, but think of my situation and then ask your heart if I be without excuse. We are not, my dearest, in circumstances most favorable to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech you, idly make them worse by indulging in suspicions and apprehensions which minds in distress are but too apt to give way to. Your most faithful and tender husband,

G.W.

BRIEF BUT SINCERE "OLD NOLL."

Oliver Cromwell seemed to have similar difficulties when he wrote:

MY DEAREST: I have not leisure to write much; but I could chide thee that, in many of thy letters, thou writest to me that I should not be unmindful of thee and thy little ones. Truly, if I love you not too well, I think I err not on the other hand much. Thou art dearer to me than any creature; let that suffice. I rest thine

OLIVER CROMWELL.

POE'S HEART IN A TIME OF TRIAL.

In the midst of his trials, Edgar Allan Poe, the famous American poet, wrote to his wife:

MY DEAR HEART, MY DEAR VIRGINIA: Our mother will explain to you why I stayed away from you this night. On my last great disappointment I should have lost my courage but for you, my little darling wife. I shall be with you to-morrow, and be assured until I see you I will keep in loving remembrance your last words and your fervent prayer. May God grant you a peaceful summer with your devoted

Edgar.

THE LOVE OF BISMARCK.

Bismarck, the man of iron, to the last day of his life was tenderly devoted to his wife, using the most endearing terms in writing to her. While he was in Paris, during the early days of their married life, he wrote to her:

They say that here one may see the most beautiful women in the world—women whose charms are a scepter more powerful than a king's. I have seen them all, my little heart, and now I know why you hold me in such unbreakable chains; for there is none of all these fair ones so richly dowered as my darling with all that gives a woman empire over the hearts of men.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

BY AMBROSE BIERCE.

Among living American writers of short stories, Ambrose Bierce is un-excelled in strength and fine simplicity. Born in 1842, he served during the Civil War, and was brevetted major for distinguished services. He went to California in 1866, and his name became familiar to readers of Pacific Coast journals. His contributions, however, quickly won a hearing throughout the country and in England, whither he went in 1872, remaining for a few years and writing for English periodicals. Later he returned to California, and more recently he removed to Washington.

The keenest, most incisive, most telling contemporary criticism was found in the column he used to contribute to the San Francisco Examiner, "Prattle: A Transient Record of Individual Opinion." Of his verse, at least one poem, "The Passing Show," is deserving of a permanent place in literature. More verse, more fiction, would be welcome from his pen. He has produced less than those who read the following story will wish, for the reason, perhaps, that he has freely given so much of his time to teaching others how to write.

It is natural, considering the experiences through which he passed at the time of life in which conscious impressions are most vivid, that Mr. Bierce should turn frequently to the incidents of war. The very restraint of his style makes his war pictures the more impressive—adds to their potency as arguments for peace. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"[A] is Mr. Bierce at his best. Powerful, grim, pathetic, it dips deep into the well of the human soul.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him, and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support"—that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot-plank which traversed it.

[A] This story is taken from "In the Midst of Life," a volume of Mr. Bierce's tales—Copyright, 1898, by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

Beyond one of the sentinels, nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree-trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette, silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark-gray and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted, and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former, the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt, and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death-knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he should shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II.

Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave-owner, and, like other slave-owners, a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening, while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was gone to fetch the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek Bridge, put it in order, and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."

"How far is it to the Owl Creek Bridge?" Farquhar asked.

"About thirty miles."

"Is there no force on this side the creek?"

"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."

"Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"

The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III.

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang which he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draft of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek.

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye, and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men—with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words:

"Attention, company! Shoulder arms! Ready! Aim! Fire!"

Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm, and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"

An appalling splash within two yards of him, followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, fort, and men—all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point, which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls, and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks, and the wind made in their branches the music of eolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape, he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars, looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood was full of noises, among which he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain, and lifting his hand to it, he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge.

THE GIANT AND PYGMY OF BOOKLAND.

The extremes of bookland which meet in the British Museum are each remarkable products of the art of book-making. Difficulties would seem to attend the perusal of either of them, though of a widely different sort. Here is to be seen the largest book in the world—an atlas of the fifteenth century. It is seven feet high. When a tall man consults it, his head is hidden as he stands between its generous leaves. Its stout binding and ponderous clasps make it seem as substantial as the walls of a room.

The smallest book in the world is a tiny "Bijou Almanac"—less than an inch square, bound in dainty red morocco, and easily to be concealed in the finger of a lady's glove.

These two extremes of the printer's art might well stand at the beginning and the end of the amazing thirty-seven miles of shelves filled with books which belong to the great English library.

The Great Southwest.

BY CHARLES M. HARVEY.

The Marvelous Development, Agricultural, Industrial, and Commercial, That Is

Now in Progress in the States of Texas and Arkansas and

the Adjoining Territories.

Revised from MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE and brought up to date by the author for THE SCRAP BOOK.

EDITOR'S NOTE.—In the growth of interest in the great States west of the Mississippi River the Southwest has until lately been commonly neglected. Gold sent men rushing first to the mountain States. Then grain led them to the prairie States. With the more fertile wheat lands fully occupied, there has of late been a tendency to the Canadian Northwest. But at the same time a remarkable development, commercial and industrial, as well as agricultural, has been going on in the Southwest. The progress made in Texas during the last few years is simply astounding.

Unknown to the great mass of the people of the United States, a new empire is being planted in the Southwest. Much is written about the thousands who are crossing the Canadian frontier and settling in Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Alberta; but very little is heard about the tens of thousands from the Northwest and the Middle West, from the East and Europe, who are moving into Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

The officials of the railways running into this latter region could tell a little of this story if they wished to. Last year, from April to November, something like a million dollars was paid into the treasuries of the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fé, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, the Iron Mountain, the Missouri Pacific, the St. Louis and San Francisco, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railways, for fares by seekers of homes in the Southwest. About one-third of these prospectors become permanent settlers. The money put into farms, into manufacturing industries, and into business of various sorts in that region, according to the estimates of railway officials and of immigration agents, has amounted during the past twelve months to fully two hundred million dollars.

The Empire State of the Future.

Consider for a moment the State of Texas—as she was, as she is, and as she will be. Admitted to the Union in 1845, newly baptized with blood in her struggle against the Mexicans, she then contained little more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. To-day she has three and a half millions, and ranks fifth among the States, having passed Missouri since the last census. Only New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio are now ahead of her. If all these States continue to advance in population at the same rate as in recent years, she will pass Ohio before 1920, Illinois by 1930, and Pennsylvania by 1940. Before 1950 she will have outstripped New York and will be the Empire State of the Union.

In spite of her more than twenty-fold increase during the past six decades, Texas is still, comparatively speaking, a sparsely settled region. She has as yet a mere fraction of the population her generous soil could support. Remember that she is larger than France or Germany, larger than two Italys or two Great Britains. When she became a State she had two square miles of land for each of her inhabitants. She now has about thirteen people to each square mile. The State of New York has one hundred and sixty people to the square mile, and is steadily growing in population. Massachusetts has three hundred and seventy-five to the square mile, and is steadily growing. Belgium has five hundred and ninety to the square mile, and is steadily growing. England has six hundred and twenty-five to the square mile, and is steadily growing. If the present ratio of increase continues, think of the incalculable growth that the coming years will bring to the great Southwestern State!

If Texas were peopled as densely as New York State, she would have forty-two million inhabitants—more than ten times what she has. Settled as closely as Massachusetts, she would have one hundred millions; as closely as England, one hundred and sixty-six millions. This American State is destined to rank with the powers of the world.

Remarkable as was the showing that Texas made at the last census, other portions of the Southwest could point to a still more phenomenal gain. While the population of the Lone Star State advanced thirty-six per cent between 1890 and 1900, that of Arizona rose one hundred and five per cent, that of the Indian Territory one hundred and seventeen per cent, and that of Oklahoma no less than five hundred and forty-four per cent in the ten years.

Texas Now Leads in Railways.

From 1870 till 1904 Illinois had a larger number of miles of railway than any other State. In 1904 Texas passed Illinois. On March 1, 1906, the great Southwestern State had approximately twelve thousand miles of main railway track, or over two hundred miles in excess of Illinois. Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and New York, in this order, stand below Illinois in railway mileage, New York's total at the same date being a little short of nine thousand miles.

In recent years, about half of the country's entire new railway mileage has been built in the Southwest. The increase of mileage between 1897 and the end of 1903 was twelve and a half per cent for the United States. It was ten per cent in the Middle States, seven per cent in the Rocky Mountain region and on the Pacific Slope, and three per cent in Ohio and Indiana. It was twenty-seven per cent in the section comprising Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, Texas, and New Mexico. There could scarcely be a more significant index of advancing wealth, population, and industry.

The Land of Corn and Cotton.

The Southwest at this moment is enjoying a prosperity unexampled in its annals. Last year's yield of corn, wheat, and cotton proved better than was expected early in the season, the corn crop being particularly good. Land values have doubled in much of this region during the past five years; though prices are still so much below those prevailing in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana that the inrush from those States continues to be large.

Traveling salesmen report better business in Oklahoma, Texas, and their neighbors than in any other part of the West. More visitors came to the St. Louis Exposition from the Southwestern States and Territories than from any other part of the country, in proportion to population—which was a good test of that region's financial condition.

Before the Civil War, when the South was proclaiming cotton to be king, cotton's realm was in the Atlantic seaboard States. But Texas now produces nearly a third of the country's entire crop. Her recent average has been about three million bales; last year the yield was a little less than that. The Indian Territory and Oklahoma are beginning to figure prominently in cotton production. Cotton accounts for much of the prosperity of the Southwest. More and more the farmers of that region are raising other crops for a living, and using the proceeds of their cotton-fields as a surplus fund.

What Statehood Will Mean.

Statehood, of course, will give a new impetus to the growth of the Territories of the Southwest, attracting settlers and capital. It is practically certain that Oklahoma and the Indian Territory are shortly to become a State under the name of Oklahoma. The political future of New Mexico and Arizona is more problematical, being a subject of controversy at Washington as this is written. It is variously proposed to admit each Territory separately, to admit New Mexico while excluding her sister Territory, or to unite them into a single State, probably under the title of Arizona. The question will have been settled before this reaches the reader, unless its settlement is postponed to a later session of Congress.

The State of Oklahoma will start with a population of fully a million and a half—about equal to that of California, and considerably above that of such commonwealths as Louisiana, South Carolina, or Maryland. If New Mexico and Arizona should be united, they will have about half a million inhabitants. In area they will form the second State in the Union, inferior only to Texas.

The Growth of the Gulf Ports.

Through the growing popularity of the Gulf ports as outlets for the country's merchandise, the Southwest is bound to be a great gainer. As compared with 1904, there was a larger gain in the exports by the ports of the Gulf of Mexico in 1905 than the Atlantic ports showed.

This gain is due to several causes. More and more the great railways are establishing terminals at the Gulf outlets. From the chief productive centers of the Mississippi Valley the distances to these points are shorter than to the Atlantic, and the grades are easier. In population, productivity, and general industrial and commercial importance, the southern end of the vast Mississippi Valley is growing with disproportionate rapidity. The Southwest's pull on the population center of the United States is shown by the fact that during the decade ending with 1900 that point moved fourteen miles westward and three miles southward.

The center of the country's production of wheat and of oats, and the center of the total area in the country's farms, are now west of the Mississippi. The center of the production of cotton, now on the western verge of the State of Mississippi, and the center of the production of corn, now in the western part of Illinois, will cross the big river before 1910. More than sixty-five per cent of the country's exports already originate west of the Mississippi.

Galveston and the Panama Canal.

For all the region between the Mississippi and the continental divide of the Rockies, the Texas ports, chiefly Galveston, will be the natural outlets to the sea. In aggregate value of merchandise exports Galveston has left Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston far behind. In the last calendar year she stood third among American ports in the value of her merchandise shipments, New York and New Orleans being the only two ahead of her. She has gained so rapidly on New Orleans in recent years, and the Crescent City led her by so slight a margin in 1905, that for the twelve months ending with next December it seems safe to predict that the Texas seaport will take second place.

Much has been said of the benefits which the Panama Canal will bring to the United States by giving us a short cut to the Pacific littoral of our own continent, to the west coast of South America, and to Asia and Australia. Undoubtedly the isthmian waterway will open new markets to Galveston and other Texas ports, and will be a powerful influence in enabling the Southwest to score further industrial and commercial conquests.

He who allows his happiness to depend too much on reason, who submits his pleasures to examination, and desires enjoyments only of the most refined nature, too often ends by not having any at all.—Chamfort.

ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

A Strange Scene in a French Law-Court—A German Botanist's Hunt for a Mysterious Native Tribe—The Pranks of a Famous Joker—The Mileage of the Blood—Tiny Republics of Europe—Average Weights of Men and Women at Various Ages—With Other Curious and Interesting Things Drawn from Many Sources.

Compiled and edited for THE SCRAP BOOK.

HOW MELODRAMA WAS ECLIPSED BY TRUTH.

COINCIDENCES IN PARIS COURT.

Official's Attempt to Convict His Unrecognized

Son Was Interrupted by Wife

He Deserted Many Years Before.

Coincidence—chance, play a tremendous part in human history. Fate is another name for the same thing; so is luck. All these words are merely our puny euphemisms for X, the unknown quantity.

Not a day passes but the story of a remarkable coincidence is brought to public notice. A stranger incident never occurred, however, than this one, the account of which we have unearthed in an old copy of the Chronique de Paris.

A youth of about nineteen was brought to trial for having broken the window of a baker's shop and stolen a two-pound loaf.

The Judge—"Why did you steal the loaf?"

Prisoner—"I was driven by hunger."

"Why did you not buy it?"

"Because I had no money."

"But you have a gold ring on your finger; why did you not sell it?"

"I am a foundling; when I was taken from the bank of a ditch, this ring was suspended from my neck by a silken cord, and I kept it in the hope of thereby discovering at least who were my parents; I cannot dispose of it."

The procureur du roi (king's attorney) made a violent speech against the prisoner, who was found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment for five years. Immediately upon this, a woman, more worn down by poverty than age, came forward and made the following declaration:

"Gentlemen of the Jury: Twenty years ago a young woman was married to a young man of the same town, who afterward abandoned her. Poor and distressed, she was obliged to leave her child to the care of Providence. The child has since grown up, and the woman and the husband have grown older; the child in poverty, the woman in misery, and her husband in prosperity. They are all three now in court. The child is the unfortunate prisoner whom you have just pronounced guilty; the mother is myself; and there sits the father!" pointing to the king's attorney.

THE FIRST SIGHT OF A WHITE FACE.

HUNTING DOWN THE SHY NEGRITO.

How Albert Grubauer Won the Confidence

of a Timid People Who Had Never

Before Seen a European.

In the mountains of northern Malacca and southern Siam dwells a tribe of dwarf Negritos who, until a few months ago, knew nothing of the white man and his ways. From their hunting grounds they could almost see the foreign ships steam through Malacca Straits. Certain conveniences obtainable only from the whites had reached them through intermediate tribes; for example, they had become well acquainted with the Swedish safety matches, yet no white man had ever come in contact with them.

A German botanist, Albert Grubauer, not long ago set out to make acquaintance with these shy people. With a few native servants he stole quietly up into the mountains. For some time their patience was rewarded only with disappointment, but at last one morning they came upon a party of the little men. The Negritos dropped the bundles of rattan they were carrying and concealed themselves in the under-growth.

The German and his men knew exactly what they were to do in such a case, says the New York Sun, summarizing the story from the elaborate account in a German scientific journal. They were not to go an inch in pursuit. No weapon was to be shown. One of the men who could speak a little of the native dialect aired his accomplishment in the gentlest way. The white man was their good friend and had come to see them. And what wonderful presents he had brought for his friends! The white man and his servants extended their arms, which were loaded with bright cottons, strings of beads, many colored necklaces, tobacco and other tempting articles whose merits were extolled by the spokesman with all the eloquence he could command.

They knew the natives were behind the bushes looking at the tempting sight and listening to the exhortation. Then the visitors sat down, still holding out the beautiful presents. Finally, an old man, the leader of the party, stuck his head out of the bush. He broke off a green twig and held it up. It was a sign of peace and the white man nodded to him. The ice was broken. The Negrito approached the European, they shook hands, some of the presents were distributed and the visitors became the guests of the little mountaineers. They were passed on from one group to another till Grubauer, after a considerable time, had completed his studies.

HOW THEY CONSTRUCT ENGLISH IN BELGIUM.

A REQUEST TO "TWIRL THE PAGE."

American Postage-Stamp Collectors Are

Amused, When Not Puzzled, by a

Queerly Worded Circular.

"English as she is Japanned" occasionally appears on the shop signs of Yokohama, Tokyo, and other Japanese cities, to amuse travelers from America and England. But it is not necessary to search the Orient for odd perversions of the language. As near a country as Belgium is the birthplace of the following circular, which has lately been received by many American philatelists:

"Seek you good Correspondents extra-European? Want you Postage Stamps from Africa, America, Asia, Oceania? Sent immediately and advertisement for the —— Extra-European Directory, 4,000 addresses of Philatelists, residing abroad Europa. Work's price, book in 8 deg. stitched, —— The advertisements sind inserted opposite the country selected by you ... One Justificative copy gratis."

At the bottom of the page is the further instruction to English and American readers to "Twirl the page, please."

PRACTICAL JOKING OF EUGENE VIVIER.

"A MOST GENTLEMANLY EMPEROR."

How the Calf Which This Famous Hornplayer

Put in His Apartment Became

in Time an Ox.

Henry Sutherland Edwards, a London journalist, who died a short time ago, published in 1900 a volume of "Personal Recollections" which is very much alive with anecdotes of men of the past generation. Considerable space is given to a man who is now almost unremembered—Eugene Vivier, the hornplayer, "the most charming of men and the spoiled child of nearly every court in Europe." Vivier is the man who said of Napoleon III, "He is the most gentlemanly emperor I know."

"What can I do for you?" said this gentlemanly emperor one day, when Vivier had gone to see him at the Tuileries.

"Come out on the balcony with me, sire," replied the genial cynic. "Some of my creditors are sure to be passing, and it will do me good to be seen in conversation with your majesty."

Vivier was a confirmed practical joker. Once, while riding in an omnibus, he pretended to be mad.

He indulged in the wildest gesticulations, and then, as if in despair, drew a pistol from his pocket. The conductor was called upon by acclamation to interfere, and Vivier was on the point of being disarmed when suddenly he broke the pistol in two, handed half to the conductor and began to eat the other half himself. It was made of chocolate!

Vivier could not bear to see people in a hurry. According to him, there was nothing in life worth hurrying for; and, living on the Boulevard, just opposite the Rue Vivienne, he was much annoyed at seeing so many persons hastening, toward six o'clock, to the post-office on the Place de la Bourse.

He determined to pay them out, and for that purpose bought a calf, which he took up to his apartments at night, and exhibited the next afternoon at a few minutes before six o'clock on the balcony of his second floor. In spite of their eagerness to catch the post, many persons could not help stopping to look at the calf.

Soon a crowd collected and messengers stayed their steps in order to gaze at the unwonted apparition. Six o'clock struck, and soon after a number of men who had missed the post returned in an irritated condition, and, stopping before Vivier's house, shook their fists at him. Vivier went down to them and asked the meaning of the insolence.

"We were not shaking our fists at you," replied the enraged ones, "but at that calf."

"Ah! You know him, then?" returned Vivier. "I was not aware of it."

In time Vivier's calf became the subject of a legend, according to which the animal (still in Vivier's apartments) grew to be an ox, and so annoyed the neighbors by his lowing that the proprietor of the house insisted on its being sent away. Vivier told him to come and take it, when it was found that the calf of other days had grown to such a size that it was impossible to get it down-stairs.

ARTERIES AND VEINS AS A RACE-COURSE.

MILEAGE OF THE HUMAN BLOOD.

One Little Red Corpuscle May Travel One

Hundred and Sixty-Eight Miles

in a Single Day.

The speed at which the blood circulates in the veins and arteries of a healthy man is something surprising. All day long, year in and year out, the round trips continue from the heart to the extremities and back again. The red blood corpuscles travel like boats in a stream, going to this or that station for such service as they have to perform; and the white corpuscles, the phagocytes, dart hither and thither like patrol boats, ready to arrest any contraband cargo of disease germs.

The mileage of the blood circulation reveals some astounding facts in our personal history. Thus it has been calculated that, assuming the heart to beat sixty-nine times a minute at ordinary heart pressure, the blood goes at the rate of two hundred and seven yards in the minute, or seven miles per hour, one hundred and sixty-eight miles per day and six thousand three hundred and twenty miles per year. If a man of eighty-four years of age could have one single blood corpuscle floating in his blood all his life it would have traveled in that same time five million one hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred and eight miles.

SOME MICROSCOPIC EUROPEAN REPUBLICS.

ONE IS IN THE LOWER PYRENEES.

It Lies Between France and Spain, and

Every Army in Europe Has Rumbled

Pell-Mell Past Its Very Doors.

A republic without an army—without a navy—without even one policeman—with only one square mile of territory, and a population of fifty: who can tell what its name is, and where it is located?

Stranger still, it has stood in the midst of warring nations, and yet remained as independent as the United States. It has heard the roar of Napoleon's artillery. There are famous battle-fields on the north of it and on the south. Great armies from France and Spain and England have swung past it on all sides. Vast nations have arisen and gone down again to oblivion, and yet this baby republic goes on for centuries—without growth and without death.

Goust—which is the name of this wonderful little atom among the nations of Europe—is situated in the Lower Pyrenees, between France and Spain.

For over two centuries and a half Goust has elected a president every seven years, and its independence has been recognized by both France and Spain.

There are two tiny republics in Italy—the famous little state of San Marino, and the less-known islet of Tavolara. The latter did not become a republic until recently. In 1830 the absolute dominion of the island was conceded by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, to the Bartoleoni family, whose head became King Paul I.

He was likewise Paul the last, for on his death, in 1882, he requested that his title should be buried with him and that the kingdom be turned into a republic. A constitution was accordingly drawn up, and under its terms a president, with a council of six, is elected every six years, all adults, male or female, casting a ballot. No salary is paid either to the president or the members of his council.

WEIGHTS OF THE SEXES AT DIFFERENT AGES.

MEN ARE FATTEST AT FORTY.

Average Weights of Humanity Differ

More Markedly in Relation to Age

and Sex Than Is Supposed.

If all the men and women, boys and girls, and infants—black, white, yellow, brown or red—in all parts of the world, could be weighed on the same scales, the average weight would be nearly one hundred pounds avoirdupois. Six-pound infants and three-hundred-pound giants contribute to the average.

Upon the average, boys at birth weigh a little more and girls a little less than seven pounds. For the first twelve years the two sexes continue nearly equal in weight, but beyond that age the boys acquire a decided preponderance. Young men of twenty average 135 pounds, while the young women of twenty average 110 pounds each.

Men reach their heaviest weight at about forty years of age, when their average weight will be about 140 pounds; but women slowly increase in weight until fifty years of age, when their average weight will be 130 pounds. Taking the men and women together, their weight at full growth will then average from 108 to 150 pounds; and women from 80 to 130 pounds.

SPENDS TEN MONTHS GAZING INTO MIRROR.

WOMAN'S AVERAGE IN A LIFETIME.

German Statisticians Assert That a Man

Requires Only Seven Months for This

Employment.

German statisticians, who have long been noted for their tendency to turn their searchlights on subjects that might better be left alone, have made another little incursion into the field of woman's vanity. In short, they have been calculating what part of a woman's life is spent in looking at herself in a mirror.

She begins as a rule at six years. From six to ten she has a daily average of seven minutes. From ten to fifteen she devotes a quarter of an hour to her glass.

At twenty she certainly spends thirty minutes daily admiring herself, and when past twenty a whole hour.

The statisticians are tactful enough not to say when a woman begins to take less interest in her personal appearance, but women more than sixty years do not, they say, spend more than ten minutes daily at their mirrors. All this time reckoned up—it is a simple sum in multiplication—makes seven thousand hours, or about ten months, at the mirror.

Then they proceed to compare the time which a man—a German man—devotes to this occupation, and come to the conclusion that his average is seven months.

ANIMAL ENDURANCE PUTS MAN TO SHAME.

DESPAIR YIELDS TO COURAGE.

Animals and Birds Caught in Traps Display

Spartan Fortitude, and Toads

Imprisoned in Rocks Grow Fat.

At a time when six-day bicycle races, the so-called brutality of modern football, and endurance tests of the automobile excite such a degree of popular interest throughout the English-speaking world, it might not be amiss to glance over the shoulder occasionally at a few records made by some mute four-footed or feathered champions who have established records in fields in which Nature, herself, as umpire, read the inexorable law of necessity.

In reviewing some remarkable feats of animal endurance, the Chicago News mentions the case of a dog that was dug out alive from a rabbit-hole, in the Scilly Isles, after having been lost for a fortnight.

Continuing, this same authority says that whales and eagles come at the head of creatures that longest survive the evils to which other fishes and birds are heirs. Yet a whale has been found dead from a dislocated jaw. It is also recorded that an elephant died as a result of gangrene in one of its feet.

In a Scottish deer forest not long ago a stalking party came across a magnificent golden eagle, dead, caught in a fox trap. He had been caught by the center claw of one foot and had died of exhaustion in attempting to escape.

By his side were two grouse and a partly eaten hare which other eagles had brought to sustain him in his fight for life. If a rat had been caught by his leg in a trap either he or his comrades would have bitten off the imprisoned limb and released him.

The poor despised toad is not built to stand physical violence, but he would fatten on imprisonment. Toads imprisoned in rocks for years—no one knows how many—come to light from time to time, fat and well. They have been found beneath deposits which, according to all accepted ideas of geology, must have been long ages in process of formation. Unless microbes, carried to them through the pores of the imprisoning rock, have been their fare, it is certain, according to naturalists who ought to know, that they have eaten nothing for an unthinkable period.

EGGS OF VARIOUS FOWLS MUCH ALIKE.

GOOSE'S CONTAIN MOST PROTEIN.

Despite Old Adage, It Requires About a

Pound of Eggs to Equal the Nutriment

in a Pound of Beefsteak.

The white of an egg is nearly seven-eighths water, the balance being pure albumen. The yolk is slightly less than one-half water. These figures apply approximately to the eggs of turkeys, hens, geese, ducks, and guinea-fowls.

To show how nearly alike the eggs of various domestic fowls are in respect to composition, the following figures are given by the Department of Agriculture:

Hen's egg—50 per cent water, 16 per cent "protein," 33 per cent fat.

Duck's egg—46 per cent water, 17 per cent "protein," 36 per cent fat.

Goose egg—44 per cent water, 19 per cent "protein," 36 per cent fat.

Turkey egg—48 per cent water, 18 per cent "protein," 33 per cent fat.

It should be explained that "protein" is the stuff that goes to make muscle and blood. Fat, of course, is fuel for running the body-machine. Thus it will be seen that eggs, though half, or nearly half, water, are extremely nutritious, containing all the elements required for the building and support of the human body. But the old saying that an egg contains as much nutriment as a pound of beefsteak is manifestly very far from correct. It would be nearer the fact to estimate a pound of eggs as equal to a pound of lean beefsteak in nourishing power.

A CHECK FOR THOUSANDS ON A PINE SHINGLE.

A PIONEER BANKER'S READINESS.

How Joseph C. Palmer, With Some Extraordinary

Material, Wrote for

a Large Sum.

Many different substances have been used to send communications through the mails, from bits of carved wood to leather post-cards. But banks are supposed to be more insistent upon red tape. A stamp and an address will satisfy the postal authorities; ink, paper, and indubitable signature—these are requisites in bank paper. Yet in new countries it is frequently obliged to put up with makeshifts. Here is a story of early banking in California, as related by the San Francisco Bulletin:

Joseph C. Palmer, a California pioneer, and at one time a banker and politician in the early days of California, was a member of the firm of Palmer, Cook & Co., a bank which did an immense business, and whose influence was felt throughout the State.

To show his readiness to adopt original methods in an emergency, it is related that once a depositor called to draw a large sum of money (twenty-eight thousand dollars) from the bank. Mr. Palmer's signature was necessary, but he had been called away to attend to some duty in a lumberyard at a distance of a mile or more.

Thither the depositor hastened and made known his wants and the necessity of having them attended to at once. Mr. Palmer could find neither pen, pencil, ink, nor paper. But without a moment's hesitation he picked up a shingle, borrowed a piece of red chalk, and with it wrote a check on the shingle in large and distinct letters for twenty-eight thousand dollars.

This was good when presented for all the money the depositor had in bank, and it proved an exceedingly good advertisement for Palmer. It gained confidence for the original genius of our first great banker, whom everybody trusted.

Robert Emmet's Speech of Vindication.

Robert Emmet, the Irish patriot, was born in Dublin in 1778, and was executed for treason in Dublin, September 20, 1803. A prize-winner at Trinity College, Dublin, and an eloquent speaker before the Historical Society, he lent his young energies to the cause of Ireland with a devotion that was as pure and unselfish as it was rash. Traveling on the Continent, he received from Napoleon I a promise to help Ireland. He then returned secretly to Ireland and made plans for a revolution. An abortive uprising occurred. Emmet, with a mob of followers, attempted to seize Dublin Castle, but one volley dispersed his rabble.

He fled to the Wicklow mountains, intending to escape from the country, but he made a last visit to his sweetheart, Miss Curran, and was captured. His speeches before the tribunal which sentenced him to be hanged are models of noble and eloquent dignity. Thomas Moore, Emmet's schoolfellow and friend, inscribed to his memory a touching poem:

Oh, breathe not his name—let it sleep in the shade,

Where cold and unhonored his relics are laid;

Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,

As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head.

But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,

Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;

And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,

Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

In another lyric, which begins with the line "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps," Moore alluded to the sad after-life of Miss Curran. Her story was also told, without a mention of her name, by Washington Irving, in "The Broken Heart," which may be found in "The Sketch Book."

My Lords: What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say, which interests me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much to say, why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy: for there must be guilt somewhere—whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish—that it may live in the respect of my countrymen—I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood, on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue, this is my hope—I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High, which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest, which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or less than the government standard—a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which its cruelty has made.

I swear by the throne of heaven, before which I must shortly appear—by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me—that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long, and too patiently, travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope (wild and chimerical as it may appear) that there are still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise.

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power, in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant; in the dignity of freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and her enemies should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the vengeance of the jealous and wrathful oppressor, and to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights—am I to be loaded with calumny, and not to be suffered to resent or repel it? No!—God forbid!

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life—O ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny on the conduct of your suffering son; and see if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for an adherence to which I am now to offer up my life!

My lords, you are all impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven! Be yet patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished; my race is run; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world—it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no one who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice to my character. When my country shall take her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written! I have done.

Mortality. It takes twenty months to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take an eternity to know something of his soul: it takes but an instant to kill him.—Voltaire.

The Rivals.

By BENSON J. LOSSING.

The late historian, Benson J. Lossing, whose name for a large part of the last century was connected with historical authorship and with wood engraving, was born in Dutchess County, New York, February 12, 1813, and died June 3, 1891. When a very young man he became editor of a local paper in Poughkeepsie, and, afterward, with Barritt, under the familiar signature of "Lossing and Barritt," did a very large amount of the wood engraving current a generation or more ago.

Inspired by his editorial and art experience, he began early to visit the places made notable by the battles and memorable scenes of the Revolutionary War. Of buildings connected therewith, or of their falling ruins, he made sketches. Out of this activity came his famous and still excellent work, "The Field Book of the Revolution." The history of our subsequent wars he also treated; and it was history chiefly that engaged his pen. The one exception was his publication of the Casket, in 1836 or thereabouts, which in a form similar to that of the Nation, was a very creditable literary and family magazine, conducted in a popular way, when magazines in this country were few and unimportant. One does not find, in any account of him apart from this venture of possibly not over three years' duration, that he left his purely historical themes.

Very recently, however, THE SCRAP BOOK came across a somewhat romantic story, with a touch and climax of art and love in it, which is the product of his pen; though its style is a little more ambitious and florid than the one for which he was noted. It tells, with much liberty of embellishment, the thrilling anecdote of the contest of the Grecian artists, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. As it was interesting sixty years ago, when it appeared (in 1846), doubtless it may have some interest now.

Zeuxis was the pride and boast of Athens. His pencil had no rival, and thrice he had been crowned victor of the Olympic games. The dwellings of the rich and noble, and the shrines and temples of the gods, were decorated with the fruits of his genius. He was courted by the wise and powerful. Artists and magi came from distant cities to look upon the Athenian painter, whose name was sounded worldwide.

Even the proud ruler of Palmyra, the "Tadmor of the wilderness," sent a deputation of nobles to invite his presence at the Palmyrene court. Contemporary artists acknowledged his superiority; and Apollodorus, the father of Athenian painters, declared that Zeuxis had "stolen the cunning from all the rest." Thus flattered and caressed, Zeuxis became proud and haughty. He found no rival, for he knew no equal.

The Agonothetai employed him to paint a wrestler or champion, to adorn the peristylium of the Gymnasia. Assembled thousands gave a simultaneous shout of applause when the picture was exhibited on the first day of the games. The victors in the chariot-race, the discus, the cestus, and the athletæ, were almost forgotten amid the general admiration of the picture of Zeuxis. Conscious of his superiority, the artist, with pedantic egotism, wrote beneath his picture, "Invisurus aliquis facilius quam imitaturus!"—"Sooner envied than equaled!"

This inscription met the eye of an obscure youth, who resolved to prove its falsity.

The third day of the games had terminated. The last rays of the sun yet lingered on the Acropolis, and burnished the crest of hoary Olympus that gleamed in the distance. Zeuxis sat alone with his wife and daughter, listening attentively to the strains of a minstrel who swept the lyre for a group of joyous dancers assembled near the grove sacred to Psyche. As the music ceased, a deep sigh escaped the daughter, and a tear trembled in the maiden's eye.

"Cassandra, my sweet Cassandra," said Zeuxis, "why that tear, that sigh?"

A deep crimson suffused the cheeks of the maiden, and she was silent.

"Tell me, Cassandra," said the father, affectionately placing her hand in his own, and inquisitively eying the blushing damsel; "tell me what new grief makes sorrowful the heart of my daughter? Thinkest thou yet of the worthless Parrhasius—even now, upon the eve of thy nuptials with the noble Thearchus?"

"Nay, dear father," said Cassandra, "it was the music that made me weep. It awakened memory to the recollections of the many happy hours spent with my dear Portia, who is now among the immortals. Four years ago we danced together to the same strain, and the lyre was touched by the gentle Parrhasius."

"Gentle Parrhasius, sayest thou, Cassandra?—gentle Parrhasius! Wouldst thou call him gentle, the poor plebeian who sought to rival the noble Thearchus in thy affections?—who openly avowed in the streets of Athens, in the Gymnasium and the Hippodrome, that his pencil would yet make Zeuxis envious?"

"And yet he was gentle," mildly replied Cassandra, while the big round tears coursed down her cheeks, and her bosom swelled with tender emotion.

The brow of Zeuxis lowered, and indices of a whirlwind of passion were in his countenance. Four years had elapsed since Parrhasius had asked for his daughter in marriage, and was indignantly refused. Affection, deep and abiding as vitality itself, existed between the young painter and Cassandra—affection based upon reciprocal appreciation of mutual worth; but the ambition of Zeuxis made him forget his duty to his child, and, without estimating consequences, he resolved to wed her to Thearchus, a wealthy Athenian nobleman, and son of one of the judges of the Areopagus.

When Parrhasius modestly but firmly pressed his suit, Zeuxis became indignant—taunted him with his plebeian birthright and obscure lineage; and denounced him as a poor Ephesian boy, unworthy, because of his poverty, the friendship, much less the confidence of sonship, of the great Athenian painter.

The spirit of Parrhasius was aroused and, standing erect in all the dignity of conscious equality of genius, full-fledged and eager to soar, he boldly repelled the insults of Zeuxis, and with a voice that reached the listening ear of his beloved, exclaimed:

"Know, proud man, that thou, the unrivaled master of Greece, of the world, wilt yet envy the talent and fame of Parrhasius, though a poor plebeian boy of Ephesus!"

The rage of Zeuxis was unbounded, and he ordered his helots to thrust the youth from his presence. The order was instantly obeyed; and, ere the setting sun, Parrhasius left the walls of Athens behind him, and turned toward Ephesus, to practise his skill in seclusion there.

During the interim of the games, the young painter assiduously practised his art, in utter seclusion from the world; and those who knew him before departing for Athens, believed him dead. Nor could Cassandra, during these four years, hear aught of her exiled lover. Her constancy and hope whispered to her heart the fulfilment of the prediction of excellence, and that destiny would yet unite them in holy ties by its mysterious web.

This hope and this constancy had thus far delayed her marriage with Thearchus. Like Penelope, she framed reasons for repelling her suitor, and daily looked for the return of her lord, wearing the bay of success. Her father, wearied by procrastination, and ambitious for display, had resolved to have the nuptials celebrated during the festival of the Olympic games. His persuasions became commands, his arguments positive orders, and his paternal government by the power of love a stern executor of the behest of his ambition. The herald had already sounded the proclamation, and all Athens greeted with joy the approaching nuptials of the noble Thearchus and the lovely Cassandra.

Yet the stern ambition of Zeuxis was susceptible of tender impressions. He adored his daughter, and her tears melted the ice of his heart. He knew she loved the Ephesian, and the war of duty and ambition waxed warm as he witnessed new proofs of her constancy and love.

"Come, come, Cassandra," said he caressingly, "these tears ill become the daughter of the Athenian painter on the eve of her nuptials with one of the noblest sons of Greece. Forget that childish passion that attaches thee to Parrhasius, and thank the gods for his exile from Athens."

"Would you see your Cassandra happy?" asked the weeping maiden.

"I would, indeed," replied Zeuxis; "and it was for her happiness that I spurned the Ephesian and favored the worthy Thearchus."

"But Thearchus has no place in my affections," replied Cassandra. "I love him not; and to wed him is but to plunge me into deeper misery. What is wealth—what nobility and the applause of the people, if the affections of the heart have no participation therein? They are ministers of woe to the broken spirit. Without love there is no happiness; without happiness life is nothing worth. I would sooner wed a shepherd than an archon, did he but bring with him the riches of true affection."

"Madness, madness!" exclaimed Zeuxis. "This philosophy may do for a peasant maiden, but should not pollute the lips of a daughter of Zeuxis. Talk of love! Why, it is but a passion born of circumstances. To-day it burns with volcanic violence, to-morrow it is but a glimmering taper; to-day its intensity warms the most cheerless cabin of poverty, to-morrow its flickering rays will barely illumine the most cheerful abode of wealth. It is a delusive light, that too often dazzles to blind."

"It may be so with the sensual," replied Cassandra. "With them it is indeed a passion born of circumstances. Yet, after all, it is not love. It is but a poor semblance of the holy passion. Pure affection comes not from the dross of earth, the wealth, power, and pageantry of individuals or of society, nor from the ephemeral loveliness of the human form. Such is, at best, the gross counterfeit of love, and undeserving its divine name. When moral and intellectual worth—the beauties and amiability of character—the noble evidences of exalted genius, excite our admiration, and win our affections for the possessor, then indeed do we truly love, and love a worthy object. Such, dear father, is my love for Parrhasius. Submission to thy will must unite me to Thearchus, whom I cannot love; but the undying flame of first affection will only make me more miserable."

Zeuxis was silent. He loved his daughter with exceeding tenderness; yet burning ambition presented a paramount claim, and would not permit him again to delay the nuptials on which he had resolved. He kissed the tears from the cheeks of Cassandra, and was about to retire for the night; but the maiden seized his hand, and, looking imploringly in his face, said:

"Hear me once more, dear father, ere the decree of my unhappiness shall have irrevocably gone forth. Hope whispers in my ear that the prophetic taunt of Parrhasius may yet be verified. Thou well knowest the genius and spirit of that youth, and I know thy gentle nature will now forgive him the utterance of words spoken in passion. Forgive, and Cassandra will be happy."

"For thy sake," replied Zeuxis, "I will pardon the rashness of the Ephesian boy. But why thy hope? Wouldst thou see thy father rivaled, and the voice of Athens—of the world—loud in praises of another?"

"No," replied Cassandra, "it is not for that I hope; but thy daughter loves Parrhasius, and she desires to see him worthy of that love in the eyes of her father. This is the foundation of my hope. Is it not just?"

"Truly, such an aspiration is worthy of my daughter," replied Zeuxis; and again bidding her good night, he was about to depart. But the maiden still clung to his hand.

"One word more," she exclaimed; "one more boon, and your Cassandra will be completely happy. Promise me that I shall wed Parrhasius if his prediction be fulfilled."

"I promise," replied Zeuxis, conscious that her hopes were groundless, and that the last day of the festival would witness the nuptials of Thearchus and Cassandra, and thus crown his paternal ambition with a more valued bay than the laurel of the victor.

On the following morning Zeuxis prepared for the games. Just at the moment of starting a helot approached him with a small roll directed to "Zeuxis, the unrivaled painter of Greece." He was delighted with the flattering superscription, and, having unbound it, read:

Parrhasius, the plebeian boy of Ephesus, to Zeuxis, the great Athenian artist: Greeting. Ten days, and the games of Olympia will terminate. On the ninth I challenge thee to a trial of skill. The subject is left to the choice of the challenged.

Zeuxis rent the challenge in a thousand pieces, and, burning with rage, exclaimed: "Tell your master that Zeuxis stoops not to compete with plebeians! Tell him I trample his insolent challenge beneath my feet, even as I would crush its author. Begone! Gods, has it come to this?" continued he. "Must I first bear the taunts of that boy, and then, in the face of thousands, have him challenge me to a trial? I know him well. If I refuse, a herald will proclaim that refusal in every street of Athens, and the gymnasium and the circus will ring with my shame. It must not be." And he commanded the helot to return.

"Tell your master," said Zeuxis, "that I accept his challenge: the subject, fruit." The helot departed.

"Now," said Zeuxis, "my triumph will be complete, and Cassandra's delusion will be broken. Now will I prove the insolent Ephesian unworthy of my exalted notice and the noble Cassandra's love. It is well. Destiny bids me stoop to the trial, only to add another laurel to my brow!" And Zeuxis, with haughty step, proceeded to the circus.

Within a few hours all Athens was in commotion. A new impulse had been given to the public excitement, and the first sound that fell upon the ear of Zeuxis as he entered the circus was the voice of a herald proclaiming that an Ephesian painter had challenged the great artist to a trial of skill.

The voice of the herald also sounded throughout the streets of Athens, and fell like sweetest symphony upon the ear of Cassandra. She knew not the name of the competitor, but the revealings of hope and love assured her that it was none other than Parrhasius. And that hope and that love also gave her assurance that her beloved one would be the victor, and that holy affection rather than proud ambition would be crowned by the hand of Astrea.

The time fixed upon for the trial arrived. The thousands who had congregated in Athens to witness the games flowed like a living torrent through the eastern gate of the city, and halted upon a hill overlooking a flowery plain bordering upon the Ilyssus. The sun had journeyed half his way toward the meridian, when amid the thundering shouts of applause of the populace, Zeuxis, with a proud and haughty step, left the pavilion of the judges, and with a tablet in his hand, on which was painted a cluster of grapes, proceeded to the plain. Upon a small column erected for the purpose, near a grove, the artist placed his painting, and, withdrawing the curtain that concealed it, returned to the pavilion. The multitude was astonished, for they expected to feast their eyes on the production of the great artist. Murmurs of dissatisfaction ran through the crowd, and a few loudly denounced the conduct of Zeuxis in placing the picture beyond their observation.

Suddenly a deafening shout, and a cry of "Zeuxis and Athens!" arose from the throng. A whole bevy of birds from the grove had alighted upon the column, and eagerly sought to devour the pictured fruit!

This decision of the birds of heaven was deemed sufficient evidence of the superiority of the Athenian painter, and the people clamored loudly for the crown of laurels and the branch of palm for Zeuxis. His competitor had not yet been seen, either in the crowd or with the judges; and Zeuxis gloried in the thought that his conscious inferiority had made him shrink from the trial. The branch of palm was placed in the Athenian's hand, and a virgin was about to place the crown of evergreen upon his head, when, from a small tent opposite the pavilion of the judges, stepped forth the "Ephesian boy," pale and trembling, and, with a tablet in his hand, approached the multitude. Not a single voice greeted him, for he was unknown to that vast concourse, and the silence weighed like lead upon his heart. There was, however, one heart there that beat in sympathy with his own. It was that of Cassandra. She, too, stood pale and trembling; and by her side was Thearchus, watching with intense anxiety for the result.

Parrhasius drew near to his rival. At first he would not deign to notice him; but a few faint voices crying out, "Victory for Parrhasius!" the judges demanded an exhibition of the picture of the Ephesian. Turning around, with ill-concealed rage, Zeuxis, with a bitter, scornful tone cried out, "Come, away with your curtain, that the assemblage may see what goodly affair you have beneath it!"

Parrhasius handed the tablet to his rival. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet, he could not have been more astounded. The curtain was painted upon the tablet, and so exquisitely was it wrought that even the practised eye of the great painter did not till then detect the deception!

"I yield! I yield!" cried the Athenian; "Zeuxis beguiled poor birds, but Parrhasius hath deceived Zeuxis! Bring hither the laurel and also the palm: my hand, and mine alone, shall crown the young victor!"

"And thy promise!" exclaimed Cassandra, bounding forward and grasping the hand of her father.

"I here fulfil it," said he. "Parrhasius is indeed worthy of my Cassandra. Embrace and be happy!"

The laurel and the palm were brought—and there, in the presence of assembled thousands, Zeuxis crowned the young Ephesian. Then, mounting a pedestal, he addressed the assembled multitude. He recounted the pure love and constancy of Parrhasius and Cassandra, and told of his promise; he also tenderly related his engagement with Thearchus.

He was proceeding to vindicate himself from the imputation of treachery to Thearchus, when another deafening shout arose from the assembly, as a noble youth came from the pavilion with a branch of palm and placed it in the hands of Cassandra. It was Thearchus. He had before heard and now witnessed the devotion of the lovers, and his generous heart melted at the spectacle. He had tenderly loved the maiden, but he magnanimously resigned all.

"Laurels for Thearchus!" shouted the vast multitude—and Thearchus, too, was crowned victor, for he had conquered love.

Matrons and virgins strewed the path of Parrhasius and Cassandra with flowers, as they returned to the city; and on the following day their nuptials were celebrated with a splendor fully adequate to the wishes of the ambitious Zeuxis, for the city made the marriage a high festival in honor of Genius and Constancy.

The games ended; the city became quiet. A few years of happiness cast their sunlight around the footsteps of the great painter, and he went down into the tomb honored and mourned by a nation—by the world, wherever his fame was known. His mantle fell upon Parrhasius, who is revered by Genius as the greatest painter of antiquity.

Ideals. Every man has at times in his mind, the ideal of what he should be, but is not. The ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character. Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself.—Theodore Parker. (1810-1860.)

LITTLE GEMS FROM TENNYSON.

Willow whiten, aspen quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers,

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle embowers

The Lady of Shalott.

From "The Lady of Shalott."

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream!

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,

Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;

To hear each other's whispered speech;

Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory,

With those old faces of our infancy

Heaped over with a mound of grass—

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!

From "The Lotos-Eaters."

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little.

From "Ulysses."

The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow! Set the wild echoes flying!

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes—dying, dying, dying.

Song from "The Princess."

Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know

The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink

Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free:

For she that out of Lethe scales with man

The shining steps of Nature, shares with man

His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal,

Stays all the fair young planet in her hands—

If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,

How shall men grow?

From "The Princess."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands:

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

From "Locksley Hall."

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new,

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

From "Locksley Hall."

This is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

From "Locksley Hall."

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark.

From "Crossing the Bar."

O love! O fire! once he drew

With one long kiss my whole soul through

My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

From "Fatima."

God gives us love. Something to love

He lends us; but when love is grown

To ripeness, that on which it throve

Falls off, and love is left alone.

Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace!

Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,

While the stars burn, the moons increase,

And the great ages onward roll.

From poem "To J.S."

That tower of strength

Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.

From "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington."

The old order changeth, yielding place to new;

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

From "The Passing of Arthur."

Howe'er it be, it seems to me

'T is only noble to be good;

Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood.

From "Lady Clara Vere de Vere."

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;

A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;

But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

From "The Grandmother."

And on her lover's arm she leant,

And round her waist she felt it fold,

And far across the hills they went

In that new world which is the old.

From "The Day-Dream."

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

From "In Memoriam."

HOW TO TELL A WOMAN'S AGE.

Two Ways of Securing Certain Valuable and Closely Guarded Information Which the

Fair Sex Defies Even the Courts to Extract.

Few mysteries are at once so impenetrable and so irritating as that which surrounds a truthful woman who declines to take you into her confidence when the subject of her age is mentioned. But even women who are truthful and secretive are curious, and when a friend tells them that he can solve the mystery in spite of them they may easily fall into a certain mathematical snare.

Tell the young woman to put down the number of the month in which she was born, then to multiply it by 2, then add 5, then to multiply it by 50, then to add her age, then to add 115, then to subtract 365, and finally to tell you the amount that she has left.

The two figures to the right will tell her age, and the remainder the month of her birth. For example, the amount is 822; she is twenty-two years old, and was born in the eighth month (August).

Then there is another method.

Just hand this table to a young lady, and request her to tell you in which column or columns her age is contained, and add together the figures at the top of the columns in which her age is found, and you have the great secret. Thus, suppose her age to be seventeen, you will find that number in the first and fifth columns. Here is the magic table:

1

2

4

8

16

32

3

3

5

9

17

33

5

6

6

10

18

34

7

7

7

11

19

35

9

10

12

12

20

36

11

11

13

13

21

37

13

14

14

14

22

38

15

15

15

15

23

39

17

18

20

24

24

40

19

19

21

25

25

41

21

22

22

26

26

42

23

23

23

27

27

43

25

26

28

28

28

44

27

27

29

29

29

45

29

30

30

30

30

46

31

31

31

31

31

47

33

34

36

40

48

48

35

35

37

41

49

49

37

38

38

42

50

50

39

39

39

43

51

51

41

42

44

44

52

52

43

43

45

45

53

53

45

46

46

46

54

54

47

47

47

47

55

55

49

50

52

56

56

56

51

51

53

57

57

57

53

54

54

58

58

58

55

55

55

59

59

59

57

58

60

60

60

60

59

59

61

61

61

61

61

62

62

62

62

62

63

63

63

63

63

63

ODDITIES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE.

Despite the veneration in which it has been held by mankind for the last nineteen hundred years, the Bible has fared almost as badly at the hands of translators and printers as books of far less importance. Errors made in the course of translating and printing have caused various nicknames to be applied to the editions. Some of the more extraordinary of these editions were described in a recently published catalogue as follows:

The Gutenberg Bible (1450)—The earliest book known. Printed from movable metal types, is the Latin Bible issued by Gutenberg, at Mayence.

The Bug Bible (1551)—Was so called from its rendering of the Psalms xci:5: "Afraid of bugs by night." Our present version reads: "Terror by night."

The Breeches Bible—The Geneva version is that popularly known as the Breeches Bible, from its rendering of Genesis iii:7: "Making themselves breeches out of fig-leaves." This translation of the Scriptures—the result of the labors of the English exiles at Geneva—was the English family Bible during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and till supplanted by the present authorized version of King James I.

The Place-Makers' Bible (1562)—From a remarkable typographical error which occurs in Matthew v:9: "Blessed are the place-makers," instead of "peace-makers."

The Treacle Bible (1568)—From its rendering of Jeremiah viii:22: "Is there no treacle [instead of balm] in Gilead?"

The Rosin Bible (1609)—From the same text, but translated "rosin."

The Thumb Bible (1670)—Being one inch square and half an inch thick; was published at Aberdeen.

The Vinegar Bible (1717)—So named from the head-line of the twentieth chapter of Luke, which reads: "The Parable of the Vinegar," instead of the "vineyard."

The Printers' Bible—We are told by Cotton Mather that in a Bible printed prior to 1702 a blundering typographer made King David exclaim: "Printers [instead of princes] persecuted him without a cause." See Psalms cxix:161.

The Murderers' Bible (1801)—So called from an error in the sixteenth verse of the Epistle of Jude, the word "murderers" being used instead of "murmurers."

The Caxton Memorial Bible (1877)—Wholly printed and bound in twelve hours, but only one hundred copies struck off.

However much truth there may be in the stories of the dissolute conduct of Shakespeare, there is abundant proof of the fact that the Bible was one of his favorite books. Indeed, his admiration for the Scriptures carried him so far that he frequently incorporated Bible sentences in his plays. The following are examples:

Bible—"But though I be rude in speech."—2 Corinthians xi:6.

Othello—"Rude am I in speech."

Bible—"To consume thine eyes and to grieve thine heart."—1 Samuel ii:33.

Macbeth—"Shew his eyes and grieve his heart."

Bible—"Look not upon me because I am black; because the sun hath looked upon me."—Song of Solomon i:6.

Merchant of Venice—"Mislike me not for my complexion—the shadowed livery of the burnished sun."

Bible—"I caught him by his beard and smote him and slew him."—1 Samuel xvii:35.

Othello—"I took by the throat the circumcised dog, and smote him."

Bible—"Opened Job his mouth and cursed his day; let it not be joined unto the days of the year; let it not come into the number of months."—Job.

Macbeth—"May this accursed hour stand ay accursed in the calendar."

Bible—"What is man that Thou art mindful of him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands."—Psalms viii:4; Hebrews ii:6.

Hamlet—"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason; how infinite in faculties; in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel; in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world—the paragon of animals."

Bible—"Nicanor lay dead in his harness."—Maccabees xvii:12.

Macbeth—"We'll die with harness on our backs."

The Prophecies of Bonaparte.

Remarkable Manuscript Found in the Exiled Emperor's Desk on the

Island of Elba before Waterloo.

That the first Napoleon was exceedingly superstitious is well known. He was a devout believer in dream warnings, and he was a patron of palmists, clairvoyants, and astrologers. Like many another great man, the famous emperor sometimes was prone to indulge in prophetic utterances himself.

One of the most interesting of the compositions of Napoleon is a remarkable prophecy which, in the emperor's own handwriting, was found in his desk on the island of Elba. The document was discovered by Captain Campbell, in 1815. It is as follows:

The foundation of our political society is so defective and tottering that it threatens ruin; the fall will be terrible, and all the nations on the continent will be involved in it; no human force can arrest the course of events.

All civilized Europe will find itself in the position in which a part of Italy once was under the Cæsars.

The storm of the Revolution, some clouds of which will extend over France, will soon cover all that portion of the globe which we inhabit with a frightful darkness.

The world can be saved only by shedding torrents of blood; a terrible and violent hurricane can alone purge the poisonous air which envelops Europe.

I only could have saved the world, and no other.

I would have given it the chalice of suffering to empty at a single draft; instead of which it must now drink it drop by drop.

That which is now fermenting in Spain and at Rome will soon cause a general commotion. Then the crisis will be terrible.

I know men and the age; I would have hastened the advent of happiness on earth, if those with whom I had to deal had not been villains. They accuse me of having despised and enslaved them; their own groveling spirit and thirst for gold and distinction brought them to my feet. Could I take one step without crushing them? I did not need to spread snares in their path; it sufficed to present to them the cup of worldly riches and honors. Then, like a swarm of hungry flies, they precipitated themselves on their prey. The slaves needed a master, but I had no need of slaves.

What shall we think of forty millions of people who complain bitterly of the oppression of a single individual!

Cupidity, envy, vanity, false glory, pursue them like furies through this stormy life; they talk incessantly of virtue, generosity, and love, while, like an incurable cancer, envy, interest, and ambition are gnawing the inner folds of their hearts. They carefully conceal their wickedness, and feign a virtue which they do not possess; they reciprocally lavish flatteries on one another. Though no one of them believes in the honor of the rest, nevertheless, through weakness, they play together the parts they have learned, for want of courage to show themselves such as they are.

The best among them are those who are most condemned, because they do not know how to feign, and the false virtue of the rest gives more éclat to their crimes.

Nothing is more revolting to me than this mania for falsehood, to which I have sometimes been myself obliged to make sacrifices, that I might not expose others.

Their private life is but a constant series of boasting, a disconnected conversation, the repetition of a part carefully studied.

As I saw everywhere that ambition and interest prevailed (taking from all and giving to none), that all wished to command and no one wished to obey, I resolved to terminate this insensate dispute, by taking from all what they desired so eagerly and could not possess; thus, the men who loudly demanded liberty were compelled to learn to know it, and appreciate it by a blind obedience.

It was in this manner that by a voluntary reciprocity each one recovered his due.

Renouncing all these frivolous manners, all these theatrical caricatures of our times, let us be more sincere; less of courtiers, more serious, more reflective, and less apish. This is a sure method, if there is one, of renewing the Golden Age.

For myself, I care very little what may be said, thought, or written of me. I have been accused of having done, and suffered to be done, much evil.

When the storm hovers over the surface of the earth, to purify the air and fertilize the mountains, ought we to complain if, in its course, it carries away roofs and loose tiles, or shakes off the fruits of trees? Even the sun, when he sheds his beneficent light upon the Arctic pole, kills and scorches all vital plants beneath his meridian.

With the amiable popularity of a Cæsar and of a Henry IV, I might not have found, it is true, a single Brutus, but a hundred Ravaillacs.

Although I care little for the people, because they are fickle, flattering, cruel, and capricious as children (for they are always such) and trample beneath their feet to-day those they idolized yesterday, nevertheless I would have promoted their welfare, more than those who have so basely betrayed them.

REJECTED BOOKS THAT WON FAME.

"Ben-Hur," "Vanity Fair," "Jane Eyre," and Scores of Other Masterpieces Were

"Declined With Thanks" by Several Publishers.

There used to be an old superstition that a flash of lightning would turn milk sour. This is the sort of effect produced upon a young author by the rejection of a manuscript by a publisher. As the author becomes older, more successful, and more experienced, such incidents do not discourage him, and if he sighs at all, the sigh is one of commiseration for the publisher who cannot appreciate a really good thing when he sees it.

The owner of a rejected manuscript is in good company, for many of the more celebrated works of literature have been summarily returned to their authors by unappreciative publishers.

Few books published in the United States have yielded to their publishers and authors larger returns than "Ben-Hur," by the late Lew Wallace, and yet the manuscript had been rejected by nearly every first-class publisher in this country before it finally was accepted by the Harpers, to whom it was submitted for the second time.

"Rejected Addresses," by Horace and James Smith, was offered to Mr. Murray for twenty pounds, but refused. A publisher, however, purchased it, and, after sixteen editions, Mr. Murray gave a hundred and thirty pounds for the right to issue a new edition. The total amount received by the authors was more than a thousand pounds.

"Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Brontë, was, it is said, rejected by several publishers. This, however, is rather doubtful. We believe the manuscript was sent to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., in Cornhill, and there it remained for a long time, till a daughter of one of the publishers read it and recommended her father to publish it. The result is well known. It brought the author fame and money.

"Eöthen," by Mr. Kinglake, was offered to twenty different houses. All refused it. He then, in a fit of desperation, gave the manuscript to an obscure bookseller and found the expenses of publication himself. This also proved a success.

"Vanity Fair," that most famous work of Thackeray's, was written for Colburn's Magazine, but it was refused by the publishers as having no interest.

"The History of Ferdinand and Isabella," by Mr. Prescott, was rejected by two of the first publishers in London, and it ultimately appeared under the auspices of Mr. Bentley, who stated that it had more success than any book he had ever published.

The author of "The Diary of a Late Physician" for a long time sought a publisher, and unsuccessfully. At last he gave the manuscript to Blackwood's Magazine, where it first appeared and was very successful.

The first volume of Hans Andersen's "Fairy Tales" was rejected by every publisher in Copenhagen. Andersen had then neither name nor popularity, and published this exquisite book at his own expense, a proceeding which soon brought him into notoriety.

Miss Jane Austen's novels, models of writing at this day, at first met with no success. One of them, "Northanger Abbey," was purchased by a publisher in Bath for ten pounds. After paying this sum, he was afraid to risk any further money in its publication, and it remained many years in his possession before he ventured upon the speculation, which, to his surprise, turned out very profitable.

The poet Shelley had always to pay for the publication of his poems.

The "Ode on the Death of Sir John Moore at Corunna" was written by Rev. Charles Wolfe. It was rejected so scornfully by a leading periodical that the author gave it to an obscure Irish paper.

Con Cregan's Legacy.

BY CHARLES LEVER.

Charles James Lever (1806—1872) remains the most popular novelist that Ireland has ever produced. He was born in Dublin and studied medicine both there and in Germany. After practising his profession for several years, he began to write his novels of Irish life, the first of which, "Harry Lorrequer," appeared serially in the Dublin University Magazine in 1837. This story caught the fancy of the public at once, by its unrestrained spirit of rollicking fun, verging often upon farce. The flow of animal spirits which Lever displayed was even more conspicuous in the most popular of all his books, "Charles O'Malley," and in the succeeding novels, "Jack Hinton," "Tom Burke of Ours," and "The Confessions of Con Cregan," from the last of which the accompanying selection is taken.

Wit and humor are blended in everything that Lever wrote, and he had a keen eye for the grotesque. His later years were largely spent upon the Continent, and he died at Trieste, where he had been British consul for many years. He and Samuel Lover afford the best examples of Celtic wit that are to be found in literature.

When, my worthy reader, we shall have become better acquainted, there will be little necessity for my insisting upon a fact which, at this early stage of our intimacy, I deem it requisite to mention; namely, that my native modesty and bashfulness are only second to my veracity, and that while the latter quality in a manner compels me to lay an occasional stress upon my own goodness of heart, generosity, candor, and so forth, I have, notwithstanding, never introduced the subject without a pang—such a pang as only a sensitive and diffident nature can suffer or comprehend; there now, not another word of preface or apology!

I was born in a little cabin on the borders of Meath and King's County; it stood on a small triangular bit of ground, beside a cross-road; and although the place was surveyed every ten years or so, they were never able to say to which county we belonged, there being just the same number of arguments for one side as for the other—a circumstance, many believed, that decided my father in his original choice of the residence; for while, under the "disputed boundary question," he paid no rates or county cess, he always made a point of voting at both county elections!

This may seem to indicate that my parent was of a naturally acute habit; and indeed the way he became possessed of the bit of ground will confirm that impression.

There was nobody of the rank of gentry in the parish, nor even "squireen"; the richest being a farmer, a snug old fellow, one Henry McCabe, that had two sons, who were always fighting between themselves which was to have the old man's money. Peter, the elder, doing everything to injure Mat, and Mat never backward in paying off the obligation. At last Mat, tired out in the struggle, resolved he would bear no more. He took leave of his father one night, and next day set off for Dublin, and 'listed in the "Buffs."

Three weeks after, he sailed for India; and the old man, overwhelmed by grief, took to his bed, and never arose from it.

Not that his death was anyway sudden, for he lingered on for months longer; Peter always teasing him to make his will, and be revenged on "the dirty spalpeen" that disgraced the family; but old Harry as stoutly resisting, and declaring that whatever he owned should be fairly divided between them.

These disputes between them were well known in the neighborhood. Few of the country people passing the house at night but had overheard the old man's weak, reedy voice and Peter's deep, hoarse one, in altercation. When at last—it was on a Sunday night—all was still and quiet in the house; not a word, not a footstep, could be heard, no more than if it were uninhabited, the neighbors looked knowingly at each other, and wondered if the old man were worse—if he were dead!

It was a little after midnight that a knock came to the door of our cabin. I heard it first, for I used to sleep in a little snug basket near the fire; but I didn't speak, for I was frightened.

It was repeated still louder, and then came a cry—"Con Cregan; Con, I say, open the door! I want you."

I knew the voice well; it was Peter McCabe's; but I pretended to be fast asleep, and snored loudly. At last my father unbolted the door, and I heard him say, "Oh, Mr. Peter, what's the matter? Is the ould man worse?"

"Faix that's what he is! for he's dead!"

"Glory be his bed! When did it happen?"

"About an hour ago," said Peter, in a voice that even I from my corner could perceive was greatly agitated. "He died like an ould haythen, Con, and never made a will!"

"That's bad," says my father, for he was always a polite man, and said whatever was pleasing to the company.

"It is bad," said Peter; "but it would be worse if we couldn't help it. Listen to me now, Corny, I want ye to help me in this business; and here's five guineas in goold, if ye do what I bid ye. You know that ye were always reckoned the image of my father, and before he took ill ye were mistaken for each other every day of the week."

"Anan!" said my father; for he was getting frightened at the notion, without well knowing why.

"Well, what I want is, for ye to come over to the house, and get into the bed."

"Not beside the corpse?" said my father, trembling.

"By no means, but by yourself; and you're to pretend to be my father, and that ye want to make yer will before ye die; and then I'll send for the neighbors, and Billy Scanlan, the schoolmaster, and ye'll tell him what to write, laving all the farm and everything to me—ye understand. And as the neighbors will see ye, and hear yer voice, it will never be believed but that it was himself that did it."

"The room must be very dark," said my father.

"To be sure it will, but have no fear! Nobody will dare to come nigh the bed; and ye'll only have to make a cross with yer pen under the name."

"And the priest?" said my father.

"My father quarreled with him last week about the Easter dues: and Father Tom said he'd not give him the 'rites': and that's lucky now! Come along now, quick, for we've no time to lose: it must be all finished before the day breaks."

My father did not lose much time at his toilet, for he just wrapped his big coat 'round him, and slipping on his brogues, left the house. I sat up in the basket and listened till they were gone some minutes; and then, in a costume as light as my parent's, set out after them, to watch the course of the adventure. I thought to take a short cut, and be before them; but by bad luck I fell into a bog-hole, and only escaped being drowned by a chance. As it was, when I reached the house the performance had already begun.

I think I see the whole scene this instant before my eyes, as I sat on a little window with one pane, and that a broken one, and surveyed the proceeding. It was a large room, at one end of which was a bed, and beside it a table, with physic bottles, and spoons, and teacups; a little farther off was another table, at which sat Billy Scanlan, with all manner of writing materials before him.

The country people sat two, sometimes three, deep round the walls, all intently eager and anxious for the coming event. Peter himself went from place to place, trying to smother his grief, and occasionally helping the company to whisky—which was supplied with more than accustomed liberality.

All my consciousness of the deceit and trickery could not deprive the scene of a certain solemnity. The misty distance of the half-lighted room; the highly wrought expression of the country people's faces, never more intensely excited than at some moment of this kind; the low, deep-drawn breathings, unbroken save by a sigh or a sob—the tribute of affectionate sorrow to some lost friend, whose memory was thus forcibly brought back: these, I repeat it, were all so real, that, as I looked, a thrilling sense of awe stole over me, and I actually shook with fear.

A low, faint cough, from the dark corner where the bed stood, seemed to cause even a deeper stillness; and then in a silence where the buzzing of a fly would have been heard, my father said, "Where's Billy Scanlan? I want to make my will!"

"He's here, father!" said Peter, taking Billy by the hand and leading him to the bedside.

"Write what I bid ye, Billy, and be quick; for I haven't a long time afore me here. I die a good Catholic, though Father O'Rafferty won't give me the 'rites'!"

A general chorus of muttered "Oh! musha, musha," was now heard through the room; but whether in grief over the sad fate of the dying man, or the unflinching severity of the priest, is hard to say.

"I die in peace with all my neighbors and all mankind!"

Another chorus of the company seemed to approve these charitable expressions.

"I bequeath unto my son, Peter—and never was there a better son, or a decenter boy!—have you that down? I bequeath unto my son, Peter, the whole of my two farms of Killimundoonery and Knocksheboora, with the fallow meadows, behind Lynch's house, the forge, and the right of turf on the Dooran bog. I give him, and much good may it do him, Lantry Cassarn's acre, and the Luary field, with the limekiln; and that reminds me that my mouth is just as dry; let me taste what ye have in the jug."

Here the dying man took a very hearty pull, and seemed considerably refreshed by it.

"Where was I, Billy Scanlan?" says he; "oh, I remember, at the limekiln; I leave him—that's Peter, I mean, the two potato gardens at Noonan's Well; and it is the elegant fine crops grows there."

"Ain't you gettin' wake, father darlin'?" says Peter, who began to be afraid of my father's loquaciousness; for, to say the truth, the punch got into his head, and he was greatly disposed to talk.

"I am, Peter, my son," says he; "I am getting wake; just touch my lips agin with the jug. Ah, Peter, Peter, you watered the drink!"

"No, indeed, father; but it's the taste is lavin' you," says Peter; and again a low chorus of compassionate pity murmured through the cabin.

"Well, I'm nearly done now," says my father: "there's only one little plot of ground remaining; and I put it on you, Peter—as ye wish to live a good man, and die with the same easy heart I do now—that ye mind my last words to ye here. Are ye listening? Are the neighbors listening? Is Billy Scanlan listening?"

"Yes, sir. Yes, father. We're all minding," chorused the audience.

"Well, then, it's my last will and testament, and may—give me over the jug"—here he took a long drink—"and may that blessed liquor be poison to me if I'm not as eager about this as every other part of my will; I say, then, I bequeath the little plot at the crossroads to poor Con Cregan; for he has a heavy charge, and is as honest and as hardworking a man as ever I knew. Be a friend to him, Peter dear; never let him want while ye have it yourself; think of me on my deathbed whenever he asks ye for any trifle. Is it down, Billy Scanlan? the two acres at the cross to Con Cregan, and his heirs in secla seclorum. Ah, blessed be the saints! but I feel my heart lighter after that," says he; "a good work makes an easy conscience; and now I'll drink the company's good health, and many happy returns——"

What he was going to add, there's no saying; but Peter, who was now terribly frightened at the lively tone the sick man was assuming, hurried all the people away into another room, to let his father die in peace.

When they were all gone, Peter slipped back to my father, who was putting on his brogues in a corner: "Con," says he, "ye did it all well; but sure that was a joke about the two acres at the cross."

"Of course it was, Peter," says he; "sure it was all a joke for the matter of that: won't I make the neighbors laugh to-morrow when I tell them all about it!"

"You wouldn't be mean enough to betray me?" says Peter, trembling with fright.

"Sure ye wouldn't be mean enough to go against yer father's dying words?" says my father; "the last sentence ever he spoke;" and here he gave a low, wicked laugh, that made myself shake with fear.

"Very well, Con!" says Peter, holding out his hand; "a bargain's a bargain; yer a deep fellow, that's all!" and so it ended; and my father slipped quietly home over the bog, mighty well satisfied with the legacy he left himself.

And thus we became the owners of the little spot known to this day as Con's Acre.

GEORGE III SOUGHT HEAVEN'S AID.

The British Sovereign Proclaimed a General Fast and Commanded His Subjects to Humble

Themselves to Win the Divine Favor in Their War with the American Colonies.

When the American colonies rebelled against King George, England was not so easy in her view of the situation as is often assumed. The reader who may stumble upon a copy of the London Gazette for October, 1776, will find therein this:

PROCLAMATION FOR A GENERAL FAST.

George R.

We, taking into our most serious Consideration the just and necessary Measures of Force which We are obliged to use against Our rebellious Subjects in Our Colonies and Provinces in North America and Putting Our Trust in Almighty God, that He will vouchsafe a special Blessing on Our Arms both by Sea and Land, have resolved, and do, by and with the Advice of Our Privy Council, hereby command, That a Publick Fast and Humiliation be observed throughout that Part of Our Kingdom of Great Britain called England, Our Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed, upon Friday the 13th Day of December next; and so both We and Our People may humble Ourselves before Almighty God, in order to obtain Pardon of Our Sins; and may, in the most devout and solemn Manner, send up our Prayers and Supplications to the Devine Majesty, for averting those heavy Judgments which Our manifold Sins and Provocations have most justly deserved, and for imploring his Intervention and Blessing speedily to deliver Our loyal Subjects within Our Colonies and Provinces in North America from the Violence, Injustice, and Tyranny, of those daring Rebels who have assumed to themselves the Exercise of Arbitrary Power; to open the Eyes of those who have been deluded by specious Falsehoods into Acts of Treason and Rebellion; to turn the Hearts of the Authors of these Calamities, and finally to restore Our People in those distracted Provinces and Colonies to the happy Condition of being free Subjects of a free State; under which heretofore they flourished so long and prospered so much.

And We do strictly charge and command, That the said Publick Fast be reverently and devoutly observed by all Our loving Subjects in England, Our Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed, as they tender the Favour of Almighty God, and would avoid His Wrath and Indignation; and upon Pain of such Punishment as We may justly inflict upon all such as contemn and neglect the Performance of so religious a Duty. And, for the better and more orderly solemnizing the same, We have given Directions to the Most Reverend the Archbishops, and the Right Reverend the Bishops of England, to compose a Form of Prayer, suitable to this Occasion, to be used in all Churches, Chapels, and Places of Publick Worship, and to take Care the same be timely dispersed throughout their respective Dioceses. Given at Our Court at St. James, the Thirtieth Day of October, One Thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, in the Seventeenth Year of Our Reign.

HOW PUNSTERS SMITE THE LYRE.

THE AHKOOND OF SWAT.

By George Thomas Lanigan.

(This famous poem appeared in the New York Sun in January, 1876. Mr. Lanigan wrote it the previous evening, on the arrival of a brief cablegram announcing the death of the Ahkoond of Swat, in British India.)

What, what, what,

What's the news from Swat?

Sad news,

Bad news,

Comes by the cable led

Through the Indian Ocean's bed,

Through the Persian Gulf, the Red

Sea, and the Med-

iterranean—he's dead;

The Ahkoond is dead!

For the Ahkoond I mourn;

Who wouldn't?

He strove to disregard the message stern,

But he Ahkoodn't.

Dead, dead, dead;

(Sorrow Swats!)

Swats wha hae wi' Ahkoond bled,

Swats whom he hath often led

Onward to a gory bed,

Or to victory,

As the case might be,

Sorrow Swats!

Tears shed,

Shed tears like water,

Your great Ahkoond is dead!

That Swats the matter!

Mourn, city of Swat!

Your great Ahkoond is not,

But lain 'mid worms to rot.

His mortal part alone; his soul was caught

(Because he was a good Ahkoond)

Up to the bosom of Mahound.

Though earthly walls his fame surround

(Forever hallowed be the ground!)

And skeptics mock the lowly mound

And say "He's now of no Ahkoond!"

His soul is in the skies—

The azure skies that bend above his loved

Metropolis of Swat.

He sees with larger, other eyes,

Athwart all earthly mysteries

He knows what's Swat.

Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond

With a noise of mourning and of lamentation!

Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond

With the noise of the mourning of the Swattish nation!

Fallen is at length

Its tower of strength,

Its sun is dimmed ere it had nooned;

Dead lies the great Ahkoond;

The great Ahkoond of Swat

Is not!

THE DYING SHOEMAKER.

"Dear wife, I'm waxing near my end,"

The dying cobbler said;

"Soon to an upper world my soul

Its lonely way must tread.

"I fear indeed I'm pegging out;

But then what boots it, love?

Here we've been a well-fitted pair,

And so we'll be above.

"My ills I know no drugs may heel,

So it's well to prepare;

We can't run counter to our fate—

Just put a peg in there.

"The future need not give you care,

I've left my awl to you;

For deep within my inner sole

I know that you've been true.

"I've always given you your rights,

But now you must be left;

However, do not grieve too much

When of me you're bereft.

"A last farewell I now will take."

He smiled and raised his head.

"B-last the cruel malady

That lays you low," she said.

"I'll slipper away in peace," he sighed;

"The strife will soon be past."

His head fell back, he sweetly smiled,

And then he breathed his last.

I WANT TO GO TO MORROW.

I started on a journey just about a week ago,

For the little town of Morrow, in the State of Ohio.

I never was a traveler, and really didn't know

That Morrow had been ridiculed a century or so.

I went down to the depot for my ticket, and applied

For the tips regarding Morrow, not expecting to be guyed.

Said I, "My friend, I want to go to Morrow and return

Not later than to-morrow, for I haven't time to burn."

Said he to me, "Now let me see if I have heard you right;

You want to go to Morrow and come back to-morrow night.

You should have gone to Morrow yesterday and back to-day,

For if you started yesterday to Morrow, don't you see,

You could have got to Morrow and returned to-day at three.

The train that started yesterday—now understand me right—

To-day it gets to Morrow, and returns to-morrow night."

Said I, "My boy, it seems to me you're talking through your hat,

Is there a town named Morrow on your line? Now tell me that."

"There is," said he, "and take from me a quiet little tip—

To go from here to Morrow is a fourteen-hour trip.

The train that goes to Morrow leaves to-day eight-thirty-five;

Half after ten to-morrow is the time it should arrive.

Now if from here to Morrow is a fourteen-hour jump,

Can you go to-day to Morrow and come back to-day, you chump?"

Said I, "I want to go to Morrow; can I go to-day

And get to Morrow by to-night, if there is no delay?"

"Well, well," said he, "explain to me and I've no more to say;

Can you go anywhere to-morrow and come back to-day?

For if to-day you'd get to Morrow, surely you'll agree

You should have started not to-day, but yesterday, you see.

So if you start to Morrow, leaving here to-day, you're flat,

You won't get in to Morrow till the day that follows that.

"Now if you start to-day to Morrow, it's a cinch you'll land

To-morrow into Morrow, not to-day, you understand.

For the train to-day to Morrow, if the schedule is all right,

Will get you into Morrow by about to-morrow night."

Said I, "I guess you know it all, but kindly let me say,

How can I go to Morrow if I leave the town to-day?"

Said he, "You cannot go to Morrow any more to-day,

For the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way."

FINALE.

I was so disappointed I was mad enough to swear;

The train had gone to Morrow and had left me standing there.

The man was right in telling me I was a howling jay;

I didn't go to Morrow, so I guess I'll go to-day.

THE WASHERWOMAN'S SONG.

Wring out the old, wring out the new,

Wring out the black, wring out the gray,

Wring out the white, wring out the blue—

And thus I wring my life away.

An occupation strange is mine;

At least it seems to people droll

That while I'm working at the line

I'm going on from pole to pole.

Where'er I go I strive to please,

From morn to night I rub and rub;

I'm something like Diogenes—

I almost live within a tub.

To acrobats who vault and spring

In circuses I take a shine;

They make their living in the ring,

And by the wringer I make mine.

My calling's humble, I'll agree,

But I am no cheap calico,

As some folks are who sneer at me;

I'm something that will wash, you know.

I smile in calm, I strive in storm,

With life's adversities I cope

My duties bravely to perform;

My motto—While there's life there's soap.

Wring out the old, wring out the new,

Wring out the black, wring out the gray,

Wring out the white, wring out the blue—

And thus I wring my life away.

Mr. Caudle Lends Five Pounds.

BY DOUGLAS JERROLD.

A Glimpse of English Domestic Life in Which the American Reader May

Find Here and There Something That Sounds Quite Familiar.

Editor, humorist, playwright, humanitarian, Douglas William Jerrold—to give him his seldom heard full name—was a winning figure in his period. He was born in London in 1803, the son of an actor and theater lessee. He had little schooling, but he was fond of books, and educated himself precociously by reading a wide range of literature in English, French, Italian, and Latin. Occasionally his father cast him for children's parts on the stage. For a time he served as a midshipman in the British navy, and later became a printer's apprentice. He was only fifteen when he wrote a comedy, "More Frightened Than Hurt," which was well received. His best-remembered play, "Black-Eyed Susan," was produced in 1829. All in all, he wrote more than forty plays, many of which enjoyed an ephemeral success.

Meantime he was constantly engaging in literary ventures. When Punch was founded, in 1841, he at once became a contributor, and he continued the connection until his death. "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," "Punch's Letters to His Son," and "Cakes and Ale" are well-known compilations of his papers in Punch.

Jerrold was a lovable man, of an easy-going, generous nature. Sociable, impulsive, simple, fiery—his faults were those of carelessness or haste.

When Mrs. Caudle was brought into public notice in the forties, the type was quickly recognized, and England and America chuckled aloud. Mrs. Caudle still lives—and will live as long as her sex; therefore, England and America still chuckle.

You ought to be very rich, Mr. Caudle. I wonder who'd lend you five pounds! But so it is: a wife may work and slave. Oh, dear! the many things that might have been done with five pounds! As if people picked up money in the streets! But you always were a fool, Mr. Caudle! I've wanted a black satin gown these three years, and that five pounds would have pretty well bought it. But it's no matter how I go—not at all. Everybody says I don't dress as becomes your wife—and I don't; but what's that to you, Mr. Caudle? Nothing. Oh, no! You can have fine feelings for everybody but those that belong to you. I wish people knew you as I do—that's all. You like to be called liberal and your poor family pays for it.

And the girls want bonnets, and when they're to get 'em I can't tell. Half five pounds would have bought 'em, but now they must go without. Of course they belong to you; and anybody but your own flesh and blood, Mr. Caudle.

The man called for the water-rate to-day; but I should like to know how people are to pay taxes who throw away five pounds to every fellow that asks them.

Perhaps you don't know that Jack, this morning, knocked the shuttlecock through his bedroom window. I was going to send for the glazier to mend it; but, after you lent that five pounds, I was sure we couldn't afford it. Oh, no; the window must go as it is; and pretty weather for a dear child to sleep with a broken window. He's got a cold already on his lungs, and I shouldn't at all wonder if that broken window settled him; if the dear boy dies, his death will be upon his father's head, for I'm sure we can't now pay to mend windows. We might, though, and do a good many more things, if people didn't throw away their five pounds.

Next Tuesday the fire-insurance is due. I should like to know how it's to be paid. Why, it can't be paid at all. That five pounds would have just done it, and now insurance is out of the question. And there never were so many fires as there are now. I shall never close my eyes all night; but what's that to you, so people can call you liberal, Mr. Caudle? Your wife and children may all be burnt alive in their beds, as all of us to a certainty shall be, for the insurance must drop. After we've insured for so many years! But how, I should like to know, are people to insure who make ducks and drakes of their five pounds?

I did think we might go to Margate this summer. There's poor Caroline, I'm sure she wants the sea. But no, dear creature, she must stop at home; she'll go into a consumption, there's no doubt of that; yes, sweet little angel. I've made up my mind to lose her now. The child might have been saved; but people can't save their children and throw away five pounds, too.

I wonder where little Cherub is? While you were lending that five pounds, the dog ran out of the shop. You know I never let it go into the street, for fear it should be bit by some mad dog and come home and bite the children. It wouldn't at all astonish me if the animal was to come back with hydrophobia and give it to all the family. However, what's your family to you, so you can play the liberal creature with five pounds?

Do you hear that shutter, how it's banging to and fro? Yes, I know what it wants as well as you: it wants a new fastening. I was going to send for the blacksmith to-day. But now it's out of the question: now it must bang of nights, since you have thrown away five pounds.

Well, things have come to a pretty pass! This is the first night I ever made my supper of roast beef without pickles. But who is to afford pickles when folk are always lending five pounds?

Do you hear the mice running about the room? I hear them. If they were only to drag you out of bed, it would be no matter. Set a trap for 'em? But how are people to afford the cheese, when every day they lose five pounds?

Hark! I'm sure there's a noise down-stairs. It wouldn't surprise me if there were thieves in the house. Well, it may be the cat; but thieves are pretty sure to come some night. There's a wretched fastening to the back door; but these are not times to afford bolts and bars, when fools won't take care of their five pounds.

Mary Anne ought to have gone to the dentist's to-morrow. She wants three teeth pulled out. Now it can't be done. Three teeth, that quite disfigures the child's mouth. But there they must stop, and spoil the sweetest face that was ever made. Otherwise she'd have been the wife for a lord. Now, when she grows up, who'll have her? Nobody. We shall die, and leave her alone and unprotected in the world. But what do you care for that? Nothing; so you can squander away five pounds.

And now, Mr. Caudle, see what misery you've brought on your wretched family! I can't have a satin gown—the girls can't have new bonnets—the water-rate must stand over—Jack must get his death through a broken window—our fire-insurance can't be paid, so we shall all be victims to the devouring element—we can't go to Margate, and Caroline will go to an early grave—the dog will come home and bite us all mad—that shutter will go banging forever—the mice never let us have a wink of sleep—the thieves be always breaking in the house—and our dear Mary Anne be forever left an unprotected maid—and all, all, Mr. Caudle, because you will go on lending five pounds!

How They Got On In The World.

Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Through

the Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.

Compiled and edited for THE SCRAP BOOK.

RISE OF A CHORE BOY.

Present Head of Stanford University Had

a Hard Row to Hoe in Order to

Get an Education.

David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University and the leading authority on fishes in the United States, was a farm boy from Gainsville, New York, when he joined the first class that entered Cornell University. He had little money, but he got along comfortably by waiting on table, husking corn, taking care of lawns, digging ditches and tutoring. It was the proper way to work through college, for he says: "A young man is not worth educating who cannot work through college that way."

He became an instructor in botany while still a junior, and he did so well that he attracted the attention of Andrew D. White, president of the university, who encouraged him and aided him in his work. The rounding of Jordan's education was completed by Louis Agassiz, with whom he studied three months in a shed on Penikese Island in Buzzard's Bay.

A Student of Fishes.

Jordan's attention was early drawn to the study of fishes, and the general ignorance concerning them determined him to make them his special line of work. As a source of food supply, fish stands close to meat, and millions of people depend on the fish supply rather than on meat. Yet concerning the habits, breeding, and geographical distribution of fish, there was little known. In studying his chosen subject Jordan has traveled more than two hundred thousand miles, and to-day he is the accepted authority on fish. Much of the important work accomplished by the United States Fish Commission, of which he has been a member since 1877, has been due to his initiative.

The value of American fisheries averages fifty million dollars annually, but for a long time the business was carried on in a haphazard fashion, and few naturalists thought it worth while to devote any considerable amount of attention to the study of fishes. Jordan did as much to change that state of affairs as any other man.

The breeding of food fish, now extensively carried on by the United States Government, is largely the result of his advice, and he has greatly increased the efficiency of the fishers by placing at their disposal new knowledge concerning the habits and migrations of food fish.

Selecting His Aids.

His work in connection with the fisheries was only part of what he has managed to crowd into a busy life. As professor of zoology at Indiana University he stimulated his pupils to a thorough study of their subject, and his influence in this department was felt even outside the university. It was while he was in Indiana that he was called to the presidency of Leland Stanford University. His first work was to bring together a faculty.

A big trunk full of applications for positions was turned over to him, and he was told he could do what he liked with them. He never opened the trunk. He knew the men he wanted for the various positions, and he drew them from Cornell and Indiana. To this day Jordan does not know even the names of the applicants.

The students who come under the influence of Dr. Jordan do not have a life of scholastic ease and idleness. Their president has said, "The problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger."

He accepted the presidency of Stanford University with the distinct understanding that he was to do nothing that it was possible to hire another man to do. As a result he has had a free hand, and has devoted himself to the larger affairs of the university's development. The result is that Stanford in a short time has been able to push well to the front as a solid and progressive place of learning.

Dr. Jordan is straightforward in his methods and utterances.

"You can't fasten a five-thousand-dollar education on a fifty-cent boy," he said, and that dictum has been his guide in conducting the university.

FATHER OF GERMAN STEEL.

Ambitious Manufacturer Died Poor, but

He Bequeathed His Great Purpose

to His Young Son.

Friedrich Krupp, the founder of the Krupp steel industry, died with all the work he had outlined uncompleted, but he died satisfied that all he had wished to do and all he had planned would in the course of time be brought to fulfilment. This first Krupp possessed a little money, and in 1818 he built a tiny furnace at Essen, in Prussia, and started in to manufacture steel. His declared intention was to make the little Prussian town of Essen a greater steel center than Sheffield, England.

In four years he lost all his money and his home. He moved to a small cottage, borrowed a few thousand marks, and again began operations. In four years more his health was shattered, the borrowed money was gone, and he died in absolute poverty.

The heir to his debts and his desire to manufacture steel was Alfred Krupp, a boy fourteen years old. The only thing else the boy had was the dilapidated furnace around which his father worked until it killed him. There was, however, a command from his father that he was resolved to obey.

"You are to make Essen the most famous steel-manufacturing place in the world," the dying Krupp had said. "Your mother will help you do it."

The boy and his mother then began to conduct the business. There were four workmen ready to assist them, and ready to trust them for the future payment of the wages that could not be paid during the first few months of operation.

Success came slowly. Every foot of the way had to be fought. Prussian-made steel was mistrusted, for at that time England was supreme in the art of steel-working. But the elder Krupp had been on the right track, and would have won if his strength had held out. Alfred Krupp, though a boy, was not afraid to do a man's work in the foundry during the day, and at night he attended to the business end of affairs. His mother assisted him in everything, working in the office, soliciting orders, performing the work of an overseer in the foundry, and attending to the household. By the time young Krupp was twenty-one the business had begun to move, and he was employing a score of workmen.

When the business was on such a solid basis that the future was assured, Alfred Krupp was urged to marry. He steadfastly refused. His father had left to him the task of looking after his mother, as well as that of building up the business of steel-making, and it was not until after Mrs. Krupp died in 1852 that her son took a wife.

Even when the business had begun to prosper, all was not easy for him. The Prussian government placed obstacles in his way, and it was not until 1859 that he received a government order for cannon. The "Cannon King" had at last been recognized, and it was he who thereafter armed the Prussian soldiers, and he made the batteries that wrought such havoc in the French forces in the war of 1870.

When he died in 1887 he left a plant in which twenty thousand men were employed. In Essen alone, at the present time, fifty thousand men find work, and at the Krupp shipyards, where the German battleships are constructed, and in the subsidiary Krupp industries, fifty thousand more are employed.

FRIGHTENED JAY GOULD.

Man Destined to Revolutionize Street

Railway Traffic Unwittingly Caused

Prospective "Angel" to Flee.

Frank J. Sprague, formerly president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, founder of the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company, and builder of the Richmond trolley line, was, in 1883, a lieutenant in the American navy. A future with a moderate amount of success was assured, and fame was possible. He was determined, however, to devote his attention to the study of electricity as a motive power. At that time there did not exist a single mile of trolley-line.

His friends vainly tried to dissuade him. He went to work with Edison to increase the knowledge of motors he had already acquired in the navy. He remained a year at Menlo Park and then organized the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company. It was capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars with nothing paid in. He was vice-president, electrician, treasurer, and man of all work, and was to get fifty dollars a week whenever the condition of the company warranted it.

One small room was both business office and laboratory. He earned a little money by building motors, and this enabled him, in 1886, to begin a series of experiments with motors of twelve horse-power. Officials from the Manhattan Elevated were interested in the trials, and one day Jay Gould came to see the new motors that could drive a truck along sixty feet of track.

The day Gould visited him, Sprague resolved to test the motor to the utmost. In suddenly reversing the current, an excess blew out the safety-catch, causing a big noise and a blinding flash of light. Gould gazed a moment, then hurried from the room and never came back.

Sprague was somewhat discouraged, but his confidence came back when Superintendent Chinnock, of the Pearl Street Edison station, offered him thirty thousand dollars for a one-sixth interest in the company. The offer was refused, though at the time Sprague did not have money enough to pay a month's board.

"Well," said the surprised Chinnock, "you're a fool!"

A few days later a successful trial was made before Cyrus W. Field, and Chinnock came back with an offer of twenty-five thousand dollars for a one-twelfth share. This was accepted, and later another twelfth was sold for a slightly higher price. The motors used in these experiments were the forerunners of the thousands now used on the trolley systems all over the world.

The first big public exhibition was given in August, 1887, and the New York Sun said next day:

They tried an electric car on Fourth Avenue yesterday. It created an amount of surprise and consternation from Thirty-Second Street to One Hundred and Seventeenth Street that was something like that caused by the first steamboat on the Hudson. Small boys yelled "Dynamite!" and "Rats!" and similar appreciative remarks until they were hoarse. Newly appointed policemen debated arresting it, but went no further. The car horses which were met on the other track kicked, without exception, as was natural, over an invention which threatens to relegate them to the sausage factory.

All that happened only nineteen years ago. To-day the trolley-lines of the country employ more than seventy thousand men.

The same year Sprague's company got the contract for the building of the Union Passenger Railroad at Richmond, Virginia. The methods were still primitive, but the success was unequivocal. The hills of Richmond, up which the mule, dragging a little car, had hitherto toiled, were now easily surmounted by smoothly running cars that could attain fair speed, and which operated with almost perfect precision.

The utility of the trolley road had been demonstrated on a large scale, and the old horse-car lines were equipped as speedily as possible for electric traction; new roads, embodying the new principle, were built, and hundreds of other roads were projected.

The stock of the Sprague concern, which went begging in 1885 and a twelfth of which could be bought for twenty-five thousand dollars two years later, went soaring, and the question of capital for the carrying out of experiments or for equipping projected lines, could now be had for the asking.

WORK WAS TOO EASY.

That Was Why the Man Who Was to

Build the Subway Resigned His

Position as a Municipal Clerk.

John B. McDonald, the builder of the New York City Subway, began work in the New York office of the Registry of Deeds. The work was easy and the pay was fairly good. On the whole, it was just such a place as thousands would look upon as highly desirable. McDonald thought otherwise, and during his spare time he studied hard at scientific subjects. He had been in the place a year when he came home one night with the announcement:

"I've thrown up my job."

"Why?"

"I want real work, and I'm going to have it."

He got it as timekeeper at the building of Boyd's Dam, part of the Croton water system. The work was just what he wanted, and it was not long before he became a foreman. Here his real ability showed itself, and he made such progress that when he was twenty-three he was inspector of masonry on the New York Central tunnel. Here he made his first bid for a sub-contract, and it was accepted. The first work he ever did as a builder was the big arch at Ninety-Sixth Street. He got other big contracts on the Boston and Hoosac Tunnel, the building of the Lackawanna road from Binghamton to Buffalo, the Georgian Bay branch of the Canadian Pacific, and a dozen other roads in various parts of the country.

All this was easy for him, and it was not until he began the tunnel under Baltimore for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that he got the real work he wanted. It was a tunnel through mud and quicksands, a tunnel that subterranean streams threatened constantly to destroy. Every day, in rubber coat and hip-boots, for five years, he worked at it, surmounting one obstacle after another, and finished a winner, having carried through one of the hardest underground jobs ever attempted.

While he was doing this he built the Jerome Park Reservoir—so as to keep himself busy, he said.

When he put in a bid five million dollars lower than his next competitor for the building of the New York Subway there was at first some hitch over the seven-million-dollar security demanded, and his rival was asked if he expected to get the contract by default.

"No," he said, "McDonald has that contract and he'll keep it. He never lets go."

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

Interesting Story of a Young Tenderfoot

Who Won Fortune, Fame, and Political

Honors in the West.

Edward O. Wolcott, the late Senator from Colorado, was one of the young Eastern men who set out, shortly after the Civil War, to explore the resources of the West.

For a time the struggle to make a living was a difficult one; but, quick to realize the low value that the pioneers placed upon Puritan ancestry and a collegiate education, he became successively a bank clerk, ticket seller for a theatrical company, and railroad employee, until he drifted to the small mining town of Georgetown, in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. There, at last, the reputation of "having an education" proved useful. The position of schoolmaster was offered to Mr. Wolcott and was accepted.

Gradually the city of Denver began to hear of the schoolmaster of Georgetown. His name was encountered frequently in the records as the possessor of various mining interests—oftentimes deeded to him for legal services in lieu of money consideration. Everything he touched seemed to pan out rich; and this brought him followers as adventurous as himself and ready to back his judgment with cash.

Finally, in 1890, two prospectors having exhausted their grubstake were returning wearily over the hills of Creede, when during a brief halt one of their burros wandered off to prospect for himself. After a long search, one of the prospectors found the animal standing in front of a large boulder. In telling the story afterward, the prospector never could tell whether the seemingly hypnotized gaze of the burro or something peculiar in the appearance of the outcrop attracted his attention; but he recalled with little difficulty that, after chipping off a few chunks from the ledge with a hammer and minutely examining them, he set rough stakes in short order.

The following day, provided with assay certificates showing very rich results, the miners sought the schoolmaster and offered to sell him a large interest in their discovery for a small amount of development money.

Always a man quick to clinch his opportunities, Wolcott put the money up on the spot. In six months' time "The Last Chance Silver Mine" repaid its outlay, and later yielded to him a couple of millions more.

HOW GARFIELD ROSE.

Future President May Have Sought Employment

on Canal Because of His

Fondness for Sea Stories.

James A. Garfield was reared in the forests of Ohio. When he was not engaged at work on the farm, he was reading all the books that he could get hold of, especially those pertaining to the sea, for which he had a passion. Supposedly, it was this that influenced him to obtain one of his first jobs—the driving of mules which towed the canal-boat between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. After a severe attack of illness, contracted after a plunge into the canal, he began to educate himself.

He entered Geauga Seminary, then went to Williams College, and afterward to Hiram. It was at this time that he suffered the worst poverty of his career, for frequently he was obliged to stay in bed while his landlady darned his clothes. Seeing the young man's discouragement, she told him to cheer up, and that he would forget all about it when he became President.

In after life he said: "Poverty is uncomfortable, I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself." And on another occasion: "I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man; and I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat."

At the close of Garfield's college life he went into a law office in Cleveland; from there to the Ohio Senate, and then to the Civil War, after which he was elected to the House of Representatives.

TURNED OVER BRICKS.

The Boy Who Was Paid Seven Cents

for the Job Is Turning Over Many

Millions Now.

John Wanamaker once received seven copper cents for turning over bricks to dry in the sun. This was the first sum of money that the successful merchant can remember having earned; but his first regular position, which paid him a dollar and a quarter per week, was in a bookstore in Philadelphia.

At that time it was the boy's intention to become a clergyman, and partly in preparation for such a calling, he became a member of the Young Men's Christian Association. A remark made by one of its members was responsible for the change in his intentions, for he intimated to young Wanamaker that if he worked as hard for himself as he did for the association he would become a rich man. Acting on this advice, the boy obtained a situation as stock clerk in a large clothing establishment.

After passing successively through the various grades of clerks and salesmen, he finally formed a partnership with his brother-in-law to go into the clothing trade. Their joint capital was thirty-five hundred dollars. On the first day the firm did a business of twenty-four dollars and sixty-seven cents, and for the year, twenty-four thousand dollars. But although year after year the business increased, Wanamaker never lost interest in religious gatherings. Among other things, he founded a Sabbath-school, which, commencing with only twenty-seven pupils, has grown into the Bethany of to-day, with its several thousand members.

Always abstemious in his way of living and credited with many acts of generosity, it is related that one day, on being requested for the story of his life, Mr. Wanamaker replied:

"Thinking, trying, toiling, and trusting—in those four words you have all of my biography."

AN OIL KING'S START.

Massachusetts Newsboy Gets an Attack

of Wanderlust and Finds Fortune in

Pennsylvania Wells.

H.H. Rogers, future master builder of industrial organizations, did odd chores for the neighbors, in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, when a boy, and earned on the average fifty cents a week. His first step in real business was when he established a news route of forty-seven subscribers for the New Bedford Standard. In one week he doubled the number and struck for seventy-five cents more a week than the seventy-five cents he was receiving. This was granted and he also got an increased commission on new subscribers. A few months in a grocery store completed his Fairhaven business experience, and then, with Charles Ellis, a schoolfellow, he went to the Pennsylvania oil fields to make his fortune. Each had about two hundred dollars and they started in the refining business. It did not go the way Rogers wished, so he said to Ellis:

"Look here, I am going to learn the oil business. You run the office."

Rogers put on overalls and went to work at the pumps and stills. He was there early and late, working at everything, investigating, getting a grip on every detail, learning how the business could be run on the most economical basis and at the same time give the best quality of product. When he returned to office work the organization of the Standard Oil was under way. It was the knowledge he had gained at the stills that enabled him to figure down the cost of production to the fraction of a cent. It was he, also, who was the leading factor in the elimination of competition.

CAME BACK FOR MORE.

Financier Who Retired from Business at

Forty Assumes Direction of Great

Railroad at Fifty-Seven.

Alexander Johnston Cassatt retired independently wealthy at the age of forty, and seventeen years later he returned to dominate one of the largest railroads in the country. He was born in Pittsburgh. Though poor, his parents gave him a good education. He became a civil engineer, and the first work he got to do was on a road being built in Georgia. He remained in the South two years, but on the breaking out of the Civil War he returned North, and entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Cassatt's ability won rapid promotion. In nine years he built new roads, reorganized the company's shops, and improved the construction of cars and locomotives. Then, when he was thirty-one years old, the position of general manager was created for him.

One of the first things he did in this position was to introduce the air-brake, which at that time received scant encouragement from railroad men. Cassatt was told that it was useless. His experiments cost thousands of dollars, but they established the practicability of the air-brake.

It was Cassatt also who developed the idea of combining individual roads into one great system. In 1872 he executed a grand coup and purchased for the Pennsylvania the controlling stock of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Road, a line the Baltimore and Ohio people had tried to obtain. It took Cassatt one night to engineer the deal, and in payment for the stock a check for $14,549,052.20 was drawn—up to that time the largest on record.

Cassatt was first vice-president of the road when he withdrew in 1882, and for seventeen years he remained out of railroad affairs. When he returned it was as president of the Pennsylvania system, a position he still holds.

A "YELLOW JOURNAL" GLOSSARY.

This Sort of Language Doesn't Wear Any Dictionary Harness, So It Has to Be Put in a

Class by Itself, and Made the Subject of Special Study.

One of the characteristics of the "yellow journal" is that while it usually says what it means, it does not always mean just what it says. It has a system of phraseology that is peculiar to itself, and one who would read it intelligently must familiarize himself with the idiosyncrasies of "yellow" expression. Some of these idiosyncrasies have been carefully collected by the New York Sun:

PRETTY GIRL—Any unmarried human female less than thirty-five years old who gets into the news.

SOCIETY MATRON—Any married woman, from a bartender's wife up through the social grades, who gets into the news.

SOCIETY GIRL—Synonymous with "pretty girl." See above.

NOT EXPECTED TO RECOVER—Phrase applied to the condition of all persons injured in course of news story.

PROMINENT YALE GRADUATE—Any one wearing a boiled shirt, arrested for anything above a misdemeanor.

MULTIMILLIONAIRE—Person possessed of property worth fifty thousand dollars or over, or a relative of a person listed in the Social Register. Up to three years ago "millionaire" was used in the same sense.

THIRTY-TWO CALIBER, PEARL HANDLED—Phrase which must always be attached to the noun "revolver," unless otherwise ordered.

TOT—Any child under seven. In a pathetic story the adjective "tiny" must always be prefixed.

PLUCKY WOMAN—Any woman who did not scream.

HEROINE—Principal female character in any burglary story. Otherwise synonymous with "plucky woman," q.v.

PROMINENT CLUBMAN—Any bachelor leasing apartments at thirty dollars a month and upward. Also members of the Paul Kelley and Timothy D. Sullivan associations who happen to be arrested while wearing dress suits.

FATALLY INJURED—See "not expected to recover," above.

FASHIONABLE APARTMENT HOUSE—Any dwelling which has an elevator.

TODDLE—Verb applied to the walk of a tiny tot. See under "tot" for correct usage.

WELL DRESSED—Phrase always applied to a woman who, when arrested, is comparatively clean. Must be used in a story about a prominent clubman, q.v. as above.

SNUG SUM—Money.

RAFFLES—Any thief who wears a collar.

CRISP FIVE-DOLLAR BILL—Five dollars.

COZY.—Adjective always applied to home to which the remains are taken.

WUZ—Synonymous with "was," but indicates dialect.

HURLED—Motion of passengers, cars, and cabs at the time of the accident.

FAINT—Course taken by all the women within six blocks of the accident.

SCREAM—See "faint," above.

DASH—Gait of the crowd at the time of the accident. "Rush" is synonymous. "Run" is not good usage.

HEIR—Child having three hundred dollars coming to him from a life insurance policy.

RING OUT—What shots always do.

HURTLE—Verb used of motion of any falling object, especially a brick or a suicide.

HAVOC—Good word to use almost anywhere.

HIGH—Adjective which must be prefixed to noun "noon" in the account of a fashionable wedding.

SLAY—Synonymous with obsolete verb "kill."

JUGGLE—What is always done with the funds of a bank or trust company.

COLLEGE GIRL—Any woman who has ever gone to school.

BANDIT—Person guilty of crime against property for which the penalty is more than ten days in jail.

BURLY—Adjective always applied to a male negro.

PROMINENT—Descriptive adjective applied to farmers, plumbers, and dentists.

BOUDOIR—Any bedroom the rent of which is more than one dollar and a half a week.

GLOBE TROTTER—Any one who has been to Hohokus, N.J., Kittery, Me., or Peru, Ind.

GEMS—Personal ornaments worth more than one dollar and seventy-five cents.

GRAVE, GAY, AND EPIGRAMMATIC.

THE PIPE THAT FAILED.

This story is told about ex-Senator J. S. Clark, of Calais, Maine: One day, while awaiting his turn in a barber-shop in Calais, he was talking with a friend, and was so deeply interested in the conversation that he allowed his pipe to go out several times. Each time he would ask Melvin Noble, a local practical joker, for a match.

About the time he wanted the fifth match, Noble said: "I don't begrudge you the matches, Jed, but I think it would be cheaper for you to put a grate in your pipe and burn coal."—Boston Herald.

ANCIENT, BUT IT GOES.

Feebles (about to be operated upon for appendicitis)—Doctor, before you begin, I wish you would send and have our pastor, the Rev. Mr. Blank, come over.

Dr. Sawem—Certainly, if you wish it, but—ah——

Feebles—I'd like to be opened with prayer.—Exchange.

RILEY'S RYE PATCH.

Whitcomb Riley was looking over a fence on his farm at a field of rye, when a neighbor who was driving by stopped his horse and asked:

"Hullo, Mr. Riley, how's your rye doing?"

"Fine, fine," replied the poet.

"How much do you expect to clear to the acre?"

"Oh, about four gallons," answered Mr. Riley, soberly.—Success.

IN A SHOE STORE.

"Have you felt slippers, sir?" she said.

The boy clerk blushed and scratched his head.

Then, smiling back, he found his tongue:

"I felt 'em often when I was young."

Boston Herald.

AT NAPOLEON'S TOMB.

Henry Vignaud, secretary of the American embassy at Paris, enjoys telling of an American who was being shown the tomb of Napoleon. As the loquacious guide referred to the various points of interest in connection with the tomb, the American paid the greatest attention to all that was said.

"This immense sarcophagus," declaimed the guide, "weighs forty tons. Inside of that, sir, is a steel receptacle weighing twelve tons, and inside of that is a leaden casket, hermetically sealed, weighing over two tons. Inside of that rests a mahogany coffin containing the remains of the great man."

For a moment the American was silent, as if in deep meditation. Then he said:

"It seems to me that you've got him all right. If he ever gets out, cable me at my expense."—Success.

THE OTHER SIDE.

"Did you ever get into Brown's confidence?"

"Oh, yes; it was costly, too."

"What was costly?"

"To get out."—Yonkers Herald.

TIPS FOR AUTHORS.

An author wrote a little book,

Which started quite a quarrel;

The folk who read it frowned on it

And said it was immoral.

They bade him write a proper screed,

He said that he would try it;

He did. They found no fault with it,

And neither did they buy it.

Washington Evening Star.

HIS IMPOLITE QUERY.

"Women claim that the way to get on with a man is to give him plenty of nicely cooked food."

"Well," answered Mr. Sirius Barker, irritably, "why don't some of them try it?"—Washington Star.

ARTEMUS WARD'S ADVICE.

A certain Southern railroad was in a wretched condition, and the trains were consequently run at a phenomenally low rate of speed. When the conductor was punching his ticket, the late Artemus Ward, who was one of the passengers, remarked:

"Does this railroad company allow passengers to give it advice, if they do so in a respectful manner?"

The conductor replied in gruff tones that he guessed so.

"Well," Artemus went on, "it occurred to me that it would be well to detach the cowcatcher from the front of the engine and hitch it to the rear of the train; for, you see, we are not liable to overtake a cow, but what's to prevent a cow from strolling into this car and biting a passenger?"—Boston Herald.

LOST.

Legends of the absent-minded savant are legion, but the following, told of a well-known Ph.D. of this city, perhaps touches the climax:

One of the charwomen in the temple of learning with which he is associated choked on a pin she had put in her mouth as she went about her work. Rushing up to Professor Blank's sanctum she burst in through the door without the formality of a knock.

"Professor, oh, professor!" she panted, "I've swallowed a pin."

"Never mind," returned the professor, feeling absently about the edges of his lapel without raising his eyes from the book before him, "here's another one you can have."—New York Times.

IT WOULD NOT "DOWN."

Nat Goodwin was much occupied in looking at the waves. As he leaned over the deck railing a young woman passenger emerged from the first-cabin saloon.

"Oh. Mr. Goodwin," she cried, "is the moon up to-night?"

"If I swallowed it, it's up," responded the actor sorrowfully.—New York Mail.

LABORERS WERE PLENTIFUL.

An officer who served with Lord Kitchener in Egypt tells the following anecdote of him:

"During the progress of some construction work in Upper Egypt the young subaltern in charge had the misfortune to lose some native workmen through the accidental explosion of some cases of dynamite. He telegraphed to Lord Kitchener, then Sirdar:

"'Regret to report killing ten laborers by dynamite accident.'

"In a few hours came this laconic dispatch: "Do you need any more dynamite?"—Pittsburgh Dispatch.

FEMININE ARITHMETIC.

When I was ten and you were eight,

Two years between us stood,

We used to meet by daddy's gate—

A stolen kiss was good.

When I was twenty—quite a boy,

You still were my heart's queen,

But grown of kissing somewhat coy;

You see, you were sixteen!

When I was thirty, bronzed and tall,

With sweethearts, too, in plenty,

I met you at the Wilsons' ball—

You told me you were twenty.

I'm forty now, a little more—

Oh, Time, you ruthless bandit!

But you—you're only twenty-four;

I cannot understand it!

Pearson's Weekly.

FAR IN THE FUTURE.

"Don't you ever expect to get married?" she asked.

"Well," replied the old bachelor, "I may some day. But I have been reading up on the subject and the scientists agree that if a man takes proper care of himself there is no reason why his mind should begin to fail before he is eighty at least."—Chicago Record-Herald.

CRUSHED.

MR. W.S. Gilbert was once at the house of a wealthy but ignorant and pretentious woman. She asked Mr. Gilbert several questions about musical composers, to show that she knew all about them.

"And what about Bach?" she asked. "Is he composing nowadays?"

"No, ma'am," answered Gilbert; "he is decomposing!"—Tit-Bits.

IN A STREET CAR.

Blodgett—You see that homely woman hanging to that strap?

Foster—How do you know she is homely? You can't see her face.

Blodgett—I can see she is hanging to a strap.—Boston Transcript.

Poems by Dickens and Thackeray.

Verses from the Pen of Two of England's Most Celebrated

Novelists.

With the notable exception of Sir Walter Scott, no writer of English novels has attained any marked distinction as a poet. But like men engaged in hundreds of other occupations, celebrated novelists have at times succumbed to the allurements of the muse, and have offered some of their thoughts to the world through the medium of verse. Among these were Dickens and Thackeray.

"The Ivy Green," by Dickens, lends grace to the "Pickwick Papers," while Thackeray's "The Church Porch" plays an interesting part in the novel "Pendennis."

THE IVY GREEN.

[Recited by the Old Clergyman at Manor Farm.]

Oh! a dainty plant is the ivy green,

That creepeth o'er ruins old!

Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,

In his cell so lone and cold.

The wall must be crumbled, the stones decayed,

To pleasure his dainty whim;

And the moldering dust that years have made

Is a merry meal for him.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,

And a stanch old heart has he;

How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,

To his friend the huge oak-tree!

And slyly he traileth along the ground,

And his leaves he gently waves,

As he joyously hugs and crawleth round,

The rich mold of dead men's graves.

Creeping where grim death has been,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,

And nations have scattered been;

But the stout old ivy shall never fade

From its hale and hearty green.

The brave old plant in its lonely days

Shall fatten upon the past:

For the stateliest building man can raise

Is the ivy's food at last.

Creeping on where time has been,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

THE CHURCH PORCH.

[Arthur Pendennis made his entry into literature by writing these verses for Mr. Bacon's "Spring Annual." The Hon. Percy Popjoy, a regular contributor to that fashionable publication, had sent in a poem which Mr. Bacon's reader condemned as too execrable to inflict upon the public. To take its place, at George Warrington's suggestion, Pendennis was invited to turn off a copy of verses to accompany an engraving which showed a damsel entering a church porch, with a young man watching her from a near-by niche. The poem printed below was the result.]

Although I enter not,

Yet round about the spot

Ofttimes I hover:

And near the sacred gate

With longing eyes I wait,

Expectant of her.

The minster bell tolls out

Above the city's rout

And noise and humming:

They've stopped the chiming bell;

I hear the organ's swell:

She's coming, she's coming!

My lady comes at last,

Timid, and stepping fast,

And hastening hither,

With modest eyes downcast;

She comes—she's here—she's past—

May heaven go with her!

Kneel undisturbed, fair saint!

Pour out your praise or plaint

Meekly and duly;

I will not enter there,

To sully your pure prayer

With thoughts unruly.

But suffer me to pace

Round the forbidden place,

Lingering a minute,

Like outcast spirits who wait

And see through heaven's gate

Angels within it.

World-Famous Bachelors.

At a Time When Contemporary Writers Are Pointing Out the Men Who

"Have Been Made By Their Wives," a List of a Few Men Who

"Made Themselves" May Prove Worth While.

Compiled and edited for THE SCRAP BOOK.

"He travels the fastest who travels alone," sings Kipling. In other words, the bachelor has the advantage in the race for fame and fortune. The truth or falsity of this viewpoint depends upon the road which a person travels; it also depends upon his harness mate—who very often helps him along much faster than he could go by himself. Even were it universally true, the average man would undoubtedly prefer to jog along comfortably with a mate beside him.

It is worth while, however, to note that many great men have remained single; some from choice, some from indifference, some because of early disappointment. Especially among those whose work requires the most concentrated reasoning is the single state frequent. In the following nutshell biographies of famous bachelors it will be observed that a majority of the men named are philosophers. The great philosopher seldom marries—for is not the experience of Socrates a warning?

BARUCH DE SPINOZA (Holland—1632-1677).

Baruch Spinoza was by nature unfitted for matrimony. An aggressive thinker, he led a troubled life. Of Portuguese Hebrew parentage, he was accused of heresy at an early age and narrowly escaped assassination. Quitting Amsterdam he took up his abode at The Hague, where he remained until he died. Having no private fortune he earned his living by polishing spectacles. His needs were few, and he refused with equal equanimity a sum of two thousand florins, which his friend, Simon de Vries, presented to him, and the offer of the chair of philosophy in the University of Heidelberg.

Fame was not his object, and of all his writings a theologico-political treatise was the only one published during his life. A storm of disapproval greeted it, and the author decided not to provoke the public any further. He did not cease to labor, however, and after his death his friends found that a mass of manuscripts were ready for the press.

RENÉ DESCARTES (France—1596-1650).

Another thinker, over whose life no woman seems to have exercised any influence, is René Descartes. He took part in the siege of La Rochelle in 1629 and then sought solitude in Holland and remained there for twenty years. During this time he published his metaphysical works and made a great name for himself. The Princess Palatine became his warm friend, and Christine of Sweden invited him to her court. He declined her invitation at first, but finally, finding that his theological opponents were determined to suppress him, he fled from Holland and took refuge in Stockholm, where the rigorous climate soon carried him off. Christine, whose counselor and warm friend, in a Platonic sense, he had been for years, mourned sincerely for him. So did other notable women who dimly recognized in him the Socrates of the seventeenth century.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON (England—1642-1727).

Very similar was the fate of the great Sir Isaac Newton. Born in 1642, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1660, and thenceforward gave himself up to the study of mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Making his home at Woolsthorpe, where he possessed a fine property, he spent his remaining years there, taking occasional trips to London and Cambridge. In 1672 he became a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1688 he represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament. In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society, and held the position until his death in 1727.

Why he never married is not clear. It is supposed, however, that he was crossed in love in his youth and on that account abandoned all thoughts of matrimony.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG (Sweden—1688-1772).

A mystic from his cradle, Swedenborg blossomed first as a man of letters and a poet and won considerable popularity in Stockholm and throughout Sweden. Then he became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and broached his famous atomic theory. Finally, at the age of fifty-four, he cast off all mortal interests and became the expounder of new religious doctrines, claiming that the truths he gave out were secured through direct inspiration.

His disciples founded the Church of the New Jerusalem, which spread rapidly, and to-day has offshoots in England, India, Africa, and this country.

IMMANUEL KANT (Prussia—1724-1804).

Another man of monastic temperament was Immanuel Kant, the eminent founder of German philosophy. Born at Königsberg in 1724, he lived there all his life. He did not travel; he did not even take flying trips to the great universities; the old city on the Pregel was good enough for him, and there he stayed and worked.

An honorable, dignified man, he was practically dead to the world and lived only that he might do honor to his goddess, Philosophy. Womankind seems to have had no attraction for him, and from social pleasures he rigidly abstained. His proper place was in a cloister, and no ascetic ever lived who apportioned out his time more regularly or did more conscientious work during the twenty-four hours of each day.

FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE (France—1694-1778).

Turning from the recluse to the men of the world, where can we find a more distinguished bachelor than Voltaire? Born in 1694, this witty Frenchman lived his memorable life among the gayest men and women of the world, and yet when his last hour came there was no wife to close his eyelids, there were no children to follow him to the tomb.

A weakling from birth, he was not baptized until he was nine months old. The Abbé de Chateauneuf, a cynical relative, gave him his first lessons in atheism and introduced him to Ninon de l'Enclos, the famous beauty. Ninon was so charmed with the boy that she left him a considerable sum of money in her will, with instructions that it be spent in furnishing his library.

The youth soon made his début as a poet and wit, but his father, who abhorred verses, was vexed at his notoriety and sent him to Holland. There the lad got entangled in a love affair and was promptly summoned home again. His father's next move was to banish him to the country, but he was again disappointed in thinking that his son would reform. Voltaire began to write an epic poem on Henry IV, and, his talents as a satirist being known, was suddenly arrested on the charge of lampooning Louis XIV, and imprisoned in the Bastile.

When he came out he began to write for the theaters, and as a playwright and a merciless critic of creeds and other cherished beliefs his life was spent. He was a favorite in society, and the fair sex petted him to his heart's content, yet he never married.

Mme. Denis, his niece, for whom he had a great affection, looked after his house at Ferney, near Geneva, and with her he spent his last days. It was she, too, who accompanied him to Paris in 1778 and who watched by his bedside when, overcome by the fatigues of his reception in the French capital—the greatest triumph of his life—he lay calmly, waiting for the angel of death to call him.

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD (England—1717-1797).

Another distinguished man of letters who never entered the bonds of matrimony was Horace Walpole. Born in 1717, he entered Cambridge University, and there became intimately acquainted with the poet Gray. In 1741 he became a member of the House of Commons, but won little distinction there, his time and thoughts being almost wholly devoted to the study of art and literature. In 1765 he took a trip to Paris, and at this period the romance of his life began. He became attached to Mme. du Deffand, and in her society passed the pleasantest hours of his life.

Walpole was a polished gentleman, a charming conversationalist, and a letter-writer of the first rank. He wrote French as well as English, and it may be that his thorough knowledge of French aided him greatly in making his English letters the masterpieces that they are. There was in him, too, much of the Gallic temperament. Bachelor though he was, we discover in him no moroseness, and see only the gay man of the world, who knows how to enjoy life in a rational manner.

EDWARD GIBBON (England—1737-1794).

Born in 1737, Gibbon studied at Oxford, and at the age of fifteen became so zealous a student of history that he undertook to write an account of the reign of Sesostris. It was at Rome in 1764 that he conceived the idea of writing a history of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The entire work, however, was not finished until 1788. Five years previously he had gone to Lausanne, in Switzerland, and there he stayed until he was brought home to die.

A severe student, whose views about religion were the reverse of orthodox, he was by nature much of a recluse and seems never to have shone in society. Only one woman is known to have inspired a deeper feeling than friendship, and the fates were against their marriage. The lady subsequently became Mme. Necker. That Gibbon was sincerely attached to her is certain, and that had it not been for untoward circumstances she would have married him seems to be almost equally certain. Their paths in life, however, were divided; her fate was to become a shining light in the French capital and his was to spend the noon and evening of his life in solitude at Lausanne.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (England—1540-1596).

A renowned man of action and a celibate was Francis Drake, the navigator and discoverer. The sea was his mistress, and fighting the Spaniards was his lifework. Queen Elizabeth crowned him with honors, and he repaid the compliment by capturing stores of Spanish gold and taking possession of California in her name. In 1595 he waged his last attack against the Spanish colonies in America, which proved unsuccessful, and in which both he and Sir John Hawkins died of fever.

Honored throughout England as a courtier and a seaman, Drake ever maintained his high reputation. Constantly at sea, he had really no home on land. No woman had a nest ready for him after his travels; no children looked out for his home-returning ship. For fifty years he waged a good fight against England's foes and then rested forever from his labors.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (Germany—1770-1827).

Great artists have much of the recluse in them, and Beethoven, the composer, was no exception to the rule. For art he lived, and the joys and sorrows of domestic life he never knew. Yet the story goes that he was once deeply in love and that his unconquerable shyness alone prevented him from becoming a happy lover and husband.

Indeed, his aversion to society was abnormal. Melancholy and morose, he shunned his fellows and found pleasure only in his music. Monarchs showered compliments and gifts on him, but to the imaginative eye he appears always solitary and abstracted. Seated in a reverie before his piano, in his silent, gloomy chamber, he wrote passionate love music for others, but he won no woman's love for himself.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (United States—1807-1892).

In America, also, there has been no lack of bachelors who have achieved fame. The poet Whittier is, perhaps, the best known.

The son of a Quaker farmer, his boyhood was spent mainly upon the farm, but he early displayed a talent for verse, and learned the art of slipper-making to support himself while improving his education. In 1829 he was made editor of a Boston paper, and soon, aside from his poetry, became a real force in the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts.

Yet in all his long and active life as editor, author, legislator, reformer, and poet, he had no thought—so far as we can tell—of marriage.

SAMUEL JONES TILDEN (United States—1814-1886).

There is perhaps no better example of the bachelor statesman in America than Samuel J. Tilden.

The story goes that he was once deeply in love with a Southern lady, but that fate, in some form, intervened. He never married, however, nor did he allow disappointment to interfere with his career. He became governor of New York, and later was nominated for president, being defeated by one electoral vote (though he was the popular choice by a majority of two hundred and fifty thousand). At his death he left more than five million dollars, chiefly to philanthropic purposes, of which the Tilden Foundation Fund of the New York Public Library received about one half.

Little Glimpses of the 19th Century

The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled

so as to Present a Nutshell Record.

[Continued from page 46.]

SECOND DECADE.

1811

The French army under Masséna was finally driven from Portugal by the British under Wellington. France, the south and middle German states, and Austria formed an alliance against Russia. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, and formerly one of Napoleon's marshals, refused aid to France. Napoleon threatened Sweden and began preparations against Russia.

The United States seized West Florida. The American ship President and the British ship Little Belt exchanged shots, and friction between the two countries increased. At Tippecanoe, General Harrison defeated the Indians under Tecumseh. Resentment against Great Britain because of her conduct on the sea, and her assertion of her right to search American ships, increased in the United States.

The Mamelukes decoyed to attend a festival in Cairo and slaughtered by Mehemet Ali. Dutch settlements in Java captured by the English. The King of Rome, son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, born on March 20. Agitation in England against flogging soldiers and sailors. Luddites smashed machinery in Nottingham. Heinrich Kleist, German poet, committed suicide. Bishop Percy, ballad compiler, died.

POPULATION.—Washington, D.C., 8,208; New York, 96,373; London (including Metropolitan District, census 1811), 1,009,546; United States, 7,239,881; Great Britain and Ireland (census 1811), 15,547,720.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that the Prince of Wales became regent of Great Britain.

1812

The English under Wellington captured Ciudad Rodrigo, and began to press hard on the French in Spain. Badajos, held by the French under General Philippon, stormed by the British after a fight in which five thousand men fell. American privateers began to prey on British commerce. June 18, war began between America and England. The first contest was between the American ship President and the British ship Blandina; the Blandina escaped. The Essex, Captain David Porter, and with Midshipman David G. Farragut, aged thirteen, on board, captured a British transport with two hundred soldiers, and forced the Alert to surrender. The United States frigate Constitution sunk the British frigate Guerrière, but the British Poictiers captured the American sloop Wasp. Other naval duels ended in favor of American ships. Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, took the Macedonian, while the Constitution captured the Java. President Madison refused the services of General Andrew Jackson; Jackson thereupon organized an independent corps, which was reluctantly accepted when reverses came. General Hull led the Americans to Canada, and was defeated at Mackinaw. Hull surrendered Detroit to Brock, British governor of Upper Canada, who had formed an alliance with the Indians. Fort Dearborn (Chicago), was burned by the Indians, and the settlers massacred. In a battle near Fort George, on October 13, General Brock was killed, but the Americans were forced to retreat. Dearborn made a fruitless attempt to invade Canada.

On June 22, Napoleon, with over six hundred thousand men, began his disastrous Russian campaign. The Russians devastated the country as they retired before his advance. At Smolensk they inflicted upon the French a loss of fifteen thousand, fired the city, and retreated. The French, stricken with disease, suffering from lack of food, and beset on all sides by the Russians, pushed on toward Moscow. At Borodino, after a desperate battle, Napoleon won a disastrous victory; nearly a hundred thousand men fell on both sides. The French entered Moscow, but within a few hours the city was in flames—fired by the Russians at the order of the governor, Rostopchin. Russian peasants slaughtered thousands of French stragglers. Napoleon's peace overtures being rejected, he was compelled to evacuate Moscow, after blowing up the Kremlin. The retreat of the French was worse than the battles, and thousands of them perished from cold or lack of food. The Russians pursued, and won battle after battle. Of the grand army that invaded Russia, only a tenth recrossed the frontier. In Spain, the French lost Cadiz and Madrid, and were defeated by Wellington at Salamanca. In December, Napoleon hurried to Paris, crushed Malet's conspiration against him, and called for a new conscription of three hundred and fifty thousand men. This year more than a million lives were lost in the Napoleonic wars.

Louisiana admitted to the Union. Iodin discovered by Dr. de Courtois, of Paris. An earthquake in Caracas killed twelve thousand persons. The English publisher of Thomas Paine's books fined and pilloried. Luddite anti-machinery agitation increased in England.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1813

Napoleon set Pius VII at liberty, and arranged the Concordat between church and state in France. Prussia joined Russia against Napoleon, who fought a series of battles with the allies in central Germany, the most important being those of Lützen and Bautzen. Wellington's decisive victory over the French at Vittoria—where shrapnel shells were first used in warfare—gave renewed vitality to the combination of England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against France and Denmark.

In America, eight hundred Americans were captured by the British at Frenchtown, in Michigan. At sea, the American Hornet, Captain Lawrence, sunk the Peacock; the Hazard captured the British frigate Albion, but the Shannon took the American frigate Chesapeake, killing Captain Lawrence, who said as he died: "Don't give up the ship!" The Enterprise captured the British brig Boxer. On Lake Erie, September 12, Commodore Perry fought the famous battle which he thus reported: "We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." General Harrison put an end to the Creek rebellion by his victory at Fort Malden.

Austria joined the allies against France, and Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden, and Bernadotte sided against their old leader, Napoleon. At Dresden (August 26, 27) Napoleon won his last great victory; Moreau was killed. At Wahlstatt, Blücher routed the French, and Ney met disaster at Dennewitz. King Jerome Bonaparte was forced to flee from Westphalia. Bavaria refused longer to support Napoleon. The campaign in Germany culminated in the great battle of Leipzig, fought October 16 to 19, in which four hundred thousand Germans and Russians totally defeated two hundred thousand Frenchmen, killing or capturing nearly half of them, and sweeping Germany free of invaders. Meanwhile Wellington invaded France from the south, and Napoleon's empire began to crumble fast. Spain was forever lost to him. Napoleon dissolved the Corps Législatif, determined to carry out his plans for prosecuting the war, and called for a new conscription of three hundred thousand men.

Cape of Good Hope ceded to the British by the Dutch. George Stephenson built his first locomotive. The Jesuit order restored by Pius VII.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1814

On January 1 Blücher crossed the Rhine to begin the invasion of France. He was defeated at Brienne, but won at Rothière, and with the aid of the Russians pressed Napoleon hard in a series of battles. In March the allies won decisive victories at Laon and Arcis-sur-Aube. England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria bound themselves together for twenty years more, England agreeing to pay each of the other powers two million pounds; France was to be reduced to its original boundaries. Napoleon refused the terms offered him. Marie Louise fled from Paris. The allied armies entered Paris on March 31, and on April 11, after trying to poison himself, Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau. He retired to Elba, which was assigned to him as a mimic kingdom. Talleyrand now became dominant in Paris, and the Bourbons were restored, Louis XVIII being crowned King of France. Ferdinand VII resumed power in Spain. By the Treaty of Paris, France retained her old territory, received back the colonies captured by England, kept Alsace-Lorraine, and much of the plunder gathered by Napoleon. Russia held Poland and Finland.

In June the Americans, under Brown, seized Fort Erie and fought indecisive actions with the British at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. In August a British force, under Ross and Cockburn, landed in Maryland, defeated the Americans at Bladensburg, and advanced to Washington. Madison and his cabinet fled. The defenseless city was entered by the enemy; the White House and uncompleted Capitol were burned, and the government stores and buildings at Alexandria were destroyed. An attack on Baltimore was repulsed, inspiring Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." On Lake Champlain, McDonough captured four vessels of a British squadron and put the rest to flight. Two hundred men from a British fleet on its way to New Orleans attempted to board the privateer General Armstrong (Samuel Reid, captain), in the neutral harbor of Fayal. They were repulsed. Three British vessels closed in, and after a plucky fight Reid and his ninety men scuttled the General Armstrong, and escaped, having seriously damaged the British fleet. Jackson took Pensacola, in Florida, from the British; he also killed eight hundred Creeks for their massacre of the inhabitants of Fort Mims, and finally broke the power of the Indians in Alabama and Georgia by his victory at Horseshoe Bend. During all this time New England had held practically aloof from the war with the British, giving little assistance to the other States. On Christmas Day a treaty of peace between England and the United States was signed at Ghent.

Norway accepted the King of Sweden as ruler—an arrangement only recently abandoned. The Bourbons entered on reprisals in France and Spain, having "learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Jesuits permitted to return to France. Despotism renewed in the German states. The Prince Regent of England excluded his wife, Caroline, from court. Count Rumford, scientist, and the ex-Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that the Bourbons were restored in France and Spain; Louis XVIII King of France, and Ferdinand VII King of Spain.

1815

On January 8, the news of the peace not having reached America, Jackson won the battle of New Orleans, inflicting a loss of two thousand on the British, and losing only twenty-one men. At Mobile, the Americans captured another British force, but off New York Commodore Decatur had to surrender, with his ship, the President, to the British blockading squadron.

England restored Java to Holland, but retained Demerara and the Cape of Good Hope. The Papal States were reestablished, and the Swiss Federation formed. On February 26 Napoleon slipped out of Elba; on March 1 he landed in France, where he was received with joy by his old soldiers, and on March 20 he entered Paris, beginning the Hundred Days. Ney deserted Louis XVIII to join Napoleon, and practically the whole army followed. Louis fled to Ghent.

England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia at once united against Napoleon. In a few days he mobilized and equipped an army of one hundred and twenty thousand veterans, and in June he was ready to attack the British and Prussian forces in Belgium. At Quatre-Bras, on June 16, Ney fought an indecisive engagement with the former, while at Ligny, on the same day, Napoleon defeated the Prussians under Blücher. On the 18th, Napoleon's army confronted that of Wellington before Waterloo. Before noon the fight began. Ney made repeated and gallant charges against the solid British squares, but his cavalry was slaughtered. Late in the day Blücher, after a forced march, arrived with part of his army, and, joining the British, sent the French forces flying. Napoleon barely escaped, and the allies pursued the shattered remnants of his army. The Napoleonic wars, which had cost nine million lives and untold treasure, and had remade the map of the world, were ended.

On June 20 Napoleon reached Paris, and on June 22 he abdicated, the House of Representatives having adopted by acclamation Lafayette's motion that the chamber should sit permanently, and that any attempt to dissolve it should be high treason. On July 7 the allies again entered Paris; on the 15th Napoleon surrendered to Captain Maitland of the British ship Bellerophon, at Rochefort. He was taken to England, and thence sent as a prisoner to the island of St. Helena, where he arrived October 15.

Madison reelected President of the United States. Philadelphia began construction of waterworks system. United States victorious in the war with Algiers. The Holy Alliance formed, including all the rulers of Europe excepting the Sultan of Turkey, the Pope, and the King of England. Davy invented the safety lamp. Wollaston, English scientist, by means of electricity, brought platinum to incandescence—the forerunner of the incandescent electric light. Daniel O'Connell killed D'Esterre in a duel. Anti-corn-law riots in England. Robert Fulton died. Financial depression throughout the United States.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that for a hundred days (March to June) Napoleon was in power in France, Louis XVIII having fled from Paris.

1816

Twenty years of continual warfare had left England with a debt of eight hundred million pounds, with business at a standstill, riots general throughout the country, and hundreds of thousands of discharged sailors and soldiers added to the unemployed. Fouché was expelled from France by the Bourbons, and Talleyrand replaced in the ministry by the Duc de Richelieu. The Inquisition was reestablished in Spain, and stringent measures employed in the effort to put down the revolts in the American colonies. Bolivar, in Venezuela, inflicted serious losses on the Spaniards. Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay, declared themselves independent of Spain.

The United States still suffered from a general commercial and industrial depression. First tariff imposed; New England, with Daniel Webster as its leading orator, was at that time for free trade; the South, led by Calhoun, was for protection. New England's shipping trade was practically suspended as a result of the new tariff. Seminole Indian uprising in Florida quelled. First savings-bank in the country opened in Philadelphia. Indiana admitted to the Union. Freemasons expelled from Italy. Goods of English manufacture excluded from Russia. Rebuilding of Moscow begun. First form of the stethoscope invented by Laennec, of Paris.

Gouverneur Morris, American statesman, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, English dramatist and statesman, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1817

The United States entered upon the prosperous period known as the Era of Good Feeling. Government land rapidly taken up by settlers, and people began to push westward. Resumption of the trouble with the Seminoles on the border of Florida. Jackson took command of the troops after many white settlers had been massacred. First line of steamships between New York and Liverpool opened. On July 4 ground was broken for the Erie Canal. First school for deaf-mutes opened at Hartford. First insane asylum in America opened by the Friends in Philadelphia. Mississippi admitted to the Union.

Depression continued in England; several Luddites executed for smashing machinery; eighteen persons hanged for forging Bank of England notes; habeas corpus suspended. Pindaree and Mahratta wars in India; Lord Hastings, the English governor-general, won a series of victories and greatly extended the British power. The Prince Regent of England hooted by mobs because of his conduct to his wife.

Eleven persons in Philadelphia and seven in Norwich, England, killed by steamboat boiler explosions, resulting in violent public opposition to steam vessels. Cholera epidemic started in Bengal, spread over Asia and Europe, crossed the Atlantic, and caused a million deaths before it was checked some years later. Béranger, French poet, imprisoned for blasphemy.

Mme. de Staël, French writer, and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Polish patriot and soldier in the American Revolution, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that James Monroe became President of the United States on March 4.

1818

The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII, whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union, and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress. Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and children of Revolutionary soldiers—the beginning of the pension system. The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.

Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to prove his innocence by meeting his accuser in battle; under an ancient statute this was possible, and as Thornton's accuser declined the proposed combat, the prisoner was set free. The obsolete law was thereupon repealed. Patent leather and strychnia discovered. Steam first used for heating purposes.

Independence of Chile finally declared, after eight years of fighting, on February 12.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Charles XIV (formerly Marshal Bernadotte) succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and Norway.

1819

Most of the Cherokee Indians removed from Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi. Congress agitated by the Missouri discussion; bill to prohibit slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, excepting in Missouri, introduced, and passed the following year. Opposition to slavery increased in the Northern States. Yellow fever in New York. Alabama admitted to the Union. Würtemberg abolished serfdom. August Kotzebue, German playwright and leader of the opposition to liberal ideas and education, assassinated by Sand, a Jena student; severe measures of repression, under the influence of Metternich, the great Austrian minister, followed. Throughout the German States censorship of the press was established, wholesale arrests of liberals occurred, student societies were forbidden, and ninety-four students were executed for wearing black, red, and yellow ribbons, the emblems of liberalism.

Richard Carlisle, of London, arrested for reprinting Paine's "Age of Reason." Velocipedes, hobby-horses, and other forerunners of the bicycle became popular. Oersted, of Copenhagen, made important discoveries in electromagnetism.

Queen Victoria born; James Watt, Scottish inventor; General Blücher, Prussian soldier; and Warren Hastings, first governor-general of India, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1820

Riego's revolt in Spain failed, but was followed by other movements in favor of liberalism. In Madrid, the prison of the Inquisition was stormed, and the political prisoners it contained set at liberty. King Ferdinand was forced to convoke the Cortes and agree to restore the comparatively liberal constitution of 1812. Divorce suit of George IV of England before the House of Lords; when the prosecutor had just started his opening address, the peers rose suddenly and rushed out in a body to witness an eclipse of the sun; the suit failed. Sir Walter Scott was the first baronet created by George IV.

The Duc de Berry, heir presumptive to the French throne, assassinated by Louvel, February 13. The Carbonari, or charcoal burners, forced Ferdinand I, King of Naples, to grant a constitution, which he swore to uphold, but almost immediately repudiated. The people of Portugal also rebelled and obtained a constitution. Russia sold to Spain a fleet of fighting vessels, which proved later to consist of rotting hulks.

In the United States, the Missouri Compromise Bill was passed and signed by Monroe, who was reelected to a second term in the Presidency. Maine was admitted as a State, and Spain agreed to cede her title to Florida for the sum of five million dollars.

Hydropathy introduced by Priessnitz. Ampère discovered the galvanometer. Caffeine separated by Oudry, and quinin by Pelletier and Caventou.

George III, King of England; Benjamin West, American artist; Henry Grattan, Irish statesman; and Arthur Young, political economist, died.

POPULATION.—Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York, 123,706; London (Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; United States, 9,638,453; Great Britain and Ireland (1821), 22,566,755.

RULERS—United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George III, died January 29, George IV succeeded; France, Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Alexander I; Austria, Francis I; Pope Pius VII.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.—Jonathan Swift.

POE AND LONGFELLOW

ON THEIR LOST LOVES.

Though the love of man for woman has been one of the most fruitful sources of inspiration to the poets, verses in which famous authors have sung the praises of women who have become their wives are comparatively rare. The belief is common that the natures of poets are more sensitive than those of other persons. If this is true, it is only reasonable to infer that a poet possesses the power of giving more forceful expression to his sense of bereavement than any other person would be capable of doing.

In the case of Poe, the poem "Annabel Lee," written shortly after the death of his beautiful young wife, is said to have been inspired by the writer's loss. Mrs. Poe, Virginia Clemm, a first cousin of the poet, became his wife before she was fifteen years old. Her wedded life was one of sorrow and hardship, and eleven years later she died of consumption.

The wife of Longfellow died in 1861. Shortly afterward the poem "Via Solitaria" was written. It was not intended for publication, and during Longfellow's lifetime it was not included in any collection of his poems, for the reason that its author regarded it as being too distinctively personal for the public eye.

ANNABEL LEE.

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.

It was many and many a year ago

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee,

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love,

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee,

So that her high-born kinsman came

And bore her away from me

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me.

Yes, that was the reason (as all men know),

In this kingdom by the sea,

That the wind came out of the cloud by night

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we,

Of many far wiser than we,

And neither the angels in heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

And so all the nighttide I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,

In her sepulcher there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

VIA SOLITARIA.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Alone, I walked the peopled city,

Where each seems happy with his own;

Oh! friends, I ask not for your pity—

I walk alone.

No more for me yon lake rejoices,

Though moved by loving airs of June.

Oh! birds, your sweet and piping voices

Are out of tune.

In vain for me the elm tree arches

Its plumes in many a feathery spray,

In vain the evening's starry marches

And sunlit day.

In vain your beauty, Summer flowers;

Ye cannot greet these cordial eyes;

They gaze on other fields than ours—

On other skies.

The gold is rifled from the coffer,

The blade is stolen from the sheath;

Life has but one more boon to offer,

And that is—Death.

Yet well I know the voice of Duty,

And, therefore, life and health must crave,

Though she who gave the world its beauty

Is in her grave.

I live, O lost one! for the living

Who drew their earliest life from thee,

And wait, until with glad thanksgiving

I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station

Wherein apart a traveler stands—

One absent long from home and nation,

In other lands;

And I, as he who stands and listens,

Amid the twilight's chill and gloom,

To hear, approaching in the distance,

The train for home.

For death shall bring another mating,

Beyond the shadows of the tomb,

On yonder shore a bride is waiting

Until I come.

In yonder field are children playing,

And there—oh, vision of delight!—

I see the child and mother straying

In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest,

Stealing the treasures one by one,

I'll call Thee blessed when Thou makest

The parted—one.

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued from Month to Month

and Will Include All Players of Note.

BLANCHE BATES BALKED.

As a School Marm She Got Behind Footlights

to Dodge Promotion from

Kindergarten to Primary Grade.

I knew that Blanche Bates came of a theatrical family, and that, therefore, she had an open sesame to the stage, but I did not know just when she made her first appearance, and to learn this for THE SCRAP BOOK I sought her out in the brief interval of rest she has, without a costume change, between the first and second acts of "The Girl of the Golden West."

"How did I make my start?" she repeated in answer to my question. "Well, I rather think it was because I balked at the idea of being known as a 'school marm.' I'll tell you about it. Although both my father and mother were on the stage, I didn't care for the life in the least. In fact, in my small young mind, I set up to being a very grand lady.

"'An actress? No, indeed,' I told myself. 'Something much better than that for me.' I was interested in young children and became a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco, where my mother was playing with L.R. Stockwell. But it was my very success with the youngsters that brought about the close of my career as a teacher. If I could do so well in the kindergarten, the committee argued, I was worth promoting, so one day they came to me with the announcement that I had been advanced to the charge of a grade in the primary department.

To Teach or Not to Teach.

"I suppose I should have felt duly honored, but I didn't. I sat down and began to look ahead, through the vista of years to come. A teacher, a schoolmistress! That somehow didn't agree with the ideas of the grand lady my fancy had conjured up. And, at that psychological moment mother came home with a proposition from Mr. Stockwell.

"It seemed that they were to give him a benefit, and he suggested to her, by way of novelty in the bill, that I should appear in a one-act play. Coming as it did just as I was wavering in my mind about my prospects in the teaching business, the idea caught me, and I said: 'Yes, I'd like to do it.'

"The play was 'The Picture,' by Brander Matthews, and I was the only woman in it, with the gamut of all the passions to run in the portrayal of the part. But I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened at the notion. I went on, and got through, and with the smell of the footlights possessing me I became thoroughly set upon a New York appearance."

After her experience with the Stockwell forces, Miss Bates secured an opening with the Frawley stock as utility woman at twenty dollars a week, which led to the realization of her hopes in the way of a chance on Broadway. And this came in the shape of an engagement with no less famous a company than Augustin Daly's. She made her début in February, 1899, but lasted only two nights.

Too Good for Daly's.

"The resignation of Blanche Bates from Augustin Daly's theatrical company will give a good many persons the chance to say 'I told you so,' the dramatic critic of the New York Sun observed at the time. "A short career for Miss Bates on that stage was predicted on the opening night of 'The Great Ruby; or, The Kiss of Blood.'

"She was called before the curtain four times after her best scene, and the applause was enthusiastic and genuine. That would have been enough to base the belief on. But there was a second and bigger reason, said the prophets, why her stay would be brief.

"The curtain later fell in silence on what should have been an impressive climax for Ada Rehan, and was lifted a single time after the ushers had incited a mild demonstration of personal regard for that favorite.

"It has never been customary to have at Daly's any other actress of dramatic strength than Miss Rehan. The rôles secondary in serious importance have been played by charming but weak young women. As soon as rivalry began, as in the case of Maxine Elliott, it was removed.

"In the sensational melodrama from Drury Lane, with the singularly felicitous title or sub-title of 'The Kiss of Blood,' is a Russian adventuress, who has an honest love affair, though she is a thief, and who is the only female character to figure in the heroics of the play. Miss Bates was assigned to it.

"She had come from California, and was unknown here. She proved to be handsome, fiery, forceful, and very talented. She was a revelation to the first audience, and it was disposed to go wild over her.

"Maybe it would have been better for Miss Rehan if the part had been given to her. Perhaps she had disliked to enact a wicked woman. Anyway, she had chosen instead to appear as a vain, frivolous, but clean and cheerful, wife of a London tradesman.

"This had been written as an eccentric character, and at the Drury Lane it had been played with irresistible drollery by Mrs. John Wood. But Miss Rehan had no mind to look grotesque, and as to low comedy, it is clear out of her line.

"In a serio-comic scene of somnambulism, where Mrs. Wood had been a fright in curl papers and a funny nightgown, Miss Rehan sacrificed nothing to the comic requirements. She was as dignified and stately as any Lady Macbeth. For those reasons the sleep-walking episode, which had been very valuable in London, counted for nothing here, and at its end the actress had good reason to know that it had failed with the audience.

"It was then that experts foretold the withdrawal of the California actress. She appeared at Daly's only one more night. She had not found Daly's Theater comfortable."

Naturally, Miss Bates did not long remain without an engagement. She was snapped up by the Lieblers for Miladi in "The Musketeers," and soon caught the eye of Belasco, who featured her in "Under Two Flags." Her real arrival, however, was with "The Darling of the Gods," which brought her seven hundred and fifty dollars a week salary and a percentage of the receipts, not a mean advance from the twenty dollars she had been getting from Frawley less than five years before.

MILLER'S STAR OF DESTINY.

It Led Him from His Native London,

Through Canada, and Finally to the

Old Lyceum Stock Company.

Henry Miller was born in London, but brought up in Canada. He was only a schoolboy when he chanced to read a magazine article about Henry Irving. This fired him with the ambition to act, but he set about realizing it in a most matter-of-fact and sensible way.

Instead of running off to join some theatrical troupe as a super, he began the study of elocution under the late W.C. Couldock, best remembered perhaps as the worthy miller, father of Hazel Kirke. This was at Miller's home, in Toronto, and here he had four years of grounding in the text of Shakespeare.

He was barely nineteen when the chance came, at a Toronto theater, for him to show what his studying had taught him. He was assigned to the part of the bleeding Sergeant in "Macbeth," and the very fact that the company was merely a scratch affair, not far removed from the barnstorming category, really worked to young Miller's advantage.

He was the first leading man with the old Lyceum stock, in "The Wife," and the second at the Empire. In 1899, he expressed his greatest ambition as being the management of a New York theater. This he has realized the past winter at the Princess, where he organized and produced "Zira" for Miss Anglin.

STORM FOR MISS RUSSELL.

As a Child of Ten She Excited Rose

Eytinge's Anger Because She

Lacked Experience.

Annie Russell, like Miss Bates, comes of theatrical stock, so the door to the stage was on the latch for her.

Miss Russell's first appearance took place in Montreal when she was ten years old, and was preceded by a heart-breaking episode. Rose Eytinge was playing "Miss Multon" against Clara Morris. Two children are needed in the piece, and when Miss Eytinge ascertained that one of them—Jeanne, assigned to Annie Russell—had never been on before, she was furious.

"Do you want to queer the show when so much depends on it?" she demanded of E.A. McDowell, her manager.

The girl, Annie, chanced to overhear her, and fell to weeping bitterly. Miss Eytinge noticed her, had her heart touched by the spectacle, soothed the child, and allowed her to play the part. Later on she appeared in the chorus of a juvenile "Pinafore" company, and was soon promoted to be Josephine.

Then she made a big jump—to the West Indies, to look out for her small brother Tommy, the "child actor" of the company, later one of the two famous Fauntleroys and now a dramatic critic on a New York paper. While with this troupe she was pressed into service to fill a big variety of parts, giving her a good foundation on which to build her big hit in the sun-bonnet of "Esmeralda."

She followed this with another success, in an altogether different line—the poetical one of "Elaine," and then fell ill. For some years she remained off the boards, close to death's door, and returned to them finally in a weakling play by Sydney Grundy, "The New Woman."

She took the taste of this out of the public's mouth by a triumph both here and in London with "Sue," and then went into the background once more with "Catherine," from the French.

Her real arrival as a popular star was made in the autumn of '99, at the Lyceum, in "Miss Hobbs."

MEDAL SET MANTELL GOING.

He Was Encouraged to Become an Actor

by a Prize Which, as a Boy, He Won

for Proficiency in Declamation.

Mantell, now in Shakespeare, made his professional start as a sergeant. This was in 1874, in the Rochdale Theater, Lancashire, England, under the stage name of Hudson. The play was "Arrah-na Pogue." He was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 7th of February, 1854, but was brought up in Ireland, where he won a medal at school for his proficiency in declamation. This turned his attention to the amateur stage, where his first appearance was made as De Mauprat in "Richelieu."

He came to America in the same year that he began to act professionally, and he procured an engagement with the Museum stock company in Boston. But he soon returned to England, where he remained for four years, acting in the provinces, and when the States saw him again it was in 1878, when he and Miller were with Modjeska.

His first real lift into popularity arrived when Fanny Davenport engaged him for Loris in "Fedora." In this part he was accounted one of the best-looking men who had trod the American boards, and he established a vogue for himself that paved the way for his stellar career of several years in the one play "Monbars."

GILLETTE DESERTED LAW.

Abetted by Mark Twain, the Future Playwright

and Star Took to "The Road,"

Which He Found a Thorny One.

William Gillette may be said to have reached the stage on the run, for he ran away from home in order to gratify his ambition to become an actor. His family were staid citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, where his father once ran for Governor of the State.

The idea was to make a lawyer of William, but after he got over a taste for mechanics, which led him to construct secretly a steam-engine in his bedroom, he conceived for the stage a craze that refused to be snuffed out by parental opposition.

Mark Twain, a neighbor in Hartford, was on the boy's side. His "Gilded Age" was being dramatized, and the author lent his influence to get young Gillette a place in the cast as foreman of the jury in the company of which John T. Raymond was the head. In this rôle he was entrusted with the onerous task of saying these four words in response to the question of the judge: "We have. Not guilty."

Gillette was barely nineteen at the time, and after the run of "The Gilded Age" was over he found himself in New Orleans without another engagement or the chance of obtaining one. Finally he secured an opening on these magnificent terms—agreeing to play without salary and to furnish his own costumes.

The post was that of leading utility man for a New Orleans stock company, and when, after serving for a while under these humiliating conditions for the sake of the experience it would bring, Gillette mildly suggested that he be paid a small honorarium, he was told there was one alternative that was always open to him—he could leave, which he did.

Thereupon ensued a rough and tumble period of existence for the young actor, who did not arrive at pleasant pastures again until he took to writing plays himself. And yet his first production to reach the footlights was by no means an overwhelming success. This was "The Professor," produced at the Madison Square Theater, with himself in the leading part, when that house was managed by an Episcopal clergyman and his brother.

Success Follows Failure.

It is such a superhuman task to secure a manager's attention for a play that the new playwright is prone to feel that the Rubicon has been passed once the manuscript has been accepted. But in reality this is only a halting-place on the roadside where he may tarry to obtain his second wind. And young Gillette needed all the recuperative powers possible, for when "The Professor" was brought to public attention the critics hurled at it their keenest shafts.

The actor-playwright managed to survive, although his play didn't, and, failing to be discouraged, he went ahead with his work on "Esmeralda." This was a story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which the Mallorys of the theater had become interested, and the dramatization of which, in association with the author, they had entrusted to Gillette. This proved to be a big hit, with Annie Russell in the name-part, and ran to over three hundred performances.

Another adaptation success quickly followed—that of "The Private Secretary," in which Gillette also played. Meantime he was at work on another original piece, "Held by the Enemy," a war drama which almost beat "Shenandoah" on its own ground in the race for popularity.

Inspired by the success he had achieved, Gillette was not content to go ahead on the same lines. He ached to branch out, to astonish folks, to do something big, and with his record behind him he had little difficulty in persuading Charles Frohman to go halves in the production of "Ninety Days."

This was a melodrama of the most lurid type, but the Third Avenue edge of it was supposed to be taken off by the elaborate fashion in which it was staged and the care with which the mechanical effects were looked after. It failed completely, running a bare month, and carrying down all Gillette's savings in its collapse. The disappointment shattered his health, and he retired to a cabin in South Carolina, where, after a time, he set to work on some more adaptations—"Too Much Johnson," "All the Comforts of Home," and "Mr. Wilkinson's Widows."

These were all produced successfully, which could not be said of what eventually turned out to be his most famous work; for "Secret Service," called originally "The Secret Service," was looked upon coldly when it was launched in Philadelphia, with Maurice Barrymore in the lead.

Gillette gave the piece a thorough overhauling, and it was put on in the new form, and with the author as the hero, at the Garrick, New York, in 1896, and made the hit that was really the beginning of Gillette's career of fame as actor-playwright.

BELLEW WAS A SAILOR.

He Studied for the Ministry and Ran

Away to Sea Before He Got Into

the Spot-light.

Kyrle Bellew, soon to follow "Raffles" with "The Right of Way," is the son of an actor who bore the reputation of being the handsomest man in England. He married the daughter of a commodore, and left the stage to enter the church, becoming Bishop of Calcutta. Harold Kyrle (by which name Bellew was then known), being the eldest son, was destined to follow in his father's footsteps, and studied for holy orders at Oxford.

But he soon found that he had made a mistake. His flesh constantly warred against the confining life of the scholar, and at nineteen he ran away to sea, in the old-fashioned way of the story-books.

After five years on salt water he found himself back in England, no further advanced in this world's goods than when he cut stick from Oxford. He wandered about London, not daring to go home, and without money in his pockets. It was at this crisis that he chanced to read an advertisement calling for a light comedian to join a company for the provinces, the salary to be two pounds (ten dollars) a week.

The blood that had come from his actor-father stirred in his veins, and he went at once to apply for the post. His good looks and pleasing address outweighed his lack of experience, and he was transported with joy at being engaged.

While playing in Dublin as George de Lesparre in Boucicault's "Led Astray" his work and appearance so impressed a critic that he wrote to Boucicault, in London, about him. The dramatist at once sent for the unknown actor, and gave him a position in the company at the Haymarket, where in three years' time he rose to be leading man. From there he went to the Lyceum, under Henry Irving, where he first used the name "Kyrle Bellew."

TRIBUTES TO DEAD BROTHERS.

EULOGIES PRONOUNCED AT THE GRAVE BY SIR

ECTOR ON SIR LAUNCELOT, AND BY ROBERT

G. INGERSOLL ON E.C. INGERSOLL.

However unemotional man may be, his deepest sentiments are stirred when he stands face to face with death. The sense of loss; the uncertainty; the vastness of the mystery, which can be solved only by conjecture or the intuitions of faith—all these solemn elements call out the most interior thought and feeling.

Among the recorded utterances of grief we have selected two for our readers. Each is a funeral oration over the body of a brother. In literature we go back to old Sir Thomas Malory for the "doleful complaints" of Sir Ector de Moris over the dead Sir Launcelot, his brother. It will be remembered that after the death of Queen Guinevere, as recorded in the "Morte d'Arthur," Sir Launcelot "ever after eat but little meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead." They bore him to Joyous Gard, where he had desired to be buried, and thither came Sir Ector, who for seven years had been vainly seeking his brother.

The second utterance is the eulogy which was pronounced by the late Robert G. Ingersoll at the funeral of his brother, E.C. Ingersoll. Under similar conditions of grief no deeper note has been so eloquently sounded. Colonel Ingersoll touched the meanings of life, and, infidel though he was, ventured a noble hope in death.

SIR ECTOR TO SIR LAUNCELOT.

And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, and his helm from him; and when he beheld Sir Launcelot's visage, he fell down in a swoon; and when he awoke, it were hard for any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his brother. "Ah! Sir Launcelot," said he, "thou wert head of all Christian knights. And now, I dare say," said Sir Ector, "that Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, thou wert never matched of none earthly knight's hands; and thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bear shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man, and the gentlest, that ever eat in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

INGERSOLL'S EULOGY.

Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point; but being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust.

Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid-sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower.

He was the friend of heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstition far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of the grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak and with a willing hand gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshiper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: "For justice, all place a temple and all season summer."

He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did a loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers.

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, "I am better now."

Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you, who have been chosen from among the many men he loved to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

America's First Great Poem.

In the history of literature there are occasionally noted the names of some distinguished writers whose best remembered work was accomplished at the very beginning of their careers. One remarkable illustration is found in the poem "Thanatopsis," which was composed by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) when he was but seventeen years of age.

His father found the poem in his son's desk, together with the manuscript of "The Waterfowl," and was so affected by the discovery of verse so unusual that he hastened to the house of a neighbor, thrust the manuscripts into his hand, and then burst into tears as he exclaimed:

"Oh, read that. It is Cullen's!"

"Thanatopsis" was taken by Dr. Bryant to the editor of the newly established North American Review; but this gentleman and the friends to whom he showed it were at first unwilling to believe that an American could have written so fine a poem. It was, however, published (in 1817); yet even then, and for a long time after, most persons credited it to Dr. Bryant rather than to his son.

The importance of "Thanatopsis" is at once literary and historical. It is in reality the first original note ever sounded in American poetry. Until that time Americans had merely imitated whatever style of writing happened to be current in England. Bryant, however, attained spontaneous self-expression and distinct individuality. He drew a direct inspiration from Nature itself; and his lines were vivified by the imagination that is unforced. The publication of "Thanatopsis," therefore, is now held to mark the date at which the national literature of America begins.

THANATOPSIS.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

To him who in the love of nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language: for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty; and she glides

Into his darker musings with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart,

Go forth under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around—

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—

Comes a still voice: Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements—

To be a brother to the insensible rock,

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,

The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good—

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun—the vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between—

The venerable woods—rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste—

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite hosts of heaven,

Are shining on the sad abodes of death,

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings

Of morning; traverse Barca's desert sands,

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound

Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there;

And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw

In silence from the living, and no friend

Take note of thy departure? All that breathe

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh

When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care

Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase

His favorite fantom; yet all these shall leave

Their mirth and their employments, and shall come

And make their bed with thee. As the long train

Of ages glide away, the sons of men—

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes

In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,

And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man—

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side

By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

PRE-EASTER PHILOSOPHY.

A Few Reflections, Pertinent and Impertinent, on the Subject of Clothes, Their Cost, and

the Consequences of Sartorial Splendor.

Dwellers in huts and marble halls—

From shepherdess up to queen—

Cared little for bonnets, and less for shawls,

And nothing for crinoline.

But now simplicity's not the rage,

And it's funny to think how cold

The dress they wore in the Golden Age

Would seem in the Age of Gold.

HENRY S. LEIGH—The Two Ages.

Nothing is thought rare

Which is not new, and follow'd; yet we know

That what was worn some twenty years ago

Comes into grace again.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER—Prologue to the Noble Gentleman.

Dress drains our cellar dry,

And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,

And introduces hunger, frost, and wo.

Where peace and hospitality might reign.

COWPER—The Task. Bk. II.

He that is proud of the rustling of his silks, like a madman, laughs at the rattling of his fetters. For indeed, Clothes ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency.

Fuller—The Holy and Profane States.

I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,

And entertain some score or two of tailors,

To study fashions to adorn my body:

Since I am crept in favor with myself,

I will maintain it with some little cost.

Richard III. Act I. Sc. 2.

So tedious is this day,

As is the night before some festival

To an impatient child, that hath new robes,

And may not wear them.

Romeo and Juliet. Act III. Sc. 2.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 3.

The glass of fashion and the mold of form,

The observ'd of all observers.

Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 1.

Their clothes are after such a pagan cut too,

That, sure, they've worn out Christendom.

Henry VIII. Act I. Sc. 3.

You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred;

only I do not like the fashion of your garments.

King Lear. Act III. Sc. 6.

He is only fantastical that is not in fashion.

BURTON—Anatomy of Melancholy.

And as the French we conquer'd once,

Now gives us laws for pantaloons,

The length of breeches and the gathers,

Port-cannons, periwigs, and feathers.

BUTLER—Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto III.

Thy clothes are all the soul thou hast.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER—Honest Man's Fortune. Act V. Sc. 3.

A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat;

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

I see a wild civility—

Do more bewitch me than when art

Is too precise in every part.

ROBERT HERRICK—Delight in Disorder.

Fashion—a word which knaves and fools may use,

Their knavery and folly to excuse.

CHURCHILL—Rosciad.

As good be out of the world as out of the fashion.

COLLEY CIBBER—Love's Last Shift.

Who seems most hideous when adorned the most.

ARIOSTO—Orlando Furioso. XX. 116.

I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 148.

Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;

In short, my deary, kiss me! and be quiet.

LADY M.W. MONTAGU—Summary of Lord Littelton's Advice.

Classics From Carlyle.

Two of the Most Celebrated Passages in "Sartor Resartus," Penned By

the Great Scottish Philosopher in What He Called "The

Loneliest Nook in Britain."

"The selections printed here are taken from what is regarded by nearly every one as the masterpiece of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). "Sartor Resartus" (The Tailor Retailored) is the title of a book which exhibits the very soul of Carlyle himself, with all its mingled scorn, lawlessness, humor, and pathos. He wrote in what he called "the loneliest nook in Britain"—a little Scottish farm at Craigenputtoch.

To this place Carlyle had taken his bride, Jane Welsh, a very brilliant woman, and there the two lived for years amid the most desolate surroundings and after the rudest fashion. They were a strange and ill-assorted couple—he in manner and appearance a gaunt and uncouth peasant; she a delicate and nervous woman of the world. Carlyle suffered tortures from dyspepsia, which often made him as savage as a wolf. His wife, who had married him less from love than because she thought he had a great career before him, suffered from his heedlessness and roughness, yet took her revenge upon him by the sharpness of her tongue, and by the burning record which she left of their mutual bitterness and spite.

It was in this lonely place that Carlyle wrote "Sartor Resartus," which first appeared in Fraser's Magazine (1833-1834). It is one of the strangest and most eccentric of literary productions. It has no form. Its language is often exclamatory, vociferous, and wild—interlarded also with foreign words, and words that Carlyle himself invented. It really sets forth the personal opinions, the fanciful speculations, and the mental writhings of its author; and it foreshadows the almost demoniac power wherewith Carlyle afterward wrote the story of the French Revolution, which he himself called "truth clad in hell-fire."

Carlyle, as a man, was so erratic as to be almost impossible. His opinions were extreme, and he was fond of bellowing them forth in the fiercest and most furious words, insulting those who differed with him, eaten up by a colossal vanity, and yet unquestionably a genius of the first order.

Night View of a City.

"Ah, my dear friend," said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire?

"That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad; that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid!

"The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying—on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night.

"The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw; in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard, hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting and playing their high chess game, the pawns being Men.

"The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready, and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders; the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his pick-locks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes.

"Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but in the Condemned Cells the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow; comes no hammering from the Raven's Rock?—their gallows must even now be a-building.

"Upward of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie around us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten—all these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but carpentry and masonry between them—crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel—or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others; such work goes on under that smoke-counterpane! But I sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars."

In Nature's Wilds.

"Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness of form and softness of environment; in a climate favorable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster around the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur; you ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken, shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength.

"To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence can the Son of Time not pretend; still less if some Specter haunt him from the Past; and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, specter-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this world's Happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if that suit thee better: 'Whoso can look on death will start no shadows.'

"From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outward; for now the valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony, water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there.

"An upland, irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent toward every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together; only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude.

"No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province.

"But sunward, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and center of the mountain region! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried!

"Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine.

"And as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion.

"The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four; it was open; servants and postilions wore wedding-favors; that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near; Du Himmel! It was Herr Towgood and—Blumine!

"With slight unrecognizing salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring thickets, onward, to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, I remained alone, behind them, with the Night!"

THE ACTUAL HEIGHT OF SEA WAVES.

Average in Different Oceans—Fifty-Two Feet the Height of the Tallest Billow Yet

Measured—Not More Than Thirty Feet in North Atlantic.

Waves are the agents of tremendous force, as the batterings received by the big ocean liners in the winter storms tend to prove. But in spite of the stories told by timid or imaginative passengers on the Europe-America ferry, the surges of the North Atlantic are not the highest waves nor the most forcible. The most tremendous of seas are those that form south of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, where the oceanic belt is unbroken by land.

How high those southern waves rise has not been accurately measured, so far as can be discovered; but probably they are not very much higher than the waves farther north. Says the New York Sun:

Sailors in modern times have never seen such waves as those which the early navigators declared attained heights of one hundred to one hundred and thirty feet. La Perouse asserted that he saw waves towering in the Pacific to a height of nearly two hundred feet. In these more scientific days we may say that the highest wave yet measured had an altitude of about fifty-two feet.

This was in the southern ocean, a little north of the Antarctic regions; and it is quite certain that the highest waves ever seen in that region did not surpass fifty-eight feet in altitude. A wave of that height would certainly be a formidable looking object, and its crest would wash the windows of the fifth story of many New York buildings.

The average height of the waves in different oceans has been ascertained with some approach to accuracy as the result of a great many measurements. The highest waves observed in the Indian Ocean, for example, are about forty feet. The highest waves in the North Atlantic are from twenty-five to twenty-nine feet, and in the Mediterranean from sixteen to nineteen feet.

Even the smallest of these great waves has considerable destructive power. Some of them travel along at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. A wave about thirty feet high contains thousands of tons of water, and when this immense force is dashed against any structure the ruin wrought is likely to be impressive.

BASEBALL BARDS "ON DECK."

A Garland of Truly American Verse—Poems, New and Old, That Sing the Glories

of the Great National Game.

THE OLD ENTHUSIAST.

By S.E. Kiser.

There's a glad old-fashioned feeling stealing over me once more;

I forget that I'm gray-headed and am verging on threescore;

There are many weighty matters that my earnest care should claim—

But come, old man, let's knock off and go out and see the game.

Let's get a bag of peanuts, and be boys again and shout

For the men who lam the leather and who line three-baggers out;

Let's go out and root and holler, and forget that we have cares,

And that still the world has markets which are worked by bulls and bears.

Every year or two they tell us that baseball is out of date;

But each spring it's back in fashion when they line up at the plate,

When the good old, glad old feeling comes again to file its claim—

When a man can turn from trouble and go out and see the game.

I can feel the warm blood rushing through my veins again—hooray!

See those slender pennants waving? Hear the umpire calling "Play!"

Yah, you bluffer—no, you didn't—aw, say, umpire, that's a shame!

What? Two strikes? Come off, you robber! Well, you're rotten all the same!

Oh, if we'd a man like Anson or Dan Brouthers used to be,

To hold down that first bag—say, what a corker that was! Gee!

Go it! Slide, you chump—you've got to—never touched him! Yip! Hurrah!

Say, that boy's a wonder—hold it! Ah, the dub, they've caught him—pshaw!

Ever see John Ward as short-stop? There's the boy that had the head!

Why, if we had him out yonder he would scare those fellows dead!

And Mike Kelly—Whee-e-e! A beauty! Home run, sure as Brown's my name!

Downed 'em nine to eight, by golly! Wasn't it a corkin' game?

Chicago Record-Herald.

THE BOY WHO KEEPS THE BATS.

By Bide Dudley.

Just see him stride from bench to plate—

The boy who keeps the bats;

With truly a majestic gait—

The boy who keeps the bats.

His clothes are old, his feet are bare,

His face unwashed, unkempt his hair,

He's still in pride a millionaire—

The boy who keeps the bats.

A most important man is he—

The boy who keeps the bats;

Possessed of great activity—

The boy who keeps the bats.

He knows each player by his name,

His age, his weight, from whence he came,

And just how long he's played the game—

The boy who keeps the bats.

He'll lug ten sticks and laugh with glee—

The boy who keeps the bats.

"De gang" regards with jealousy

The boy who keeps the bats.

Although he's not employed for pay,

He "gets inside to see 'em play,"

Which beats his former knot-hole way—

The boy who keeps the bats.

He knows each player's stick, you bet—

The boy who keeps the bats.

'Twould break his heart should he forget—

The boy who keeps the bats.

Whene'er a ball is knocked away,

He throws them one with which to play,

He's there for business ev'ry day—

The boy who keeps the bats.

He yells when worthy work is done—

The boy who keeps the bats.

He "hollers" after ev'ry run—

The boy who keeps the bats.

He's overjoyed at victory,

And tells the other kids how "we"

Won out as easily as could be—

The boy who keeps the bats!

St. Joseph News.

CASEY AT THE BAT.

BY PHINEAS THAYER.

It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day;

The score stood two to four, with but an inning left to play.

So, when Cooney died at second, and Burrows did the same,

A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest,

With that hope which springs eternal within the human breast,

For they thought: "If only Casey could get a whack at that,"

They'd put up even money now, with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, and likewise so did Blake,

And the former was a puddin', and the latter was a fake,

So on that stricken multitude a deathlike silence sat,

For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a "single," to the wonderment of all,

And the much-despised Blakey "tore the cover off the ball."

And when the dust had lifted, and they saw what had occurred,

There was Blakey safe at second, and Flynn a-huggin' third.

Then, from the gladdened multitude went up a joyous yell,

It rumbled in the mountain-tops, it rattled in the dell;

It struck upon the hillside and rebounded on the flat;

For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;

There was pride in Casey's bearing, and a smile on Casey's face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt,

Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt;

Then while the New York pitcher ground the ball into his hip,

Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurling through the air,

And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.

Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped—

"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,

Like the beating of storm waves on a stern and distant shore.

"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted some one on the stand.

And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised a hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;

He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on:

He signaled to Sir Timothy, once more the spheroid flew;

But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered "Fraud!"

But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,

And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout:

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

FOIBLES OF LITERARY MEN.

Many qualities which would be regarded as censurable if possessed by ordinary men and women are often regarded with a respect that is tinctured with admiration when they are possessed by persons of genius.

There is scarcely an author or musician of note who has not been distinguished by some foible that has excited the amusement of his friends. In many instances these foibles afford an index to the character of their victim. Some are natural, while others would seem to be the result of some inexplicable affectation. Viewed in any light, however, all are interesting.

Keats liked red pepper on his toast.

Sardou imagines he has a perpetual cold.

Dickens was fond of wearing flashy jewelry.

Ernest Renan wore his finger-nails abnormally long.

Walter Savage Landor threw the dishes around to relieve his mind.

Edgar Allan Poe slept with his cat. He was inordinately proud of his feet.

Alphonse Daudet wore his eye-glasses when asleep. He did his best work when hungry.

Thackeray used to lift his hat whenever he passed the house in which he wrote "Vanity Fair."

Thomas Wentworth Higginson possesses a singular power over wild birds, and can easily tame them.

Alexandre Dumas, the younger, bought a new painting every time he had a new book published.

Robert Louis Stevenson's favorite recreation was playing the flute, in order, as he said, to tune up his ideas.

Robert Browning could not sit still. With the constant shuffling of his feet holes were worn in the carpet.

Longfellow enjoyed walking only at sunrise or sunset, and he said his sublimest moods came upon him at these times.

Washington Irving never mentioned the name of his fiancée after her death, and if anybody else did so, he immediately left the room.

Nathaniel Hawthorne always washed his hands before reading a letter from his wife. He delighted in poring over old advertisements in the newspaper files.

Macaulay kept his closets crammed with elaborately embroidered waistcoats, and the more gaudy they were the better he liked them.

Disraeli wore corsets. The older he grew, the greater became his desire to dress like a young man. He had a pen stuck behind each ear when writing.

F. Marion Crawford carries his own stationery, pen, and ink, and never writes with any other. He has written every word of every novel with the same penholder.

Bjornson kept his pockets full of the seeds of trees, scattering handfuls broadcast in his daily walks. He even tried to persuade his associates to do the same.

Darwin had no respect for books as books, and would cut a big volume in two, for convenience in handling, or he would tear out the leaves he required for reference.

Zola would pass whole weeks in the belief that he was an idiot. While in this state he wrote more than at any other time. He would never accept an invitation to dinner.

Oliver Wendell Holmes used to carry a horse-chestnut in one pocket and a potato in another to ward off rheumatism. He had a great fondness for trees, and always sat under one when he could.

Voltaire, as a preliminary to his day's work, would sharpen an even dozen lead pencils. He would untie and retie his stock whenever an idea concerning his work particularly pleased him.

Count Tolstoy used to go barefoot and hatless the year round. He is fond of French perfumes, and keeps his linens scented with sachet powder. There is always a flower on his desk as he writes. Although rich, he wears the cheapest clothes he can buy.

Sir A. Conan Doyle, even in the coldest weather, never wears an overcoat. When he gives an afternoon lecture he removes his vest and buttons his Prince Albert coat close to his body. He is a golf enthusiast, and spends all the time possible on the links.

Bret Harte, when the inspiration was on him, would hire a cab for the night, and drive, without stopping, through the darkness until the struggle for ideas was over, and he grew calm enough to write. Nothing pleased him more than to be taken for an Englishman.

The World's Fastest Trains.

Great Britain Leads in Speed, with France a Good Second, and the United

States Only a Slow Third.—Some Passenger Statistics.

Speed is the magician that makes the world smaller. Compare the hourly runs of the old stage-coaches with the hourly runs of the modern railroad train, and we can figure without difficulty just how much the world has shrunk in seventy-five years—though, as always happens in magic, the shrinkage is apparent, not real. Motor cars now are made so powerful that the fastest can go more than two miles in a minute—a speed which is not yet considered practicable for ordinary travel. Railroad trains have made phenomenal time over short distances, and there is one train which regularly travels one hundred and eighteen and one-half miles at about sixty miles an hour.

It is something of a surprise to learn that American trains are not the fastest. England is first, with France second. The following article from the New York Sun gives the speed figures of the fastest trains of all countries where good speed is made:

The fastest regular long-distance run without stop in the world is on the Great Western, from London to Bristol, 118½ miles in 120 minutes, or practically sixty miles an hour. In order to leave passengers at Bath a car is dropped from the train without stop, a time-saving device in operation on a number of European roads, though still unknown here.

The longest run without stop made in any country is from London to Liverpool on the London and Northwestern, 201 miles, made at the rate of fifty-four miles an hour. The next longest is on the Midland, from London to Leeds, 196 miles, at the rate of fifty-two miles an hour.

The Empire State Express.

The train in this country coming nearest to these long runs without stop is the Empire State Express on the New York Central, from New York to Albany, 143 miles, at the rate of 53 64-100 miles an hour; and the time of the same train to Buffalo, 440 miles in 500 minutes, is just a trifle faster than that of the Midland express from London to Glasgow, 447 miles in 510 minutes. Each makes four regular stops. The Northwestern runs a train from London to Glasgow, 401½ miles, in eight hours, making two stops.

The Great Northern runs a train from London to Doncaster, 156 miles, without stop, in 169 minutes, at the rate of 55½ miles an hour, and the Great Central train runs over England's new road, from London to Sheffield, 165 miles, in 170 minutes, better than 58 miles an hour, slipping a car at Leicester without stop.

Such runs as that between London and Birmingham on the Great Western, a distance of 129¼ miles, made without stop in 140 minutes, or at the rate of more than 55 miles an hour, are less remarkable; for this seems to be about the regular gait of many trains in England.

These fast and long runs are common to all the trunk lines in England, while in the United States the fast runs are all confined to two roads, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania. Compared with many English fast runs, the time between New York and Washington and Boston is slow. The distance to the two cities from New York is about the same, and in both cases the fastest trains make it in five hours (or a little over, now, to Boston), or at 46 miles an hour.

For runs of nearly 1,000 miles no country can show trains to compare with the New York and Chicago trains on the New York Central, the best trains making the 980 miles in 1,080 minutes, or at 54 miles an hour. While this is not quite so fast as the time made by the fast trains from Paris to Lyons and Marseilles, the distance is twice as great as across France.

Fast Time to Atlantic City.

Coming to short runs and special summer trains, undoubtedly the fastest are from Camden to Atlantic City. Here some very fast time has been made over an ideal country for fast time by both the Reading and the Pennsylvania. The best Reading time is 56½ miles in 50 minutes, or 66 miles an hour, while the best Pennsylvania time is 59 miles at the rate of 64 miles an hour.

These constitute all the very fast regular trains in the United States. The fastest run in New England outside the Boston-New York run is from Boston to Portland at the rate of 44 miles an hour, and the showing is still poorer in the West and South. Chicago, in many respects the greatest railroad center in the world, has no fast trains outside the New York Central and Pennsylvania trains referred to.

Throughout the West, though the best trains are very luxurious, the runs are all short, averaging about 30 miles between stations and the speed nowhere averages 40 miles an hour.

Next to speed may be considered the frequency of trains, their appointments, etc. In this respect a still more pronounced difference appears in different countries with almost equal population.

More trains leave the great South Terminal in Boston in one day than are moved in one direction on all the roads of Spain and Portugal in two weeks. From one terminal in London more trains leave daily than move in ten days to supply the whole population of Russia.

The World's Largest Station.

The South Terminal in Boston not only is the largest station in the world, but sends out daily more than 400 trains, nearly twice the number despatched from the Grand Central Station by the three roads starting from there. The next largest number sent from any station in this country is about 350 from the Boston and Maine terminal in Boston, and the next about 325 from the Broad Street Station, Philadelphia. Then come the Grand Central Station, New York, and the Reading Terminal, Philadelphia.

But these figures do not equal those of the great London terminals. There one station sends out 700 trains daily, the greatest number from any one station in the world, and all of the twelve great terminals send out large numbers of trains.

Including all suburban trains, and figuring on a mean average of winter and summer, the regular scheduled trains leave the four great centers in the following numbers daily, the figures being for all roads and approximately correct: New York city, 1,400; Boston, 1,000; Philadelphia, 850; Chicago, 850. No other American city has 400.

Good Road-Beds Abroad.

The road-bed and the operating equipment are better in England and some parts of France and Germany than in America, and, owing to the ever-prevailing precautions, accidents are only about one-fifth as frequent as in America. All the principal roads in England have two tracks and many main lines have four.

In this respect Americans are making great improvements now, as the Pennsylvania is four-tracked from New York to Pittsburgh, and the New Haven from New York to New Haven, while the New York Central is three-tracked part of the way to Albany, and four-tracked from there to Buffalo.

Turning to continental Europe it is found that France alone indulges in really fast trains, and possibly she is ahead even of England in the number of trains running regularly above fifty miles an hour. The greatest travel route on the Continent is from Paris south to Lyons, Marseilles, and the Mediterranean, and here are found fine and fast trains.

The run from Paris to Marseilles, 585 miles, is made in 750 minutes, with only six stops. Many of the shorter runs, such as from Paris to Calais, to the Belgian frontier, etc., are at the rate of from fifty-eight to sixty-two miles an hour for the regular schedule.

Europe's Fast Averages.

According to a German authority, the average speed of the fastest trains in Europe is as follows: French, fifty-eight miles an hour; English, fifty-five miles an hour, and German, fifty-one. As a matter of experience, fast trains are hard to find in Germany, and the service in this respect does not compare with France.

It takes the fastest train 227 minutes to go from Berlin to Hamburg, 178 miles, which is 47½ miles an hour, and the "luxe" train, the one fast goer between Münich and Vienna, runs at only 45.60 miles an hour; but there are as a rule frequent trains throughout Germany and the service is good.

For all the rest of Europe the speed drops to about 30 miles an hour for express trains. Italy is surprisingly slow. It takes the express 965 minutes to go from Turin to Rome, 413 miles, or only 26 miles an hour, though the Milan-Rome express makes nearly 40 miles an hour.

Between Rome and Naples, 155 miles, there are only four or five trains daily, the fastest at 34 miles an hour, while it takes 920 minutes to go 439 miles on the best train from Rome to Brindisi, a rate of less than 30 miles an hour.

The express between Stockholm and Gothenburg, the two large cities of Sweden, barely makes 30 miles an hour. In the remaining continental countries the trains are even slower.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THINGS.

Sealing-wax in the present form was first noted in London in the middle of the sixteenth century. A sort of earth was used by the ancient Egyptians in sealing papers and documents. The Egyptians placed such earth on the horns of cattle, and upon it was stamped the seal of the priest. Thus were identified the cattle to be used in the sacrifices.

The diving-bell was not mentioned before the sixteenth century. Two Greeks in that century (1538) gave an exhibition before Charles V, descending into water of considerable depth in a large inverted kettle. They took down with them burning lights. The men returned to the surface without being wet. The light was still burning.

The Lombardians were the first to use effectual quarantine methods against the plague and infectious diseases, and mention of a quarantine is made in Lombardy and Milan in 1374, 1383, and 1399. Prior to that time Christian communities resigned themselves to the visitation of the plague, regarding it as a divine punishment.

J.H. Schultze, a German, obtained the first actual photographic copies (of writing) in 1727; and to Thomas Wedgwood is due the honor of first producing pictures on sensitized surfaces in 1802. Between 1826 and 1833 Louis Jacques Daguerre and Nicéphore Nièpce perfected the daguerreotype process, the first practical photography. Their discovery was communicated to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839.

The turkey is an American bird. Lucullus and the Epicureans did not know about him. He was found in his wild state after Columbus's time. About a hundred years after the discovery of America broiled young turkeys became great delicacies on the Frenchman's table.

A telegraphic line, consisting of twenty-four wires, each representing a letter, was established by Lesage, at Geneva, in 1774; and in the same year Bishop Watson made experiments over a two-mile wire near London. In Germany the invention is credited to Sommering—1809.

Cork was known to the Greeks and Romans, and was put to almost as many uses as at present, although there is no mention in Rome of linoleum, notwithstanding its Roman sound. Glass bottles, with cork stoppers, for wine and beer did not come into use until the middle of the fourteenth century.

Water-mills were used in the time of Julius Cæsar. In Roman times slaves were condemned to the corn-mills, which were propelled by treads. Afterward cattle were used. In the third and fourth centuries there were as many as three hundred cattle-mills in Rome.

Corn-mills are often mentioned in the Bible. The original corn-mill much resembled the modern druggist's pestle. Moses forbade corn-mills to be taken in pawn, for that, he thought, was like taking a man's life in pledge.

Joseph Henry was the first to construct electro-magnets in a useful form. In 1832, at the Albany Academy, he succeeded in ringing a bell over a mile of wire.

Wire was first beaten out by a hammer, but the artisans of Nuremberg, in 1350, began to draw it, which was the great step forward in that art.

The first camera-obscura was invented by Giambattista della Porta, an Italian philosopher, during the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The first cologne was called Hungary water, from the country of its invention. It was made from spirits of wine distilled upon rosemary.

Colored glass came from Egypt. The Egyptians carried the art to great perfection apparently before history begins to tell of it.

Buckwheat began to be cultivated in England in 1597. It had been brought into Europe from Asia one hundred years before.

Wall paper, with fancy colored figures, began to be used in 1620. The art was developed thereafter largely by the French.

A RESCUED POEM.

The Scrap Book Resurrects from Distressing Obscurity a Gem

That Might Otherwise Have Been Lost to Posterity.

History records that in 1895 Langdon Smith, at that time connected with the Sunday edition of the New York Herald, wrote the first few stanzas of the following poem. They were printed in the Herald. Four years later, having joined the staff of the New York Journal in the interim, Mr. Smith came across the verses among his papers, and, reading them over, was struck with a sense of their incompleteness. He added a stanza or two, and laid the poem aside. Later he wrote more stanzas, and finally completed it and sent it in to Arthur Brisbane, editor of the Evening Journal. Mr. Brisbane, being unable to use it, turned it over to Charles E. Russell, of the Morning Journal. It appeared in the Morning Journal—in the middle of a page of want "ads"! How it came to be buried thus some compositor may know. Perhaps a "make-up" man was inspired with a glimmer of editorial intelligence to "lighten up" the page.

But even a deep border of "ads" could not smother the poem. Mr. Smith received letters of congratulation from all parts of the world, along with requests for copies. The poem has been in constant demand; and it has been almost unobtainable. Here for the first time it is given to the public in a suitable position, with proper recognition—proof once more that the true spark cannot long remain hid under a bushel.

Mr. Smith has caught a note of deep interest. He has linked evolution to the theory of soul-transmigration—has translated Wordsworth's ode on immortality into the terms of science. "The glory and the dream" come, not from another world, but from the Paleozoic period, in which existed the most ancient forms of life of which traces still remain. And the author gives us glimpses of man in several geological periods, showing him, finally, as the cave man of the Stone Age; whence it is comparatively a short jump to the twentieth century—and Delmonico's.

EVOLUTION.

BY LANGDON SMITH.

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish,

In the Paleozoic time,

And side by side on the ebbing tide

We sprawled through the ooze and slime,

Or skittered with many a caudal flip

Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,

My heart was rife with the joy of life,

For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,

And mindless at last we died;

And deep in a rift of the Caradoc drift

We slumbered side by side.

The world turned on in the lathe of time,

The hot lands heaved amain,

Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,

And crept into light again.

We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed,

And drab as a dead man's hand;

We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees,

Or trailed through the mud and sand,

Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet

Writing a language dumb,

With never a spark in the empty dark

To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved,

And happy we died once more;

Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold

Of a Neocomian shore.

The eons came, and the eons fled,

And the sleep that wrapped us fast

Was riven away in a newer day,

And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees

We swung in our airy flights,

Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,

In the hush of the moonless nights.

And oh! what beautiful years were these,

When our hearts clung each to each;

When life was filled, and our senses thrilled

In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life, and love by love,

We passed through the cycles strange,

And breath by breath, and death by death,

We followed the chain of change.

Till there came a time in the law of life

When over the nursing sod

The shadows broke, and the soul awoke

In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull,

And tusked like the great Cave Bear;

And you, my sweet, from head to feet,

Were gowned in your glorious hair.

Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,

When the night fell o'er the plain,

And the moon hung red o'er the river bed,

We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,

And shaped it with brutish craft;

I broke a shank from the woodland dank,

And fitted it, head and haft.

Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,

Where the Mammoth came to drink;—

Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,

And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,

Loud answered our kith and kin;

From west and east to the crimson feast

The clan came trooping in.

O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof,

We fought, and clawed and tore,

And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,

We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone,

With rude and hairy hand,

I pictured his fall on the cavern wall

That men might understand.

For we lived by blood, and the right of might,

Ere human laws were drawn.

And the Age of Sin did not begin

Till our brutal tusks were gone.

And that was a million years ago,

In a time that no man knows;

Yet here to-night in the mellow light,

We sit at Delmonico's;

Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,

Your hair is as dark as jet.

Your years are few, your life is new,

Your soul untried, and yet——

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,

And the scarp of the Purbeck flags,

We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones,

And deep in the Coraline crags;

Our love is old, our lives are old,

And death shall come amain;

Should it come to-day, what man may say

We shall not live again?

Then as we linger at luncheon here,

O'er many a dainty dish,

Let us drink anew to the time when you

Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.

A HOROSCOPE OF THE MONTHS.

BY MARION Y. BUNNER.

SECOND INSTALMENT.

What the Old Astrological Traditions Say of the Characteristics and the Destiny of

Those Born Under the Sign "Aries," Representing the Period Between

March 21 and April 19.

Compiled and edited for THE SCRAP BOOK.

ARIES: THE RAM.

MARCH 21 to APRIL 19.

CUSP: MARCH 21 to MARCH 27.

The constellation "Aries"—the first sign of the zodiac, and the head sign of the Fire Triplicity—exerts its influence from March 21 to April 19, the period coinciding with the first month of the Roman year. It is a cardinal, equinoctial, movable, masculine sign, the positive pole of the Fire Triplicity, governing the face and head. The most typical attributes of its subjects are unfailing courage, intuition, and reason.

A person born during the period of the cusp, when the sun is on the edge of the sign, does not receive the full benefits of the individuality of either sign, but partakes of the characteristics of both.

Persons born under this sign are positive, obedient, yet with a faculty for commanding, paradoxical as this may appear. They are also inventive, original, determined, and executive. Once the mind of an Aries subject is made up, nothing can swerve him from the course he has determined to pursue. Before undertaking any new enterprise, his habit is to study the entire situation carefully, thereby discovering and profiting by many seemingly minor, yet in the end important, points which would probably have escaped the ordinary individual.

Aries people are good conversationalists, having keen intellects. Many fine writers, poets, lecturers, and teachers come out of this sign.

They are aggressive and excitable, oftentimes going to extremes in their excitement, and they are apt to show too much antagonism. They enter a fight to win, and nothing can induce them to back out of it. The Aries woman has the same fighting spirit, and stands by her friends to the end, no matter what the circumstances may be.

The subjects of Aries are easily angered, but the fire is quickly quenched, leaving behind no sting or grudge. They are generous, sympathetic, and kindly, and so much do they think of their friends that they will never acknowledge a comrade's faults. On the other hand, they never fail to see the failings of their enemies and to speak of them in no uncertain terms.

The traits of Aries people are perhaps more varied and peculiar than those of any other of the twelve signs. They are not naturally patient, yet they are extremely so with those they love.

The Aries man is usually well-built, strong, and tall.

According to some authorities, the short, broad-shouldered subjects are much more fortunate in making money than are the tall ones. They have intellectual eyes, a ruddy complexion. Their foreheads are broad at the eyebrows. The eyes are generally deep set. They are more than willing to work for what they want to secure.

The success of an Aries subject depends upon the way in which he uses his splendid energy, action, systematic endeavor, and finally upon his determination to stick at the work in hand and push it to completion.

Faults Are Impatience and Anger.

The chief faults of the Aries people are impatience, anger, selfishness, and fickleness, together with a tendency to extreme aggressiveness. The physical temperament of the subject will be nervous-sanguine if born in a southern climate, and bilious-sanguine if born in a northern latitude.

When Aries and Sagittarius people are united, astrologists declare that a happy domestic life is certain. The children will be physically fine, their nature still finer, and their intellect of the highest order.

Aries children should be very carefully and tenderly brought up. They can be readily managed only through kindness and love. In fact, Aries children seem to demand a constant expression of love. They crave a just appreciation of any little task they may perform.

It is most important that an Aries child be not overpraised, for in so doing his higher development is certain to be arrested.

The ruling planets of the month are Mars and Neptune, and the gems are sapphire, turquoise, and diamond. The astral colors are blue, white, and pink. An old rhyme says:

Those who in April date their years,

Diamonds should wear, lest bitter tears

For vain repentance flow.

Traditions of the Month.

For Aries people, Tuesday is the most fortunate day of the week, and June and July the most favorable months in which to bring any business transactions to a successful issue. It is well for an Aries subject to endeavor to carry out the most important business interests during these months.

The flower emblematic of Aries is the amaryllis, signifying unbending pride. The ancient Hebraic tribe over which the sign has ruled is that of Gad, and the ruling angel of the sign is Machidial.

In the old Roman reckoning, April was the second month, but it is counted in the Julian calendar as the fourth. The traditional derivation of the name is omnia aperit—"it opens everything." Among the Romans, this month was sacred to Venus. The first twenty days were given over to feasts, games, and equestrian combats. On the 21st, which was regarded as the birthday of Rome, the wine of the previous autumn was first tasted; on the 25th, the ceremony of the Robigalia, for the averting of mildew, and on the last three days came the "Dance of the Flowers."

The 1st of April has long been a day for the playing of practical jokes. According to an old tradition, this custom had its origin in the belief that it was on the first day of April that Noah sent his dove on its fruitless search for evidence of the subsidence of the flood. The dove got back without an olive-branch, but there is no evidence on which to base the belief that Noah regarded the failure of the bird's mission as a joke.

Singularly enough, the great day for practical joking in Hindustan is March 31.

It is usually in the month of April, too, that Easter falls. The word "Easter" is of Saxon derivation. Among the Teutonic races, April was called Ostermonath—the month of the east wind. Our Easter Sunday must be between March 21 and April 25. It is regulated by the occurrence of the paschal moon, or first full moon between the vernal equinox and fourteen days afterward.

Though it has long been the custom to make Easter Day the occasion of the celebration of the resurrection of Christ, there is no trace of such a celebration in the New Testament or in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.

St. George's Day is the 23d of the month, and St. Mark's Eve, with its superstition about those who were doomed to die, falls on the 24th.

A good type of the aggressiveness, independence, singleness of purpose, and strength of character of the Aries people is the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst. Bismarck was an excellent illustration of the dogged determination and fighting characteristics of the sign.

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Table of Contents

THE SCRAP BOOK.

APRIL, 1906.

A MARVELOUS RECEPTION.

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While.

IS THE RICH YOUNG MAN HANDICAPPED?

TO TEACH TRADES TO YOUNG WORKERS.

A COLLEGE CAREER—IS IT WORTH WHILE?

ATHENIAN CULTURE IS AMERICA'S NEED.

NOTABLE NEGLECT OF INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

BELGIAN DRAMATIST CRITICIZES NEW YORK.

WHAT "PUNCH" HAS MEANT TO ENGLAND.

THE OLD JOURNALISM COLORED BY THE NEW.

HOW TO ASSIMILATE THE BEST IN BOOKS.

ARE WE SURFEITED WITH WIT AND HUMOR?

WOMAN'S REAL PLACE IN LITERARY WORK.

RACE SUICIDE MAY PROVE A BLESSING.

WORTH WHILE TO LIVE IN A LARGE CITY.

MAKING MONEY IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY.

LET DOCTORS TELL WHAT THE MATTER IS.

FOOD AS A PRIME FACTOR OF CHARACTER.

DR. W.S. RAINSFORD A FORCEFUL FIGURE.

LESSONS THAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM BIRDS.

CHINA IS SEEKING WESTERN LEARNING.

Love-Letters of the Great.

QUEEN VICTORIA'S ROMANCE.

LEIGH HUNT AND HIS MARIANNE.

THE KINGLY LOVE OF CHARLES I.

NAPOLEON TO HIS FIRST LOVE.

THE FIDELITY OF WASHINGTON.

BRIEF BUT SINCERE "OLD NOLL."

POE'S HEART IN A TIME OF TRIAL.

THE LOVE OF BISMARCK.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

II.

III.

THE GIANT AND PYGMY OF BOOKLAND.

The Great Southwest.

The Empire State of the Future.

Texas Now Leads in Railways.

The Land of Corn and Cotton.

What Statehood Will Mean.

The Growth of the Gulf Ports.

Galveston and the Panama Canal.

ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

HOW MELODRAMA WAS ECLIPSED BY TRUTH. COINCIDENCES IN PARIS COURT.

THE FIRST SIGHT OF A WHITE FACE. HUNTING DOWN THE SHY NEGRITO.

HOW THEY CONSTRUCT ENGLISH IN BELGIUM. A REQUEST TO "TWIRL THE PAGE."

PRACTICAL JOKING OF EUGENE VIVIER. "A MOST GENTLEMANLY EMPEROR."

ARTERIES AND VEINS AS A RACE-COURSE. MILEAGE OF THE HUMAN BLOOD.

SOME MICROSCOPIC EUROPEAN REPUBLICS. ONE IS IN THE LOWER PYRENEES.

WEIGHTS OF THE SEXES AT DIFFERENT AGES. MEN ARE FATTEST AT FORTY.

SPENDS TEN MONTHS GAZING INTO MIRROR. WOMAN'S AVERAGE IN A LIFETIME.

ANIMAL ENDURANCE PUTS MAN TO SHAME. DESPAIR YIELDS TO COURAGE.

EGGS OF VARIOUS FOWLS MUCH ALIKE. GOOSE'S CONTAIN MOST PROTEIN.

A CHECK FOR THOUSANDS ON A PINE SHINGLE. A PIONEER BANKER'S READINESS.

Robert Emmet's Speech of Vindication.

The Rivals.

LITTLE GEMS FROM TENNYSON.

HOW TO TELL A WOMAN'S AGE.

ODDITIES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE.

The Prophecies of Bonaparte.

REJECTED BOOKS THAT WON FAME.

Con Cregan's Legacy.

GEORGE III SOUGHT HEAVEN'S AID.

HOW PUNSTERS SMITE THE LYRE.

THE AHKOOND OF SWAT.

THE DYING SHOEMAKER.

I WANT TO GO TO MORROW.

FINALE.

THE WASHERWOMAN'S SONG.

Mr. Caudle Lends Five Pounds.

How They Got On In The World.

RISE OF A CHORE BOY.

A Student of Fishes.

Selecting His Aids.

FATHER OF GERMAN STEEL.

FRIGHTENED JAY GOULD.

WORK WAS TOO EASY.

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

HOW GARFIELD ROSE.

TURNED OVER BRICKS.

AN OIL KING'S START.

CAME BACK FOR MORE.

A "YELLOW JOURNAL" GLOSSARY.

GRAVE, GAY, AND EPIGRAMMATIC.

THE PIPE THAT FAILED.

ANCIENT, BUT IT GOES.

RILEY'S RYE PATCH.

IN A SHOE STORE.

AT NAPOLEON'S TOMB.

THE OTHER SIDE.

TIPS FOR AUTHORS.

HIS IMPOLITE QUERY.

ARTEMUS WARD'S ADVICE.

LOST.

IT WOULD NOT "DOWN."

LABORERS WERE PLENTIFUL.

FEMININE ARITHMETIC.

FAR IN THE FUTURE.

CRUSHED.

IN A STREET CAR.

Poems by Dickens and Thackeray.

THE IVY GREEN.

THE CHURCH PORCH.

World-Famous Bachelors.

BARUCH DE SPINOZA (Holland—1632-1677).

RENÉ DESCARTES (France—1596-1650).

SIR ISAAC NEWTON (England—1642-1727).

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG (Sweden—1688-1772).

IMMANUEL KANT (Prussia—1724-1804).

FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE (France—1694-1778).

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD (England—1717-1797).

EDWARD GIBBON (England—1737-1794).

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (England—1540-1596).

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (Germany—1770-1827).

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (United States—1807-1892).

SAMUEL JONES TILDEN (United States—1814-1886).

Little Glimpses of the 19th Century

SECOND DECADE. 1811

1812

1813

1814

1815

1816

1817

1818

1819

1820

POE AND LONGFELLOW

ON THEIR LOST LOVES.

ANNABEL LEE.

VIA SOLITARIA.

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

BLANCHE BATES BALKED.

To Teach or Not to Teach.

Too Good for Daly's.

MILLER'S STAR OF DESTINY.

STORM FOR MISS RUSSELL.

MEDAL SET MANTELL GOING.

GILLETTE DESERTED LAW.

Success Follows Failure.

BELLEW WAS A SAILOR.

TRIBUTES TO DEAD BROTHERS.

SIR ECTOR TO SIR LAUNCELOT.

INGERSOLL'S EULOGY.

America's First Great Poem.

THANATOPSIS.

PRE-EASTER PHILOSOPHY.

Classics From Carlyle.

Night View of a City.

In Nature's Wilds.

THE ACTUAL HEIGHT OF SEA WAVES.

BASEBALL BARDS "ON DECK."

THE OLD ENTHUSIAST.

THE BOY WHO KEEPS THE BATS.

CASEY AT THE BAT.

FOIBLES OF LITERARY MEN.

The World's Fastest Trains.

The Empire State Express.

Fast Time to Atlantic City.

The World's Largest Station.

Good Road-Beds Abroad.

Europe's Fast Averages.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THINGS.

A RESCUED POEM.

EVOLUTION.

A HOROSCOPE OF THE MONTHS.

Faults Are Impatience and Anger.

Traditions of the Month.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE