twelve men by theodore dreiser contents i _peter_ ii _a doer of the word_ iii _my brother paul_ iv _the country doctor_ v _culhane, the solid man_ vi _a true patriarch_ vii _de maupassant, jr._ viii _the village feudists_ ix _vanity, vanity_ x _the mighty rourke_ xi _a mayor and his people_ xii _w.l.s._ _peter_ in any group of men i have ever known, speaking from the point of view of character and not that of physical appearance, peter would stand out as deliciously and irrefutably different. in the great waste of american intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the desert. he understood life. he knew men. he was free--spiritually, morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me. as one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men, financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces nature unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous, healthy way. the first time i ever saw peter was in st. louis in ; i had come down from chicago to work on the st. louis _globe-democrat_, and he was a part of the art department force of that paper. at that time--and he never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he died in --he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at others, and always, and intentionally, i am sure, most amusing to contemplate. in addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety. plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "this whole business of living is a great joke." he always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup--an amazing grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and relatives especially. in addition he was nearly always liberally besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms: in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing more substantial. one of the things about him which most impressed me at that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, i suppose, to entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace. and yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. it was good just as he found it, excellent. life to peter was indeed so splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to live, to study, to do a thousand things. for him it was a workshop for the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. to him, as i saw then and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. all things were only relatively so. a thief was a thief, but he had his place. ditto the murderer. ditto the saint. not man but nature was planning, or at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very likely he was a mere tool. peter was as much thrilled and entendered by the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with her starry crown. the rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. he pitied ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. he was liberal, material, sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) if not in fact, and most grateful to all. yet also, as i have said, always he wished to _seem_ the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his profoundest faith in the most fantastic things. do i seem to rave? i am dealing with a most significant person. in so far as i knew he was born into a mid-western family of irish extraction whose habitat was southwest missouri. in the town in which he was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well grown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. apropos of this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad, entered the station with his wife and children long before train time, bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "when does this thing start?" he meant the station building itself. at the time peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school, and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what any school or college had to offer. his father, curiously enough, was an educated irish-american, a lawyer by profession, and a catholic. his mother was an american catholic, rather strict and narrow. his brothers and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as i learned later, astonishingly virile and interesting americans of a rather wild, unsettled type. they were all, in so far as i could judge from chance meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed on one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. one of the brothers, k----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for peter's sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he frightened me a little. he loved noisy, garish places. he liked to play the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as the denizens of the tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the flashy, clever promoter. he was always representing a new company, introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the machine itself. he was here, there, everywhere--in waukesha, wisconsin; san francisco; new york; new orleans. "my, my! this is certainly interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit to a comedian and extending both hands. "peter's pet friend, dreiser! well, well, well! let's have a drink. let's have something to eat. i'm only in town for a day. maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit the high places? would you? well, well, well! let's make a night of it! what do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. but i was talking of peter. the day i first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a snake story for one of the sunday issues of the _globe-democrat_, which apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, extended tongue, most fatefully coiled. "my," i commented in passing, for i was in to see him about another matter, "what a glorious snake!" "yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he was in his shirt-sleeves. then he expectorated not in but to one side of a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most disturbingly "decorated." i was most impressed by this latter fact although at the time i said nothing, being too new. later, i may as well say here, i discovered why. this was a bit of his clowning humor, a purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of soul. if any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral manner, at the same time raising a hand. "hold! out--not in--to one side, on the mat! that cost me seven dollars!" then he would solemnly seat himself and begin to draw again. i saw him do this to all but the chiefest of the authorities of the paper. and all, even the dullest, seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. but i am getting ahead of my tale. in so far as the snake was concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories in charge. "the fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he went on, "the better. i'd like it if we could use a little color in this paper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. the farmers upstate would love that. they like good but poisonous snakes." then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and beard and added, "a snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper. we have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." he grinned most engagingly. i could not help laughing, of course. the impertinent air! the grand, almost condescending manner! we soon became fast friends. in the same office in close contact with him was another person, one d---- w----, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated how emphatic and important peter was. he had a thin, pale, dantesque face, coal black, almost indian-like hair most carefully parted in the middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked as though it had been glued. his eyes were small and black and querulous but not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines at each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and i suppose earned him some, sympathy. dick in his way was an actor, a tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. like most actors, he was a great poseur. he invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any american imitation of the "quartier latin" denizen have been without one at that date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and limp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a slender cane, a boutonnière--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial st. louis, full of middle-west business men and farmers! i would not mention this particular person save that for a time he, peter and myself were most intimately associated. we temporarily constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. for some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, although later peter and myself having drifted eastward and hob-nobbing as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more come to view dick for what he was: a character of dickensian, or perhaps still better, cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. but in those days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, all but sleeping together. i had a studio of sorts in a more or less dilapidated factory section of st. louis (tenth near market; now i suppose briskly commercial), dick had one at broadway and locust, directly opposite the then famous southern hotel. peter lived with his family on the south side, a most respectable and homey-home neighborhood. it has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences intellectually, my most gorgeous _rapprochements_ and swiftest developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women, although there have been several exceptions to this. nearly every turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of great force, to whom i owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects, glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day. peter was one such. about my own age at this time, he was blessed with a natural understanding which was simply godlike. although, like myself, he was raised a catholic and still pretending in a boisterous, rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent--"in case there might be something in it; you never can tell." still he hadn't the least interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. apparently nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, and preferably irish, like himself. at the same time he had a hearty admiration for the germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a german girl. as far as i could make out, peter had no faith in anything except nature itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he took the greatest delight. life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure. unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any lingering puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy, free, at times almost barbaric, way. the negroes, the ancient romans, the egyptians, tales of the orient and the grotesque dark ages, our own vile slums and evil quarters--how he reveled in these! he was for nights of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing! apropos of this i should like to relate here that one of his seemingly gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain black house of prostitution, of which there were many in st. louis. here while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way that took one instanter to the wilds of central africa. there was, so far as i know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. he was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. he satisfied, i am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer revels. nor do i know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. i was never with him when he did. but aside from the satiation they afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, i am sure they reflected no gross or sensual appetite. but i wish to attest in passing that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as toxic effect on me. as i view myself now, i was a poor, spindling, prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! peter was not so. to him all, positively _all_, life was good. it was a fascinating spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle. when i look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous, winding motions of the body, i am grateful to him. he released my mind, broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. for as i sat with him, watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love of color and effect, and feeling myself _low_, a criminal, disgraced, the while i was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, i realized that i was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than i was in many respects, saner, really more wholesome. i was a moral coward, and he was not losing his life and desires through fear--which the majority of us do. he was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so. but, lest i seem to make him low or impossible to those who instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. he was not low but simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. america and its point of view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be taken seriously. he loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, secret schools. he loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities and atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. already at this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most astonishing and illuminating list to me--maspero, froude, huxley, darwin, wallace, rawlinson, froissart, hallam, taine, avebury! the list of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be given here. his chief interest, in so far as i could make out, in these opening days, was egyptology and the study of things natural and primeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world. "dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the fascination of some of the old beliefs. do you know the significance of a scarab in egyptian religious worship, for instance?" "a scarab? what's a scarab? i never heard of one," i answered. "a beetle, of course. an egyptian beetle. you know what a beetle is, don't you? well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles would come up. then the egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to life, possessed immortality. so they thought it must be a god and began to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if i were properly impressed. "you don't say!" "sure. that's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and add a bit about monkey-worship, the zoroastrians and the parsees, the sacred bull of egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at sidon and tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were carried aloft before the multitude. being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, i knew that it must be so. it fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodox emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets to which i fancied he must have access. eagerly i inquired of him where, how. he told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom i might have access, and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me. in addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, jewel-cutting and designing, and i know not what else, yet there was always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. he wanted to laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at least semi-serious, circumstances. thus i recall that one of the butts of his extreme humor was this same dick, whom he studied with the greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. dick, in addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. as a newspaper artist i believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, if so much, whereas peter was much better, although he deferred to dick in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though i knew he did not, that dick represented all there was to know in matters artistic. among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, immensely interested in all things pertaining to the chinese and to know not only something of their language, which he had studied a little somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and the spirit and significance of their art and customs. he sometimes condescended to take us about with him to one or two chinese restaurants of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and thieves and disreputable tenderloin characters generally. (of such was the beginning of the chinese restaurant in america.) he would introduce us to a few of his celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom he was now on the best of terms. he had, as peter pointed out to me, the happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly mysterious and superior about the whole chinese race, that there was some chinese organization known as the six companions, which, so far as i could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of course) the entire habitable globe. for one thing it had some governing connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of chinese laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains quietly to china in coffins made in china and brought for that purpose to the country in which they were. the chinese who had worked for the builders of the union pacific had been supplied by this company, as i understood from dick. in regard to all this peter used to analyze and dispose of dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all. but there was one phase of all this which interested peter immensely. were there on sale in st. louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, porcelains, basketry or figurines of true chinese origin? he was far more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the lives of the chinese, and was constantly urging dick to take him here, there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading dick in the process a merry chase and a dog's life. dick was compelled to persuade nearly all of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. once, i recall, a collection of rare chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum of art, there was nothing for it but that dick must get one or more of his oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in connection with this, that and the other vase--things which put him to no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, dick included, were not honest enough to admit it. "you know, dreiser," peter said to me one day with the most delicious gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "i am really doing all this just to torture dick. he doesn't know a damned thing about it and neither do these chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make 'em sweat. the museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out what they're all about. i like to see his expression and that of those chinks when they examine those things." he subsided with a low chuckle all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of well-grounded knowledge. another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social and other forms of life to which dick was hoping to ascend via marriage and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or drawing, and i know not what else. he had, as i have said, a "studio" in broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence turned commercial but which dick had decorated in the most, to him, recherché or _different_ manner possible. in dick's gilding imagination it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books--things which the ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to dick, having been reared in bloomington, illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. he had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place--the more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." besides it gave him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers. his great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress, one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the west end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought, writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. i myself had a marked tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: dick being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than i, as i fancied, was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas i, not being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. often, as around dinnertime he ambled from the office arrayed in the latest mode--dark blue suit, patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand--i was already almost convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening perhaps, and that i should never see him more except as the husband of a very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an almost forgotten friend, and in passing! even now perhaps he was on his way to her, whereas i, poor oaf that i was, was moiling here over some trucky work. would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my turn? unkind heaven! as for peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect, understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making a fol-de-rol use of it. one day he came into the city-room where i was working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor announced, "gee, dreiser, i've just thought of a delicious trick to play on dick! oh, lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up laughter. "it's too rich! oh, if it just works out dick'll be sore! wait'll i tell you," he went on. "you know how crazy he is about rich young heiresses? you know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and writing about marrying one of those girls in the west end?" (dick was forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us nights in his studio.) "that's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting in those big houses out there. all he does is to dress up every night as though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around. well, listen. here's the idea. we'll go over to mermod & jaccards to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample sheets. then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic name we can think of--juanita or cyrene or doris--and explain who she is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? then we'll have her suggest that he come out to the west gate of, say, portland place at seven o'clock and meet her. we'll have her describe herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to wear, and we'll kill him. he'll fall hard. then we'll happen by there at the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into the park with us or to dinner. we'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed of us. he'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date for him, see? we'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see, because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. my god, he'll be crazy! he'll think we've ruined his life--oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly writhed with inward joy. the thing worked. it was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved over the humorous ills of others? the paper was secured, the letter written by a friend of peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. extreme youth, beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. the fascination of dick as a romantic figure was touched upon. he would know her by a green silk scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. seven o'clock was the hour. she could give him only a moment or two then--but later--and she gave no address! the letter was mailed in the west end, as was meet and proper, and in due season arrived at the office. peter, working at the next easel, observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye. "you should have seen him, dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about an hour after the letter arrived. "oh, ho! say, you know i believe he thinks it's the real thing. it seemed to make him a little sick. he tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went out, over to deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for i followed him. he's all fussed up. wait'll we heave into view that night! i'm going to get myself up like a joke, a hobo. i'll disgrace him. oh, lord, he'll be crazy! he'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. there's no address. he can't do a thing. oh, ho, ho, ho!" on the appointed day--and it was a delicious afternoon and evening, aflame with sun and in may--dick left off his work at three p.m., as peter came and told me, and departed, and then we went to make our toilets. at six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a short block from the point of meeting. i shall never forget the sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love, even in this form. the sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds. but peter--blessings or curses upon him!--was arrayed as only he could array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting--more like an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than anything else. his hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands dirty, his shoes ditto. he had even blackened one tooth slightly. he had on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane, if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. at one angle of his multiplex character the man must have been a born actor. we waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking almost all that he hoped--delicate, pale, artistic. the new straw hat! the pale green "artists'" shirt! his black, wide-buckled belt! the cane! the dark-brown low shoes! the boutonnière! he was plainly ready for any fate, his great moment. and then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and unworthiness--out of hell, as it were. we were most brisk, familiar, affectionate. it was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and peradventure. the night was so fine. we were out for a stroll in the park, to eat afterward. he must come along. i saw him look at peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. it was too much. such a friend--such friends (for on peter's advice i was looking as ill as i might, an easy matter)! no, he couldn't come. he was waiting for some friends. we must excuse him. but peter was not to be so easily shaken off. he launched into the most brisk and serious conversation. he began his badger game by asking about some work upon which dick had been engaged before he left the office, some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; and, when dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, something that had developed in connection with it. he asked inane questions, complimented dick on his looks, began to tease him about some girl. and poor dick--his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of the waning of his opportunity! it was cruel. he was becoming more and more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and wishing to go or for us to go. he was horribly unhappy. finally, after ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses--each one carrying his heiress, no doubt!--he seemed to summon all his courage and did his best to dispose of us. "you two'll have to excuse me," he exclaimed almost wildly. "i can't wait." those golden moments! she could not approach! "my people aren't coming, i guess. i'll have to be going on." he smiled weakly and made off, peter half following and urging him to come back. then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. then we went into the park a few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking--or peter was--most volubly. he was really choking with laughter. a little later, at seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and saw dick bustling off at our approach. it was sad really. there was an element of the tragic in it. but not to peter. he was all laughter, all but apoplectic gayety. "oh, by george!" he choked. "this is too much! oh, ho! this is great! his poor heiress! and he came back! har! har! har!" "peter, you dog," i said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in this way?" "not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "do him good. why shouldn't he suffer? he'll get over it. he's always bluffing about his heiresses. now he's lost a real one. har! har! har!" and he fairly choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told. he merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was laughing about, even dick, he would reply, "oh, something--a joke i played on a fellow once." if dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. but that lost romance! that faded dream! not so long after this, the following winter, i left st. louis and did not see peter for several years, during which time i drifted through various cities to new york. we kept up a more or less desultory correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper of which i had charge in new york, and later, in part at least i am sure, in his coming there. i noticed one thing, that although peter had no fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write, engrave, carve and what not--he was in no way troubled about it. "i don't see just what it is that i am to do best," he said to me once. "it may be that i will wind up as a painter or writer or collector--i can't tell yet. i want to study, and meantime i'm making a living--that's all i want now. i want to live, and i am living, in my way." some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements which enter into the making of them, and peter was one. i think sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as yet he had not found himself. i have known many writers, many geniuses even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to life. he was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose, as a posthumous volume ("wolf, the autobiography of a cave dweller") amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it troubled him not at all. he loved life's every facet, was gay and helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy. immediately upon coming to new york he began to examine and grasp it in a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each other's ways, he departed without a word, and i did not hear from him for months. temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. the next i knew he was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant paper of philadelphia. it was after he had established himself very firmly in philadelphia that we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. also here perhaps, more than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in the west. it was here that i first noticed the ease with which he took hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament would never have touched upon. for, first of all, wherever he happened to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city, its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and finest things architecturally. nor did any one ever take a keener interest in the current intellectual resources of a city--any city in which he happened to be--its museums, libraries, old bookstores, newspapers, magazines, and i know not what else. it was he who first took me into leary's bookstore in philadelphia, descanting with his usual gusto on its merits. then and lastly he was keenly and wisely interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. he seemed to know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those various realms. his mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him was a delight. he gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. his thoughts were so rich at times that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored stones and jewels. i felt always as though i were in the presence of a great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his interests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensive specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand rôle. and yet i always felt that perhaps he might. he attracted people of all grades so easily and warmly. his mind leaped from one interest to another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked him. while in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to wish to immerse himself in them. and yet nearly all his thoughts were, from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. among his friends he was always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently accepted as true. he was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life. he was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our dreams and lives,--its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane indifference to wondrous things,--but never in a depressed or morbid spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. but if any one chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. at the same time he was forever reading, reading, reading--history, archæology, ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. he was never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that ruled in greece and rome from b.c. on, the philosophies, the travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and regretting that they were no more. he grieved at times, i think, that he had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that, might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. there was something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the egyptians, greeks and romans, their public and private house plans, their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords, chariots. carthage, rome, greece, phoenicia--their colonies, art and trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships--how he raved! a book like thaïs, salammbo, sonica, quo vadis, touched him to the quick. at the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its catholicity. it included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estate dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or three newspaper artists and reporters--a list too long to catalogue here and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live in contact with. yet his relations with all of these were of a warm, genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. he used them as one might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on their own ground; a thing which i could never quite understand, being more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to take life, as he did. for he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. he took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. with these, then, and a type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class, he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another, flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at restaurants or the theater, and i know not what else. he could sing (a very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the jews'-harp, the french harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. at any "party" he was always talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something--fudge, taffy, a rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the details be left strictly to him. "now just cut out of this, all of you, and leave this to your uncle dudley. who's doing this? all i want is sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and i'll show you the best fudge you ever ate." then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in a manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general pleasure an hundredfold. yes, peter woke people up. he could convey or spread a sense of ease and good nature and give and take among all. wise as he was and not so good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no means unconscious of their beauty. he could always, and easily, break down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. indeed he was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. at odd tête-à-tête moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons." "my god, dreiser, i've found a peach! i can't tell you--but oh, wonderful! just what i need. this world's a healthy old place, eh? let's have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen of light german beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle. it was while he was in philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down into the homiest of home men i have ever seen and which for sheer naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories i know anything about. it appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of north philadelphia one saturday afternoon about the first or second year of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children, he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing i ever saw. she had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and say, dreiser, when i saw her i stopped flat and said 'me for that' if i have to wait fifteen years! dutchy--you never saw the beat! and poor! her shoes were clogs. she couldn't even talk english yet. neither could the other kids. they were all sausage--a regular german neighborhood. "but, say, i watched her a while and then i went over and said, 'come here, kid. where do you live?' she didn't understand, and one of the other kids translated for her, and then she said, 'ich sprech nicht english,'" and he mocked her. "that fixed her for me. one of the others finally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, i went right home and began studying german. in three months i could make myself understood, but before that, in two weeks, i hunted up her old man and made him understand that i wanted to be friends with the family, to learn german. i went out sundays when they were all at home. there are six children and i made friends with 'em all. for a long time i couldn't make madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all about, but finally i did, and she knows now all right. and i'm crazy about her and i'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough." "how do you know that she'll have you?" i inquired. "oh, she'll have me. i always tell her i'm going to marry her when she's eighteen, and she says all right. and i really believe she does like me. i'm crazy about her." five years later, if i may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned to philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he fancied would please her. it was a fortunate marriage in so far as love and home pleasures were concerned. i never encountered a more delightful atmosphere. all along in writing this i feel as though i were giving but the thinnest portrait of peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and interests. to me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense attached--old books, prints, things connected with history and science in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the collection and imitation of japanese and chinese prints, the art of embalming as applied by the egyptians (which, in connection with an undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat or two after the egyptian manner). in all of these lines he trained himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after the art of some one else. but most of all, at this time and later, he was interested in collecting things japanese and chinese: netsukes, inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; and it was while he was in philadelphia and seemingly trifling about with the group i have mentioned and making love to his little german girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. by the time he had reached newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper there, he was in possession of a complete tokaido (the forty views on the road between tokio and kyoto), various prints by hokusai, sesshiu, sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other exceedingly beautiful and valuable things--mandarin skirts and coats, among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around among one collector friend and another for things which they had. i recall his selling his completed tokaido, a labor which had extended over four years, for over a thousand dollars. just before he died he was trading netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum. but in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and gambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an odd turn to it in connection with peter, since he could be interested in so many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. at others he seemed not to miss or think of them. indeed, you could be sure of him and all his interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand, knew exactly how far he was going, and that when the time came he could and would stop. yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him long might have indicated a mania. thus i remember once running over to philadelphia to spend a saturday and sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of the commonest occurrence. at that time he was living in some quiet-looking boarding-house in south fourth street, but in which dwelt or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever i came there, at least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of life and pleasure. a dozen or more men might be seated at or standing about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their coats off, their sleeves rolled up, peter always conspicuous among them. on the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be peter among the players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his voice, his eyes aglow, "that's mine!" "i say it's not!" "two on the sixes!" "three!" "four!" "ah, roll the bones! roll the bones!" "get off! get off! come on now, spikes--cough up! you've got the money now. pay back. no more loans if you don't." "once on the fours--the fives--the aces!" "roll the bones! roll the bones! come on!" or, if he saw me, softening and saying, "gee, dreiser, i'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or "i've lost thirty all told. i'll stick this out, though, to win or lose five more, and then i'll quit. i give notice, you fellows, five more, one way or the other, and then i'm through. see? say, these damned sharks are always trying to turn a trick. and when they lose they don't want to pay. i'm offa this for life unless i get a better deal." in the room there might be three or four girls--sisters, sweethearts, pals of one or other of the players--some dancing, some playing the piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern pair usually, about whose past and present lives peter seemed always to know much. he had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. it thrilled, fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. he was vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. he would play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had in hand--be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club--would declare, "that's enough! that's enough! i'm done now. i've licked-cha," or "i'm licked. no more. not another round. come on, dreiser, i know just the place for us--" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or grill or chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped. as he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his keen attention. in his presence the whole world used to look different to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. doors seemed to open; in imagination i saw the interiors of a thousand realms--homes, factories, laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. during his day such figures as mckinley, roosevelt, hanna, rockefeller, rogers, morgan, peary, harriman were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and interests--and sincerities and insincerities--were the subject of his wholly brilliant analysis. he rather admired the clever opportunist, i think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like mckinley. rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. once when i asked him why he disliked mckinley so much he replied laconically, "the voice is the voice of mckinley, but the hands--are the hands of hanna." roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking out for teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with visions. rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country on to autocracy, oligarchy, possibly revolution. ditto hanna, ditto morgan, ditto harriman, ditto rogers, unless checked. peary might have, and again might not have, discovered the north pole. he refused to judge. old "doc" cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "my god, the gall, the nerve! and that wreath of roses the danes put around his neck! it's colossal, dreiser. it's grand. munchausen, cook, gulliver, marco polo--they'll live forever, or ought to!" some saturday afternoons or sundays, if he came to me or i to him in time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. on such occasions peter was at his best and i could have listened forever, quite as the disciples of plato and aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on life, his broad and broadening conceptions of nature--her cruelty, beauty, mystery. once, far out somewhere beyond camden, we were idling about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which crossed it. just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least middle-class means. i was for leaving, being made a little sick by the mere sight. not so peter. he was for joining in the effort which brought the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of the dead man, making himself really one of the group. finally he was urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police. but more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical components--chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen--and speculating as to which particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues, greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! he had a great stomach for life. the fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. he speculated as to _these_, their duties and functions! he asserted boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both. he at once went off into the mysteries--where, when with me at least, he seemed to prefer to dwell--talked of the divinations of the chaldeans, how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of greek and roman temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels every morning for market. i revolted. i declared he was sickening. "my boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. you can't take life that way. it's all good to me, whatever happens. we're here. we're not running it. why be afraid to look at it? the chemistry of a man's body isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating the dead things we've killed all the time. a little more or a little less in any direction--what difference?" apropos of this same a little later--to shock me, of course, as he well knew he could--he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the little finger of a child, and that "it was very good--very good, indeed." "dog!" i protested. "swine! thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled heartily and stuck to his tale! but if i paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me almost incredible, figure. insisting on such things, he was still and always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. peter would never shock those who did not want to be shocked. a minute or two or five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion. after spending about two or three years in philadelphia--which city came to reflect for me the color of peter's interests and mood--he suddenly removed to newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its principal paper for some time. some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! in newark, a city to which before this i had paid not the slightest attention, he found himself most happy; and i, living in new york close at hand, felt that i possessed in it and him an earthly paradise. although it contained no more than , people and seemed, or had, a drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another light, because he was there. very swiftly he found a wondrous canal running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking along its banks, out into the woods and fields. he found or created out of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of philadelphia. he joined a country club near passaic, on the river of that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. he found a chinese quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing italian section with a restaurant; a man who had a $ , collection of rare japanese and chinese curios, all in his rooms at the essex county insane asylum, for he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in new york; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. peter was so restless and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. to my astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for himself, being interested in reproducing various chinese dishes and vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the metropolitan museum of art. his plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid porcelain at his own home, and fire. in the course of six or eight months, working in his rooms saturdays and sundays and some mornings before going to the office, he managed to produce three or four which satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. the others he gave away. a little later, if you please, it was turkish rug-making on a small scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then providing himself with a pillow, turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. as may be imagined, it was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound and pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me. "for heaven's sake," i once observed, "couldn't you think of anything more interestingly insane to do than this? it's the slowest, most painstaking work i ever saw." "that's just it, and that's just why i like it," he replied, never looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious fashion. "you have just one outstanding fault, dreiser. you don't know how to make anything out of the little things of life. you want to remember that this is an art, not a job. i'm discovering whether i can make a turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. if i can get so much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the design, i'll be satisfied. i'll know then that i can do it, the whole thing, don't you see? some of these things have been the work of a lifetime of one man. you call that a small thing? i don't. the pleasure is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." he clacked and tied, congratulating himself vastly. in due course of time three or four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how long? i often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a splendid carpet. it was at this time that he built about him in newark a structure of friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, promised to be for life. he interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and enthusiasm. publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. he took out life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to have! with the manager of the engraving department he was working out problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. with his enduring love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four states and was telegraphed to and talked about in a sunday feature way, by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved peter as an actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. and yet it was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he often told me. this particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, terrible. i knew nothing of it until peter, one sunday afternoon when we were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in newark, suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "dreiser, i've just hit upon a great idea which i am working out with some of the boys down on our paper. it's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, better than if it were a really decent idea. i'm inventing a wild man. you know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, different,'terrible.' barnum was right, you know. there's one born every minute. well, i'm just getting this thing up now. it's as good as the sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. and what's more, i'm going to stage it right here in little old newark--and they'll all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most ecstatically. "for heaven's sake, what's coming now?" i sighed. "oh, very well. but i have it all worked out just the same. we're beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days--one from ramblersville, south jersey, let us say, another from hohokus, twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. by degrees as spring comes on i'll bring him north--right up here into essex county--a genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. we're giving him long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. he's entirely naked--or will be when he gets here. he's eight feet tall. he kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. he frightens men and women and children. i'm having him bound across lonely roads, look in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out of the country. but say, wait and see. as summer comes on we'll make a regular headliner of it. we'll give it pages on sunday. we'll get the rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. maybe some one will actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. you can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough." i laughed. "you're crazy," i said. "what a low comedian you really are, peter!" well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from such austere journals as the _sun_ and _world_ of new york, the _north american_ of philadelphia, the _courant_ of hartford, recording the antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. longish articles actually began to appear here and there, in eastern papers especially, describing the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. he had been seen in a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always coming northward. in one place he had killed three cows at once, in another two, and eaten portions of them raw! old mrs. gorswitch of dutchers run, pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her daughter-in-law, annie a. gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in osgoroola county, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize her, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, he had desisted and fled, leaving old mrs. gorswitch in a faint upon the ground. barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... i marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man. one day in june or july following, being in newark and asking peter quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "oh, it's great, great! couldn't be better! he'll soon be here now. we've got the whole thing arranged now for next sunday or saturday--depends on which day i can get off. we're going to photograph him. wanto come over?" "what rot!" i said. "who's going to pose? where?" "well," he chuckled, "come along and see. you'll find out fast enough. we've got an actual wild man. i got him. i'll have him out here in the woods. if you don't believe it, come over. you wouldn't believe me when i said i could get the natives worked up. well, they are. look at these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. the wild man was actually being seen in essex county, not twenty-five miles from newark. he had ravaged the property of people in five different states. it was assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the jersey coast (suggestions made by peter himself). his depredations, all told, had by now run into thousands, speaking financially. staid residents were excited. rewards for his capture were being offered in different places. posses of irate citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, until he was captured. quite remarkable developments might be expected at any time ... i stared. it seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back of it all was smirking, chuckling peter, the center and fountain of it! "you dog!" i protested. "you clown!" he merely grinned. not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of this prodigy of the wilds, i was up early and off the following sunday to newark, where in peter's apartment in due time i found him, his rooms in a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, photographing the dread peril. "yes, well, who's going to be him?" i insisted. "never mind! never mind! don't be so inquisitive," chortled peter. "a wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. remember, i caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. he's very sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. he'll be photographed, and he'll be wild. that's all you need to know." in due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well might be. it was near the old essex and morris canal, not far from boonton. a charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, was made. then peter, slipping away--i suddenly saw him ambling toward us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--as good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall. "peter!" i said. "how ridiculous! you loon!" "have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "a wild man is a wild man. our punctilio is not to be trifled with. i am of the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. touch me not." he strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of his pursuers. "but you're not eight feet tall!" i interjected at one point. "a small matter. a small matter," he replied airily. "i will be in the picture. nothing easier. we wild men, you know--" some of the views were excellent, most striking. he leered most terribly from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. the man was a good actor. for years i retained and may still have somewhere a full set of the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next week. well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, but the wild man got away, as was feared. he went into the nearby canal and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim recesses of peter's memory. he was only heard of a few times more in the papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. as for peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if not a better man. he was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie. "what a scamp!" i insisted lovingly. "what an incorrigible trickster!" "dreiser, dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. you should not scoff. i am a public benefactor. i am really a creator. i have created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. he is in many minds--mine, yours. you know that you believe in him really. there he was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. and he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give them a new interest. if stevenson can create a jekyll and hyde, why can't i create a wild man? i have. we have his picture to prove it. what more do you wish?" i acquiesced. all told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and the ridiculous. for some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. from much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that peter was out of sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace, the purely practical. as a matter of fact it was just the other way about. i never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in the usual as peter. he was all for creating, developing, brightening life along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself was concerned. nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and homey. a good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to peter as any one or anything else, if not a little more so. he respected their lines, their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. he believed that millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they could under the very severe conditions which life offered. he objected to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the officiously puritanic or dogmatic. he resented, for himself at least, solemn pomp and show. little houses, little gardens, little porches, simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry, convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could. he insisted that they were enough. a man did not need a great house unless he was a public character with official duties. "dreiser," he would say in philadelphia and newark, if not before, "it's in just such a neighborhood as this that some day i'm going to live. i'm going to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog, cat, canary, best german style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and sundays, by god, i'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids, as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and i'll lead the procession." "yes, yes," i said. "you talk." "well, wait and see. nothing in this world means so much to me as the good old orderly home stuff. one ought to live and die in a family. it's the right way. i'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's nothing. i'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just as i tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. it's the only way. it's the way nature intends us to do. all this early kid stuff is passing, a sorting-out process. we get over it. every fellow does, or ought to be able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live with and stick by her. that makes the world that you and i like to live in, and you know it. there's a psychic call in all of us to it, i think. it's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down. and when i do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the other lady. i'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing there. don't you think i won't. smile if you want to--it's so. i'll have my garden. i'll be friendly with my neighbors. you can come over then and help us put the kids to bed." "oh, lord! this is a new bug now! we'll have the vine-covered cot idea for a while, anyhow." "oh, all right. scoff if you want to. you'll see." time went by. he was doing all the things i have indicated, living in a kind of whirl of life. at the same time, from time to time, he would come back to this thought. once, it is true, i thought it was all over with the little yellow-haired girl in philadelphia. he talked of her occasionally, but less and less. out on the golf links near passaic he met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. i met her. she was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory. for a time peter seemed greatly attracted to her. she danced, played a little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be, intensely interested in him. he confessed at last that he believed he was in love with her. "so it's all day with philadelphia, is it?" i asked. "it's a shame," he replied, "but i'm afraid so. i'm having a hell of a time with myself, my alleged conscience, i tell you." i heard little more about it. he had a fad for collecting rings at this time, a whole casket full, like a hindu prince, and he told me once he was giving her her choice of them. suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to marry the maid of philadelphia. he had thrown the solitaire engagement ring he had given her down a sewer! at first he would confess nothing as to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually came out. apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. he had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed. yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. the girl was not "straight." she had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with other men--one anyhow. she was in love with peter well enough, as she insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it was still not believed that she had. there were those who could not only charge, but prove. a compromising note of some kind sent to some one was involved, turned over to peter. "dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right. i ought to know better. i know the kind of woman i need. this one has handed me a damned good wallop, and i deserve it. i might have guessed that she wasn't suited to me. she was really too free--a life-lover more than a wife. that home stuff! she was just stringing me because she liked me. she isn't really my sort, not simple enough." "but you loved her, i thought?" "i did, or thought i did. still, i used to wonder too. there were many ways about her that troubled me. you think i'm kidding about this home and family idea, but i'm not. it suits me, however flat it looks to you. i want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine experience, and i'm going to do it." "but how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" i asked curiously. "well, when i heard this i went direct to her and put it up to her. if you'll believe me she never even denied it. said it was all true, but that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that i wanted her to be." "well, that's fair enough," i said, "if she loves you. you're no saint yourself, you know. if you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good." "well, maybe, but i don't think so really," he returned, shaking his head. "she likes me, but not enough, i'm afraid. she wouldn't run straight, now that she's had this other. she'd mean to maybe, but she wouldn't. i feel it about her. and anyhow i don't want to take any chances. i like her--i'm crazy about her really, but i'm through. i'm going to marry little dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this old-line stuff. you'll have to stand up with me when i do." in three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little dutchy--or zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought to newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home neighborhoods in newark. it was positively entertaining to observe peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of the conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married, to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his particular home was concerned, comfortable world. i have no space here for more than the barest outline. i have already indicated his views, most emphatically expressed and forecasted. he fulfilled them all to the letter, up to the day of his death. in so far as i could make out, he made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as i have ever seen. he did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth and flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reason and forethought. i misdoubted. i was not quite willing to believe that it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was peter's. "here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--zuleika. isn't she a peach? ever see any nicer hair than that? and these here, now, pink cheeks? what? look at 'em! and her little dutchy nose! isn't it cute? oh, dutchy! and right here in me vest pocket is the golden band wherewith i am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. and right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." then, in a loud aside to me, "in six months i'll be beating her. come now, zuleika. we have to go through with this. you have to swear to be my slave." and so they were married. and in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any man about the house could ever hope to be. he was always fussing about after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or helping zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook something if she didn't know how. he was running to the store or bringing home things from the downtown market. months before the first child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "in a few months now, dreiser, zuleika and i are going to have our first calf. the bones roll for a boy, but you never can tell. i'm offering up prayers and oblations--both of us are. i make zuleika pray every night. and say, when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. no bawling or rocking it to sleep nights permitted. here's one kid that's going to be raised right. i've worked out all the rules. no trashy baby-foods. good old specially brewed culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it. this is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old 'dichtig, wichtig' law and order." i used to chuckle the while i verbally denounced him for his coarse, plebeian point of view and tastes. in a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was a boy. i never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made for its health and well-being. for the first few weeks he still talked of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that i ever saw. always the child must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would permit it. when he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. he liked nothing better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair american style and singing, or come tramping into my home in new york, the child looking like a woolen ball. at night if it stirred or whimpered he was up and looking. and the baby-clothes!--and the cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or second or third week! "what about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?" "yes, i know. that's all good stuff before you get one. i've got one of my own now, and i've got a new light on this. say, dreiser, take my advice. go through the routine. don't try to escape. have a kid or two or three. there's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way. it's nature's way. it's a great scheme. you and your girl and your kid." as he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. it was wonderful. and mrs. peter--how happy she seemed. there was light in that house, flowers, laughter, good fellowship. as in his old rooms so in this new home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones, friends of this region. in the course of a year or two he was on the very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood, his tailor, and then just neighbors. the milkman, the coal man, the druggist and cigar man at the next corner--all could tell you where peter lived. his little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer long, his lot in the back was a garden--lettuce, onions, peas, beans. peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or lying on the floor making something--an engraving or print or a box which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling about. he was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a mock-threatening, "now say, not so much industry there. you leave my things alone," to the child. of a sunday he sat out on the front porch smoking, reading the sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy married life, and most of the time holding the infant. afternoons he would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the park, new york, to see me. at breakfast, dinner, supper the heir presumptive was in a high-chair beside him. "ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. beat with that. it's less destructive and less painful physically." "how about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "--heh? do you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?" "zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two might not hurt him. what do you say?" occasionally, especially of a saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling and yet he wanted his heir. the problem was solved by fitting the latter into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while peter and myself or some of his friends bowled. at ten or ten-thirty or eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against peter's scarf, his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out. "peter, look at that," i observed once. "don't you think we'd better take him home?" "home nothing! let him sleep. he can sleep here as well as anywhere, and besides i like to look at him." and in the room would be a great crowd, cigars, beers, laughter, and peter's various friends as used to the child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. he was just the man who could do such things. his manner and point of view carried conviction. he believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and more and more as he went along people not only respected, i think they adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to move and have his being. about this time there developed among those in his immediate neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of councilman, or state assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would rise to something higher. but he would none of it--not then anyhow. instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a brilliant piece of prose poetry ("wolf"), which, coming from him, did not surprise me in the least. if he had designed or constructed a great building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected governor or senator, i would have taken it all as a matter of course. he could have. the material from which anything may rise was there. i asked him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which i was connected, and i recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "you'll never make much, if anything, on this book. it's too good, too poetic. but whether it pays or not, i vote yes. i'd rather lose money on something like this than make it on some of the trash we do make it on." amen. i agreed then, and i agree now. the last phase of peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the others. his married life was going forward about as he had planned. his devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex interests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me, especially in view of his olden days. one day he was over in new york visiting one of his favorite chinese importing companies, through which he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. he had come down to me in my office at the butterick building to see if i would not come over the following saturday as usual and stay until monday. he had secured something, was planning something. i should see. at the elevator he waved me a gay "so long--see you saturday!" but on friday, as i was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was handed me. it was from mrs. peter and read: "peter died today at two of pneumonia. please come." i could scarcely believe it. i did not know that he had even been sick. his little yellow-haired wife! the two children! his future! his interests! i dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. en route i speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often speculated--death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or cruelty of nature. what would become of mrs. peter? his children? i arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that puts out a light. there was peter, stiff and cold, and in the other rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as usual, and mrs. peter practically numb and speechless. it had come so suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not even tell me at first. the doctor was there--also a friend of his, the nearest barber! also two or three representatives from his paper, the owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $ , collection of curios. all were stunned, as i was. as his closest friend, i took charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to arrange for his burial, in newark or philadelphia, as his wife should wish, she having no connection with newark other than peter. it was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted disaster which hung over the place. it was as though impish and pagan forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the ugliest character. on monday, the day he saw me, he was well. on tuesday morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. tuesday night he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey. wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not deemed serious. wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set in. thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. thursday night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, so unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. friday morning he was no worse and no better. "if he was no worse by night he might pull through." at noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. oxygen was applied by his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. by one-thirty he was lower still, very low. "his face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife told me. "we put the oxygen tube to his mouth and i said 'can you speak, peter?' i was so nervous and frightened. he moved his head a little to indicate 'no.' 'peter,' i said, 'you mustn't let go! you must fight! think of me! think of the babies!' i was a little crazy, i think, with fear. he looked at me very fixedly. he stiffened and gritted his teeth in a great effort. then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. he was dead." i could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the last minute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a minute before his death. what is the human spirit, or mind, that it can fight so, to the very last? i felt as though some one, something, had ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing more and nothing less. and there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. i gazed and marveled. i looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. it spelled, what such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or the willful, brutal indifference of nature to all that relates to man. if he is to prosper he must do so without her aid. that same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the body, a pale candle burning near it, i felt as though peter were walking to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond, thinking and grieving. his imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed and distressed. once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my face. i felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies, but he could make no one see, hear, understand. i got up and looked at his _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again. the next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. his mother and sister came on from the west as well as the mother and brother of his wife. i had to look after his affairs, adjusting the matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his body "in consecrated ground" in philadelphia, with the consent and aid of the local catholic parish rector, else no burial. his mother desired it, but he had never been a good catholic and there was trouble. the local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. finally i threatened the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of plain common sense and courtesy to a catholic family, if not charity to a tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. all along i felt as if a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. i could not get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad. two, three, five, seven years later, i visited the little family in philadelphia. the wife was with her mother and father in a simple little home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an architect. she was little changed--a little stouter, not so carefree, industrious, patient. his boy, the petted f----, could not even recall his father, the girl not at all of course. and in the place were a few of his prints, two or three chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his loom with the unfinished rug. i remained for dinner and dreamed old dreams, but i was uncomfortable and left early. and mrs. peter, accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though i, alone, was all that was left of the old life. _a doer of the word_ noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of connecticut, lying half-way between new london and stonington. once it was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. today its wharves are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. there is a shipyard, employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. everything is peaceful. the sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. in the sunny lane which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises of the workers at their work. water gurgling about the stanchions of the docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the mind to repose and speculation. i was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the nature of man. he is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much when you come to look upon many phases of it. "did any of you ever know a contented man?" i inquired idly, merely for the sake of something to say. there was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye. old mr. main was the first to answer. "yes, i did. one." "so did i," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to think about it. "yes, and i did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door. "maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, jacob," said old mr. main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder. "i think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the builder. "who is he?" i asked. "charlie potter," said the builder. "that's the man!" exclaimed mr. main. "yes, i reckon charlie potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old fisherman who had hitherto been silent. such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. charlie potter--what a humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. and to hear him so spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all the more interesting. "so you really think he is contented, do you?" i asked. "yes, sir! charlie potter is a contented man," replied mr. main, with convincing emphasis. "well," i returned, "that's rather interesting. what sort of a man is he?" "oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. fishes and builds boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder. "is that all? nothing else?" "he preaches now and then--not regularly," said mr. main. a-ha! i thought. a religionist! "a preacher is expected to set a good example," i said. "he ain't a regular preacher," said mr. main, rather quickly. "he's just kind of around in religious work." "what do you mean?" i asked curiously, not quite catching the import of this "around." "well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he does. he ain't got anything." "what does he live on then?" i persisted, still wondering at the significance of "around in religious work." "i don't know. he used to fish for a living. fishes yet once in a while, i believe." "he makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "he sold the new haven road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago." a vision of a happy-go-lucky jack-of-all-trades arose before me. a visionary--a theorist. "what else?" i asked, hoping to draw them out. "what makes you all think he is contented? what does he do that makes him so contented?" "well," said mr. main, after a considerable pause and with much of sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "charlie potter is just a good man, that's all. that's why he's contented. he does as near as he can what he thinks he ought to by other people--poor people." "you won't find anybody with a kinder heart than charlie potter," put in the boat-builder. "that's the trouble with him, really. he's too good. he don't look after himself right, i say. a fellow has to look out for himself some in this world. if he don't, no one else will." "right you are, henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere. i was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so. "if he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room. "what makes you say that?" i queried. "isn't it better to be kind-hearted and generous than not?" "it's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go hungry." "is that what charlie potter does?" "well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. he and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at times." you see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put. "there's no doubt but that's where charlie is wrong," put in old mr. main a little later. "he don't always stop to think of his family." "what did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" i asked of the young man who had spoken from the corner. "that's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; "i ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around here that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter." "i believe in lookin' out for number one, that's what i believe in," interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "this givin' up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but i don't believe it. a man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what i say." "that's the way it looks to me," put in mr. main. "well, does potter give up everything and go without things?" i asked the boat-maker. "purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing the company in general he added, "look at the time he worked over there on fisher's island, at the ellersbie farm--the time they were packing the ice there. you remember that, henry, don't you?" mr. main nodded. "what about it?" "what about it! why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, to old drunken jimmy harper, and him loafin' around half the year drunk, and worked around on the ice without any shoes himself. he might 'a' took cold and died." "why did he do it?" i queried, very much interested by now. "oh, charlie's naturally big-hearted," put in the little old man who sold cunners. "he believes in the lord and the bible. stands right square on it, only he don't belong to no church like. he's got the biggest heart i ever saw in a livin' being." "course the other fellow didn't have any shoes for to wear," put in the boat-maker explanatorily, "but he never would work, anyhow." they lapsed into silence while the latter returned to his measuring, and then out of the drift of thought came this from the helper in the corner: "yes, and look at the way bailey used to sponge on him. get his money saturday night and drink it all up, and then sunday morning, when his wife and children were hungry, go cryin' around potter. dinged if i'd 'a' helped him. but potter'd take the food right off his breakfast table and give it to him. i saw him do it! i don't think that's right. not when he's got four or five orphans of his own to care for." "his own children?" i interrupted, trying to get the thing straight. "no, sir; just children he picked up around, here and there." here is a curious character, sure enough, i thought--one well worth looking into. another lull, and then as i was leaving the room to give the matter a little quiet attention, i remarked to the boat-maker: "outside of his foolish giving, you haven't anything against charlie potter, have you?" "not a thing," he replied, in apparent astonishment. "charlie potter's one of the best men that ever lived. he's a good man." i smiled at the inconsistency and went my way. a day or two later the loft of the sail-maker, instead of the shed of the boat-builder, happened to be my lounging place, and thinking of this theme, now uppermost in my mind, i said to him: "do you know a man around here by the name of charlie potter?" "well, i might say that i do. he lived here for over fifteen years." "what sort of a man is he?" he stopped in his stitching a moment to look at me, and then said: "how d'ye mean? by trade, so to speak, or religious-like?" "what is it he has done," i said, "that makes him so popular with all you people? everybody says he's a good man. just what do you mean by that?" "well," he said, ceasing his work as though the subject were one of extreme importance to him, "he's a peculiar man, charlie is. he believes in giving nearly everything he has away, if any one else needs it. he'd give the coat off his back if you asked him for it. some folks condemn him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans he has, but i always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. i've got a family myself--but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. it's pretty hard to live up to your light always." he looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but hearing none, he went on. "i always liked him personally very much. he ain't around here now any more--lives up in norwich, i think. he's a man of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. he ain't never done nothin' for me, i not bein' a takin' kind, but that's neither here nor there." he paused, in doubt apparently, as to what else to say. "you say he's so good," i said. "tell me one thing that he ever did that struck you as being preëminently good." "well, now, i can't say as i kin, exactly, offhand," he replied, "there bein' so many of them from time to time. he was always doin' things one way and another. he give to everybody around here that asked him, and to a good many that didn't. i remember once"--and a smile gave evidence of a genial memory--"he give away a lot of pork that he'd put up for the winter to some colored people back here--two or three barrels, maybe. his wife didn't object, exactly, but my, how his mother-in-law did go on about it. she was livin' with him then. she went and railed against him all around." "she didn't like to give it to them, eh?" "well, i should say not. she didn't set with his views, exactly--never did. he took the pork, though--it was right in the coldest weather we had that winter--and hauled it back about seven miles here to where they lived, and handed it all out himself. course they were awful hard up, but then they might 'a' got along without it. they do now, sometimes. charlie's too good that way. it's his one fault, if you might so speak of it." i smiled as the evidence accumulated. houseless wayfarers, stopping to find food and shelter under his roof, an orphan child carried seven miles on foot from the bedside of a dead mother and cared for all winter, three children, besides two of his own, being raised out of a sense of affection and care for the fatherless. one day in the local post office i was idling a half hour with the postmaster, when i again inquired: "do you know charlie potter?" "i should think i did. charlie potter and i sailed together for something over eleven years." "how do you mean sailed together?" "we were on the same schooner. this used to be a great port for mackerel and cod. we were wrecked once together" "how was that?" "oh, we went on rocks." "any lives lost?" "no, but there came mighty near being. we helped each other in the boat. i remember charlie was the last one in that time. wouldn't get in until all the rest were safe." a sudden resolution came to me. "do you know where he is now?" "yes, he's up in norwich, preaching or doing missionary work. he's kind of busy all the time among the poor people, and so on. never makes much of anything out of it for himself, but just likes to do it, i guess." "do you know how he manages to live?" "no, i don't, exactly. he believes in trusting to providence for what he needs. he works though, too, at one job and another. he's a carpenter for one thing. got an idea the lord will send 'im whatever he needs." "well, and does he?" "well, he lives." a little later he added: "oh, yes. there's nothing lazy about charlie. he's a good worker. when he was in the fishing line here there wasn't a man worked harder than he did. they can't anybody lay anything like that against him." "is he very difficult to talk to?" i asked, meditating on seeking him out. i had so little to do at the time, the very idlest of summers, and the reports of this man's deeds were haunting me. i wanted to discover for myself whether he was real or not--whether the reports were true. the samaritan in people is so easily exaggerated at times. "oh, no. he's one of the finest men that way i ever knew. you could see him, well enough, if you went up to norwich, providing he's up there. he usually is, though, i think. he lives there with his wife and mother, you know." i caught an afternoon boat for new london and norwich at one-thirty, and arrived in norwich at five. the narrow streets of the thriving little mill city were alive with people. i had no address, could not obtain one, but through the open door of a news-stall near the boat landing i called to the proprietor: "do you know any one in norwich by the name of charlie potter?" "the man who works around among the poor people here?" "that's the man." "yes, i know him. he lives out on summer street, number twelve, i think. you'll find it in the city directory." the ready reply was rather astonishing. norwich has something like thirty thousand people. i walked out in search of summer street and finally found a beautiful lane of that name climbing upward over gentle slopes, arched completely with elms. some of the pretty porches of the cottages extended nearly to the sidewalk. hammocks, rocking-chairs on verandas, benches under the trees--all attested the love of idleness and shade in summer. only the glimpse of mills and factories in the valley below evidenced the grimmer life which gave rise mayhap to the need of a man to work among the poor. "is this summer street?" i inquired of an old darky who was strolling cityward in the cool of the evening. an umbrella was under his arm and an evening paper under his spectacled nose. "bress de lord!" he said, looking vaguely around. "ah couldn't say. ah knows dat street--been on it fifty times--but ah never did know de name. ha, ha, ha!" the hills about echoed his hearty laugh. "you don't happen to know charlie potter?" "oh, yas, sah. ah knows charlie potter. dat's his house right ovah dar." the house in which charlie potter lived was a two-story frame, overhanging a sharp slope, which descended directly to the waters of the pretty river below. for a mile or more, the valley of the river could be seen, its slopes dotted with houses, the valley itself lined with mills. two little girls were upon the sloping lawn to the right of the house. a stout, comfortable-looking man was sitting by a window on the left side of the house, gazing out over the valley. "is this where charlie potter lives?" i inquired of one of the children. "yes, sir." "did he live in noank?" "yes, sir." just then a pleasant-faced woman of forty-five or fifty issued from a vine-covered door. "mr. potter?" she replied to my inquiry. "he'll be right out." she went about some little work at the side of the house, and in a moment charlie potter appeared. he was short, thick-set, and weighed no less than two hundred pounds. his face and hands were sunburned and brown like those of every fisherman of noank. an old wrinkled coat and a baggy pair of gray trousers clothed his form loosely. two inches of a spotted, soft-brimmed hat were pulled carelessly over his eyes. his face was round and full, but slightly seamed. his hands were large, his walk uneven, and rather inclined to a side swing, or the sailor's roll. he seemed an odd, pudgy person for so large a fame. "is this mr. potter?" "i'm the man." "i live on a little hummock at the east of mystic island, off noank." "you do?" "i came up to have a talk with you." "will you come inside, or shall we sit out here?" "let's sit on the step." "all right, let's sit on the step." he waddled out of the gate and sank comfortably on the little low doorstep, with his feet on the cool bricks below. i dropped into the space beside him, and was greeted by as sweet and kind a look as i have ever seen in a man's eyes. it was one of perfect courtesy and good nature--void of all suspicion. "we were sitting down in the sailboat maker's place at noank the other day, and i asked a half dozen of the old fellows whether they had ever known a contented man. they all thought a while, and then they said they had. old mr. main and the rest of them agreed that charlie potter was a contented man. what i want to know is, are you?" i looked quizzically into his eyes to see what effect this would have, and if there was no evidence of a mist of pleasure and affection being vigorously restrained i was very much mistaken. something seemed to hold the man in helpless silence as he gazed vacantly at nothing. he breathed heavily, then drew himself together and lifted one of his big hands, as if to touch me, but refrained. "yes, brother," he said after a time, "i _am_." "well, that's good," i replied, taking a slight mental exception to the use of the word brother. "what makes you contented?" "i don't know, unless it is that i've found out what i ought to do. you see, i need so very little for myself that i couldn't be very unhappy." "what ought you to do?" "i ought to love my fellowmen." "and do you?" "say, brother, but i do," he insisted quite simply and with no evidence of chicane or make-believe--a simple, natural enthusiasm. "i love everybody. there isn't anybody so low or so mean but i love him. i love you, yes, i do. i love you." he reached out and touched me with his hand, and while i was inclined to take exception to this very moral enthusiasm, i thrilled just the same as i have not over the touch of any man in years. there was something effective and electric about him, so very warm and foolishly human. the glance which accompanied it spoke, it seemed, as truthfully as his words. he probably did love me--or thought he did. what difference? we lapsed into silence. the scene below was so charming that i could easily gaze at it in silence. this little house was very simple, not poor, by no means prosperous, but well-ordered--such a home as such a man might have. after a while i said: "it is very evident that you think the condition of some of your fellowmen isn't what it ought to be. tell me what you are trying to do. what method have you for improving their condition?" "the way i reason is this-a-way," he began. "all that some people have is their feelings, nothing else. take a tramp, for instance, as i often have. when you begin to sum up to see where to begin, you find that all he has in the world, besides his pipe and a little tobacco, is his feelings. it's all most people have, rich or poor, though a good many think they have more than that. i try not to injure anybody's feelings." he looked at me as though he had expressed the solution of the difficulties of the world, and the wonderful, kindly eyes beamed in rich romance upon the scene. "very good," i said, "but what do you do? how do you go about it to aid your fellowmen?" "well," he answered, unconsciously overlooking his own personal actions in the matter, "i try to bring them the salvation which the bible teaches. you know i stand on the bible, from cover to cover." "yes, i know you stand on the bible, but what do you do? you don't merely preach the bible to them. what do you do?" "no, sir, i don't preach the bible at all. i stand on it myself. i try as near as i can to do what it says. i go wherever i can be useful. if anybody is sick or in trouble, i'm ready to go. i'll be a nurse. i'll work and earn them food. i'll give them anything i can--that's what i do." "how can you give when you haven't anything? they told me in noank that you never worked for money." "not for myself alone. i never take any money for myself alone. that would be self-seeking. anything i earn or take is for the lord, not me. i never keep it. the lord doesn't allow a man to be self-seeking." "well, then, when you get money what do you do with it? you can't do and live without money." he had been looking away across the river and the bridge to the city below, but now he brought his eyes back and fixed them on me. "i've been working now for twenty years or more, and, although i've never had more money than would last me a few days at a time, i've never wanted for anything and i've been able to help others. i've run pretty close sometimes. time and time again i've been compelled to say, 'lord, i'm all out of coal,' or 'lord, i'm going to have to ask you to get me my fare to new haven tomorrow,' but in the moment of my need he has never forgotten me. why, i've gone down to the depot time and time again, when it was necessary for me to go, without five cents in my pocket, and he's been there to meet me. why, he wouldn't keep you waiting when you're about his work. he wouldn't forget you--not for a minute." i looked at the man in open-eyed amazement. "do you mean to say that you would go down to a depot without money and wait for money to come to you?" "oh, brother," he said, with the softest light in his eyes, "if you only knew what it is to have faith!" he laid his hand softly on mine. "what is car-fare to new haven or to anywhere, to him?" "but," i replied materially, "you haven't any car-fare when you go there--how do you actually get it? who gives it to you? give me one instance." "why, it was only last week, brother, that a woman wrote me from maiden, massachusetts, wanting me to come and see her. she's very sick with consumption, and she thought she was going to die. i used to know her in noank, and she thought if she could get to see me she would feel better. "i didn't have any money at the time, but that didn't make any difference. "'lord,' i said, 'here's a woman sick in maiden, and she wants me to come to her. i haven't got any money, but i'll go right down to the depot, in time to catch a certain train,' and i went. and while i was standing there a man came up to me and said, 'brother, i'm told to give you this,' and he handed me ten dollars." "did you know the man?" i exclaimed. "never saw him before in my life," he replied, smiling genially. "and didn't he say anything more than that?" "no." i stared at him, and he added, as if to take the edge off my astonishment: "why, bless your heart, i knew he was from the lord, just the moment i saw him coming." "you mean to say you were standing there without a cent, expecting the lord to help you, and he did?" "'he shall call upon me, and i shall answer him,'" he answered simply, quoting the ninety-first psalm. this incident was still the subject of my inquiry when a little colored girl came out of the yard and paused a moment before us. "may i go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked. "yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said: "she's one of my adopted children." he gazed between his knees at the sidewalk. "have you many others?" "three." "raising them, are you?" "yes." "they seem to think, down in noank, that living as you do and giving everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and children." "well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, but she's never wanted for anything. she'll tell you herself that she's never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been happy." he paused to meditate, i presume, over the opinion of his former fellow townsmen, and then added: "it's true, there have been times when we have been right where we had to have certain things pretty badly, before they came, but they never failed to come." while he was still talking, mrs. potter came around the corner of the house and out upon the sidewalk. she was going to the saturday evening market in the city below. "here she is," he said. "now you can ask her." "what is it?" she inquired, turning a serene and smiling face to me. "they still think, down in noank, that you're not very happy with me," he said. "they're afraid you want for something once in a while." she took this piece of neighborly interference in better fashion than most would, i fancy. "i have never wanted for anything since i have been married to my husband," she said. "i am thoroughly contented." she looked at him and he at her, and there passed between them an affectionate glance. "yes," he said, when she had passed after a pleasing little conversation, "my wife has been a great help to me. she has never complained." "people are inclined to talk a little," i said. "well, you see, she never complained, but she did feel a little bit worried in the beginning." "have you a mission or a church here in norwich?" "no, i don't believe in churches." "not in churches?" "no. the sight of a minister preaching the word of god for so much a year is all a mockery to me." "what do you believe in?" "personal service. churches and charitable institutions and societies are all valueless. you can't reach your fellowman that way. they build up buildings and pay salaries--but there's a better way." (i was thinking of st. francis and his original dream, before they threw him out and established monasteries and a costume or uniform--the thing he so much objected to.) "this giving of a few old clothes that the moths will get anyhow, that won't do. you've got to give something of yourself, and that's affection. love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. when you give love, you give everything. everything comes with it in some way or other." "how do you say?" i queried. "money certainly comes handy sometimes." "yes, when you give it with your own hand and heart--in no other way. it comes to nothing just contributed to some thing. ah!" he added, with sudden animation, "the tangles men can get themselves into, the snarls, the wretchedness! troubles with women, with men whom they owe, with evil things they say and think, until they can't walk down the street any more without peeping about to see if they are followed. they can't look you in die face; can't walk a straight course, but have got to sneak around corners. poor, miserable, unhappy--they're worrying and crying and dodging one another!" he paused, lost in contemplation of the picture he had conjured up. "yes," i went on catechistically, determined, if i could, to rout out this matter of giving, this actual example of the modus operandi of christian charity. "what do you do? how do you get along without giving them money?" "i don't get along without giving them some money. there are cases, lots of them, where a little money is necessary. but, brother, it is so little necessary at times. it isn't always money they want. you can't reach them with old clothes and charity societies," he insisted. "you've got to love them, brother. you've got to go to them and love them, just as they are, scarred and miserable and bad-hearted." "yes," i replied doubtfully, deciding to follow this up later. "but just what is it you do in a needy case? one instance?" "why, one night i was passing a little house in this town," he went on, "and i heard a woman crying. i went right to the door and opened it, and when i got inside she just stopped and looked at me. "'madam,' i said, 'i have come to help you, if i can. now you tell me what you're crying for.' "well, sir, you know she sat there and told me how her husband drank and how she didn't have anything in the house to eat, and so i just gave her all i had and told her i would see her husband for her, and the next day i went and hunted him up and said to him, 'oh, brother, i wish you would open your eyes and see what you are doing. i wish you wouldn't do that any more. it's only misery you are creating.' and, you know, i got to telling about how badly his wife felt about it, and how i intended to work and try and help her, and bless me if he didn't up and promise me before i got through that he wouldn't do that any more. and he didn't. he's working today, and it's been two years since i went to him, nearly." his eyes were alight with his appreciation of personal service. "yes, that's one instance," i said. "oh, there are plenty of them," he replied. "it's the only way. down here in new london a couple of winters ago we had a terrible time of it. that was the winter of the panic, you know. cold--my, but that was a cold winter, and thousands of people out of work--just thousands. it was awful. i tried to do what i could here and there all along, but finally things got so bad there that i went to the mayor. i saw they were raising some kind of a fund to help the poor, so i told him that if he'd give me a little of the money they were talking of spending that i'd feed the hungry for a cent-and-a-half a meal." "a cent-and-a-half a meal!" "yes, sir. they all thought it was rather curious, not possible at first, but they gave me the money and i fed 'em." "good meals?" "yes, as good as i ever eat myself," he replied. "how did you do it?" i asked. "oh, i can cook. i just went around to the markets, and told the market-men what i wanted--heads of mackerel, and the part of the halibut that's left after the rich man cuts off his steak--it's the poorest part that he pays for, you know. and i went fishing myself two or three times--borrowed a big boat and got men to help me--oh, i'm a good fisherman, you know. and then i got the loan of an old covered brickyard that no one was using any more, a great big thing that i could close up and build fires in, and i put my kettle in there and rigged up tables out of borrowed boards, and got people to loan me plates and spoons and knives and forks and cups. i made fish chowder, and fish dinners, and really i set a very fine table, i did, that winter." "for a cent-and-a-half a meal!" "yes, sir, a cent-and-a-half a meal. ask any one in new london. that's all it cost me. the mayor said he was surprised at the way i did it." "well, but there wasn't any particular personal service in the money they gave you?" i asked, catching him up on that point. "they didn't personally serve--those who gave you the money?" "no, sir, they didn't," he replied dreamily, with unconscious simplicity. "but they gave through me, you see. that's the way it was. i gave the personal service. don't you see? that's the way." "yes, that's the way," i smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the drag of his thought he took up another idea. "i clothed 'em that winter, too--went around and got barrels and boxes of old clothing. some of them felt a little ashamed to put on the things, but i got over that, all right. i was wearing them myself, and i just told them, 'don't feel badly, brother. i'm wearing them out of the same barrel with you--i'm wearing them out of the same barrel.' got my clothes entirely free for that winter." "can you always get all the aid you need for such enterprises?" "usually, and then i can earn a good deal of money when i work steadily. i can get a hundred and fifty dollars for a little yacht, you know, every time i find time to make one; and i can make a good deal of money out of fishing. i went out fishing here on the fourth of july and caught two hundred blackfish--four and five pounds, almost, every one of them." "that ought to be profitable," i said. "well, it was," he replied. "how much did you get for them?" "oh, i didn't sell them," he said. "i never take money for my work that way. i gave them all away." "what did you do?" i asked, laughing--"advertise for people to come for them?" "no. my wife took some, and my daughters, and i took the rest and we carried them around to people that we thought would like to have them." "well, that wasn't so profitable, was it?" i commented amusedly. "yes, they were fine fish," he replied, not seeming to have heard me. we dropped the subject of personal service at this point, and i expressed the opinion that his service was only a temporary expedient. times changed, and with them, people. they forgot. perhaps those he aided were none the better for accepting his charity. "i know what you mean," he said. "but that don't make any difference. you just have to keep on giving, that's all, see? not all of 'em turn back. it helps a lot. money is the only dangerous thing to give--but i never give money--not very often. i give myself, rather, as much as possible. i give food and clothing, too, but i try to show 'em a new way--that's not money, you know. so many people need a new way. they're looking for it often, only they don't seem to know how. but god, dear brother, however poor or mean they are--he knows. you've got to reach the heart, you know, and i let him help me. you've got to make a man over in his soul, if you want to help him, and money won't help you to do that, you know. no, it won't." he looked up at me in clear-eyed faith. it was remarkable. "make them over?" i queried, still curious, for it was all like a romance, and rather fantastic to me. "what do you mean? how do you make them over?" "oh, in their attitude, that's how. you've got to change a man and bring him out of self-seeking if you really want to make him good. most men are so tangled up in their own errors and bad ways, and so worried over their seekings, that unless you can set them to giving it's no use. they're always seeking, and they don't know what they want half the time. money isn't the thing. why, half of them wouldn't understand how to use it if they had it. their minds are not bright enough. their perceptions are not clear enough. all you can do is to make them content with themselves. and that, giving to others will do. i never saw the man or the woman yet who couldn't be happy if you could make them feel the need of living for others, of doing something for somebody besides themselves. it's a fact. selfish people are never happy." he rubbed his hands as if he saw the solution of the world's difficulties very clearly, and i said to him: "well, now, you've got a man out of the mire, and 'saved,' as you call it, and then what? what comes next?" "well, then he's saved," he replied. "happiness comes next--content." "i know. but must he go to church, or conform to certain rules?" "no, no, no!" he replied sweetly. "nothing to do except to be good to others. 'true religion and undefiled before our god and father is this,'" he quoted, "'to visit the widow and the orphan in their affliction and to keep unspotted from the world. charity is kind,' you know. 'charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh not its own.'" "well," i said, rather aimlessly, i will admit, for this high faith staggered me. (how high! how high!) "and then what?" "well, then the world would come about. it would be so much better. all the misery is in the lack of sympathy one with another. when we get that straightened out we can work in peace. there are lots of things to do, you know." yes, i thought, looking down on the mills and the driving force of self-interest--on greed, lust, love of pleasure, all their fantastic and yet moving dreams. "i'm an ignorant man myself, and i don't know all," he went on, "and i'd like to study. my, but i'd like to look into all things, but i can't do it now. we can't stop until this thing is straightened out. some time, maybe," and he looked peacefully away. "by the way," i said, "whatever became of the man to whom you gave your rubber boots over on fisher's island?" his face lit up as if it were the most natural thing that i should know about it. "say," he exclaimed, in the most pleased and confidential way, as if we were talking about a mutual friend, "i saw him not long ago. and, do you know, he's a good man now--really, he is. sober and hard-working. and, say, would you believe it, he told me that i was the cause of it--just that miserable old pair of rubber boots--what do you think of that?" i shook his hand at parting, and as we stood looking at each other in the shadow of the evening i asked him: "are you afraid to die?" "say, brother, but i'm not," he returned. "it hasn't any terror for me at all. i'm just as willing. my, but i'm willing." he smiled and gripped me heartily again, and, as i was starting to go, said: "if i die tonight, it'll be all right. he'll use me just as long as he needs me. that i know. good-by." "good-by," i called back. he hung by his fence, looking down upon the city. as i turned the next corner i saw him awakening from his reflection and waddling stolidly back into the house. _my brother paul_ i like best to think of him as he was at the height of his all-too-brief reputation and success, when, as the author and composer of various american popular successes ("on the banks of the wabash," "just tell them that you saw me," and various others), as a third owner of one of the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a moth in the white light of broadway. by reason of a little luck and some talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. in his day he had been by turn a novitiate in a western seminary which trained aspirants for the catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with a perambulating cure-all oil troupe or wagon ("hamlin's wizard oil") traveling throughout ohio, indiana and illinois; both end- and middle-man with one, two or three different minstrel companies of repute; the editor or originator and author of a "funny column" in a western small city paper; the author of the songs mentioned and a hundred others; a black-face monologue artist; a white-face ditto, at tony pastor's, miner's and niblo's of the old days; a comic lead; co-star and star in such melodramas and farces as "the danger signal," "the two johns," "a tin soldier," "the midnight bell," "a green goods man" (a farce which he himself wrote, by the way), and others. the man had a genius for the kind of gayety, poetry and romance which may, and no doubt must be, looked upon as exceedingly middle-class but which nonetheless had as much charm as anything in this world can well have. he had at this time absolutely no cares or financial worries of any kind, and this plus his health, self-amusing disposition and talent for entertaining, made him a most fascinating figure to contemplate. my first recollection of him is of myself as a boy often and he a man of twenty-five (my oldest brother). he had come back to the town in which we were then living solely to find his mother and help her. six or seven years before he had left without any explanation as to where he was going, tired of or irritated by the routine of a home which for any genuine opportunity it offered him might as well never have existed. it was run dominantly by my father in the interest of religious and moral theories, with which this boy had little sympathy. he was probably not understood by any one save my mother, who understood or at least sympathized with us all. placed in a school which was to turn him out a priest, he had decamped, and now seven years later was here in this small town, with fur coat and silk hat, a smart cane--a gentleman of the theatrical profession. he had joined a minstrel show somewhere and had become an "end-man." he had suspected that we were not as fortunate in this world's goods as might be and so had returned. his really great heart had called him. but the thing which haunts me, and which was typical of him then as throughout life, was the spirit which he then possessed and conveyed. it was one of an agile geniality, unmarred by thought of a serious character but warm and genuinely tender and with a taste for simple beauty which was most impressive. he was already the author of a cheap songbook, "_the paul dresser songster_" ("all the songs sung in the show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave me. but we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some of the melodies "by ear." the home in which by force of poverty we were compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the obvious need of, assistance. still he was as much an enthusiastic part of it as though he belonged to it. he was happy in it, and the cause of his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. i recall how he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing difficulties in the past. he was very grand and youthfully self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. until she died years later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over her troubles and his. he contributed regularly to her support and sent home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. (bless her tired hands!) as i look back now on my life, i realize quite clearly that of all the members of my family, subsequent to my mother's death, the only one who truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same paul, my dearest brother. not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or that he understood, even in later years (long after i had written "sister carrie," for instance), what it was that i was attempting to do; he never did. his world was that of the popular song, the middle-class actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes of the writing world as bill nye, petroleum v. nasby, the authors of the spoopendyke papers, and "samantha at saratoga." as far as i could make out--and i say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means--he was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which i am very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so much his debtor that i should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain all that he did for or meant to me. imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue weight or lethargy. his temperament, always ebullient and radiant, presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him compelling interest and even admiration. easily cast down at times by the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his smile. this tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave him a very definite force and charm. admitting, as i freely do, that he was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for women, a frivolous, childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other qualities which were absolutely adorable. life seemed positively to spring up fountain-like in him. one felt in him a capacity to do (in his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate his success--qualities exceedingly rare, i believe. some people are so successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish--exclusive, not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. not so my good brother. he was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that is literally true. he was the mark if not the prey of all those who desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have rendered him a service of any kind. he was all life and color, and thousands (i use the word with care) noted and commented on it. when i first came to new york he was easily the foremost popular song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, having established himself in the publishing field and being so comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a commercial sea. i was very much afraid of new york, but with him here it seemed not so bad. the firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in an old residence turned office building, as so many are in new york, in twentieth street very close to broadway, and here, during the summer months ( - ) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental publications of his firm a success. i may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. at the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power or fame was concerned. he considered himself a personage of sorts, and was. the minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. to this day i recall his characterization of an old irish washerwoman arguing; a stout, truculent german laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows actors of the hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. other butts of his humor were the actor, the irish day-laborer, the negro and the hebrew. and how he could imitate them! it is useless to try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. perhaps i can best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the following: one night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were supposed to be dropped. at once my brother noticed him, for he had an eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. at the same time, so inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous. "got any pennies?" he demanded. "three or four." going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, should begin a new melody. a custom of the singer's, since the song was of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to interpolate a "thank you" after each coin dropped in his cup and between the words of the song, regardless. it was this little idiosyncrasy which evidently had attracted my brother's attention, although it had not mine. standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for the "thank you," which caused the song to go about as follows: "da-a-'ling" (clink!--"thank you!") "i am--" (clink!--"thank you!") "growing o-o-o-ld" (clink!--"thank you!"), "silve-e-r--" (clink!--"thank you!") "threads among the--" (clink!--"thank you!") "go-o-o-ld--" (clink! "thank you!"). "shine upon my-y" (clink!--"thank you!") "bro-o-ow toda-a-y" (clink!--"thank you!"), "life is--" (clink!--"thank you!") "fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay" (clink!--"thank you!")--and so on ad infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and until he was saying more "thank yous" than words of the song. a passer-by noticing it had begun to "haw-haw!", at which others joined in, myself included. the beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, "i'll have to thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, i suppose. god bless you!" my brother came away smiling and content. however, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that i wish to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. of all characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests jack falstaff, with his love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and sympathy. sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more than humor, although the latter was always present. one might recite a thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which contained no least thought of return or reward. i recall that once there was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any other way, and, having turned out "bad" and sunk to the level of a bank robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the mêlée and escape. of all four criminals only this one had been caught. somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother's sentimental ballads, "the convict and the bird," and recollecting that he had known paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no money or friends. at once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. he showed the letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. i suggested a lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his--always he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks--who might take the case for little or nothing. there was the leader of tammany hall, richard croker, who could be reached, he being a friend of paul's. there was the governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy's unfortunate life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit. all of these things he did, and more. he went to the prison (sing sing), saw the warden and told him the story of the boy's life, then went to the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. he was introduced to the governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. there was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment--the best that could be done. but he was so grateful for that, so pleased. you would have thought at the time that it was his own life that had been spared. "good heavens!" i jested. "you'd think you'd done the man an inestimable service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!" "that's right," he grinned--an unbelievably provoking smile. "he'd better be dead, wouldn't he? well, i'll write and ask him which he'd rather have." i recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. but now being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of sympathy and aid. by some chance he knew paul, or paul had known him, and now because of the former's obvious prosperity--he was much in the papers at the time--he had appealed to him. the man lived with a sister in a wretched little town far out on long island. on receiving his appeal paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. at any rate he wanted me to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary november afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away i said, "paul, why should you be the goat in every case?" for i had noted ever since i had been in new york, which was several years then, that he was a victim of many such importunities. if it was not the widow of a deceased friend who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress "down and out" and unable to "get back to new york" and requiring his or her railroad fare wired prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin and a decent form of burial. "well, you know how it is, thee" (he nearly always addressed me thus), "when you're old and sick. as long as you're up and around and have money, everybody's your friend. but once you're down and out no one wants to see you any more--see?" almost amusingly he was always sad over those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much. "quite so," i complained, rather brashly, i suppose, "but why didn't he save a little money when he had it? he made as much as you'll ever make." the man had been a star. "he had plenty of it, didn't he? why should he come to you?" "well, you know how it is, thee," he explained in the kindliest and most apologetic way. "when you're young and healthy like that you don't think. i know how it is; i'm that way myself. we all have a little of it in us. i have; you have. and anyhow youth's the time to spend money if you're to get any good of it, isn't it? of course when you're old you can't expect much, but still i always feel as though i'd like to help some of these old people." his eyes at such times always seemed more like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those of a man contemplating life. "but, paul," i insisted on another occasion when he had just wired twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (my spirit was not so niggardly as fearsome. i was constantly terrified in those days by the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him--why, i don't know. i was by no means incompetent.) "why don't you save your money? why should you give it to every tom, dick and harry that asks you? you're not a charity organization, and you're not called upon to feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. if you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?" "well, you know," and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling charity and tenderness of heart, "i can't say i haven't got it, can i?" he was at the height of his success at the time. "and anyhow, what's the use being so hard on people? we're all likely to get that way. you don't know what pulls people down sometimes--not wasting always. it's thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. remember how poor we were and how mamma and papa used to worry." often these references to mother or father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. "i can't stand to see people suffer, that's all, not if i have anything," and his eyes glowed sweetly. "and, after all," he added apologetically, "the little i give isn't much. they don't get so much out of me. they don't come to me every day." another time--one christmas eve it was, when i was comparatively new to new york (my second or third year), i was a little uncertain what to do, having no connections outside of paul and two sisters, one of whom was then out of the city. the other, owing to various difficulties of her own and a temporary estrangement from us--more our fault than hers--was therefore not available. the rather drab state into which she had allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept us apart. at any rate i felt that i could not, or rather would not, go there. at the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was publishing the magazine which i was editing), we twain were also estranged, nothing very deep really--a temporary feeling of distance and indifference. so i had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of the town, or out to dine where best i might--some moderate-priced hotel, was my thought. i had not seen my brother in three or four days, but after i had strolled a block or two up broadway i encountered him. i have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really followed me; was looking, in short, to see what i would do as usual he was most smartly and comfortably dressed. "where you going, thee?" he called cheerfully. "oh, no place in particular," i replied rather suavely, i presume. "just going up the street." "now, see here, sport," he began--a favorite expression of his, "sport"--with his face abeam, "what's the use you and me quarreling? it's christmas eve, ain't it? it's a shame! come on, let's have a drink and then go out to dinner." "well," i said, rather uncompromisingly, for at times his seemingly extreme success and well-being irritated me, "i'll have a drink, but as for dinner i have another engagement." "aw, don't say that. what's the use being sore? you know i always feel the same even if we do quarrel at times. cut it out. come on. you know i'm your brother, and you're mine. it's all right with me, thee. let's make it up, will you? put 'er there! come on, now. we'll go and have a drink, see, something hot--it's christmas eve, sport. the old home stuff." he smiled winsomely, coaxingly, really tenderly, as only he could smile. i "gave in." but now as we entered the nearest shining bar, a christmas crowd buzzing within and without (it was the old fifth avenue hotel), a new thought seemed to strike him. "seen e---- lately?" he inquired, mentioning the name of the troubled sister who was having a very hard time indeed. her husband had left her and she was struggling over the care of two children. "no," i replied, rather shamefacedly, "not in a week or two--maybe more." he clicked his tongue. he himself had not been near her in a month or more. his face fell, and he looked very depressed. "it's too bad--a shame really. we oughtn't to do this way, you know, sport. it ain't right. what do you say to our going around there," it was in the upper thirties, "and see how she's making out?--take her a few things, eh? whaddya say?" i hadn't a spare dollar myself, but i knew well enough what he meant by "take a few things" and who would pay for them. "well, we'll have to hurry if we want to get anything now," i urged, falling in with the idea since it promised peace, plenty and good will all around, and we rushed the drink and departed. near at hand was a branch of one of the greatest grocery companies of the city, and near it, too, his then favorite hotel, the continental. en route we meditated on the impossibility of delivery, the fact that we would have to carry the things ourselves, but he at last solved that by declaring that he could commandeer negro porters or bootblacks from the continental. we entered, and by sheer smiles on his part and some blarney heaped upon a floor-manager, secured a turkey, sweet potatoes, peas, beans, a salad, a strip of bacon, a ham, plum pudding, a basket of luscious fruit and i know not what else--provender, i am sure, for a dozen meals. while it was being wrapped and packed in borrowed baskets, soon to be returned, he went across the way to the hotel and came back with three grinning darkies who for the tip they knew they would receive preceded us up broadway, the nearest path to our destination. on the way a few additional things were picked up: holly wreaths, toys, candy, nuts--and then, really not knowing whether our plan might not mis-carry, we made our way through the side street and to the particular apartment, or, rather, flat-house, door, a most amusing christmas procession, i fancy, wondering and worrying now whether she would be there. but the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it. the stage arrangement worked as planned. my sister opened the door and from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or two afterwards ourselves. the packages were being piled on table and floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and change of heart, stared. "just thought we'd come around and have supper with you, e----, and maybe dinner tomorrow if you'll let us," my brother chortled. "merry christmas, you know. christmas eve. the good old home stuff--see? old sport here and i thought we couldn't stay away--tonight, anyhow." he beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two little ones danced about, and he and i put our arms about her. "there, there! it's all over now," he declared, tears welling in his eyes. "it's all off. we'll can this scrapping stuff. thee and i are a couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can't you? we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that's the truth. we've been quarreling, too, haven't spoken for a week. ain't that so, sport? but it's all right now, eh?" there were tears in my eyes, too. one couldn't resist him. he had the power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways. we then had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for i don't know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he eventually died in this sister's home, ministered to with absolutely restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came. but, as i have said, i always prefer to think of him at this, the very apex or tower window of his life. for most of this period he was gay and carefree. the music company of which he was a third owner was at the very top of its success. its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. he had in turn at this time a suite at the gilsey house, the marlborough, the normandie--always on broadway, you see. the limelight district was his home. he rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks were rumbling to and from the ferries. he was in his way a public restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers' offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, theatrical, newspaper and other worlds, are wont to gather. one of his intimates, as i now recall, was "bat" masterson, the western and now retired (to broadway!) bad man; muldoon, the famous wrestler; tod sloan, the jockey; "battling" nelson; james j. corbett; kid mccoy; terry mcgovern--prize-fighters all. such tammany district leaders as james murphy, "the" mcmanus, chrystie and timothy sullivan, richard carroll, and even richard croker, the then reigning tammany boss, were all on his visiting list. he went to their meetings, rallies and district doings generally to sing and play, and they came to his "office" occasionally. various high and mighties of the roman church, "fathers" with fine parishes and good wine cellars, and judges of various municipal courts, were also of his peculiar world. he was always running to one or the other "to get somebody out," or they to him to get him to contribute something to something, or to sing and play or act, and betimes they were meeting each other in hotel grills or elsewhere and having a drink and telling "funny stories." apropos of this sense of humor of his, this love of horse-play almost, i remember that once he had a new story to tell--a vulgar one of course--and with it he had been making me and a dozen others laugh until the tears coursed down our cheeks. it seemed new to everybody and, true to his rather fantastic moods, he was determined to be the first to tell it along broadway. for some reason he was anxious to have me go along with him, possibly because he found me at that time an unvarying fountain of approval and laughter, possibly because he liked to show me off as his rising brother, as he insisted that i was. at between six and seven of a spring or summer evening, therefore, we issued from his suite at the gilsey house, whither he had returned to dress, and invading the bar below were at once centered among a group who knew him. a whiskey, a cigar, the story told to one, two, three, five, ten to roars of laughter, and we were off, over the way to weber & fields (the musical burlesque house supreme of those days) in the same block, where to the ticket seller and house manager, both of whom he knew, it was told. more laughter, a cigar perhaps. then we were off again, this time to the ticket seller of palmer's theater at thirtieth street, thence to the bar of the grand hotel at thirty-first, the imperial at thirty-second, the martinique at thirty-third, a famous drug-store at the southwest corner of thirty-fourth and broadway, now gone of course, the manager of which was a friend of his. it was a warm, moony night, and he took a glass of vichy "for looks' sake," as he said. then to the quondam hotel aulic at thirty-fifth and broadway--the center and home of the then much-berated "hotel aulic or actors' school of philosophy," and a most impressive actors' rendezvous where might have been seen in the course of an evening all the "second leads" and "light comedians" and "heavies" of this, that and the other road company, all blazing with startling clothes and all explaining how they "knocked 'em" here and there: in peoria, pasadena, walla-walla and where not. my brother shone like a star when only one is in the sky. over the way then to the herald building, its owls' eyes glowing in the night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. here was a business manager whom he knew. then to the herald square theater on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric sign--among the newest in the city. in this, as in the business office of the _herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. thence to the marlborough bar and lobby at thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the knickerbocker theater at thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of the normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else? thence to the manager's office of the casino at thirty-ninth, some bar which was across the street, another in thirty-ninth west of broadway, an italian restaurant on the ground floor of the metropolitan at fortieth and broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such slow stages to the very door of the then mecca of meccas of all theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au fait, "wise," the "real thing"--the hotel metropole at broadway and forty-second street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light district. and what a realm! rounders and what not were here ensconced at round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the adjoining windows open to all broadway and the then all but somber forty-second street. it was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, so easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty, petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. among them my dearest brother was at his best. it was "paul" here and "paul" there--"why, hello, dresser, you're just in time! come on in. what'll you have? let me tell you something, paul, a good one--". more drinks, cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given, fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing, prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent, magnanimous "god's own salt" that others were. the oaths, stories of women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning beauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum. but his story?--ah, yes. i had all but forgotten. it was told in every place, not once but seven, eight, nine, ten times. we did not eat until we reached the metropole, and it was ten-thirty when we reached it! the handshakes, the road stories--"this is my brother theodore. he writes; he's a newspaper man." the roars of laughter, the drinks! "ah, my boy, that's good, but let me tell you one--one that i heard out in louisville the other day." a seedy, shabby ne'er-do-well of a song-writer maybe stopping the successful author in the midst of a tale to borrow a dollar. another actor, shabby and distrait, reciting the sad tale of a year's misfortunes. everywhere my dear brother was called to, slapped on the back, chuckled with. he was successful. one of his best songs was the rage, he had an interest in a going musical concern, he could confer benefits, favors. ah, me! ah, me! that one could be so great, and that it should not last for ever and for ever! another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a really amusing and at times ridiculous quality. he was always sighing over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and attract quite a different type--the young and beautiful, it is true, but also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage--a catholicity of taste i could never quite stomach. it was "paul dearest" here and "paul dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the music-house and the stage. in the former, popular ballad singers of both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find songs which they could sing on the american or even the english stage. and it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who principally "handled" the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained. occasionally there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors. regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or repulsive, male or female, i never knew any one whose manner was more uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an indifferent or irritated mood. he was positive sunshine, the same in quality as that of a bright spring morning. his blue eyes focused mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles. he had a brisk, quick manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk. and how he fascinated them, the women! their quite shameless daring where he was concerned! positively, in the face of it i used to wonder what had become of all the vaunted and so-called "stabilizing morality" of the world. none of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, especially the young and beautiful. they were distant and freezing enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces. it was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, that at times it took on a comic look. "get onto the hit he's making," one would nudge another and remark. "say, some tenderness, that!" this in reference to a smile or a melting glance on the part of a female. "nothing like a way with the ladies. some baby, eh, boys?"--this following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as some noticeable beauty passed out. "no wonder he's cheerful," a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he could obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone. "if i had that many women crazy about me i'd be too." and the results of these encounters with beauty! always he had something most important to attend to, morning, noon or night, and whenever i encountered him after some such statement "the important thing" was, of course, a woman. as time went on and he began to look upon me as something more than a thin, spindling, dyspeptic and disgruntled youth, he began to wish to introduce me to some of his marvelous followers, and then i could see how completely dependent upon beauty in the flesh he was, how it made his life and world. one day as we were all sitting in the office, a large group of vaudevillians, song-writers, singers, a chance remark gave rise to a subsequent practical joke at paul's expense. "i'll bet," observed some one, "that if a strange man were to rush in here with a revolver and say, 'where's the man that seduced my wife?' paul would be the first to duck. he wouldn't wait to find out whether he was the one meant or not." much laughter followed, and some thought. the subject of this banter was, of course, not present at the time. there was one actor who hung about there who was decidedly skillful in make-up. on more than one occasion he had disguised himself there in the office for our benefit. coöperating with us, he disguised himself now as a very severe and even savage-looking person of about thirty-five--side-burns, mustachios and goatee. then, with our aid, timing his arrival to an hour when paul was certain to be at his desk, he entered briskly and vigorously and, looking about with a savage air, demanded, "where is paul dresser?" the latter turned almost apprehensively, i thought, and at once seemed by no means captivated by the man's looks. "that's mr. dresser there," explained one of the confederates most willingly. the stranger turned and glared at him. "so you're the scoundrel that's been running around with my wife, are you?" he demanded, approaching him and placing one hand on his right hip. paul made no effort to explain. it did not occur to him to deny the allegation, although he had never seen the man before. with a rising and backward movement he fell against the rail behind him, lifting both hands in fright and exclaiming, "why--why--don't shoot!" his expression was one of guilt, astonishment, perplexity. as some one afterwards said, "as puzzled as if he was trying to discover which injured husband it might be." the shout that went up--for it was agreed beforehand that the joke must not be carried far--convinced him that a hoax had been perpetrated, and the removal by the actor of his hat, sideburns and mustache revealed the true character of the injured husband. at first inclined to be angry and sulky, later on he saw the humor of his own indefinite position in the matter and laughed as heartily as any. but i fancy it developed a strain of uncertainty in him also in regard to injured husbands, for he was never afterwards inclined to interest himself in the much-married, and gave such wives a wide berth. but his great forte was of course his song-writing, and of this, before i speak of anything else, i wish to have my say. it was a gift, quite a compelling one, out of which, before he died, he had made thousands, all spent in the manner described. never having the least power to interpret anything in a fine musical way, still he was always full of music of a tender, sometimes sad, sometimes gay, kind--that of the ballad-maker of a nation. he was constantly attempting to work them out of himself, not quickly but slowly, brooding as it were over the piano wherever he might find one and could have a little solitude, at times on the organ (his favorite instrument), improvising various sad or wistful strains, some of which he jotted down, others of which, having mastered, he strove to fit words to. at such times he preferred to be alone or with some one whose temperament in no way clashed but rather harmonized with his own. living with one of my sisters for a period of years, he had a room specially fitted up for his composing work, a very small room for so very large a man, within which he would shut himself and thrum a melody by the hour, especially toward evening or at night. he seemed to have a peculiar fondness for the twilight hour, and at this time might thrum over one strain and another until over some particular one, a new song usually, he would be in tears! and what pale little things they were really, mere bits and scraps of sentiment and melodrama in story form, most asinine sighings over home and mother and lost sweethearts and dead heroes such as never were in real life, and yet with something about them, in the music at least, which always appealed to me intensely and must have appealed to others, since they attained so wide a circulation. they bespoke, as i always felt, a wistful, seeking, uncertain temperament, tender and illusioned, with no practical knowledge of any side of life, but full of a true poetic feeling for the mystery and pathos of life and death, the wonder of the waters, the stars, the flowers, accidents of life, success, failure. beginning with a song called "wide wings" (published by a small retail music-house in evansville, indiana), and followed by such national successes as "the letter that never came," "i believe it, for my mother told me so" (!), "the convict and the bird," "the pardon came too late," "just tell them that you saw me," "the blue and the grey," "on the bowery," "on the banks of the wabash," and a number of others, he was never content to rest and never really happy, i think, save when composing. during this time, however, he was at different periods all the things i have described--a black-face monologue artist, an end- and at times a middle-man, a publisher, and so on. i recall being with him at the time he composed two of his most famous successes: "just tell them that you saw me," and "on the banks of the wabash," and noting his peculiar mood, almost amounting to a deep depression which ended a little later in marked elation or satisfaction, once he had succeeded in evoking something which really pleased him. the first of these songs must have followed an actual encounter with some woman or girl whose life had seemingly if not actually gone to wreck on the shore of love or passion. at any rate he came into the office of his publishing house one gray november sunday afternoon--it was our custom to go there occasionally, a dozen or more congenial souls, about as one might go to a club--and going into a small room which was fitted up with a piano as a "try-out" room (professionals desiring a song were frequently taught it in the office), he began improvising, or rather repeating over and over, a certain strain which was evidently in his mind. a little while later he came out and said, "listen to this, will you, thee?" he played and sang the first verse and chorus. in the middle of the latter, so moved was he by the sentiment of it, his voice broke and he had to stop. tears stood in his eyes and he wiped them away. a moment or two later he was able to go through it without wavering and i thought it charming for the type of thing it was intended to be. later on (the following spring) i was literally astonished to see how, after those various efforts usually made by popular music publishers to make a song "go"--advertising it in the _clipper_ and _mirror_, getting various vaudeville singers to sing it, and so forth--it suddenly began to sell, thousands upon thousands of copies being wrapped in great bundles under my very eyes and shipped express or freight to various parts of the country. letters and telegrams, even, from all parts of the nation began to pour in--"forward express today ---- copies of dresser's 'tell them that you saw me.'" the firm was at once as busy as a bee-hive, on "easy street" again, as the expression went, "in clover." just before this there had been a slight slump in its business and in my brother's finances, but now once more he was his most engaging self. every one in that layer of life which understands or takes an interest in popular songs and their creators knew of him and his song, his latest success. he was, as it were, a revivified figure on broadway. his barbers, barkeepers, hotel clerks, theatrical box-office clerks, hotel managers and the stars and singers of the street knew of it and him. some enterprising button firm got out a button on which the phrase was printed. comedians on the stage, newspaper paragraphers, his bank teller or his tailor, even staid business men wishing to appear "up-to-date," used it as a parting salute. the hand-organs, the bands and the theater orchestras everywhere were using it. one could scarcely turn a corner or go into a cheap music hall or variety house without hearing a parody of it. it was wonderful, the enormous furore that it seemed to create, and of course my dear brother was privileged to walk about smiling and secure, his bank account large, his friends numerous, in the pink of health, and gloating over the fact that he was a success, well known, a genuine creator of popular songs. it was the same with "on the banks of the wabash," possibly an even greater success, for it came eventually to be adopted by his native state as its state song, and in that region streets and a town were named after him. in an almost unintentional and unthinking way i had a hand in that, and it has always cheered me to think that i had, although i have never had the least talent for musical composition or song versification. it was one of those delightful summer sunday mornings ( , i believe), when i was still connected with his firm as editor of the little monthly they were issuing, and he and myself, living with my sister e----, that we had gone over to this office to do a little work. i had a number of current magazines i wished to examine; he was always wishing to compose something, to express that ebullient and emotional soul of his in some way. "what do you suppose would make a good song these days?" he asked in an idle, meditative mood, sitting at the piano and thrumming while i at a nearby table was looking over my papers. "why don't you give me an idea for one once in a while, sport? you ought to be able to suggest something." "me?" i queried, almost contemptuously, i suppose. i could be very lofty at times in regard to his work, much as i admired him--vain and yet more or less dependent snip that i was. "i can't write those things. why don't you write something about a state or a river? look at 'my old kentucky home,' 'dixie,' 'old black joe'--why don't you do something like that, something that suggests a part of america? people like that. take indiana--what's the matter with it--the wabash river? it's as good as any other river, and you were 'raised' beside it." i have to smile even now as i recall the apparent zest or feeling with which all at once he seized on this. it seemed to appeal to him immensely. "that's not a bad idea," he agreed, "but how would you go about it? why don't you write the words and let me put the music to them? we'll do it together!" "but i can't," i replied. "i don't know how to do those things. you write it. i'll help--maybe." after a little urging--i think the fineness of the morning had as much to do with it as anything--i took a piece of paper and after meditating a while scribbled in the most tentative manner imaginable the first verse and chorus of that song almost as it was published. i think one or two lines were too long or didn't rhyme, but eventually either he or i hammered them into shape, but before that i rather shamefacedly turned them over to him, for somehow i was convinced that this work was not for me and that i was rather loftily and cynically attempting what my good brother would do in all faith and feeling. he read it, insisted that it was fine and that i should do a second verse, something with a story in it, a girl perhaps--a task which i solemnly rejected. "no, you put it in. it's yours. i'm through." some time later, disagreeing with the firm as to the conduct of the magazine, i left--really was forced out--which raised a little feeling on my part; not on his, i am sure, for i was very difficult to deal with. time passed and i heard nothing. i had been able to succeed in a somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although i thought a great deal of my brother i paid very little attention to him or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. one spring night, however, the following year, as i was lying in my bed trying to sleep, i heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street in which i had my room. i could not make out the words at first but the melody at once attracted my attention. it was plaintive and compelling. i listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success that had "caught on." as they drew near my window i heard the words "on the banks of the wabash" most mellifluously harmonized. i jumped up. they were my words! it was paul's song! he had another "hit" then--"on the banks of the wabash," and they were singing it in the streets already! i leaned out of the window and listened as they approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit. the night was so warm, delicious. a full moon was overhead. i was young, lonely, wistful. it brought back so much of my already spent youth that i was ready to cry--for joy principally. in three more months it was everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. one day on broadway near the marlborough i met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a smart summer suit, a gay straw hat. "ah," i said, rather sarcastically, for i still felt peeved that he had shown so little interest in my affairs at the time i was leaving. "on the banks, i see." "on the banks," he replied cordially. "you turned the trick for me, thee, that time. what are you doing now? why don't you ever come and see me? i'm still your brother, you know. a part of that is really yours." "cut that!" i replied most savagely. "i couldn't write a song like that in a million years. you know i couldn't. the words are nothing." "oh, all right. it's true, though, you know. where do you keep yourself? why don't you come and see me? why be down on me? i live here, you know." he looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel. "well, maybe i will some time," i said distantly, but with no particular desire to mend matters, and we parted. there was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of the really beautiful things of life, and i might as well tell it here and now. about five years later i had become so disappointed in connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that i had suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. hope had disappeared in a sad haze. i could apparently succeed in nothing, do nothing mentally that was worth while. at the same time i had all but retired from the world, living on less and less until finally i had descended into those depths where i was in the grip of actual want, with no place to which my pride would let me turn. i had always been too vain and self-centered. apparently there was but one door, and i was very close to it. to match my purse i had retired to a still sorrier neighborhood in b----, one of the poorest. i desired most of all to be let alone, to be to myself. still i could not be, for occasionally i met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various publishing houses. one day as i was walking in some street near broadway (not on it) in new york, i ran into my brother quite by accident, he as prosperous and comfortable as ever. i think i resented him more than ever. he was of course astonished, shocked, as i could plainly see, by my appearance and desire not to be seen. he demanded to know where i was living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to tell him what the trouble was--all of which i rather stubbornly refused to do and finally got away--not however without giving him my address, though with the caution that i wanted nothing. the next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. he was the most vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature i have ever seen. he was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else. "for god's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like this--and at this number, too!" ( it was, and he was superstitious as to the thirteen.) "i knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he ejaculated. "and me over in new york! jesus christ! and you sick and run down this way! i might have known. it's just like you. i haven't heard a thing about you in i don't know when. well, i'm not going back without you, that's all. you've got to come with me now, see? get your clothes, that's all. the cabby'll take your trunk. i know just the place for you, and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're coming with me now. my god, i should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, and me feeling the way i do about you!" his eyes all but brimmed. i was so morose and despondent that, grateful as i felt, i could scarcely take his mood at its value. i resented it, resented myself, my state, life. "i can't," i said finally, or so i thought. "i won't. i don't need your help. you don't owe me anything. you've done enough already." "owe, hell!" he retorted. "who's talking about 'owe'? and you my brother--my own flesh and blood! why, thee, for that matter, i owe you half of 'on the banks,' and you know it. you can't go on living like this. you're sick and discouraged. you can't fool me. why, thee, you're a big man. you've just got to come out of this! damn it--don't you see--don't make me"--and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. "you can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see? come on. get your things. i'd never forgive myself if i didn't. you've got to come, that's all. i won't go without you," and he began looking about for my bag and trunk. i still protested weakly, but in vain. his affection was so overwhelming and tender that it made me weak. i allowed him to help me get my things together. then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with him. i was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that i needed. a bedroom adjoining his suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days i lived there, later accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in westchester, one in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame for this sort of work was great. here i was booked for six weeks, all expenses paid, until i should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. then he left, only to visit and revisit me until i returned to the city, fairly well restored in nerves if not in health. but could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? one pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and children, but rarely between brothers. here he was evincing the same thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs and i an irritable, distrait and peevish soul. take note, ye men of satire and spleen. all men are not selfish or hard. the final phase of course related to his untimely end. he was not quite fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind he might have lasted to seventy. it was due really to the failure of his firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however, as i have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his financial and social glory. his was one of those simple, confiding, non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive, easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty, however slight. you have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds, of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. they have no spiritual resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know. now his friends would leave him. now that bright world of which he had been a part would know him no more. it was pathetic, really. he emanated a kind of fear. depression and even despair seemed to hang about him like a cloak. he could not shake it off. and yet, literally, in his case there was nothing to fear, if he had only known. and yet two years before he did die, i knew he would. fantastic as it may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. he had no ready money now--not the same amount anyhow. he could not greet his old-time friends so gayly, entertain so freely. meeting him on broadway shortly after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into business for himself as a publisher, but i realized that he could not. he had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. he was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been anything but that. he tried in this new situation to write songs, but he could not. they were too morbid. what he needed was some one to buoy him up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. as it was he had no one. his friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed. personally, i was in no position to do anything at the time, being more or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which had held me for a number of years. about a year or so after he failed my sister e---- announced that paul had been there and that he was coming to live with her. he could not pay so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind and another, but neither did he have to. her memory was not short; she gave him the fullness of her home. a few months later he was ostensibly connected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling so poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses to offer. a little later i met a doctor who said, "paul cannot live. he has pernicious anæmia. he is breaking down inside and doesn't know it. he can't last long. he's too depressed." i knew it was so and what the remedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no more for him. of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as i could make out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. one or two pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. his partners, quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an injustice, remained religiously away. he found, as he often told my sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another "bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen--and all these little straws depressed him horribly. finally, being no longer strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. for a little while he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would soon return. one day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by the sight of it. to him it was the death-sign. some one had told him so not long before!!! then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held us, he wanted to see me every day. he had a desire to talk to me about his early life, the romance of it--maybe i could write a story some time, tell something about him! (best of brothers, here it is, a thin little flower to lay at your feet!) to please him i made notes, although i knew most of it. on these occasions he was always his old self, full of ridiculous stories, quips and slight _mots_, all in his old and best vein. he would soon be himself, he now insisted. then one evening in late november, before i had time to call upon him (i lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from e----. he had suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the head. when i arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth--the empty shell of the beetle. there were tears, a band of reporters from the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. it is amazing what satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms--broken columns and gates ajar! being ostensibly a catholic, a catholic sister-in-law and other relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the church of one of his favorite rectors. all broadway was there, more flowers, his latest song read from the altar. then there was a carriage procession to a distant catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the rector of the church, officiating at the grave. it was so cold and dreary there, horrible. later on he was removed to chicago. but still i think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, but on broadway between twenty-ninth and forty-second streets, the spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. ah, broadway! broadway! and you, my good brother! here is the story that you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale, pale symbol of all i think and feel. where are the thousand yarns i have laughed over, the music, the lights, the song? peace, peace. so shall it soon be with all of us. it was a dream. it is. i am. you are. and shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams? _the county doctor_ how well i remember him--the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head like plato's or that of diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. in addition, he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung darkeningly over his eyes. but what a doctor! and how simple and often non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies! "my son, your father is very sick. now, i'll tell you what you can do for me. you go out here along the cheevertown road about a mile or two and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big handful of peach sprigs--about so many, see? say that doctor gridley said he was to give them to you for him. then, mrs. ----, when he brings them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. give mr. ---- about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four hours, and i hope we'll find he'll do better. this kidney case is severe, i know, but he'll come around all right." and he did. my father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at last that we thought he was sure to die. the house was so somber at the time. over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. and then there were the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. he was seemingly so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful. on this occasion i went out along the long, cold, country road of a march evening. i was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. he seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. i knew nothing about medicine, or how lives were saved, but i felt sure that he did and that he would save my father in spite of his always conservative, speculative, doubtful manner. what a wonderful man he must be to know all these things--that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to the agony of gall stones! as i walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and deprivations were impressed upon me, even though i was so young. so few here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions--ourselves especially--and dr. gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. most often, what he prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our presence. a brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in the air. being unknown to these farmers, i wondered if any one of them would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. did they really know him? some one along the road--a home-driving farmer--told me of an old mr. mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. in a little while i came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled woman, who called back to a man inside: "henry, here's a little boy says dr. gridley said you were to cut him a double handful of peach sprigs." henry now came forward--a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool. "dr. gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically. "yes, sir." "what's the matter? what does he want with 'em? do ya know?" "yes, sir. my father's sick with kidney trouble, and dr. gridley said i was to come out here." "oh, all right. wait'll i git my big knife," and back he went, returning later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. he preceded me out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond. "dr. gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "well, i guess we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. we're all apt ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like character, he cut me an armful, saying: "i might as well give ya too many as too few. peach sprigs! now, i never heered o' them bein' good fer anythin', but i reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. he usually does--or that's what we think around here, anyhow." in the dusk i trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. the next morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. in a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be impressed upon my mind. the doctor had told him that at any time in the future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for a tea, he would find that it would help him. and the drug expense was exactly nothing. in later years i came to know him better--this thoughtful, crusty, kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond their financial resources. i remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly. during one of the nights when i was sitting up, dozing, reading and listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to get worse. her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains that finally i had to go and call my mother. a consultation with her finally resulted in my being sent for dr. gridley--no telephones in those days--to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was and ask him if he would not come. i was only fourteen. the street along which i had to go was quite dark, the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift perhaps. there was a high wind that cried in the trees. my shoes on the board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. i recall progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main street--yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front--came, because of a very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into view. here i knocked, and then knocked more. no reply. i then made a still more forceful effort. finally, through one of the red glass panels which graced either side of the door i saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. his feet were in gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely. "wait! wait!" i heard him call. "i'll be there! i'm coming! don't make such a fuss! it seems as though i never get a real good night's rest any more." he came on, opened the door, and looked out. "well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?" "doctor," i began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come at once?" "your mother!" he grumbled. "what can i do if i do come down? not a thing. feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! that's every bit i can do. your mother knows that as well as i do. that disease has to run its course." he looked at me as though i were to blame, then added, "calling me up this way at three in the morning!" "but she's in such pain, doctor," i complained. "all right--everybody has to have a little pain! you can't be sick without it." "i know," i replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister might die, "but she's in such awful pain, doctor." "well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "i know it's all foolishness, but i'll come. you go back and tell your mother that i'll be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. she isn't a bit sicker than i am right this minute, not a bit--" and he closed the door and went upstairs. to me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as i reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired--dragged out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. as i returned home i felt even more fearful, for once, as i was passing a woodshed which i could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and crowed--a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet fahrenheit, sidewise. then, as i walked along a fence which later by day i saw had a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me out of inky darkness! great hamlet's father, how my heart sank! once more i leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. then i ran until i fell into a crossing ditch. it was an amazing--almost a tragic--experience, then. in due time the doctor came--and i never quite forgave him for not making me wait and go back with him. he was too sleepy, though, i am sure. the seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited until morning. however, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a bottle, and left again. but the night trials of doctors and their patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then. one of the next interesting impressions i gained of the doctor was that of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. he was suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this, apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest. one of the truly interesting things about dr. gridley, as i early began to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his material welfare. why, i have often asked myself, should a man of so much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural community? that he was an extremely able physician there was not the slightest doubt. other physicians from other towns about, and even so far away as chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. that he knew life--much of it--as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which i subsequently learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world, surrounded probably by his rabelais, his burton, his frazer, and his montaigne, and dreaming what dreams--thinking what thoughts? "say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old dr. gridley, ed boulder who used to run the hotel over at sleichertown, congressman barr, and judge morgan, sitting out in front of boulder's hotel over there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the pierceton bus. dr. gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force and volume until it was a jolly shout. and the green fields all around. and mrs. calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. it was delicious." one of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred, was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. during his life, his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as i learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. he could not be made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that the people were poor. "once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge and collect." this generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting results. on one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his front lawn in warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's advice. he seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice ready to be received. when this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. the latter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked, finally handed back the dollar to the farmer. "you take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and have the prescription filled. i think your wife will be all right." when he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand. after a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said: "i was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. i guess he needs the dollar more than i do." in the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his, when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and simultaneously hailed him. he arose and went out to meet them. his wife, who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and took note of who they were. both were men in whose families the doctor had practiced for years. one was a prosperous farmer who always paid his "doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many services. both men talked to him a little while and then rode away, after which he returned to the house, calling to enoch, his old negro servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his medicine case. mrs. gridley, who was naturally interested in his financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as he came out: "now, doctor, which of those two men are you going with?" "why, miss susan," he replied--a favorite manner of addressing his wife, of whom he was very fond--the note of apology in his voice showing that he knew very well what she was thinking about, "i'm going with w----." "i don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "mr. n---- is as good a friend of yours as w----, and he always pays you." "now, miss susan," he returned coaxingly, "n---- can go to pierceton and get doctor bodine, and w---- can't get any one but me. you surely wouldn't have him left without any one?" what the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by the kindly wisdom of this samaritan. he was nearly everybody's doctor, in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. everywhere he went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being called into service by some one--the well-to-do as well as by those who had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor--a humanness possibly--which detained and fascinated him and made him a little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else. "he was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to worry over it. she declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care." in illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this: in our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself during the civil war. he was a figure, and very much looked up to by all. people were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him. a remote, stern soul, yet to dr. gridley he was little more than a child or schoolboy--one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. plainly, the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one to provide it. at any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and in a public place--at the principal street corner, for instance, or in the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate--it was not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself--coming out, for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself. "there you go again!" i once heard him call to the colonel, as the latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no rural free delivery in those days) "--walking around without your rubbers, and no overcoat! you want to get me up in the night again, do you?" "it didn't seem so damp when i started out, doctor." "and of course it was too much trouble to go back! you wouldn't feel that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!" "i'll put 'em on! i'll put 'em on! only, please don't fuss, doctor. i'll go back to the house and put 'em on." the doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home. another of his patients was an old mr. pegram, a large, kind, big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an exceedingly irascible temper. he was the victim of some obscure malady which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. this seemed to increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had at last discovered that if he could get mr. pegram angry enough the malady would occasionally disappear. this seemed at times as good a remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try it. among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. at the same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him greatly--a fact which the doctor knew. finding the old gentleman in a most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early the next day, without any other word, sent old enoch, his negro servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe--a request which would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old mr. pegram had died, or was about to--a hopeless case. when ushered into the latter's presence, enoch began innocently enough: "de doctah say dat now dat mr. peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat ba--ba--buffalo robe." "what!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed. "what's that? buffalo robe! by god! you go back and tell old doc gridley that i ain't dead yet by a damned sight! no, sir!" and forthwith he dressed himself and was out and around the same day. persons who met the doctor, as i heard years later from his daughter and from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a hundred harmless things--never one that could really have proved injurious to any one. once, according to his daughter, as he was driving into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it. "oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "i think i'd cut it off." "yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with what, doctor?" "oh, i think i'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously. the driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed: "well, doc, you see i cut 'er off, and she got well!" "yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the case but willing to appear interested, "--what was it you cut off?" "why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. you told me to cut it off, and i did." "yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with what?" "why, with a pair of scissors, doc, just like you said." the doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him. "but didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in disturbed astonishment. "no, no," said the driver, "i made 'em sharp, all right. i spent two days whettin' 'em up, and bob hart cut 'er off fer me. they cut, all right, but i tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle." he smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give no more idle advice of that kind. in the school which i attended for a period were two of his sons, fred and walter. both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind or another about their home--not in cages, as some might, but inveigled and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed about the yard on poles. the doctor himself was intensely fond of these and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always anticipated the spring return of many of diem--black-birds, blue jays, wrens and robins--with a hopeful, "well, now, they'll soon be here again." during the summer, according to her, he was always an interested spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. similarly, when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the house, saying sadly to his daughter: "well, dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. i am sorry. i like to see them, and i am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter is coming." "usually about the th or th of december," his daughter once quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring them all back again." one of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised, "jim" and "zip" by name. these crows came to know him well, and were finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing to him as he drove along! both of them were great thieves, and would steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they could have carried it. they were always walking about the house, cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the house. on another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. they were recovered once by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful owners. the doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away. interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. he picked it up and when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend him a knife. "no," said his son. "our knives are all lost. the crows took them." "i knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when i met zip uptown just now, i asked her to lend me one, and she did. here it is." he pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him; a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run and ask zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one. although a sad man at times, as i understood, the doctor was not a pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which the large practice of his profession put upon him. one of his greatest reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh. one of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the neighborhood of pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were still taught by a process of singing. the method adopted in this form of education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers, principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme. occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. on one occasion, however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "africa-a, africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he decided to stop in and listen a while. having tethered his horse outside he knocked at the door and was received by the little english singing teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. when they had finished this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he would especially like them to sing. "no," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in his eye, "i had thought of asking you to sing the rocky mountains, but as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time i have so limited, i have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much." "oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "now, ladies and gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to sing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings," and forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization there was no difference at all. only those, however, who knew dr. gridley in the sickroom, and knew him well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. he was really, in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his interests or his personal well-being. one of his chiefest oppositions, according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of any stricken person that there was no hope. instead, he would use every delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in order if possible to give less pain. "i remember in the case of my father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. knowing the end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging remark, and i bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said, 'doctor gridley, the disease is under control, i think. i can hear the respiration to the bottom of the lungs.' "'yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. the failure is in the recuperative energy. vitality runs too low.' it meant from the first, 'your father will not live.'" in the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent to him to ask what of the child--better or worse. his answer was: "he is passing as free from pain as ever i knew a case of this kind." in yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired: "doctor, is this case dangerous?" "not in the nature of the malady, madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition it meets. hope is broken. there is nothing to resist the damage." one of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a few miles out from silver lake, who while working about his barn met with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the gall bladder. the main accident was not in itself fatal, but the possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. fearing the danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. for nine days he came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the sufferer, until the tenth morning. on this day, according to his daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill concealed the anxiety he felt. coming up to the door, he entered just far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. with this in his hand he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own child. "there was no need for words," said one of them. "every curve and droop of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory." one of his perpetual charges, as i learned later, was a poor old unfortunate by the name of id logan, who had a little cabin and an acre of ground a half dozen miles west of warsaw, and who existed from year to year heaven only knows how. id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always spoke of him sympathetically as "poor old id logan" and would often call out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. one snowy winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride, he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. when he reached the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no heat within. rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and went in. there he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind, lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. there was no fire in the fireplace. the coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs, and under the doors and windows. going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and built a roaring fire. having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible. toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his whereabouts. "i was with id logan," he said. "what's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired. "nothing now," he returned. "it was only last night," and for years afterward he commented on the death of "poor old id," saying always at the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be sick and die without friends. his love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose one of his patients. one of his oldest friends was a fine old christian lady by the name of weeks, who lived down in louter creek bottoms and in whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. during the latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move over into whitley county, where she could stay with her daughter. just before going, however, she expressed a wish to see doctor gridley, and he called in upon her. a little dinner had been prepared in honor of his coming. after it was over and the old times were fully discussed he was about to take his leave when mrs. weeks disappeared from the room and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the attention of the little audience, said: "doctor, i am going up to whitley now to live with my daughter, and i don't suppose i will get to see you very often any more. like myself, you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. but i want to give you this spread that i have woven with my own hands since i have been sixty years of age. it isn't very much, but it is meant for a token of the love and esteem i bear you, and in remembrance of all that you have done for me and mine." her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. the doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with tears of appreciation. balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied: "madam, i appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me as much as i honor the sentiment which has produced it. there are, i know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool, and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. i have been your physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and sorrows. but, as much as i esteem you, and as highly as i prize this token of your regard, i can accept it but upon one condition, and that is, mrs. weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night, how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not fail to send for me in your hour of need. it is both my privilege and my pleasure, and i should not rest content unless i knew it were so." when the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and ended with, "now i want this put on my bed." his daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was never out of his service. one of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his last illness and death. always, during his later years, when he felt the least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any of his own medicine. instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude, he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to help him along. on this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor, one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and saying, "doctor, i'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for further developments. the latter, owing to dr. gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do. "well, doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your own condition than i am, i'm sure. what do you think i ought to give you?" "now, doctor," replied gridley sweetly, "i'm your patient, and you're my doctor. i wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and i'm going to take whatever you give me. that's why i called you in. now, you just give me what you think my condition requires, and i'll take it." the young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very effective. without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or what he thought, he merely prescribed it. "well, now, i like that," commented gridley solemnly. "i never heard of that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. i'll take it, and we'll see. what's more, i like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways of his own--" and, according to his daughter, he did take it, and was helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing, and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! he was so old and feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came was really glad to go. one of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was, as i have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder, sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them without exhibiting the emotion he felt. he was a constant student of the phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him, consciously. at other times he modified his view to one of an almost prayerful hope, and in reading emily brontë's somewhat morbid story of "wuthering heights," his copy of which i long had in my possession, i noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a future life with interesting comments of his own. to one of these passages, which reads: "i don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but i am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with me. i see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and i feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness," he had added on the margin: "how often i have felt this very emotion. how natural i know it to be. and what a consolation in the thought!" writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of drugs he had written in latin, the lines: "in life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies and death stills the heart's last emotion, oh, then may the angel of mercy arise like a star on eternity's ocean!" when he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend colonel dyer--he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes--with: "dyer, i'm almost gone. i am in the shadow of death. i am standing upon the very brink. i cannot see clearly, i cannot speak coherently, the film of death obstructs my sight. i know what this means. it is the end, but all is well with me. i have no fear. i have said and done things that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but i have never willfully wronged a man in my life. i have no concern for myself. i am concerned only for those i leave behind. i never saved money, and i die as poor as when i was born. we do not know what there is in the future now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. it seems to me there is a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but i cannot tell. no one can tell." this interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical point of view. "if there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and practice upon the principle of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' then this samaritan of the medical profession is safe from all harm. if there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters, then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so trustingly again." _culhane, the solid man_ i met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially reflected itself in my physical condition. i might almost say that i was sick spiritually. at the same time i was rather strongly imbued with a contempt for him and his cure. i had heard of him for years. to begin with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired undefeated champion of the world. as a boy i had known that he had toured america with modjeska as charles, the wrestler, in "as you like it." before or after that he had trained john l. sullivan, the world's champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful fights, and that at a time when sullivan was unfitted to fight any one. before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant farmer's son in ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way to america, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant and waiter in a bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the civil war, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of john l. sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in upper new york state which later evolved into the great and now decidedly fashionable institution in westchester, near new york. it has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,--those who revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or otherwise. there is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering in the extreme. however, in so far as culhane was concerned at this time, the case was different. whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other experiences. self-education, an acquired politeness among strangers and a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. literally, he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the most fashionable residence sections of the east. he had already given away to some sisters of mercy a great estate in northern new york. his stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use of his "guests." men of all professions visited his place, paid him gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. i myself was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose friend if not crony--if such a thing could have been said to exist in his life--he was. i was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. on the way, and before i had been introduced, i was instructed by my good brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored to be so beneficial in so many cases. they were very rough--purposely so. the day i arrived, and before i saw him, i was very much impressed with the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair shop," as subsequently i learned he was accustomed to refer to it, perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama. it was spring and quite warm and bright. the cropped enclosure which surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. the house, standing in the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple french windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and set with rockers. the land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually to the sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various toy-like sails upon the water, were no small portion of its charm. to the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the trees. due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. by night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling new york. northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until they passed into a dim green-blue haze. interiorly, as i learned later, this place was most cleverly and sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. it was airy and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five punching bags, only medicine balls. at the other end was an office or receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. to the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. on the second floor, on either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library, billiard and smoking-room at one end to culhane's private suite at the other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously mentioned. these rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors opening upon it. in another wing on the ground floor were kitchens, servants' quarters, and what not else! across the immense lawn or campus to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose stable, almost as impressive as the main building. about the place, and always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. that is as nationalities are represented in america, by first and second generations. the day i arrived i did not see my prospective host or manager or trainer for an hour or two after i came, being allowed to wait about until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him to come and see me. when he did show up, a more savage and yet gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes _de rigueur_ i have never seen. he was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like those portraits that have come down to us of richelieu and the duc de guise--fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat, black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. and yet really, at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. he was so lithe, silent, cat-like in his tread. in his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes troubles us in the presence of animals. it was hard to believe that he was all of sixty, as i had been told. he looked the very well-preserved man of fifty or less. the short trimmed mustache and goatee which he wore were gray and added to his grand air. his hair, cut a close pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a still more distinguished air. he looked very virile, very intelligent, very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening. "well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?" i gave him my name. "yes, that's so. your brother spoke to me about you. well, take a seat. you will be looked after." he walked off, and after an hour or so i was still waiting, for what i scarcely knew--a room, something to eat possibly, some one to speak a friendly word to me, but no one did. while i was waiting in this rather nondescript antechamber, hung with hats, caps, riding whips and gauntlets, i had an opportunity to study some of the men with whom presumably i was to live for a number of weeks. it was between two and three in the afternoon, and many of them were idling about in pairs or threes, talking, reading, all in rather commonplace athletic costumes--soft woolen shirts, knee trousers, stockings and running or walking shoes. they were in the main evidently of the so-called learned professions or the arts--doctors, lawyers, preachers, actors, writers, with a goodly sprinkling of merchants, manufacturers and young and middle-aged society men, as well as politicians and monied idlers, generally a little the worse for their pleasures or weaknesses. a distinguished judge of one of the superior courts of new york and an actor known everywhere in the english-speaking world were instantly recognized by me. others, as i was subsequently informed, were related by birth or achievement to some one fact or another of public significance. the reason for the presence of so many people rather above than under the average in intellect lay, as i came to believe later, in their ability or that of some one connected with them to sincerely appreciate or to at least be amused and benefited by the somewhat different theory of physical repair which the lord of the manor had invented, or for which at least he had become famous. i have remarked that i was not inclined to be impressed. sanitariums with their isms and theories did not appeal to me. however, as i was waiting here an incident occurred which stuck in my mind. a smart conveyance drove up, occupied by a singularly lean and haughty-looking individual, who, after looking about him, expecting some one to come out to him no doubt, clambered cautiously out, and after seeing that his various grips and one trunk were properly deposited on the gravel square outside, paid and feed his driver, then walked in and remarked: "ah--where is mr. culhane?" "i don't know, sir," i replied, being the only one present. "he was here, but he's gone. i presume some one will show up presently." he walked up and down a little while, and then added: "um--rather peculiar method of receiving one, isn't it? i wired him i'd be here." he walked restlessly and almost waspishly to and fro, looking out of the window at times, at others commenting on the rather casual character of it all. i agreed. thus, some fifteen minutes having gone by without any one approaching us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or appearing to be interested in us, the new arrival grew excited. "this is very unusual," he fumed, walking up and down. "i wired him only three hours ago. i've been here now fully three-quarters of an hour! a most unheard-of method of doing business, i should say!" presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. he seemed to be going somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. yet into our presence, probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger quite sharply and making no effort to apologize for our long wait. "you wish to see me?" he inquired brusquely once more. like a wasp, the stranger was vibrant with rage. plainly he felt himself insulted or terribly underrated. "are you mr. culhane?" he asked crisply. "yes." "i am mr. squiers," he exclaimed. "i wired you from buffalo and ordered a room," this last with an irritated wave of the hand. "oh, no, you didn't order any room," replied the host sourly and with an obvious desire to show his indifference and contempt even. "you wired to know if you _could engage_ a room." he paused. the temperature seemed to drop perceptibly. the prospective guest seemed to realize that he had made a mistake somewhere, had been misinformed as to conditions here. "oh! um--ah! yes! well, have you a room?" "i don't know. i doubt it. we don't take every one." his eyes seemed to bore into the interior of his would-be guest. "well, but i was told--my friend, mr. x----," the stranger began a rapid, semi-irritated, semi-apologetic explanation of how he came to be here. "i don't know anything about your friend or what he told you. if he told you you could order a room by telegraph, he's mistaken. anyhow, you're not dealing with him, but with me. now that you're here, though, if you want to sit down and rest yourself a little i'll see what i can do for you. i can't decide now whether i can let you stay. you'll have to wait a while." he turned and walked off. the other stared. "well," he commented to me after a time, walking and twisting, "if a man wants to come here i suppose he has to put up with such things, but it's certainly unusual, isn't it?" he sat down, wilted, and waited. later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then i heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. he had come a long way--denver, i believe. he had heard that all one needed to do was to wire, especially one in his circumstances. "some people think that way," solemnly commented the clerk, "but they don't know mr. culhane. he does about as he pleases in these matters. he doesn't do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, i think. he always has more applicants than he accepts." i began to see a light. perhaps there was something to this place after all. i did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o'clock lights were turned off. i lit a small candle and was looking over some things which i had placed in a grip, when i heard a voice in the hall outside: "candles out, please! candles out! all guests in bed!" then it came to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here. the next morning as i was still soundly sleeping at five-thirty a loud rap sounded at my door. the night before i had noticed above my bed a framed sign which read: "guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp." "gymnasium at six! gymnasium at six!" a voice echoed down the hall. i bounced out of bed. something about the very air of the place made me feel that it was dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. the tiger-like eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them for me than for others. i had paid my six hundred ... i had better earn it. i was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, running shoes in less than five minutes. and that room! by that time as odd a company of people as i have ever seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. the leanness! the osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the mustachios! the goatees! the fat, hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or horn glasses or pince-nezes!--laid aside a few moments later, as the exercises began. youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too acceptable--but middle age! and out in the world, i reflected rather sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. ridiculous! pitiful! as lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their shells, myself included. it was really painful. even as i meditated, however, i was advised, by many who saw that i was a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball practice, for it might save me being taken or called by _him_. i hastened so to do. even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our host entered--that iron man, that mount of brawn. in his cowled dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of the medieval years than a trainer. he walked to the center, hung up his cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like ourselves. but how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! at once he seized a large leather-covered medicine ball, as had all the others, and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, i presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. taking his place opposite the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and brow-beating epithets. "hurry up now! faster! ah, come on! put the ball back to me! put the ball back! do you want to keep it all day? great god! what are you standing there for? what are you standing there for? what do you think you're doing--drinking tea? come on! i haven't all morning for you alone. move! move, you ham! you call yourself an editor! why, you couldn't edit a handbill! you can't even throw a ball straight! throw it straight! throw it straight! for christ's sake where do you think i am--out in the office? throw it straight! hell!" and all the time one and another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was always littered with them, would be thrown in the victim's direction, and before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were supposed to keep in constant motion between them. later, a ball striking him in the stomach, he emitted a weak "ooph!" and laying his hands over the affected part ceased all effort. at this the master of the situation only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it continued, "what's the matter with you now? come on! what do you want to stop for? what do you want to stand there for? you're not hurt. how do you expect to get anywhere if you can't keep two silly little balls like these going between us?" (there had probably been six or eight.) "here i am sixty and you're forty, and you can't even keep up with me. and you pretend to give the general public advice on life! well, go on; god pity the public, is all i say," and he dismissed him, calling out another name. now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who later i learned was a manufacturer of clothing--six hundred employees under him--down in health and nerves, really all "shot to pieces" physically. plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an all but panicky mood. "move! move!" insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more irritably. "say, you work like a crab! what a motion! if you had more head and less guts you could do this better. a fine specimen you are! this is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers instead of exercising. wake up! wake up! a belt would have kept your stomach in long ago. a little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn't have any fat cheeks. even your hair might stay on! wake up! wake up! what do you want to do--die?" and as he talked he pitched the balls so quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. his physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. he was generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming red, his hands trembling and missing, when a "well, go on," sounded and a third victim was called. this time it was a well-known actor who responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for he realized quite well what was before him. he had been here for weeks and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. he ran and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the successful in the realm of the footlights. "say, you're not an actor--you're a woman! you're a stewed onion! move! move! come on! come on! look at those motions now, will you? look at that one arm up! where do you suppose the ball is? on the ceiling? it's not a lamp! come on! come on! it's a wonder when you're killed as hamlet that you don't stay dead. you are. you're really dead now, you know. move! move!" and so it would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave up and cried: "well, i can't go any faster than i can, can i? i can't do any more than i can!" "ah, go on! go back into the chorus!" called his host, who now abandoned him. "get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you," and he called another. by now, as may well be imagined, i was fairly stirred up as to the probabilities of the situation. he might call me! the man who was playing opposite me--a small, decayed person who chose me, i think, because he knew i was new, innocuous and probably awkward--seemed to realize my thoughts as well as his own. by lively exercise with me he was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable effort here. "come on, let's play fast so he won't notice us," he said most pathetically at one point. you would have thought i had known him all my life. but he didn't call us--not this morning at any rate. whether owing to our efforts or the fact that i at least was too insignificant, too obscure, we escaped. he did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. i was struck and tripped and pounded until i all but fell prone upon the floor, half convinced that i was being killed, but i was not. i was merely sent stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he tortured some one else. but the names he called me! the comments on my none too smoothly articulated bones--and my alleged mind! as in my schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent atmosphere in which i was taught my abc's, i crept shamefacedly and beaten from the scene. it was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his remarkable method was revealed. here a goodly portion of the force of his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. apparently to him, in his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. they had no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their bodies. and here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were naked. however grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his skin--well, draw your own conclusion. for after performing certain additional exercises--one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran--you were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and agilely take a bath. "well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "come on, now. now you have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself thoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin thoroughly--now start!" the distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove beneficial. he was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all dispensed with during his stay here. as he came, meticulously and gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he had been most roughly urged by culhane, i hoped that he and not i would continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all. "soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather was out in the room once more. "soap your chest! soap your stomach! soap your arms, damn it! soap your arms! and don't rub them all day either! now soap your legs, damn it! soap your legs! don't you know how to soap your legs! don't stand there all day! soap your legs! now turn round and soap your back--soap your back! for christ's sake, soap your back! do it quick--quick! now come back under the water again and see if you can get it off. don't act as though you were cold molasses! move! move! lord, you act as though you had all day--as though you had never taken a bath in your life! i never saw such an old poke. you come up here and expect me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you were made of bone! quick now, move!" the noble jurist did as demanded--that is, as quickly as he could--only the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in this as in many instances it cut deep. so often it was the shock to one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant. once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one other spot--the back of his left forearm. mine host seemed enraged. "well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching him as might a hawk. "are you going to spend all day rubbing that one spot? for god's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and get out from under the water? move! move! rub your chest! rub your belly! hell, rub your back! rub your toes and get out!" when routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. he was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp how it was done, let alone please his exacting host. "come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "get out from under the water. a lot you know about washing yourself! for a man who has been on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person i ever met. if you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? come on out and dry yourself!" the distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "such language!" some one afterwards said he said to some one else. "he's not used to dealing with gentlemen, that's plain. the man talks like a blackguard. and to think we pay for such things! well, well! i'll not stand it, i'm afraid. i've had about enough. it's positively revolting, positively revolting!" but he stayed on, just the same--second thoughts, a good breakfast, his own physical needs. at any rate weeks later he was still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally. about the second or third day i witnessed another such spectacle, which made me laugh--only not in my host's presence--nay, verily! for into this same chamber had come another distinguished personage, a lawyer or society man, i couldn't tell which, who was washing himself rather leisurely, as was _not_ the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift one-minute or less system. now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few seconds, then came over and exclaimed: "wash your toes, can't you? wash your toes! can't you wash your toes?" the skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any desire apparently to widen the operation. "here!" called the host, this time much more sharply, "i said wash your toes, not the outside of them! soap them! don't you know how to wash your toes yet? you're old enough, god knows! wash between 'em! wash under 'em!" "certainly i know how to wash my toes," replied the other irritably and straightening up, "and what's more, i'd like you to know that i am a gentleman." "well, then, if you're a gentleman," retorted the other, "you ought to know how to wash your toes. wash 'em--and don't talk back!" "pah!" exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. "i'm not used to having such language addressed to me." "i can't help that," said culhane. "if you knew how to wash your toes perhaps you wouldn't have to have such language addressed to you." "oh, hell!" fumed the other. "this is positively outrageous! i'll leave the place, by george!" "very well," rejoined the other, "only before you go you'll have to wash your toes!" and he did, the host standing by and calmly watching the performance until it was finally completed. it was just this atmosphere which made the place the most astonishing in which i have ever been. it seemed to be drawing the celebrated and the successful as a magnet might iron, and yet it offered conditions which one might presume they would be most opposed to. no one here was really any one, however much he might be outside. our host was all. he had a great blazing personality which dominated everybody, and he did not hesitate to show before one and all that he did so do. breakfast here consisted of a cereal, a chop and coffee--plentiful but very plain, i thought. after breakfast, between eight-thirty and eleven, we were free to do as we chose: write letters, pack our bags if we were leaving, do up our laundry to be sent out, read, or merely sit about. at eleven, or ten-thirty, according to the nature of the exercise, one had to join a group, either one that was to do the long or short block, as they were known here, or one that was to ride horseback, all exercises being so timed that by proper execution one would arrive at the bathroom door in time to bathe, dress and take ten minutes' rest before luncheon. these exercises were simple enough in themselves, consisting, as they did in the case of the long and the short blocks (the long block seven, the short four miles in length), of our walking, or walking and running betimes, about or over courses laid up hill and down dale, over or through unpaved mudroads in many instances, along dry or wet beds of brooks or streams, and across stony or weedy fields, often still damp with dew or the spring rains. but in most cases, when people had not taken any regular exercise for a long time, this was by no means easy. the first day i thought i should never make it, and i was by no means a poor walker. others, the new ones especially, often gave out and had to be sent for, or came in an hour late to be most severely and irritatingly ragged by the host. he seemed to all but despise weakness and had apparently a thousand disagreeable ways of showing it. "if you want to see what poor bags of mush some people can become," he once said in regard to some poor specimen who had seemingly had great difficulty in doing the short block, "look at this. here comes a man sent out to do four measly country miles in fifty minutes, and look at him. you'd think he was going to die. he probably thinks so himself. in new york he'd do seventeen miles in a night running from barroom to barroom or one lobster palace to another--that's a good name for them, by the way--and never say a word. but out here in the country, with plenty of fresh air and a night's rest and a good breakfast, he can't even do four miles in fifty minutes! think of it! and he probably thinks of himself as a man--boasts before his friends, or his wife, anyhow. lord!" a day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the united states army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about forty-eight or -nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. as he explained to culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests later. culhane resented this, i think. he resented people using him or his methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and yet he received them. he felt, and i think in the main that he was right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a way, to a position of dominance over these people. now the sight of presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or wolfish attitude imaginable. in part at least he argued, i think (for in the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at west point, who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, whereas he, because of his stamina and spartan energy, had been able to survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great institution. and to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great strength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had no control having arranged for that. however that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, and here was he, culhane, and although the major was paying well for his minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still culhane could not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, culhane, might shine by contrast. thus on the first day, having sent him around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the "joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy major had not arrived. he had been seen and passed by all, of course. after the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest railway station. at any rate, as culhane sat down at his very small private table, which stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new guest, inquired, "has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived here this morning?" no one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three miles back. "i thought so," he said tersely. "there you have a fine example of the desk general and major--we had 'em in the army--men who sit in a swivel chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. you'd think a man like that who had been trained at west point and seen service in the philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in condition. not at all. as soon as they get a little way up in their profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and show off, tell how wonderful they are. here's a man, an army officer, in such rotten shape that if i sent a good horse after him now it's ten to one he couldn't get on him. i'll have to send a truck or some such thing." he subsided. about an hour later the major did appear, much the worse for wear. a groom with a horse had been sent out after him, and, as the latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." from that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to take, the major was his especial target. he loved to pick on him, to tell him that he was "nearly all guts"--a phrase which literally sickened me at that time--to ask him how he expected to stay in the army if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on _ad infinitum_ until, while at first i pitied the major, later on i admired his pluck. culhane foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he was accustomed to them. the major, as i learned afterwards, stayed not six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain in the army. but to return to culhane himself. the latter's method always contained this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so puny and ineffectual. they might have brains and skill but here they were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. now and then it was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take an interest, but not often. in the main i think he despised them one and all for the puny machines they were. he even despised life and the pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, characterized most men. i recall once, for instance, his telling us how as a private in the united states army when the division of which he was a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end--how he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried on bushes or the branch of a tree. "those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of them died that very winter, and here i am today." and well we knew it. i used to study the faces of many of the puffy, gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, and wonder how this appealed to them. i think that in the main they took it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength. but in regard to them culhane was by no means so tolerant. one day, as i recall, there arrived at the sanitarium a stout and mushy-looking hebrew, with a semi-bald pate, protruding paunch and fat arms and legs, who applied to culhane for admission. and, as much to irritate his other guests, i think, as to torture this particular specimen into some semblance of vitality, he admitted him. and thereafter, from the hour he entered until he left about the time i did, culhane seemed to follow him with a wolfish and savage idea. he gave him a most damnable and savage horse, one that kicked and bit, and at mounting time would place mr. itzky (i think his name was) up near the front of the procession where he could watch him. always at mount-time, when we were permitted to ride, there was inside the great stable a kind of preliminary military inspection of all our accouterments, seeing that we had to saddle and bridle and bring forth our own steeds. this particular person could not saddle a horse very well nor put on his bit and bridle. the animal was inclined to rear and plunge when he came near, to fix him with an evil eye and bite at him. and above all things culhane seemed to value strain of this kind. if he could just make his guests feel the pressure of necessity in connection with their work he was happy. to this end he would employ the most contemptuous and grilling comment. thus to mr. itzky he was most unkind. he would look over all most cynically, examining the saddles and bridles, and then say, "oh, i see you haven't learned how to tighten a belly-band yet," or "i do believe you have your saddle hind-side to. you would if you could, that's one thing sure. how do you expect a horse to be sensible or quiet when he knows that he isn't saddled right? any horse knows that much, and whether he has an ass for a rider. i'd kick and bite too if i were some of these horses, having a lot of damned fools and wasters to pack all over the country. loosen that belt and fasten it right" (there might be nothing wrong with it) "and move your saddle up. do you want to sit over the horse's rump?" then would come the fateful moment of mounting. there was of course the accepted and perfect way--his way: left foot in stirrup, an easy balanced spring and light descent into the seat. one should be able to slip the right foot into the right stirrup with the same motion of mounting. but imagine fifty, sixty, seventy men, all sizes, weights and differing conditions of health and mood. a number of these people had never ridden a horse before coming here and were as nervous and frightened as children. such mounts! such fumbling around, once they were in their saddles, for the right stirrup! and all the while culhane would be sitting out front like an army captain on the only decent steed in the place, eyeing us with a look of infinite and weary contempt that served to increase our troubles a thousandfold. "well, you're all on, are you? you all do it so gracefully i like to sit here and admire you. hulbert there throws his leg over his horse's back so artistically that he almost kicks his teeth out. and effingham does his best to fall off on the other side. and where's itzky? i don't even see him. oh, yes, there he is. well" (this to itzky, frantically endeavoring to get one fat foot in a stirrup and pull himself up), "what about you? can't you get your leg that high? here's a man who for twenty-five years has been running a cloak-and-suit business and employing five hundred people, but he can't get on a horse! imagine! five hundred people dependent on that for their living!" (at this point, say, itzky succeeds in mounting.) "well, he's actually on! now see if you can stick while we ride a block or two. you'll find the right stirrup, itzky, just a little forward of your horse's belly on the right side--see? a fine bunch this is to lead out through a gentleman's country! hell, no wonder i've got a bad reputation throughout this section! well, forward, and see if you can keep from falling off." then we were out through the stable-door and the privet gate at a smart trot, only to burst into a headlong gallop a little farther on down the road. to the seasoned riders it was all well enough, but to beginners, those nervous about horses, fearful about themselves! the first day, not having ridden in years and being uncertain as to my skill, i could scarcely stay on. several days later, i by then having become a reasonably seasoned rider, it was mr. itzky who appeared on the scene, and after him various others. on this particular trip i am thinking of, mr. itzky fell or rolled off and could not again mount. he was miles from the repair shop and culhane, discovering his plight, was by no means sympathetic. we had a short ride back to where he sat lamely by the roadside viewing disconsolately the cavalcade and the country in general. "well, what's the matter with you now?" it was culhane, eyeing him most severely. "i hef hurt my foot. i kent stay on." "you mean you'd rather walk, do you, and lead your horse?" "vell, i kent ride." "all right, then, you lead your horse back to the stable if you want any lunch, and hereafter you run with the baby-class on the short block until you think you can ride without falling off. what's the good of my keeping a stable of first-class horses at the service of a lot of mush-heads who don't even know how to use 'em? all they do is ruin 'em. in a week or two, after a good horse is put in the stable, he's not fit for a gentleman to ride. they pull and haul and kick and beat, when as a matter of fact the horse has a damned sight more sense than they have." we rode off, leaving itzky alone. the men on either side of me--we were riding three abreast--scoffed under their breath at the statement that we were furnished decent horses. "the nerve! this nag!" "this bag of bones!" "to think a thing like this should be called a horse!" but there were no outward murmurs and no particular sympathy for mr. itzky. he was a fat stuff, a sweat-shop manufacturer, they would bet; let him walk and sweat. so much for sympathy in this gay realm where all were seeking to restore their own little bodies, whatever happened. so many of these men varied so greatly in their looks, capacities and troubles that they were always amusing. thus i recall one lean iron manufacturer, the millionaire president of a great "frog and switch" company, who had come on from kansas city, troubled with anæmia, neurasthenia, "nervous derangement of the heart" and various other things. he was over fifty, very much concerned about himself, his family, his business, his friends; anxious to obtain the benefits of this celebrated course of which he had heard so much. walking or running near me on his first day, he took occasion to make inquiries in regard to culhane, the life here, and later on confidences as to his own condition. it appeared that his chief trouble was his heart, a kind of phantom disturbance which made him fear that he was about to drop dead and which came and went, leaving him uncertain as to whether he had it or not. on entering he had confided to culhane the mysteries of his case, and the latter had examined him, pronouncing him ("rather roughly," as he explained to me), quite fit to do "all the silly work he would have to do here." nevertheless while we were out on the short block his heart was hurting him. at the same time it had been made rather clear to him that if he wished to stay here he would have to fulfill all the obligations imposed. after a mile or two or three of quick walking and jogging he was saying to me, "you know, i'm not really sure that i can do this. it's very severe, more so than i thought. my heart is not doing very well. it feels very fluttery." "but," i said, "if he told you you could stand it, you can, i'm sure. it's not very likely he'd say you could if you couldn't. he examined you, didn't he? i don't believe he'd deliberately put a strain on any one who couldn't stand it." "yes," he admitted doubtfully, "that's true perhaps." still he continued to complain and complain and to grow more and more worried, until finally he slowed up and was lost in the background. reaching the gymnasium at the proper time i bathed and dressed myself quickly and waited on the balcony over the bathroom to see what would happen in this case. as a rule culhane stood in or near the door at this time, having just returned from some route or "block" himself, to see how the others were faring. and he was there when the iron manufacturer came limping up, fifteen minutes late, one hand over his heart, the other to his mouth, and exclaiming as he drew near, "i do believe, mr. culhane, that i can't stand this. i'm afraid there is something the matter with my heart. it's fluttering so." "to hell with your heart! didn't i tell you there was nothing the matter with it? get into the bath!" the troubled manufacturer, overawed or reassured as the case might be, entered the bath and ten minutes later might have been seen entering the dining-room, as comfortable apparently as any one. afterwards he confessed to me on one of our jogs that there was something about culhane which _gave him confidence_ and made him believe that there wasn't anything wrong with his heart--which there wasn't, i presume. the intensely interesting thing about culhane was this different, very original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. it was a blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet always i had the sense of very great life. with no knowledge of or interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still he seemed to suggest and even live them. he was in his way an exemplification of that ancient greek regimen and stark thought which brought back the ten thousand from cunaxa. he seemed even to suggest in his rough way historical perspective and balance. he knew men, and apparently he sensed how at best and at bottom life was to be lived, with not too much emotional or appetitive swaying in any one direction, and not too little either. yet in "trapseing" about this particular realm each day with ministers, lawyers, doctors, actors, manufacturers, papa's or mamma's young hopefuls and petted heirs, young scapegraces and so-called "society men" of the extreme "upper crust," stuffed and plethoric with money and as innocent of sound knowledge or necessary energy in some instances as any one might well be, one could not help speculating as to how it was that such a man, as indifferent and all but discourteous as this one, could attract them (and so many) to him. they came from all parts of america--the pacific, the gulf, the atlantic and canada--and yet, although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here they stayed. walking or running or idling about with them one could always hear from one or another that culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (i myself thought so at times when i was angry), yet here they were, and here i was, and staying. he was low, vulgar--yet here we were. and yet, meditating on him, i began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men i had ever known, for these people he dealt with were of all the most difficult to deal with. in the main they were of that order or condition of mind which springs from ( ), too much wealth too easily acquired or inherited; or ( ), from a blazing material success, the cause of which was their own savage self-interested viewpoint. hence a colder and in some respects a more critical group of men i have never known. most of them had already seen so much of life in a libertine way that there was little left to enjoy. they sniffed at almost everything, culhane included, and yet they were obviously drawn to him. i tried to explain this to myself on the ground that there is some iron power in some people which literally compels this, whether one will or no; or that they were in the main so tired of life and so truly selfish and egotistic that it required some such different iron or caviar mood plus such a threatening regimen to make them really take an interest. sick as they were, he was about the only thing left on which they could sharpen their teeth with any result. as i have said, a part of culhane's general scheme was to arrange the starting time for the walks and jogs about the long and short blocks so that if one moved along briskly he reached the sanitarium at twelve-thirty and had a few minutes in which to bathe and cool off and change his clothes before entering the dining-room, where, if not at the bathroom door beforehand, culhane would be waiting, seated at his little table, ready to keep watch on the time and condition of all those due. thus one day, a group of us having done the long block in less time than we should have devoted to it, came in panting and rejoicing that we had cut the record by seven minutes. we did not know that he was around. but in the dining-room as we entered he scoffed at our achievement. "you think you're smart, don't you?" he said sourly and without any preliminary statement as to how he knew we had done it in less time. "you come out here and pay me one hundred a week and then you want to be cute and play tricks with your own money and health. i want you to remember just one thing: my reputation is just as much involved with the results here as your money. i don't need anybody's money, and i do need my orders obeyed. now you all have watches. you just time yourselves and do that block in the time required. if you can't do it, that's one thing; i can forgive a man too weak or sick to do it. but i haven't any use for a mere smart aleck, and i don't want any more of it, see?" that luncheon was very sad. another thing in connection with these luncheons and dinners, which were sharply timed to the minute, were these crisp table speeches, often made _in re_ some particular offender or his offense, at other times mere sarcastic comments on life in general and the innate cussedness of human nature, which amused at the same time that they were certain to irritate some. for who is it that is not interested in hearing the peccadilloes of his neighbor aired? thus while i was there, there was a new york society man by the name of blake, who unfortunately was given to severe periods of alcoholism, the results of which were, after a time, nervous disorders which sent him here. in many ways he was as amiable and courteous and considerate a soul as one could meet anywhere. he had that smooth, gracious something about him--good nature, for one thing, a kind of understanding and sympathy for various forms of life--which left him highly noncensorious, if genially examining at times. but his love of drink, or rather his mild attempts here to arrange some method by which in this droughty world he could obtain a little, aroused in culhane not so much opposition as an amused contempt, for at bottom i think he really liked the man. blake was so orderly, so sincere in his attempts to fulfill conditions, only about once every week or so he would suggest that he be allowed to go to white plains or rye, or even new york, on some errand or other--most of which requests were promptly and nearly always publicly refused. for although culhane had his private suite at one end of the great building, where one might suppose one might go to make a private plea, still one could never find him there. he refused to receive complaints or requests or visits of any kind there. if you wanted to speak to him you had to do it when he was with the group in its entirety--a commonsense enough policy. but just the same there were those who had reasonable requests or complaints, and these, by a fine intuition as to who was who in this institution and what might be expected of each one, he managed to hear very softly, withdrawing slowly as they talked or inviting them into the office. in the main however the requests were very much like those of blake--men who wanted to get off somewhere for a day or two, feeling, as they did after a week or two or three, especially fit and beginning to think no doubt of the various comforts and pleasures which the city offered. but to all these he was more or less adamant. by hook or by crook, by special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the principal showy resorts of new york, he managed to know, providing they did leave the grounds, either with or without his consent, about where they were and what they had done, and in case any of his rules or their agreements were broken their privileges were thereafter cut off or they were promptly ejected, their trunks being set out on the roadway in front of the estate and they being left to make their way to shelter elsewhere as best they might. on one occasion, however, blake had been allowed to go to new york over saturday and sunday to attend to some urgent business, as he said, he on his honor having promised to avoid the white lights. nevertheless he did not manage so to do but instead, in some comfortable section of that region, was seen drinking enough to last him until perhaps he should have another opportunity to return to the city. on his return to the "shop" on monday morning or late sunday night, culhane pretended not to see him until noonday lunch, when, his jog over the long block done with and his bath taken, he came dapperly into the dining-room, wishing to look as innocent and fit as possible. but culhane was there before him at his little table in the center of the room, and patting the head of one of the two pure-blooded collies that always followed him about on the grounds or in the house, began as follows: "a dog," he said very distinctly and in his most cynical tone and apparently apropos of nothing, which usually augured that the lightning of his criticism was about to strike somewhere, "is so much better than the average man that it's an insult to the dog to compare them. the dog's really decent. he has no sloppy vices. you set a plate of food before a regularly-fed, blooded dog, and he won't think of gorging himself sick or silly. he eats what he needs, and then stops. so does a cat" (which is of course by no means true, but still--). "a dog doesn't get a red nose from drinking too much." by now all eyes were turning in the direction of blake, whose nose was faintly tinged. "he doesn't get gonorrhea or syphilis." the united glances veered in the direction of three or four young scapegraces of wealth, all of whom were suspected of these diseases. "he doesn't hang around hotel bars and swill and get his tongue thick and talk about how rich he is or how old his family is." (this augured that blake did such things, which i doubt, but once more all eyes were shifted to him.) "he doesn't break his word. within the limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. he does what he thinks he's called upon to do. "but you take a man--more especially a gentleman--one of these fellows who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which blake never did). "let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he do? not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices--run from one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to another, one meal to another. he doesn't need to know anything necessarily. he may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way, and still he's a gentleman--because he has money, wears spats and a high hat. why i've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen i have ever seen. they kept their word. they tried to be physically fit. they tried to stand up in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (he was probably thinking of himself.) "but a gentleman wants to boast of his past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on business--his lawyers or some directors want to see him. then he swills around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose a little less red. he thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on. "well, i want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and _one gentleman_ in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized the words), "that it won't do. this isn't a hospital attached to a whorehouse or a saloon. and as for the trashy little six hundred paid here, i don't need it. i've turned away more men who have been here once or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing, than would fill this building. sensible men know it. they don't try to use me. it's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and i take 'em once or twice, but not oftener. when a man goes out of here cured, i know he is cured. i never want to see him again. i want him to go out in the world and stand up. i don't want him to come back here in six months sniveling to be put in shape again. he disgusts me. he makes me sick. i feel like ordering him off the place, and i do, and that's the end of him. let him go and bamboozle somebody else. i've shown him all i know. there's no mystery. he can do as much for himself, once he's been here, as i can. if he won't, well and good. and i'm saying one thing more: there's one man here to whom this particularly applies today. this is his last call. he's been here twice. when he goes out this time he can't come back. now see if some of you can remember some of the things i've been telling you." he subsided and opened his little pint of wine. another day while i was there he began as follows: "if there's one class of men that needs to be improved in this country, it's lawyers. i don't know why it is, but there's something in the very nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to want to wear a know-it-all look. most lawyers are little more than sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. they're always trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they are supposed to be honest and high-minded! think of it! to judge by some of the specimens i get up here," and then some lawyer in the place would turn a shrewd inquiring glance in his direction or steadfastly gaze at his plate or out the window, while the others stared at him, "you would think they were the salt of the earth or that they were following a really noble profession or that they were above or better than other men in their abilities. well, if being conniving and tricky are fine traits, i suppose they are, but personally i can't see it. generally speaking, they're physically the poorest fish i get here. they're slow and meditative and sallow, mostly because they get too little exercise, i presume. and they're never direct and enthusiastic in an argument. a lawyer always wants to stick in an 'if' or a 'but,' to get around you in some way. he's never willing to answer you quickly or directly. i've watched 'em now for nearly fifteen years, and they're all more or less alike. they think they're very individual and different, but they're not. most of them don't know nearly as much about life as a good, all-around business or society man," this in the absence of any desire to discuss these two breeds for the time being. "for the life of me i could never see why a really attractive woman would ever want to marry a lawyer"--and so he would talk on, revealing one little unsatisfactory trait after another in connection with the tribe, sand-papering their raw places as it were, until you would about conclude, supposing you had never heard him talk concerning any other profession, that lawyers were the most ignoble, the pettiest, the most inefficient physically and mentally, of all the men he had ever encountered; and in his noble savage state there would not be one to disagree with him, for he had such an animal, tiger-like mien that you had the feeling that instead of an argument you would get a physical rip which would leave you bleeding for days. the next day, or a day or two or four or six later--according to his mood--it would be doctors or merchants or society men or politicians he would discourse about--and, kind heaven, what a drubbing they would get! he seemed always to be meditating on the vulnerable points of his victims, anxious (and yet presumably not) to show them what poor, fallible, shabby, petty and all but drooling creatures they were. thus in regard to merchants: "the average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a distinctly middle-class mind." at this all the merchants and manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "as a rule, you'll find that they know just the one little line with which they're connected, and nothing more. one man knows all about cloaks and suits" (this may have been a slap at poor itzky) "or he knows a little something about leather goods or shoes or lamps or furniture, and that's all he knows. if he's an american he'll buckle down to that little business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few thousand. and yet he doesn't want to be different from--he wants to be just like--the other fellow. if some one in his line has a house up on the hudson or on riverside drive, when he gets his money he wants to go there and live. if the fellow in his line, or some other that he knows something about, belongs to a certain club, he has to belong to it even if the club doesn't want him or he wouldn't look well in it. he wants to have the same tailor, the same grocer, smoke the same brand of cigars and go to the same summer resort as the other fellow. they even want to look alike. god! and then when they're just like every one else, they think they're somebody. they haven't a single idea outside their line, and yet because they've made money they want to tell other people how to live and think. imagine a rich butcher or cloak-maker, or any one else, presuming to tell me how to think or live!" he stared about him as though he saw many exemplifications of his picture present. and it was always interesting to see how those whom his description really did fit look as though he could not possibly be referring to them. of all types or professions that came here, i think he disliked doctors most. the reason was of course that the work they did or were about to do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. in many cases no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their knowledge to him. it was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or "notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. for a little while during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small table as i and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and otherwise. he confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure, something to culhane's views and methods but that they were "over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." still, one could over-emphasize the value of drugs too. as for himself he had decided to achieve a happy medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to study culhane. as for culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had paid for," as he once said--their fathers, of course. and when they were sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their own. he knew them. one noon we were at lunch. occasionally before seating himself at his small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes, would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course immediately act upon it. one of the rules of the repair shop was that you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed from what your table companion received. thus a fat man at a table with a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some kind. now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change plates. but this was the one thing that culhane would not endure. so upon one occasion, passing near the table at which sat myself and the above-mentioned doctor, table-mates for the time being, he noticed that he was not eating his carrots, a dish which had been especially prepared for him, i imagine--for if one unconsciously ignored certain things the first day or two of his stay, those very things would be all but rammed down his throat during the remainder of his stay; a thing concerning which one guest and another occasionally cautioned newcomers. however this may have been in this particular case, he noticed the uneaten carrots and, pausing a moment, observed: "what's the matter? aren't you eating your carrots?" we had almost finished eating. "who, me?" replied the medic, looking up. "oh, no, i never eat carrots, you know. i don't like them." "oh, don't you?" said culhane sweetly. "you don't like them, and so you don't eat them! well, suppose you eat them here. they may do you a little good just as a change." "but i never eat carrots," retorted the medic tersely and with a slight show of resentment or opposition, scenting perhaps a new order. "no, not outside perhaps, but here you do. you eat carrots here, see?" "yes, but why should i eat them if i don't like them? they don't agree with me. must i eat something that doesn't agree with me just because it's a rule or to please you?" "to please me, or the carrots, or any damned thing you please--but eat 'em." the doctor subsided. for a day or two he went about commenting on what a farce the whole thing was, how ridiculous to make any one eat what was not suited to him, but just the same while he was there he ate them. as for myself, i was very fond of large boiled potatoes and substantial orders of fat and lean meat, and in consequence, having been so foolish as to show this preference, i received but the weakest, most contemptible and puling little spuds and pale orders of meat--with, it is true, plenty of other "side dishes"; whereas a later table-mate of mine, a distressed and neurasthenic society man, was receiving--i soon learned he especially abhorred them--potatoes as big as my two fists. "now look at that! now look at that!" he often said peevishly and with a kind of sickly whine in his voice when he saw one being put before him. "he knows i don't like potatoes, and see what i get! and look at the little bit of a thing he gives you! it's a shame, the way he nags people, especially over this food question. i don't think there's a thing to it. i don't think eating a big potato does me a bit of good, or you the little one, and yet i have to eat the blank-blank things or get out. and i need to get on my feet just now." "well, cheer up," i said sympathetically and with an eye on the large potato perhaps. "he isn't always looking, and we can fix it. you mash up your big potato and put butter and salt on it, and i'll do the same with my little one. then when he's not looking we'll shift." "oh, that's all right," he commented, "but we'd better look out. if he sees us he'll be as sore as the devil." this system worked well enough for a time, and for days i was getting all the potato i wanted and congratulating myself on my skill, when one day as i was slyly forking potatoes out of his dish, moved helpfully in my direction, i saw culhane approaching and feared that our trick had been discovered. it had. perhaps some snaky waitress has told on us, or he had seen us, even from his table. "now i know what's going on here at this table," he growled savagely, "and i want you two to cut it out. this big boob here" (he was referring to my esteemed self) "who hasn't strength of will or character enough to keep himself in good health and has to be brought up here by his brother, hasn't brains enough to see that when i plan a thing for his benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. like most of the other damned fools that come up here and waste their money and my time, he thinks i'm playing some cute game with him--tag or something that will let him show how much cuter he is than i am. and he's supposed to be a writer and have a little horse-sense! his brother claims it, anyhow. and as for this other simp here," and now he was addressing the assembled diners while nodding toward my friend, "it hasn't been three weeks since he was begging to know what i could do for him. and now look at him--entering into a petty little game of potato-cheating! "i swear," he went on savagely, talking to the room in general, "sometimes i don't know what to do with such damned fools. the right thing would be to set these two, and about fifty others in this place, out on the main road with their trunks and let them go to hell. they don't deserve the attention of a conscientious man. i prohibit gambling--what happens? a lot of nincompoops and mental lightweights with more money than brains sneak off into a field of an afternoon on the excuse that they are going for a walk, and then sit down and lose or win a bucket of money just to show off what hells of fellows they are, what sports, what big 'i ams.' i prohibit cigarette-smoking, not because i think it's literally going to kill anybody but because i think it looks bad here, sets a bad example to a lot of young wasters who come here and who ought to be broken of the vice, and besides, because i don't like cigarette-smoking here--don't want it and won't have it. what happens? a lot of sissies and mamma's boys and pet heirs, whose fathers haven't got enough brains to cut 'em off and make 'em get out and work, come up here, sneak in cigarettes or get the servants to, and then hide out behind the barn or a tree down in the lot and sneak and smoke like a lot of cheap schoolboys. god, it makes me sick! what's the use of a man working out a fact during a lifetime and letting other people have the benefit of it--not because he needs their money, but that they need his help--if all the time he is going to have such cattle to deal with? not one out of twenty or forty men that come here really wants me to help him or to help himself. what he wants is to have some one drive him in the way he ought to go, kick him into it, instead of his buckling down and helping himself. what's the good of bothering with such damned fools? a man ought to take the whole pack and run 'em off the place with a dog-whip." he waved his hand in the air. "it's sickening. it's impossible. "as for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "hell, what's the use! why should i bother with you? do as you damned well please, and stay sick or die!" he turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to sit there. i was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness had released that i could scarcely speak. my appetite was gone and i felt wretched. to think of having been the cause of this unnecessary tongue-lashing to the others! and i felt that we were, and justly, the target for their rather censorious eyes. "my god!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "that's always the way with me. nothing that i ever do comes out right. all my life i've been unlucky. my mother died when i was seven, and my father's never had any use for me. i started in three or four businesses four or five years ago, but none of them ever came out right. my yacht burned last summer, and i've had neurasthenia for two years." he catalogued a list of ills that would have done honor to job himself, and he was worth nine millions, so i heard! two or three additional and amusing incidents, and i am done. one of the most outré things in connection with our rides about the countryside was culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and passing strangers as representing life. thus one day, as i recall very well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and after his very military fashion there came a "halt! right by fours! right dress! face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which, and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. the former, a man of perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, i presume, that it might boil. culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and addressing us in a very clear voice, said: "there you have it. there's american labor for you, at its best--union labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. look at him." we all looked. "this poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the latter stirred and sat up, scarcely even now grasping what it was all about, so suddenly had we descended upon him, "earns or demands sixty cents an hour, and this poor sweating little helper here has to have forty. they're working now. they're waiting for that little bit of lead to boil, at a dollar an hour between them. they can't do a thing, either of 'em, until it does, and lead has to be well done, you know, before it can be used. "well, now, these two here," he continued, suddenly shifting his tone from one of light sarcasm to a kind of savage contempt, "imagine they are getting along, making life a lot better for themselves, when they lie about this way and swindle another man out of his honest due in connection with the work he is paying for. he can't help himself. he can't know everything. if he did he'd probably find what's wrong in there and fix it himself in three minutes. but if he did that and the union heard of it they'd boycott him. they'd come around and blackmail him, blow up his barn, or make him pay for the work he did himself. i know 'em. i have to deal with 'em. they fix my pipes in the same way that these two are fixing his--lying on the grass at a dollar an hour. and they want five dollars a pound for every bit of lead they use. if they forget anything and have to go back to town for it, you pay for it, at a dollar an hour. they get on the job at nine and quit at four, in the country. if you say anything, they quit altogether--they're _union_ laborers--and they won't let any one else do it, either. once they're on the job they have to rest every few minutes, like these two. something has to boil, or they have to wait for something. isn't it wonderful! isn't it beautiful! and all of us of course are made free and equal! they're just as good as we are! if you work and make money and have any plumbing to do you have to support 'em--right by fours! guide right! forward!" and off we trotted, breaking into a headlong gallop a little farther on as if he wished to outrun the mood which was holding him at the moment. the plumber and his assistant, fully awake now to the import of what had occurred, stared after us. the journeyman plumber, who was short and fat, sat and blinked. at last he recovered his wits sufficiently to cry, "aw, go to hell, you ---- ---- ----!" but by that time we were well along the road and i am not sure that culhane even heard. another day as we were riding along a road which led into a nearby city of, say, twenty thousand, we encountered a beer truck of great size and on its seat so large and ruddy and obese a german as one might go a long way and still not see. it was very hot. the german was drowsy and taking his time in the matter of driving. as we drew near, culhane suddenly called a halt and, lining us up as was his rule, called to the horses of the brewery wagon, who also obeyed his lusty "whoa!" the driver, from his high perch above, stared down on us with mingled curiosity and wonder. "now, here's an illustration of what i mean," culhane began, apropos of nothing at all, "when i say that the word man ought to be modified or changed in some way so that when we use it we would mean something more definite than we mean now. that thing you see sitting up on that wagon-seat there--call that a man? and then call me one? or a man like charles a. dana? or a man like general grant? hell! look at him! look at his shape! look at that stomach! you think a thing like that--call it a man if you want to--has any brains or that he's really any better than a pig in a sty? if you turn a horse out to shift for himself he'll eat just enough to keep in condition; same way with a dog, a cat or a bird. but let one of these things, that some people call a _man_, come along, give him a job and enough money or a chance to stuff himself, and see what happens. a thing like that connects himself with one end of a beer hose and then he thinks he's all right. he gets enough guts to start a sausage factory, and then he blows up, i suppose, or rots. think of it! and we call him a man--or some do!" during this amazing and wholly unexpected harangue (i never saw him stop any one before), the heavy driver, who did not understand english very well, first gazed and then strained with his eyebrows, not being able quite to make out what it was all about. from the chuckling and laughter that finally set up in one place and another he began dimly to comprehend that he was being made fun of, used as an unsatisfactory jest of some kind. finally his face clouded for a storm and his eyes blazed, the while his fat red cheeks grew redder. "_donnervetter!_" he began gutturally to roar. "_schweine hunde! hunds knoche! nach der polizei soll man reufen!_" i for one pulled my horse cautiously back, as he cracked a great whip, and, charging savagely through us, drove on. culhane, having made his unkind comments, gave orders for our orderly formation once more and calmly led us away. perhaps the most amusing phase of him was his opposition to and contempt for inefficiency of any kind. if he asked you to do anything, no matter what, and you didn't at once leap to the task ready and willing and able so to do, he scarcely had words enough with which to express himself. on one occasion, as i recall all too well, he took us for a drive in his tally-ho--one or two or three that he possessed--a great lumbering, highly lacquered, yellow-wheeled vehicle, to which he attached seven or eight or nine horses, i forget which. this tally-ho ride was a regular sunday morning or afternoon affair unless it was raining, a call suddenly sounding from about the grounds somewhere at eleven or at two in the afternoon, "tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the case might be). "all aboard!" gathering all the reins in his hands and perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests beside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and on top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of which i have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver trumpet, the regulation blasts on which had to be exactly as made and provided for such occasions. often, having been given no warning as to just when it was to be, there would be a mad scramble to get into our _de rigueur_ sunday clothes, for culhane would not endure any flaws in our appearance, and if we were not ready and waiting when one of his stablemen swung the vehicle up to the door at the appointed time he was absolutely furious. on the particular occasion i have in mind we all clambered on in good time, all spick and span and in our very best, shaved, powdered, hands appropriately gloved, our whiskers curled and parted, our shoes shined, our hats brushed; and up in front was culhane, gentleman de luxe for the occasion, his long-tailed whip looped exactly as it should be, no doubt, ready to be flicked out over the farthest horse's head, and up behind was the trumpeter--high hat, yellow-topped boots, a uniform of some grand color, i forget which. but, as it turned out on this occasion, there had been a hitch at the last minute. the regular hostler or stableman who acted as footman extraordinary and trumpeter plenipotentiary, the one who could truly and ably blow this magnificent horn, was sick or his mother was dead. at any rate, there he wasn't. and in order not to irritate culhane, a second hostler had been dressed and given his seat and horn--only he couldn't blow it. as we began to clamber in i heard him asking, "can any of you gentleman blow the trumpet? do any of you gentleman know the regular trumpet call?" no one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key. some could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a risk. at the same time culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, "say, do you mean to say there isn't any one back there who knows how to blow that thing? what's the matter with you, caswell?" he called to one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to another, "how about you, drewberry? or you, crashaw?" all three apologized briskly. they were terrified by the mere thought of trying. indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one youth, a rash young society somebody from rochester, volunteered more or less feebly that he "thought" that "maybe he could manage it." he took a seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off. "heigh-ho!" out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for it was a bright day and a gay country. now the trumpeter, as is provided for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on the grandiose "ta-ra-ta-ta," but to our grief and pain, although he got through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place where there was a slight hitch, a "false crack," as some one rowdyishly remarked. culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back irritably at this flaw, said nothing. for after all a poor trumpeter was better than none at all. a little later, however, the trumpeter having hesitated to begin again, he called back, "well, what about the horn? what about the horn? can't you do something with it? have you quit for the day?" up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging "ta-ra-ta-ta" was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak. it was pathetic, ghastly. as one man we wilted. what would culhane say to that? we were not long in doubt. "great christ!" he shouted, looking back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively terrifying. "who did that? throw him off! what do you think--that i want the whole country to know i'm airing a lot of lunatics? somebody who can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for god's sake! i'm not going to drive around here without a trumpeter!" for a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any one--what the deuce had got into him anyhow? it must be the horn! "well," shouted culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any one going to blow that thing? do you mean to tell me that i'm hauling all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little horn? what's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn when all i have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers? hell! any child can blow it. it's as easy as a fish-horn. if i hadn't these horses to attend to i'd blow it myself. come on--come on! kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?" "the truth is, mr. culhane," explained mr. kerrigan, the very dapper and polite heir of a philadelphia starch millionaire, "i haven't had any chance to practice with one of those for several years. i'll try it if you want me to, but i can't guarantee--" "try!" insisted culhane violently. "you can't do any worse than that other mutt, if you blow for a million years. blow it! blow it!" mr. kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and backward--and-- it was pathetic. it was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding sounds that were emitted. "god!" shouted culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "stop that! whoa! whoa!!! do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? well, this finishes me! whoa! what kind of a bunch of cattle have i got up here, anyhow? whoa! and out in this country too where i'm known and where they know all about such things! god! whoa! here i spend thousands of dollars to get together an equipment that will make a pleasant afternoon for a crowd of gentlemen, and this is what i draw--hams! a lot of barflies who never saw a tally-ho! well, i'm done! i'm through! i'll split the damned thing up for firewood before i ever take it out again! get down! get out, all of you! i'll not haul one of you back a step! walk back or anywhere you please--to hell, for all i care! i'm through! get out! i'm going to turn around and get back to the barn as quick as i can--up some alley if i can find one. to think of having such a bunch of hacks to deal with!" humbly and wearily we climbed down and, while he drove savagely on to some turning-place, stood about first in small groups, then by twos and threes began making our way--rather gingerly, i must confess, in our fine clothes--along the winding road back to the place on the hill. but such swearing! such un-sabbath-like comments! the number of times his sturdy irish soul was wished into innermost and almost sacrosanct portions of sheol! he was cursed from more angles and in more artistically and architecturally nobly constructed phrases and even paragraphs than any human being that i have ever heard of before or since, phrases so livid and glistening that they smoked. talk about the carved ivories of speech! the mosaics of verbal precious stones! you should have heard us on our way back! and still we stayed. * * * * * some two years later i was passing this place in company with some friends, when i asked my host, who also knew of the place, to turn in. during my stay it had been the privilege and custom among those who knew much of this institution to drive through the grounds and past the very doors of the "repair shop," even to stop if culhane chanced to be visible and talking to or at least greeting him, in some cases. a custom of culhane's was, in the summer time, to have erected on the lawn a large green-and-white striped marquee tent, a very handsome thing indeed, in which was placed a field-officer's table and several camp chairs, and some books and papers. here of a hot day, when he was not busy with us, he would sit and read. and when he was in here or somewhere about, a little pennant was run up, possibly as guide to visiting guests or friends. at any rate, it was the presence of this pennant which caused me to know that he was about and to wish that i might have a look at him once more, great lion that he was. as "guests," none of us were ever allowed to come within more than ten feet of it, let alone in it. as passing visitors, however, we might, and many did, stop, remind him that we had once been his humble slaves, and ask leave to congratulate him on his health and sturdy years. at such times, if the visitors looked interesting enough, or he remembered them well, he would deign to come to the tent-fly and, standing there à la napoleon at lodi or grant in the wilderness, be for the first time in his relations with them a bit civil. anyway, on this occasion, urged on by curiosity to see my liege once more and also to learn whether he would remember me at all, i had my present host roll his car up to the tent door, where culhane was reading. feeling that by this venturesome deed i had "let myself in for it" and had to "make a showing," i climbed briskly out and, approaching, recalled myself to him. with a semi-wry expression, half smile, half contemptuous curl of the corners of his mouth, he recalled me and took my extended hand; then seeing that possibly my friends if not myself looked interesting, he arose and came to the door. i introduced them--one a naval officer of distinction, the other the owner of a great estate some miles farther on. for the first time in my relations with him i had an opportunity to note how grandly gracious he could be. he accepted my friends' congratulations as to the view with a princely nod and suggested that on other days it was even better. he was soon to be busy now or he would have some one show my friends through the shop. some saturday afternoon, if they would telephone or stop in passing, he would oblige. i noted at once that he had not aged in the least. he was sixty-two or -three now and as vigorous and trim as ever. and now he treated me as courteously and formally as though he had never browbeaten me in the least. "good heavens," i said, "how much better to be a visitor than a guest!" after a moment or two we offered many thanks and sped on, but not without many a backward glance on my part, for the place fascinated me. that simply furnished institution! that severe regimen! this latter-day stoic and spartan in his tent! and, above all things, and the most astounding to me, so little could one know him, the book he had been reading and which he had laid upon his little table as i entered--i could not help noting the title for he laid it back up, open face down--was lecky's "history of european morals"! now! well! in retrospect two years after this visit, in a serious attempt to set down what i really did think of him, i arranged the following thoughts with which i closed my sketch then and which i now append for what they may be worth. they represented my best thought concerning him then: "thomas culhane belongs to that class of society which the preachers and the world's army of conventional merchants, lawyers, judges and reputable citizens generally are presumably, if one may judge by the moral and religious literature of the day, trying to reach and reform. yet here at his sanitarium are gathered representatives of those same orders, the so-called better element. and here we see them suddenly dominated, mind and soul, by this being whom they, theoretically at least, look upon as a brand to be snatched from the burning. "as the church and society view culhane, so they view all life outside their own immediate circles. culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure among the semi-taboo. he has been referred to in many an argument and platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is supposed to be vitiating. now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken down by his habits of life, and this same culhane is able to penetrate him, to see that his dogmatic and dictatorial mental habits are the cause of his ailment, and he has the moral courage to shock him, to drag him by apparently brutal processes out of his rut. he reads the man accurately, he knows him better than he knows himself, and he effects a cure. "this astonishing condition is certainly a new light for those seeking to labor among men. those who are successful gamblers, pugilists, pickpockets, saloon-keepers, book-makers, jockeys and the like are so by reason of their intelligence, their innate mental acumen and perception. it is a fact that in the sporting world and among the unconventional men-about-town you will often find as good if not better judges of human nature than elsewhere. contact with a rough and ready and all-too-revealing world teaches them much. the world's customary pretensions and delusions are in the main ripped away. they are bruised by rough facts. often the men gathered in some such café and whom preachers and moralists are most ready to condemn have a clearer perception of preachers, church organizations and reformers and their relative importance in the multitudinous life of the world than the preachers, church congregations and reformers have of those in the café or the world outside to which they belong. "this is why, in my humble judgment, the church and those associated with its aims make no more progress than they do. while they are consciously eager to better the world, they are so wrapped up in themselves and their theories, so hampered by their arbitrary and limited conceptions of good and evil, that the great majority of men move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. men are not influenced at arm's length. it would be interesting to know if some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by mr. culhane's profanity and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to his views as readily as the gladiator is able to rid him of his ailment." in justice to the preachers, moralists, et cetera, i should now like to add that it is probably not any of the virtues or perfections represented by a man like culhane with which they are quarreling, but the vices of many who are in no wise like him and do not stand for the things he stands for. at the same time, the so-called "sports" might well reply that it is not with any of the really admirable qualities of the "unco guid" that they quarrel, but their too narrow interpretations of virtue and duty and their groundless generalization as to types and classes. be it so. here is meat for a thousand controversies. _a true patriarch_ in the streets of a certain moderate-sized county seat in missouri not many years ago might have been seen a true patriarch. tall, white-haired, stout in body and mind, he roamed among his neighbors, dispensing sympathy and a curiously genial human interest through the leisure of his day. one might have taken him to be walt whitman, of whom he was the living counterpart; or, in the clear eye, high forehead and thick, appealing white hair, have seen a marked similarity to bryant as he appeared in his later years. already at this time he had seen man's allotted term on earth, and yet he was still strong in the councils of his people and rich in the accumulated interests of a lifetime. at the particular time in question he was most interesting for the eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. the loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly swayed by the magnificence of his orations. charmingly simple in manner, he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger his guest. when moved by righteous indignation, there cropped out the daring and domineering insistence of one who had always followed what he considered to be the right, and who knew its power. even then, old as he was, if there were any topic worthy of discussion, and his fellow-citizens were in danger of going wrong, he became an haranguing prophet, as it were, a local isaiah or jeremiah. every gate heard him, for he stopped on his rounds in front of each, and calling out the inhabitant poured forth such a volume of fact and argument as tended to remove all doubt of what he, at least, considered right. all of this he invariably accompanied by a magnificence of gesture worthy of a great orator. at such times his mind, apparently, was almost wholly engrossed with these matters, and i have it from one of his daughters, who, besides being his daughter, was a sincere admirer of his, that often he might have been seen coming down his private lawn, and even the public streets when there was no one near to hear him, shaking his head, gesticulating, sometimes sweeping upward with his arms, as if addressing his fellow-citizens in assemblage. "he used to push his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. occasionally he would stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, there was no one present. then, planting his big cane forcibly with each step, as though still emphasizing his recently stated ideas, he would come forward and enter the house." the same suggestion of mental concentration might have been seen in everything that he did, and i personally have seen him leading a pet jersey cow home for milking with the same dignity of bearing and forcefulness of manner that characterized him when he stood before his fellow-citizens at a public meeting addressing them on some important topic. he never appeared to have a sense of difference from or superiority over his fellowmen, but only the keenest sympathy with all things human. every man was his brother, every human being honest. a cow or a horse was as much to be treated with sympathy and charity as a man or a woman. if a purse was lost, forty-nine out of every fifty men would return it without thought of reward, if you were to believe him. in the little town where he had lived so many years, and where he finally died, he knew every living creature from cattle upwards, and could call each by name. the sick, the poor, the widows, the orphans, the insane, and dependents of all kinds, were his especial care. every sunday afternoon for years, it was his custom to go the rounds of the indigent, frequently carrying a basket of his good wife's dinner. this he distributed, along with consolation and advice. occasionally he would return home of a winter's day very much engrossed with the discovery of some condition of distress hitherto unseen. "mother," he would say to his wife in that same oratorical manner previously noted, as he entered the house, "i've found such a poor family. they have moved into the old saloon below solmson's. you know how open that is." this was delivered in the most dramatic style after he had indicated something important by throwing his overcoat on the bed and standing his cane in the corner. "there's a man and several children there. the mother is dead. they were on their way to kansas, but it got so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. they're without food; almost no clothing. can't we find something for them?" "on these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing politics. but you could never tell what he was coming for." then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. nearly always the subject of these orations was some public wrong or error which should receive, although in all likelihood it did not, immediate attention. always of a reverent, although not exactly religious, turn of mind, he took considerable interest in religious ministration, though he steadily and persistently refused, in his later years, to go to church. he had st. james's formula to quote in self-defense, which insists that "pure religion and undefiled before our god and father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." often, when pressed too close, he would deliver this with kindly violence. one of the most touching anecdotes representative of this was related to me by his daughter, who said: "mr. kent, a poor man of our town, was sick for months previous to his death, and my father used to go often, sometimes daily, to visit him. he would spend perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, with him, singing, praying, and ministering to his spiritual wants. the pastor of the church living so far away and coming only once a month, this duty devolved upon some one, and my father did his share, and always felt more than repaid for the time spent by the gratitude shown by the many poor people he aided in this way. "mr. kent's favorite song, for instance, was 'on jordan's stormy banks i stand.' this he would have my father sing, and his clear voice could often be heard in the latter's small house, and seemed to impart strength to the sick man. "upon one occasion, i remember, mr. kent expressed a desire to hear a certain song. my father was not very familiar with it but, anxious to grant his request, came home and asked me if i would get a friend of mine and go and sing the song for him. "we entered the sick-room, he leading us by the hand, for we were children at the time. mr. kent's face at once brightened, and father said to him: "'mr. kent, i told you this morning that i couldn't sing the song you asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.' "then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said: "'sing, children.' "we did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not for the poor man's recovery but that he might put his trust in the lord and meet death without fear. i have never been more deeply impressed nor felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon after, soothed into perfect peace." on another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor came running up in great excitement, calling: "mr. white, mr. white, come, right quick. mrs. sadler wants you." he explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had great faith. the old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, unmindful of that, hastened after. "mr. white," exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, "i want you to pray that i won't strangle. i'm not afraid to die, but i don't want to die that way. i want you to offer a prayer for me that i may be saved from that. i'm so afraid." seeing by the woman's manner that she was very much overwrought, he used all his art to soothe her. "have no fear, mrs. sadler, now," he exclaimed solemnly. "you won't strangle. i will ask the lord for you, and this evil will not come upon you. you need not have any fear." "kneel down, you," he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he pushed back his white hair from his forehead. "let us now pray that this good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace." and even with the rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless arms and began to pray. through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared. then when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover his composure. in a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room denoted that the end had come. several neighbors came out, and one said, "well, it is all over, mr. white. she is dead." "yes," he replied with great assurance. "she didn't strangle, did she?" "no," said the other, "the lord granted her request." "i knew he would," he replied in his customary loud and confident tone. "prayer is always answered." then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred. i happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting with him on his front porch, said, "mr. white, do you really believe that the lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?" "answered!" he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human tenderness that one could never mistake. "of course he answered! why wouldn't he--a faithful old servant like that? to be sure, he answered." "might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your voice and strength introduced? the quality of your own thoughts goes for something in such matters. mind acts on mind." "certainly," he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been a doctrine with him. "i know that. but, after all, what is _that_--my mind, your mind, the sound of voices? it's all the lord anyhow, whatever you think." how could one gainsay such a religionist as that? the poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as i have said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies. evidence of it flashed out at the most unexpected moments--loud, rough exclamations, which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to defy translation. thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into the blue. it was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so save the county the expense of caring for him. the old man broke a sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally. "look at that," he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, "now just look at that! there's a poor, demented soul, with no one to look after him. his brother is a hard-working saddler. his sister is dead. no money to speak of, any of them." he paused a moment, and then added, "i don't know what we're to do in such cases. the state and the county don't always do their duty. most people here are too poor to help, there are so many to be taken care of. it seems almost at times as if you can't do anything but leave them to the mercy of god, and yet you can't do that either, quite," and he once more shook his head sadly. i was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that it was already very heavily taxed by such cases. he did not seem to know exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, and for the time being the warm argument in which he had been indulging was completely forgotten. now he lapsed into silence and all communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair and thought. one day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. the latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it was that he was being beaten. the two were beside a wood-pile and the demented one was crying. in a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed attendant with an uplifted arm. "not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "what do you mean by striking an idiot?" "why," explained the attendant, "i want him to carry in the wood, and he won't do it." "it is not his place to bring in the wood. he isn't put here for that, and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. he's put here to be taken care of. don't you dare strike him again. i'll see about this, and you." knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community, the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the inmates, and that this one was refractory. the only way he had of making him understand was by whipping him. "not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county hireling. "you've done a wrong, and you know it. i'll see to this," and off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this institution at least. the court, which was held in his home town, was not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand uplifted in the position of one about to make oath. "swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the latter stared at him. "i want you to take this testimony under oath." the clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest, whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of policy and convention. without ado, after swearing him, he got out ink and paper, and the patriarch began. "i saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by mark sheffels, who is an attendant there, because the idiot did not understand enough to carry in wood, which the people have hired mark sheffels to carry in. think of it," he added, quite forgetting the nature of his testimony and that he was now speaking for dictation and not for an audience to hear, and going off into a most scorching and brilliant arraignment of the entire system in which such brutality could occur, "a poor helpless idiot, unable to frame in his own disordered mind a single clear sentence, being beaten by a sensible, healthy brute too lazy and trifling to perform the duties for which he was hired and which he personally is supposed to perform." there was more to the effect, for instance, that the american people and the people of this county should be ashamed to think that such crimes should be permitted and go unpunished, and that this was a fair sample. the clerk, realizing the importance of mr. white in the community, and the likelihood of his following up his charges very vigorously, quietly followed his address in a very deferential way, jotting down such salient features as he had time to write. when he was through, however, he ventured to lift his voice in protest. "you know, mr. white," he said, "sheffels is a member of our party, and was appointed by us. of course, now, it's too bad that this thing should have happened, and he ought to be dropped, but if you are going to make a public matter of it in this way it may hurt us in the election next month." the old patriarch threw back his head and gazed at him in the most blazing way, almost without comprehension, apparently, of so petty a view. "what!" he exclaimed. "what's that got to do with it? do you want the democratic party to starve the poor and beat the insane?" the opposition was rather flattened by the reply, and left the old gentleman to storm out. for once, at least, in this particular instance, anyhow, he had purified the political atmosphere, as if by lightning, and within the month following the offending attendant was dropped. politics, however, had long known his influence in a similar way. there was a time when he was the chief political figure in the county, and possessed the gift of oratory, apparently, beyond that of any of his fellow-citizens. men came miles to hear him, and he took occasion to voice his views on every important issue. it was his custom in those days, for instance, when he had anything of special importance to say, to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming, which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and personally nail up. when the hour came, a crowd, as i am told, was never wanting. citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually came to hear him. personally i never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or how truly he had been admired, until one day i drifted in upon a lone bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home and who was rather noted in the community at the time that i was there for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. he had not visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years, and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. naturally he treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity. "i don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer game. i can't understand it. men that you'd think ought to get up don't seem to. it doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along." "what makes you say that?" i asked. "well, there used to be a man over here at danville that i always thought would get up, and yet he didn't. he was the finest orator i ever heard." "who was he?" i asked. "arch white," he said quietly. "he was really a great man. he was a good man. why, many's the time i've driven fifteen miles to hear him. i used to like to go into danville just for that reason. he used to be around there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. he could stir a fellow up." "oratory alone won't make a statesman," i ventured, more to draw him out than to object. "oh, i know," he answered, "but white was a good man. the plainest-spoken fellow i ever heard. he seemed to be able to tell us just what was the matter with us, or at least i thought so. he always seemed a wonderful speaker to me. i've seen as many as two thousand people up at high hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could hear them for miles." "why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" i now asked on my part. "i dunno," he answered. "guess he was too honest, maybe. it's sometimes that way in politics, you know. he was a mighty determined man, and one that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. whenever they got to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just honest, i suppose he'd kick out. anyhow, he didn't get up, and i've always wondered at it." in danville one might hear other stories wholly bearing out this latter opinion, and always interesting--delightful, really. thus, a long, enduring political quarrel was once generated by an incident of no great importance, save that it revealed an odd streak in the old patriarch's character and his interpretation of charity and duty. a certain young man, well known to the people of this county and to the patriarch, came to danville one day and either drank up or gambled away a certain sum of money intrusted to him by his aunt for disposition in an entirely different manner. when the day was all over, however, he was not too drunk to realize that he was in a rather serious predicament, and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. his clothes were in a fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore marks which amply seconded his protestation. in the slush and rain of the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosity of white and the fact that his door was always open to those in distress, took the young man by the arm and led him to the patriarch's door, where he personally applied for him. the old patriarch, holding a lamp over his head, finally appeared and peered outward into the darkness. "yes," he exclaimed, as he always did, eyeing the victim; "what is it you want of me?" "mr. white," said the treasurer, "it's me. i've got young squiers here, who needs your sympathy and aid tonight. he's been beaten and robbed out here on the road while he was on his way to his mother's home." "who?" inquired the patriarch, stepping out on the porch and eyeing the newcomer, the while he held the lamp down so as to get a good look. "billy squiers!" he exclaimed when he saw who it was. "mr. morton, i'll not take this man into my house. i know him. he's a drunkard and a liar. no man has robbed him. this is all a pretense, and i want you to take him away from here. put him in the hotel. i'll pay his expenses for the night, but he can't come into my home," and he retired, closing the door after him. the treasurer fell back amazed at this onslaught, but recovered sufficiently to knock at the door once more and declare to his friend that he deemed him no christian in taking such a stand and that true religion commanded otherwise, even though he suspected the worst. the man was injured and penniless. he even went so far as to quote the parable of the good samaritan who passed down by way of jericho and rescued him who had fallen among thieves. the argument had long continued into the night and rain before the old patriarch finally waved them both away. "don't you quote scripture to me," he finally shouted defiantly, still holding the light and flourishing it in an oratorical sweep. "i know my bible. there's nothing in it requiring me to shield liars and drunkards, not a bit of it," and once more he went in and closed the door. nevertheless the youth was housed and fed at his expense and no charge of any kind made against him, although many believed, as did mr. white, that he was guilty of theft, whereas others of the opposing political camp believed not. however, considerable opposition, based on old mr. white's lack of humanity in this instance, was generated by this argument, and for years he was taunted with it although he always maintained that he was justified and that the lord did not require any such service of him. the crowning quality of nearly all of his mercies, as one may easily see, was their humor. even he was not unaware, in retrospect, of the figure he made at times, and would smilingly tell, under provocation, of his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. partially from himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was the following characteristic anecdote gathered. in the same community with him at one time lived a certain man by the name of moore, who in his day had been an expert tobacco picker, but who later had come by an injury to his hand and so turned cobbler, and a rather helpless, although not hopeless, one at that. mr. white had known this man from boyhood up, and had been a witness at various times to the many changes in his fortunes, from the time, for instance, when he had earned as much as several dollars a day--good pay in that region--to the hour when he took a cobbler's kit upon his back and began to eke out a bare livelihood for his old age by traveling about the countryside mending shoes. at the time under consideration, this ex-tobacco picker had degenerated into so humble a thing as uncle bobby moore, a poor, half-remembered cobbler, whose earlier state but few knew, and who at this time had only a few charitably inclined friends, with some of whom he spent the more pleasant portion of the year from spring to fall. thus, it was his custom to begin his annual pilgrimage with a visit of ten days to mr. white, where he would sit and cobble shoes for all the members of the household. from here he would go to another acquaintance some ten miles farther on, where he could enjoy the early fruit which was then ripening in delicious quantity. then he would visit a friendly farmer whose home was upon the missouri river still farther away, where he did his annual fishing, and so on by slow degrees, until at last he would reach a neighborhood rich in cider presses, where he would wind up the fall, and so end his travel for the winter, beginning his peculiar round once more the following spring at the home of mr. white. naturally the old patriarch knew him and liked him passing well. as he grew older, however, uncle bobby reached the place where even by this method and his best efforts he could scarcely make enough to sustain him in comfort during the winter season, which was one of nearly six months, free as his food and lodging occasionally were. he was too feeble. not desiring to put himself upon any friend for more than a short visit, he finally applied to the patriarch. "i come to you, mr. white," he said, "because i don't think i can do for myself any longer in the winter season. my hand hurts a good deal and i get tired so easily. i want to know if you'd won't help me to get into the county farm during the winter months, anyhow. in summer i can still look out for myself, i think." in short, he made it clear that in summer he preferred to be out so that he might visit his friends and still enjoy his declining years. the old patriarch was visibly moved by this appeal, and seizing him by the arm and leading off toward the courthouse where the judge governing such cases was then sitting he exclaimed, "come right down here, uncle bobby. i'll see what can be done about this. your old age shouldn't be troubled in this fashion--not after all the efforts you have made to maintain yourself," and bursting in on the court a few moments later, where a trial was holding at the time, he deliberately led his charge down the aisle, disturbing the court proceedings by so doing, and calling as he came: "your honor, i want you to hear this case especially. it's a very important and a very sad case, indeed." agape, the spectators paused to listen. the judge, an old and appreciative friend of his, turned a solemn eye upon this latest evidence of eccentricity. "what is it, mr. white?" he inquired. "your honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and honorable citizen of this county. he has been here nearly all the days of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living. these people here," he said, gazing about upon the interested spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco pickers this county ever saw. mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether uncle bobby always earned an honest living. speak up. tell the court, did he?" "yes, mr. white," said mayhew quickly, "he did." "morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?" mr. morrison was about to reply, when the court interfered. "the court knows, mr. white, that he is an honest man. now what would you have it do?" "well, your honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling, "this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living. however, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that, except in the spring and summer, and so i brought him here to have him assigned a place in the county infirmary. i want you to make out an order admitting him to that institution, so that i can take it and go with him and see that he is comfortably placed." "all right, mr. white," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in mid-aisle, "i so order." "but, your honor," he went on, "there's an exception i want made in this case. mr. moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer, and who like to have him visit them. i want him to have the privilege of coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me." "all right, mr. white," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege. now, what else?" satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away, and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of the court and then left him. things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and uncle bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to his friend again. it appeared that only recently he had been changed about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly disturbed his very necessary sleep. "i want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, mr. white," he concluded. "i need my sleep. but they say they can't do it without an order." once more the old patriarch led his charge before the court, then sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as before, began: "your honor, this man here, mr. moore, whom i brought before you some time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as i can, but he's an old man, your honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. now, of late they've been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. i've come here with him to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be alone and rest undisturbed." "very well, mr. white," said the court, "it shall be as you request." without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away. everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally uncle bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing. "what is it?" asked the latter. by way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew in the yard of the baptist church some miles from danville, and said: "i want you to promise that when i am dead, wherever i happen to be at the time, that you will see that i am buried under that tree." he gave no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be assured that mr. white would come and get his body and carry it to the old oak. the latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his friends, promised. after a few years went by, suddenly one day he learned that uncle bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which astonished him greatly. no one locally being supposed to know that he was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once recalled his promise. "where is his body?" he asked. "why, they buried it under the old white oak over at mt. horeb church," was the answer. "what!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?" "why, _he_ did," said the friend. "it was his last wish, i believe." "the confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "he led me to believe that i was the only one he told. i alone was to have looked after his burial, and now look at him--going and having himself buried without a word. the scoundrel! would you believe that an old friend like uncle bobby would do anything like that? however," he added after a time, "i think i know how it was. he got so old and feeble here of late that he must have lost his mind--otherwise he would never have done anything like that to me." and with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones. _de maupassant, junior_ he dawned on me in the spring of , a stocky, sturdy, penetrative temperament of not more than twenty-four or -five years of age, steady of eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type. without saying much, and seeming to take anything i had to say with a grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. frankly, i liked him very much, although i could see at a glance that he was not so very much impressed with me. i was an older man than he by, say, ten years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he did not know) to turn it into something better. in order to earn a few dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career for women. it had been ordered or encouraged, and i felt that it was but just that it should be paid for. "why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" i inquired, smiling and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time, for i had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old management which could not now be used. "you look to me to have too much force and sense for that. why not undertake something worth your time?" "my time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by the way he reminded me. "you show me a magazine in this town that would buy anything that i thought worthy of my time! you're like all the rest of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very important. you want little things probably, written to a theory or down to 'our policy.' i know. give me the stuff. you don't have to take it. it was ordered, but i'll throw it in the waste basket." "not so fast! not so fast!" i replied, admiring his courage and moved by his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in america. he was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how interesting! there was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly plowed field or the virgin prairies. he typified for me all the young unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "now, don't get excited, and don't snarl," i cooed. "i know what you say is true. they don't really want much of what you have to offer. i don't. working for some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. i've been in your position exactly. i am now. where do you come from?" he told me--missouri--and some very few years before from its state university. "and what is it you want to do?" "what's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "you probably wouldn't understand if i told you. just now i want to write enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all." "dear, dear!" i said, laughing at the slap. "what a bravo we are! really, you're interesting. but suppose now you and i get down to brass tacks. you want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid for it. i rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might do the things i want, or some of them. now, you want to do the least silly thing you can--something better than this. i want the least silly stuff i can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of the life of new york, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary magazine. roughly, here's the kind of thing i want," and i outlined to him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. i had taken an anæmic "white-light" monthly known as _the broadway_ (!) and was attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan picture. he thawed slightly. "well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to something. i don't know. it's _possible_ that you may be the one to do it." he emphasized the "possible." "at any rate, it's worth trying. judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in america wants anything decent." his lip curled. "i have ambitions of my own, but i don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this town; maybe not of this country. i didn't know that any change was under way here." "well, it is," i said. "still, you can't expect much from this either, remember. after all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. we'll see how far we can go with really interesting material. and now if you know of any others like yourself, bring them in here. i need them. i'll pay you for that article, only i'll include it in a better price i'll give you for something else later, see?" i smiled and he smiled. his was a warmth which was infectious when he chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit hard; heat chained to a purpose, i thought. he went away and i saw him no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to give me what i wanted. in the meantime i was busy organizing a staff which should if possible, i decided after seeing him, include him. i could probably use him as a salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write "specials." he looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised much. besides, the little article which he had left when he came again, while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression. and the next thing i had given him to attempt was even better. it was, if i recall correctly, a stirring picture of the east side, intended to appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the arrangement of its best points. this i explained to him, and also made it clear to him that i could show him how if he would let me. he seemed willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. he grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost if not quite satisfactory. during a number of weeks and months thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he seemed finally to grasp the theory i had, or at least to develop a method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and i was very much pleased. a little later i employed him at a regular salary. it was pathetic, as i look at it now, the things we were trying to do and the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the raw commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as i saw it then, have to argue over at all. we were in new rooms, in a new building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." our publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push," ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, american to the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little group i was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real. it was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. he was so vigorous, so avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this magazine was now seeking to portray. i felt stronger, better for having him around. the growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order in which it must be presented. a few brief technical explanations from me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and thereafter gave me no real difficulty. but what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these conditions. here, as i soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of literary composition. on the contrary he sounded, for the first time in my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. he had a style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could forgive him for they were rather well-based. already used to dealing with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection with the publications of which i had been a part, this one appealed to me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change. one day, only a few weeks after i had met him, seeing that i was alert for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all illustrative of the spirit of new york, he brought me a little poem entitled "neuvain," which interested me greatly. it was so brief and forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old french order, but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. the title seemed affected, seeing that the english word "spring" would have done as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary adorations. he was in leash to the french school of which de maupassant was the outstanding luminary, only i did not know it at the time. "charming," i exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "i like this. let me see anything else you have. do you write short stories?" for answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "let me see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or "this sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect that i might write a short story." seeing that i merely smiled most genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "sure, i write short stories. what do you think i'm in the writing game for?" "but you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry." "no," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved condescension, "the short story is what i want to specialize in." "well," i said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent, is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. i was like that myself not so long ago. and besides, if i do not encourage this type of work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?" about a week later i was given another and still more gratifying surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk with scarcely a word--"here was something i might read if i chose," i believe. the reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as though i had discovered a fully developed genius. they were so truly new or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, with so much point in them (_the second motive_; _the right man_). for by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other magazine offices before this, i had become not a little pessimistic as to the trend of american short fiction, as well as long--the impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had it. my own experience with "sister carrie" as well as the fierce opposition or chilling indifference which, as i saw, overtook all those who attempted anything even partially serious in america, was enough to make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. one dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one lived it. and one of the primary warnings i had received from the president of this very organization--a most eager and ambitious and distressing example of that american pseudo-morality which combines a pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of righteousness--was that while he wanted something new in fiction, something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still ( ), it must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and ( ), be very compelling in fact and _clean_, as the dear general reader would of course understand that word--a solid little pair of millstones which would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good story. still i did not despair; something might be done. and though i sighed, i hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. my dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make it usable. imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, tales that i could not only admire genuinely but that i could publish, things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little about life. true, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. i called him and said as much, or nearly so--a mistake, as i sometimes think now, for art should be long--and bought them forthwith, hoping, almost against hope, to find many more such like them. by this time, by the way, and as i should have said before, i had still further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional, colorful, a veritable verlaine-baudelaire-rops soul, who, not content to arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write, paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an upper social world, _entrée_ to which was his by birth. again, there was by now an irish-catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished sectarian school, who was more interested in st. jerome and his _vulgate_, as an embodiment of classic latin, than he was in getting out the magazine. still he had the advantage of being interesting--"and i learned about horace from him." again, there was a most interesting and youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the wellesley-mt. holyoke-bryn mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the makeup editor and an office boy. this very valuable and in some respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper contempt, i fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as i had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one well could be. she was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating--repression carried to the n-th power. at first l---- cordially hated her, calling her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. in addition to these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets, critics, dreamers of reforms social, and i know not what else, who, holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. it fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident world. as for l----, all this being new to him, he was as interested, fascinated even, as any one well might be. he responded to it almost gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international, enduring might not be made to come of it. he rapidly developed into one of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths i have ever met. at times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. never having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, i think, that i was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest anything to writers. i had helped him, but that was as it should be. as for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my makeup man. as for miss e----, the wellesley-bryn mawr-mt. holyoke assistant, who from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of promise, a genius really, he, as i have said, at first despised her. later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber. thereafter he was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any office. but above all he was affronted by m----, the publisher of the paper, concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous thoughts of him. the publisher, as l---- made quite bold to say to me, was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a "financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material little shopkeeper." this because m---- was accustomed to enter and force a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. one of the things which l---- most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries following him here and there from various other organizations with which he was connected. m----'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it wasn't. he merely induced others so to do. one of his customs (and it must have impressed l---- very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was to have one or another of his hirelings announce his passing from one "important" meeting to another, within or without his own building, telephone messages being "thrown in" on his line or barred out, wherever he happened to be at the moment and when, presumably, he was deep in one of those literary conferences or confidences with one employee or another or with a group, for which he rapidly developed a passion. another of his vanities was to have his automobile announced and he be almost forced into it by impetuous secretaries, who, because of orders previously given, insisted that he must be made to keep certain important engagements. or he would send for one of his hirelings, wherever he chanced to be--club, restaurant, his home--midnight if necessary, to confer with him on some subject of great moment, and the hireling was supposed to call a taxi and come post haste in order that he might not be kept waiting. "god!" l---- once remarked in my presence. "to think that a thinking being has to be beholden to a thing like that for his weekly income! somebody ought to tap him with a feather-duster and kill him!" but the manner in which l---- developed in this atmosphere! it was interesting. at first, before the magazine became so significant or well-organized, it was a great pleasure for me to associate with him outside office hours, and a curious and vivid companion he made. he was so intensely avid of life, so intolerant of the old, of anything different to that which he personally desired or saw, that at times it was most difficult to say anything at all for fear of meeting a rebuff or at least a caustic objection. as i was very pleased to note, he had a passion for seeing, as all youth should have when it first comes to the great city--the great bridges, the new tunnels just then being completed or dug, the harbor and bay, coney island, the two new and great railway terminals, then under construction. most, though, he reveled in different and even depressing neighborhoods--eighth avenue, for instance, about which he later wrote a story, and a very good one ("a quiet duet"); hell's kitchen, that neighborhood that lies (or did), on the west side of manhattan, between eighth and tenth avenues, thirty-sixth and forty-first streets; little italy, the region below delancey and north of worth street on the east side; chinatown; washington street (syria in america); the greeks in twenty-seventh and -eighth streets, west side. all these and many more phases of new york's multiplex life took his full and restless attention. once he said to me quite excitedly, walking up eighth avenue at two in the morning--i was showing him some rear tenement slums in the summertime--"god, how i hate to go to bed in this town! i'm afraid something will happen while i'm asleep and i won't see it!" that was exactly how he felt all the time, i am sure. and in those days he was most simple, a very spartan of a boy. he hadn't the least taste for drink, lived in a small hall-bedroom somewhere--eighth avenue, i believe--and took his meals in those shabby little quick-lunch rooms where the characters were more important to him than the food. (my hat--my hat is in my hand!) intellectually he was so stern and ambitious that i all but stood in awe of and reverence before him. here, i said to myself, is one who will really do; let him be as savage as he pleases. in america he probably needs to be. and during this short time, what scraps of his early life he revealed! by degrees i picked up bits of his early deprivations and difficulties, if such they might be called. he had been a newspaper reporter, or had tried to be, in kansas city, had worked in the college restaurant and laundry of the middle-west state university from which he had graduated, to help pay his way. afterward he had assisted the janitor of some great skyscraper somewhere--kansas city, i believe--and, what was most pleasing to me, he in nowise emphasized these as youthful difficulties or made any comment as to their being "hard." neither did he try to boastingly minimize them as nothing at all--another wretched pose. from him i learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made marked sacrifices for him. she had once "run" a restaurant in a western mining camp, had then or later carried him as a puling baby under her shawl or cloak across the mojave desert, on foot a part of the way. apparently he did not know who his father was, and he was not very much concerned to know whether she did or not. his father had died, he said, when he was a baby. later his mother, then a cook in some railroad hotel in texas, had sent him to school there. later still she had been a "bawler out," if you know what that means, an employee of a loan shark and used by him to compel delinquent, albeit petty and pathetic, creditors to pay their dues or then and there, before all their fellow-workers, be screamed at for their delinquency about the shop in which they worked! later she became a private detective! an insurance agent--god knows what--a kind of rough man-woman, as she turned out to be, but all the while clinging to this boy, her pet, no doubt her dream of perfection. she had by turns sent him to common and high school and to college, remitting him such sums of money as she might to pay his way. later still (at that very time in fact) she was seeking to come to new york to keep house for him, only he would not have that, perhaps sensing the need of greater freedom. but he wrote her regularly, as he confessed to me, and in later years i believe sent her a part of his earnings, which were to be saved by her for him against a rainy day. among his posthumous writings later i found a very lovely story ("his mother"), describing her and himself in unsparing and yet loving terms, a compound of the tender and the brutal in his own soul. the thing that always made me hope for the best was that at that time he was not at all concerned with the petty little _moralic_ and economic definitions and distinctions which were floating about his american world in one form and another. indeed he seemed to be entirely free of and even alien to them. what he had heard about the indwelling and abiding perfections of the human soul had gone, and rightly so, in one ear and out the other. he respected the virtues, but he knew of and reckoned with die antipathetic vices which gave them their reason for being. to him the thief was almost as important as the saint, the reason for the saint's being. and, better still, he had not the least interest in american politics or society--a wonderful sign. the american dream of "getting ahead" financially and socially was not part of him--another mark royal. all life was fascinating, acceptable, to be interpreted if one had the skill; it was a great distinction to have the skill--worth endless pains to acquire it. but how unwilling would the average american of his day have been, stuffed as he was and still is with book and picture drivel about artists and art, to accept l---- as anything more than a raw, callow yokel, presuming to assail the outer portals of the temple with his muddy feet! a romping, stamping, irritable soul, with more the air of a young railroad brakeman or "hand," than an artist, and with so much coarse language at times and such brutality of thought as to bar him completely, one might say, from having anything to do with great fiction, great artistic conceptions, or the temple of art. what, sit with the mighty!--that coarse youth, with darkish-brown hair parted at one side and combed over one ear, in the manner of a grandiose barber; with those thick-soled and none too shapely brown shoes, that none too well-made store suit of clothes, that little round brown hat, more often a cap, pulled rather savagely and vulgarly, even insultingly, over one eye; that coarse frieze overcoat, still worn on cold spring days, its "corners" back and front turned up by the damp and from being indifferently sat on; that brash corn-cob pipe and bag of cheap tobacco, extracted and lit at odd moments; what, that youth with the aggressive, irritating vibrant manner--almost the young tough with a chip on his shoulder looking for one to even so much as indicate that he is not all he should be! positively, there was something brutal and yet cosmic (not comic) about him, his intellectual and art pretensions considered. at times his waspishness and bravado palled even on me. he was too aggressive, too forceful, too intolerant, i said. he should be softer. at other times i felt that he needed to be all that and more to "get by," as he would have said. i wanted to modify him a little--and yet i didn't--and i remained drawn to him in spite of many irritating little circumstances, all but infuriating at times, and actually calculated, it seemed, with a kind of savage skill to reduce what he conceived to be my lofty superiority. at times i thought he ought to be killed--like a father meditating on an unruly son--but the mood soon passed and his literary ability made amends for everything. in so far as the magazine was concerned, once it began to grow and attract attention he was for me its most important asset; not that he did so much directly as that he provided a definite standard toward which we all had to work. not incuriously, he was swiftly recognized for what he was by all who came in touch with the magazine. in the first place, interested in his progress, i had seen to it that he was properly introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; an amusing and as interesting a group as i have ever seen. their points of rendezvous appeared to be those same shabby quick-lunches in back streets or even on the principal thoroughfares about times square, or they met in each other's rooms or my office at night after i had gone, giving me as an excuse that they had work to do. and during all this time the air fairly hummed with rumors of new singers, dancers, plays, stories being begun or under way, articles and essays contemplated; avid, if none too well financed frolics or bohemian midnight suppers here and there. money was by no means plentiful, and in consequence there was endless borrowing and "paying up" among them. among the most enthusiastic members of this circle, as i had begun to note, and finally rather nervously, were my art-director, a valiant knight in bohemia if ever there was one, and she of bryn mawr-wellesley standards. my makeup editor, as well as various contributors who had since become more or less closely identified with the magazine, were also following him up all the time. if not directly profitable it was enlivening, and i was fairly well convinced by now that from the point of view of being "aware," "in touch with," "in sympathy with" many of the principal tendencies and undercurrents which make for a magazine's success and precedence, this group was as valuable to me as any might well be. it constituted a "kitchen cabinet" of sorts and brought hundreds of interesting ideas to the surface, and from all directions. now it would be a new and hitherto unheard-of tenor who was to be brought from abroad and introduced with great noise to repute-loving americans; a new sculptor or painter who had never been heard of in america; a great actor, perhaps, or poet or writer. i listened to any quantity of gossip in regard to new movements that were ready to burst upon the world, in sculpture, painting, the scriptic art. about the whole group there was much that was exceedingly warm, youthful, full of dreams. they were intensely informative and full of hope, and i used to look at them and wonder which one, if any, was destined to have his dreams realized. of l---- however i never had the least doubt. he began, it is true, to adopt rather more liberal tendencies, to wish always to be part and parcel of this gayety, this rushing here and there; and he drank at times--due principally, as i thought, to my wildling art-director, who had no sense or reserve in matters material or artistic and who was all for a bacchanalian career, cost what it might. on more than one occasion i heard l---- declaring roundly, apropos of some group scheme of pilgrimage, "no, no! i will not. i am going _home_ now!" he had a story he wanted to work on, an article to finish. at the same time he would often agree that if by a certain time, when he was through, they were still at a certain place, or a second or third, he would look them up. never, apparently, did his work suffer in the least. and it was about this time that i began to gather the true source and import of his literary predisposition. he was literally obsessed, as i now discovered, with continental and more especially the french conception of art in writing. he had studied the works as well as the temperaments and experiences (more especially the latter, i fear) of such writers as de maupassant, flaubert, baudelaire, balzac, de musset, sand, daudet, dumas junior, and zola, as well as a number of the more recent writers: hervieu, bourget, louys and their contemporaries. most of all, though, he was impressed, and deeply, by the life and art of de maupassant, his method of approach, his unbiased outlook on life, his freedom from moral and religious and even sentimental predisposition. in the beginning of his literary career i really believe he slaved to imitate him exactly, although he could not very well escape the american temperament and rearing by which he was hopelessly conditioned. a certain western critic and editor, to whom he had first addressed his hopes and scribblings before coming to me, writing me after l----'s death in reference to a period antedating that in which i had known him, observed, "he was crazy about the _fin de siècle_ stuff that then held the boards and from which (i hope the recording angel will put it to my credit) i steered him clear." i think so; but he was still very much interested in it. he admired aubrey beardsley, the poster artists of france, verlaine, baudelaire, rops, the yellow book, even oscar wilde, although his was a far more substantial and plebeian and even radical point of view. unfortunately for l----, i have always thought, there now thrust himself forward the publisher and owner of the magazine, who from previously having been content to see that the mercantile affairs of the magazine were in good order, had decided that since it was attracting attention he should be allowed to share in its literary and artistic prestige, should indeed be closely identified with it and recognized as its true source and inspiration--a thing which in no fashion had been contemplated by me when i went there. from having agreed very distinctly with me that no such interference would at any time be indulged in, he now came forward with a plan for an advisory council which was to consist of himself and the very members of the staff which i had created. i could not object and it did not disturb me so much personally. for some time i had been sensing that the thing was for me no end in itself, but an incident. this same i felt to be true for l----, who had been taking more and more interest in the magazine's technical composition. at the same time i saw no immediate way of arranging my affairs and departing, which left me, for a very little while, more or less of a spectator. during this time i had the dissatisfaction of noting the growth of an influence with l---- which could, as i saw, prove only harmful. m---- was no suitable guide for him. he was a brilliant but superficial and very material type who was convinced that in the having and holding of many things material--houses, lands, corporation stocks, a place in the clubs and circles of those who were materially prosperous--was really to achieve all that was significant in the now or the hereafter. knowing comparatively nothing of either art or letters, or that subtle thing which makes for personality and atmosphere in a magazine or in writing (and especially the latter), that grateful something which attracts and detains one, he was nevertheless convinced that he did. and what was more, he was determined not only to make friends with and hold all those whom i might have attracted, providing they could prove useful to him, but also a number of a much more successful group in these fields, those who had already achieved repute in a more commonplace and popular way and were therefore presumably possessed of a following and with the power to exact a high return for their product, and for the magazine, regardless of intrinsic merit. his constant talk was of money, its power to attract and buy, the significance of all things material. he now wanted the magazine to be representative of this glowing element, and at the same time, paradoxical as it might seem, the best that might be in literary and artistic thought. naturally the thing was impossible, but he had a facile and specious method of arguing, a most gay and in some respects magnetic personality, far from stodgy or gross, which for a time attracted many to him. very briskly then indeed he proceeded to make friends with all those with whom i had surrounded myself, to enter into long and even private discussions with them as to the proper conduct of the magazine, to hint quite broadly at a glorious future in which all, each one particularly to whom he talked, was to share. curiously, this new and (as i would have thought) inimical personality of m---- seemed to appeal to l---- very much. i do not claim that the result was fatal. it may even, or at least might, have had value, combined with an older or slightly more balanced temperament. but it seemed to me that it offered too quickly what should have come, if at all, as the result of much effort. for in regard to the very things l---- should have most guarded against--show and the shallow pleasures of social and night and material life in new york--m---- was most specious. i never knew a more intriguing and fascinating man in this respect nor one who cared less for those he used to obtain his unimportant ends. he had positive genius for making the gaudy and the unworthy seem worthy and even perfect. during his earlier days there, l---- had more than once "cursed him out" (in his absence, of course), to use his own expressive phrase, for his middle-west trade views, as he described them, his shabby social and material ideals, and yet, as i could plainly see, even at that time the virus of his theories was working. for it must be remembered that l---- was very new to new york, very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur with which he tried to surround himself. well, that might not have proved fatal either, only l---- needed some one to keep him true to himself, his individual capabilities, to constantly caution and if possible sober him to his very severe taste, and as it was he was all but surrounded by acolytes and servitors. a little later, having left m----'s and assumed another editorial position, and being compelled to follow the various current magazines more or less professionally, i was disturbed to note that there began to appear in various publications--especially m----'s, which was flourishing greatly for the moment--stories which while exhibiting much of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color of things, still showed what i had at first feared they might: a decided compromise. that curse of all american fiction, the necessarily happy ending, had been impressed on him--by whom? to my sincere dissatisfaction, he began writing stories, some at least, which concerned ( ), a young woman who successfully abandoned art dreams for advertising; ( ), a middle-aged charmer, female, who attempted _libertinage_ and was defeated, american style; ( ), a christmas picture with sweetness and light reigning on every hand (dickens at his sentimentalest could have done no worse); ( ), a broadway press agent who, attempting to bring patronage to a great hotel via chic vice, accidentally and unintentionally mates an all-too-good young society man turned hotel manager to a grand heiress. and so on and so on, not ad infinitum but for a period at least--the ten years in which he managed to live and work. and, what was more, during this new period i heard and occasionally saw discouraging things in connection with him from time to time. true to his great promise, for i sincerely think m---- had a genuine fondness for his young protégé, as much of a fondness as he could well have for anything, he guaranteed him perhaps as much as three thousand a year; sent him to stockholm at the age of twenty-four or -five to meet and greet the famous false pole discoverer, doctor cook; allowed him to go to paris in connection with various articles; to rome; sent him into the middle and far west; to broadway for dramatic and social studies. well and good, only he wanted always in what was done for him the "uplift" note, the happy ending--or at least one not vulgar or low--whereas my idea in connection with l----, gifted as he was, was that he should confine himself to fiction as an art and without any regard to theories or types of ending, believing, as i did, that he would definitely establish himself in that way in the long run. i had no objection of course to experiences of various kinds, his taking up with any line of work which might seem at the moment far removed from realistic writing, providing always that the star of his ideal was in sight. whenever he wrote, be it early or late, it must be in the clear, incisive, uncompromising vein of these first stories and with that passion for revelation which characterized him at first, that same unbiased and unfettered non-moral viewpoint. but after meeting with and working for m---- under this new arrangement and being apparently fascinated for the moment by his personality, he seemed to me to gradually lose sight of his ideal, to be actually taken in by the plausible arguments which the latter could spin with the ease that a spider spins gossamer. in that respect i insist that m---- was a bad influence. under his tutelage l---- gradually became, for instance, an habitué of a well-known and pseudo-bohemian chop-house, a most mawkish and naïvely imitative affair, intended frankly to be a copy or even the original, forsooth, of an old english inn, done, in so far as its woodwork was concerned, in smoked or dark-stained oak to represent an old english interior, its walls covered with long-stemmed pipes and pictures of english hunting and drinking scenes, its black-stained but unvarnished tables littered with riding, driving and country-life society papers, to give it that air of _sans ceremonie_ with an upper world of which its habitués probably possessed no least inkling but most eagerly craved. here, along with a goodly group of his latter-day friends, far different from those by whom he had first been surrounded--a pretentious society poet of no great merit but considerable self-emphasis, a wall street broker, posing as a club man, _raconteur_, "first-nighter" and what not, and several young and ambitious playwrights, all seeking the heaven of a broadway success--he began to pose as one of the intimates of the great city, its bosom child as it were, the cynosure and favorite of its most glittering precincts--a most m-----like proceeding. his clothes by now, for i saw him on occasion, had taken on a more lustrous if less convincing aspect than those he had worn when i first knew him. the small round hat or rakish cap, typical of his western dreams, had now given way to a most pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, i believe, of undertakers and a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a light brown. his suit and waistcoat were of a bright english tweed, reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed perfections of the button type. he carried a heavy cane, often a bright leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and dramatic business of living and writing. "one must," so i read him at this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with the utmost severity." here, with a grand manner, he patronized the manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so. these friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening paper was read and the chop ordered. ale--not beer--in a pewter mug was _comme il faut_, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink. i am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. still, i had expected better of l----, and i was a little disappointed to see that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an absolutely worthless show. besides, twenty or thirty such stories as "the right man," "sweet dreams," "the man with the broken fingers," "the second motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting published and the profits of which permitted him these airs. again, during the early days of his success with m----, he had married--a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children, which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type of thing he was called upon to do. she had no instinct for literature or the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste for "socializing." and, naturally, he was neglecting her. his head was probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy which might well carry him anywhere. he had bought a farm some distance from new york, where in a community supposedly inhabited by successful and superior men of letters he posed as a farmer at times, mowing and cocking hay as became a western plow-boy; and also, as the mood moved him, and as became a great and secluded writer, working in a den entirely surrounded by books in fine leather bindings (!) and being visited by those odd satellites of the scriptic art who see in genius of this type the _summum bonum_ of life. it was the thing to do at that time, for a writer to own a farm and work it. horace had. one individual in particular, a man of genuine literary and critical ability and great taste in the matter of all the arts but with no least interest in or tolerance for the simplicities of effort, came here occasionally, as i heard, to help him pile hay, and this in a silk shirt and a monocle; a second--and a most fascinating intellectual _flaneur_, who, however, had no vision or the gift of dreams--came to eat, drink, talk of many things to be done, to steal a few ideas, borrow a little money perhaps or consume a little morphine, and depart; a third came to spout of his success in connection with plays, or his proposed successes; a fourth to paint a picture, urged on by l----; a fifth to compose rural verse; a sixth, a broker or race-track tout or city bar-tender (for color, this last), to marvel that one of l----'s sense, or any one indeed, should live in the country at all. there were drinking bouts, absolute drunkenness, in which, according to the johnsonian tradition and that of messieurs rabelais and molière, the weary intellect and one's guiding genius were immersed in a comforting lethe of rye. such things cost money, however. in addition, my young friend, due to a desire no doubt to share in the material splendors of his age (a doctrine m---- was ever fond of spouting--and as a duty, if you please), had saddled himself, for a time at least, with an apartment in an exclusive square on the east side, the rent of which was a severe drain. before this there had been, and after it were still, others, obligations too much for him to bear financially, all in the main taken for show, that he might be considered a literary success. now and again (so i was told by several of his intimates), confronted by a sudden exhaustion of his bank balance, he would leave some excellent apartment house or neighborhood, where for a few months he had been living in grand style, extracting his furniture as best he might, or leaving it and various debts beside, and would take refuge in some shabby tenement, or rear rooms even, and where, touched by remorse or encouraged by the great literary and art traditions (balzac, baudelaire, johnson, goldsmith, verlaine) he would toil unendingly at definite money-yielding manuscripts, the results of which carried to some well-paying _successful magazine_ would yield him sufficient to return to the white lights--often even to take a better apartment than that which last had been his. by now, however, one of the two children he eventually left behind him had been born. his domestic cares were multiplying, the marriage idea dull. still he did not hesitate to continue those dinners given to his friends, the above-mentioned group or its spiritual kin, either in his apartment or in a bohemian restaurant of great show in new york. in short, he was a fairly successful short-story writer and critic in whom still persisted a feeling that he would yet triumph in the adjacent if somewhat more difficult field of popular fiction. it was during this period, if i may interpolate an incident, that i was waiting one night in a broadway theater lobby for a friend to appear, when who should arrive on the scene but l----, most outlandishly dressed in what i took to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of his first pose, as i now half-feared it to be: that of the uncouth and rugged young american, disclaiming style in dress at least, and content to be a clod in looks so long as he was a shelley in brains. his suit was of that coarse ill-fitting character described as store, and shelf-worn; his shoes all but dusty brogans, his headgear a long-visored yellowish-and-brown cross-barred cap. he had on a short, badly-cut frieze overcoat, his hands stuck defiantly in his trousers pockets, forcing its lapels wide open. and he appeared to be partially if not entirely drunk, and very insolent. i had the idea that the drunkenness and the dress were a pose, or else that he had been in some neighborhood in search of copy which required such an outfit. charitably let us accept the last. he was accompanied by two satellic souls who were doing their best to restrain him. "come, now! don't make a scene. we'll see the show all right!" "sure we'll see the show!" he returned contentiously. "where's the manager?" a smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the business manager himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner. "this is mr. l----," one of the satellites now approached and explained to the manager. "he's connected with m----'s magazine. he does short stories and dramatics occasionally." the manager bowed. after all, m----'s magazine had come to have some significance on broadway. it was as well to be civil. courtesy was extended for three, and they went in. as for myself, i resented the mood and the change. it was in no way my affair--his life was his own--and still i resented it. i did not believe that he was as bad as he seemed. he had too much genuine sense. it was just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting over that and settling down. i really hoped that time would modify all this. one thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after this m----'s magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that semi-financial protection which i felt was doing him so much harm. the next favorable sign that i observed was that a small volume of short stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which i was financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me (i really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and on my advice eventually published (it sold, i believe, a little under five hundred copies). but the thing that cheered me was that it contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with his first views. and better, it had been brought to the concern with which i was connected--intentionally, i am sure. i was glad to have had a hand in its publication. "at least," i said, "he has not lost sight of his first ideal. he may go on now." and thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have but a small circulation, i saw something of his which had genuine merit. a western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, for which i am sure he received nothing at all. again, three or four years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as his first, was issued by this same western paper. he was trying to do serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those grand scenes on the farm or in some new york restaurant or an expensive apartment, and when he could no longer afford it. he still wrote happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market for them. in the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had developed, and he wrote for it. his eyes were also turning toward the stage, as one completed manuscript and several "starts" turned over to me after his death proved. one day some one who knew him and me quite well assured me that l----, having sent out many excellent stories only to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing america for its attitude toward serious letters--an excellent sign, i thought, good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material grandeur and find himself. "in time, in time," i said, "he will eat through the husks of these other things, the 'm---- complex,' and do something splendid. he can't help it. but this fantastic dream of grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down." for a time now i heard but little more save once that he was connected with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money. then i saw a second series of essays in the same western critical paper--that of the editor who had published his book--and some of them were excellent, very searching and sincere. i felt that he was moving along the right line, although they earned him nothing. then one week, very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being i decided to make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone call. did i recall him? (!) could he come and see me? (!) i invited him to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things--and for him, the ex-railroad boy--a great armful of red roses. this touched me. "what's the idea?" i inquired jovially, laughing at him. he blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, i thought, for he found me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may have felt that i was laughing at him, which i wasn't. "i wished to give them to you, and i brought 'em. why shouldn't i?" "you know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and i'm only too glad to get them, anyway. don't think i'm criticizing." he smiled and began at once on the "old days," as he now called them, a sad commentary on our drifting days. indeed he seemed able to talk of little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm. he went over many things and people--m----; k----, the wonderful art-director, now insane and a wreck; the group of which he and i had once been a part; his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time. "you know," he confessed quite frankly finally, "my mother always told me then and afterwards that i made a mistake in leaving you. you were the better influence for me. she was right. i know it now. still, a life's a life, and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow." i agreed heartily. he told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. it appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing very well. his great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of selling a good thing. it was true, i said, and at midnight he left, promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country at my convenience. i promised. but one thing and another interfered. i went south. one day six months later, after i had returned, he called up once more, saying he wished to see me. of course i asked him down and he came and spoke of his health. some doctor, an old college pal of his, was assuring him that he had bright's disease and that he might die at any time. he wanted to know, in case anything happened to him, would i look after his many mss., most of which, the most serious efforts at least, had never been published. i agreed. then he went away and i never saw him again. a year later i was one day informed that he had died three days before of kidney trouble. he had been west to see a moving-picture director; on his way east he had been taken ill and had stopped off with friends somewhere to be treated, or operated upon. a few weeks later he had returned to new york, but refusing to rest and believing that he could not die, so soon, had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. or, rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, unsentimental perhaps--a mental condition l---- most fancied--had told him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!--a fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted l---- to die. at any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, who wished to defy the doctor and who in her hope for herself and her children as well as him strove to contend against this gloom, he did so go to bed and did die. on the last day, realizing no doubt how utterly indifferent his life had been, how his main aspirations or great dreams had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance (how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for hours. then he died. a friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather satirically, "he was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. have you ever seen him?" the doctor, he meant. "he looks like an advertisement for an undertaker. i do believe he was trying to discover whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met l---- in the nick of time. you know how really sensitive he was. well, that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. he said 'you're already dead,' and he was." and--oh yes--m----, his former patron. at the time of l----'s sickness and death he was still owing him $ for services rendered during the last days of that unfortunate magazine. he had never been called upon to pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue. yes, he was rich again, rated a no. , the president of a great corporation, and with l----'s $ still unpaid and now not legally "collectible." his bank balance, established by a friend at the time, was exactly one hundred thousand. but mrs. l----, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had written to him. there was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to feed the children at the moment. that matter of $ now--could he spare a little? l---- had thought-- a letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving m----y document it was. m---- had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned. could it really be? could it? his young brilliant friend? impossible! at the dread, pathetic news he had cried--yes he had--cried--and cried--and cried--and then he had even cried some more. life was so sad, so grim. as for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. it was unfortunate. debts there were on every hand. they haunted him, robbed him of his sleep. he himself scarcely knew which way to turn. they stood in serried ranks, his debts. a slight push on the part of any one, and he would be crushed--crushed--go down in ruin. and so, as much as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing, nothing, nothing. he was agonized, beaten to earth, but still--. then, having signed it, there was a p.s. or an n.b. this stated that in looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself in another direction he _could_ manage to scrape together twenty-five dollars, and this he was enclosing. would that god had designed that he should be better placed at this sad hour! * * * * * however that may be, i at once sent for the mss. and they came, a jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so i was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had been lost somewhere! there had been much financial trouble of late and more than one enforced move. mrs. l---- had been compelled--but i will not tell all. suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own realistic pen might have satirically craved. the mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all but uniformly worthless. there was also the attempt at a popular comedy, previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher could ever be found for them--a most agreeable little group, showing a pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. i arranged them as best i could and finally-- but they are still unpublished. * * * * * p.s. as for the sum total of the work left by l----, its very best, it might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still, owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might unthinkingly suppose he was. neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de maupassant, now o. henry, now poe; but also it must be said that slowly and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and water-clear in expression and naturalness. at times he veered to a rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when necessary. like his idol, de maupassant, he had no moral or strong social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth of perplexing ideas. he saw america and life as something to be painted as all masters see life and paint it. gifted with a true vein of satire, he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. he still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted to interfere with the very smooth arrangement of his colors. at the same time, had he not been disturbed by so many of the things which in america, as elsewhere, ordinarily assail an ambitious and earnest writer--the prejudice against naturalness and sincerity in matters of the intellect and the facts of life, and the consequent difficulty of any one so gifted in obtaining funds at any time--he might have done much better sooner. he was certain to come into his own eventually had he lived. his very accurate and sensitive powers of observation, his literary taste, his energy and pride in his work, were destined to carry him there. it could not have been otherwise. ten years more, judging by the rate at which he worked, his annual product and that which he did leave, one might say that in the pantheon of american letters it is certain that he would have proved a durable if not one of its great figures, and he might well have been that. as it stands, it is not impossible that he will be so recognized, if for no more than the sure promise of his genius. _the village feudists_ in a certain connecticut fishing-town sometime since, where, besides lobstering, a shipyard and some sail-boat-building there existed the several shops and stores which catered to the wants of those who labored in those lines, there dwelt a groceryman by the name of elihu burridge, whose life and methods strongly point the moral and social successes and failures of the rural man. sixty years of age, with the vanities and desires of the average man's life behind rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the conventional drawings of parson thirdly, which graced the humorous papers of that day. two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to depict. add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see how he might very readily give the impression of being a minister. his clothes, however, were old, his trousers torn but neatly mended, his little blue gingham jumper which he wore about the store greasy and aged. everything about him and his store was so still and dark that one might have been inclined on first sight to consider him crusty and morose. even more remarkable than himself, however, was his store. i have seen many in my time that were striking because of their neatness; i never saw one before that struck me as more remarkable for its disorder. in the first place it was filled neck-deep with barrels and boxes in the utmost confusion. dark, greasy, provision-lined alleys led off into dingy sections which the eye could not penetrate. old signs hung about, advertising things which had long since ceased to sell and were forgotten by the public. there were pictures in once gilt but now time-blackened frames, wherein queerly depicted children and pompous-looking grocers offered one commodity and another, all now almost obliterated by fly-specks. shelves were marked on the walls by signs now nearly illegible. cobwebs hung thickly from corners and pillars. there were oil, lard, and a dust-laden scum of some sort on three of the numerous scales with which he occasionally weighed things and on many exteriors of once salable articles. pork, lard, molasses, and nails were packed in different corners of the place in barrels. lying about were household utensils, ship-rigging, furniture and a hundred other things which had nothing to do with the grocery business. as i entered the store the first afternoon i noticed a bible open at judges and a number of slips of paper on which questions had been written. on my second visit for oil and vinegar, two strangers from off a vagrant yacht which had entered the little harbor nudged one another and demanded to know whether either had ever seen anything like it. on the third, my companion protested that it was not clean, and seeing that there were other stores we decided to buy our things elsewhere. this was not so easily accomplished. "where can i get a flatiron?" i inquired at the postoffice when i first entered the village. "most likely at burridge's," was the reply. "do you know where i can get a pair of row-locks?" i asked of a boy who was lounging about the town dock. "at burridge's," he replied. when we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to go to burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our trade despite the condition of his store. during all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and dry in his conversation. one day we lost a fruit jar which he had loaned, and i took one very much like it back in its place. when i began to apologize he interrupted me with, "a jar's a jar, isn't it?" another time, when i remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he exclaimed, "well, i won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me. i inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "if it isn't," he replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. you can have that back." "that's the way you do business, is it?" "yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the line of the lower one like a vise. i was in search of a rocking-chair one day and was directed to burridge's as the only place likely to have any! "do you keep furniture?" i inquired. "some," he said. "have you a rocking-chair?" "no, sir." a day or two later i was in search of a table and on going to burridge's found that he had gone to a neighboring city. "have you got a table?" i inquired of the clerk. "i don't know," he replied. "there's some furniture in the back room, but i don't know as i dare to sell any of it while he's away." "why?" "well, he don't like me to sell any of it. he's kind of queer that way. i dunno what he intends to do with it. gar!" he added in a strangely electric way, "he's a queer man! he's got a lot of things back there--chairs and tables and everything. he's got a lot more in a loft up the street here. he never seems to want to sell any of 'em. heard him tell people he didn't have any." i shook my head in puzzled desperation. "come on, let's go back and look anyway. there's no harm in seeing if he has one." we went back and there amid pork and molasses barrels, old papers, boxes and signs, was furniture in considerable quantity--tables, rocking-chairs, washstands, bureaus--all cornered and tumbled about. "why, here are rocking-chairs, lots of them," i exclaimed. "just the kind i want! he said he didn't have any." "gar! i dunno," replied the clerk. "here's a table, but i wouldn't dare sell it to you." "why should he say he didn't have a rocking-chair?" "gar! i dunno. he's goin' out of the furniture business. he don't want to sell any. i don't know what he intends to do with it." "well," i said in despair, "what about the table? you can sell that, can't you?" "i couldn't--not till he comes back. i don't know what he'd want to do about it." "what's the price of it?" "i dunno. he could tell you." i went out of the thick-aired stuffy backroom with its unwashed windows, and when i got opposite the bible near the door i said: "what's the matter with him anyhow? why doesn't he straighten things out here?" again the clerk awoke. "huh!" he exclaimed. "straighten it out! gar! i'd like to see anybody try it." "it could be," i said encouragingly. "gar!" he chuckled. "one man did try to straighten it out once when mr. burridge was away. got about a third of it cleaned up when he come back. gar! you oughta seen him! gar!" "what did he do?" "what did he do! what didn't he do! gar! just took things an' threw them about again. said he couldn't find anything." "you don't say!" "gar! i should say so! man come in an' asked for a hammer. said he couldn't find any hammer, things was so mixed up. did it with screws, water-buckets an' everything just the same. took 'em right off the shelves, where they was all in groups, an' scattered 'em all over the room. gar! 'now i guess i can find something when i want it,' he said." the clerk paused to squint and add, "there ain't anybody tried any straightenin' out around here since then, you bet. gar!" "how long ago has that been?" "about fourteen years now." surprised by this sharp variation from the ordinary standards of trade, i began thinking of possible conditions which had produced it, when one evening i happened in on the local barber. he was a lean, inquisitive individual with a shock of sandy hair and a conspicuous desire to appear a well-rounded social factor. "what sort of person is this burridge over here? he keeps such a peculiar store." "elihu is a bit peculiar," he replied, his smile betraying a desire to appear conservative. "the fault with elihu, if he has one, is that he's terribly strong on religion. can't seem to agree with anybody around here." "what's the trouble?" i asked. "it's more'n i could ever make out, what is the matter with him. they're all a little bit cracked on the subject around here. nothing but revivals and meetin's, year in and year out. they're stronger on it winters than they are in summer." "how do you mean?" "well, they'll be more against yachtin' and sunday pleasures when they can't go than when they can." "what about elihu?" i asked. "well, he can't seem to get along, somehow. he used to belong to the baptist church, but he got out o' that. then he went to a church up in graylock, but he had a fallin' out up there. then he went to northfield and eustis. he's been all around, even over on long island. he goes to church up at amherst now, i believe." "what seems to be the trouble?" "oh, he's just strong-headed, i guess." he paused, and ideas lagged until finally i observed: "it's a very interesting store he keeps." "it's just as billy drumgold told him once: 'burridge,' he says, 'you've got everything in this store that belongs to a full-rigged ship 'cept one thing.' 'what's that?' burridge asks. 'a second-hand pulpit.' 'got that too,' he answered, and takes him upstairs, and there he had one sure enough." "well," i said, "what was he doing with it?" "danged if i know. he had it all right. has it yet, so they say." days passed and as the summer waned the evidences of a peculiar life accumulated. noank, apparently, was at outs with burridge on the subject of religion, and he with it. there were instances of genuine hard feeling against him. writing a letter in the postoffice one day i ventured to take up this matter with the postmaster. "you know mr. burridge, don't you--the grocer?" "well, i should guess i did," he replied with a flare. "anything wrong with him?" "oh, about everything that's just plain cussed--the most wrangling man alive. i never saw such a man. he don't get his mail here no more because he's mad at me, i guess. took it away because i had mr. palmer's help in my fight, i suppose. wrote me that i should send all his mail up to mystic, and he goes there three or four miles out of his way every day, just to spite me. it's against the law. i hadn't ought to be doing it, re-addressing his envelopes three or four times a day, but i do do it. he's a strong-headed man, that's the trouble with elihu." i had no time to follow this up then, but a little later, sitting in the shop of the principal sailboat maker, which was situated in the quiet little lane which follows the line of the village, i was one day surprised by the sudden warm feeling which the name of elihu generated. something had brought up the subject of religion, and i said that burridge seemed rather religious. "yes," said the sailboat maker quickly, "he's religious, all right, only he reads the bible for others, not for himself." "what do you mean by that?" "why, he wants to run things, that's what. as long as you agree with elihu, why, everything's all right. when you don't, the bible's against you. that's the way he is." "did he ever disagree with you?" i asked, suspecting some personal animus in the matter. "me and elihu was always good friends as long as i agreed with him," he went on bitterly. "we've been raised together, man and boy, for pretty near sixty years. we never had a word of any kind but what was friendly, as long as i agreed with him, but just as soon as i didn't he took a set against me, and we ain't never spoke a word since." "what was the trouble?" i inquired sweetly, anxious to come at the kernel of this queer situation. "well," he said, dropping his work and looking up to impress me, "i'm a man that'll sometimes say what i don't believe; that is, i'll agree with what i hadn't ought to, just to be friendly like. i did that way a lot o' times with elihu till one day he came to me with something about particular salvation. i'm a little more liberal myself. i believe in universal redemption by faith alone. well, elihu came to me and began telling me what he believed. finally he asked me something about particular salvation and wanted to know whether i didn't agree with him. i didn't, and told him so. from that day on he took a set against me, and he ain't never spoke a word to me since." i was unaware that there was anything besides a religious disagreement in this local situation until one day i happened to come into a second friendly contact with the postmaster. we were speaking of the characteristics of certain individuals, and i mentioned burridge. "he's all right when you take him the way he wants to be taken. when you don't you'll find him quite a different man." "he seems to be straightforward and honest," i said. "there ain't anything you can tell me about elihu burridge that i don't know," he replied feelingly. "not a thing. i've lived with him, as you might say, all my life. been raised right here in town with him, and we went to school together. man and boy, there ain't ever been a thing that elihu has agreed with, without he could have the running of it. you can't tell me anything about him that i don't know." i could not help smiling at the warmth of feeling, although something about the man's manner bespoke a touch of heart-ache, as if he were privately grieving. "what was the trouble between you two?" i asked. "it's more'n i could ever find out," he replied in a voice that was really mournful, so difficult and non-understandable was the subject to him. "before i started to work for this office there wasn't a day that i didn't meet and speak friendly with elihu. he used to have a good many deeds and papers to sign, and he never failed to call me in when i was passing. when i started to work for this office i noticed he took on a cold manner toward me, and i tried to think of something i might have done, but i couldn't. finally i wrote and asked him if there was anything between us if he wouldn't set a time and place so's we might talk it over and come to an understanding." he paused and then added, "i wish you could see the letter he wrote me. comin' from a christian man--from him to me--i wish you could see it." "why don't you show it to me?" i asked inquisitively. he went back into the office and returned with an ancient-looking document, four years old it proved to be, which he had been treasuring. he handed me the thumbed and already yellowed page, and i read: "matthew holcomb, esquire, "dear sir:--in reply to your letter asking me to set a time and place in which we might talk over the trouble between us, would say that the time be eternity and the place where god shall call us to judgment. "very truly, "elihu burridge." his eyes rested on me while i read, and the moment i finished he began with: "i never said one word against that man, not one word. i never did a thing he could take offense at, not one thing. i don't know how a man can justify himself writing like that." "perhaps it's political," i said. "you don't belong to the same party, do you?" "yes, we do," he said. "sometimes i've thought that maybe it was because i had the support of the shipyard when i first tried to get this office, but then that wasn't anything between him and me," and he looked away as if the mystery were inexplicable. this shipyard was conducted by a most forceful man but one as narrow and religionistic as this region in which it had had its rise. old mr. palmer, the aged founder of it, had long been a notable figure in the streets and private chambers of the village. the principal grocery store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted in its interests. his opinion was always foremost in the decision of the local authorities. he was still, reticent, unobtrusive. once i saw him most considerately helping a cripple up the lane to the local baptist church. "what's the trouble between burridge and palmer?" i asked of the sail-maker finally, coming to think that here, if anywhere, lay the solution of the difficulty. "two big fish in too small a basket," he responded laconically. "can't agree, eh?" "they both want to lead, or did," he said. "elihu's a beaten man, though, now." he paused and then added, "i'm sorry for elihu. he's a good man at heart, one of the kindest men you ever saw, when you let him follow his natural way. he's good to the poor, and he's carried more slow-pay people than any man in this country, i do believe. he won't collect an old debt by law. don't believe in it. no, sir. just a kind-hearted man, but he loves to rule." "how about palmer?" i inquired. "just the same way exactly. he loves to rule, too. got a good heart, too, but he's got a lot more money than elihu and so people pay more attention to him, that's all. when elihu was getting the attention he was just the finest man you ever saw, kind, generous, good-natured. people love to be petted, at least some people do--you know they do. when you don't pet 'em they get kind o' sour and crabbed like. now that's all that's the matter with elihu, every bit of it. he's sour, now, and a little lonely, i expect. he's drove away every one from him, or nearly all, 'cept his wife and some of his kin. anybody can do a good grocery business here, with the strangers off the boats"--the harbor was a lively one--"all you have to do is carry a good stock. that's why he gets along so well. but he's drove nearly all the local folks away from him." i listened to this comfortable sail-loft sage, and going back to the grocery store one afternoon took another look at the long, grim-faced silent figure. he was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not there now. he looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. two or three little children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand in his. "your children?" i asked, by way of reaching some friendly understanding. "no," he replied, looking fondly down, "she belongs to a french lady up the street here. she often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and forefinger. the little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and put her arm about his knee. quietly he stood there in a simple way until she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor. i was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by the way, was brother-in-law to burridge, when i said to him: "i wish you'd tell me the details about elihu. how did he come to be what he is? you ought to know; you've lived here all your life." "so i do know," he replied genially. "what do you want me to tell you?" "the whole story of the trouble between him and palmer; how he comes to be at outs with all these people." "well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the following details: twenty-five years before elihu had been the leading citizen of noank. from operating a small grocery at the close of the civil war he branched out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. noank was then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. whaling was still in force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. wealthy sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually purchased here. burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of this business to him. he had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local baptist church and a counselor in matters political, social and religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. every fourth of july during these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. every christmas eve he traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry shouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. for the skating season he prepared a pond, spending several thousand dollars damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place to skate. he created a library where all might obtain suitable reading, particularly the young. on new year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and bereaved and lonely in noank, taking a great dray full of presents and leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake at every door. the lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included, for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be lonely too. he once told his brother-in-law that one new year's day a voice called to him in church: "elihu burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of noank?" "up i got," he concluded, "and from that day to this i have never neglected them." when any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the benefit of widows or orphans, burridge was the one to take charge of it. people on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his services. after a number of years the old judge to whom he always repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this respect, also refused to accept any fee. when he saw him coming he would exclaim: "well, elihu, what is it this time? another widow or orphan that we've got to look after?" after elihu had explained what it was, he would add: "well, elihu, i do hope that some day some rich man will call you to straighten out his affairs. i'd like to see _you_ get a little something, so that _i_ might get a little something. eh, elihu?" then he would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs. these general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's general decline the result of the rise of this other individual--robert palmer,--"operating" to take the color of power and preëminence from him. palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which was not much at first but which grew swiftly. he was born in noank also, a few years before burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when elihu was already successful. he was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard labor and a saving disposition he obtained, soon after the civil war, a powerful foothold. many vessels were ordered here from other cities. eventually he began to build barges in large numbers for a great railroad company. early becoming a larger employer of labor than any one else in the vicinity he soon began to branch out, possessed himself of the allied industries of ship-rigging, chandlering, and finally established a grocery store for his employees, and opened a hotel. now the local citizens began to look upon him as their leading citizen. they were always talking of his rise, frequently in the presence of burridge. he said nothing at first, pretending to believe that his quondam leadership was unimpaired. again, there were those who, having followed the various branches of labor which palmer eventually consolidated, viewed this growth with sullen and angry eyes. they still sided with burridge, or pretended still to believe that he was the more important citizen of the two. in the course of time, however--a period of thirty years or more--some of them failed; others died; still others were driven away for want of a livelihood. only burridge's position and business remained, but in a sadly weakened state. he was no longer a man of any great importance. not unnaturally, this question of local supremacy was first tested in the one place in which local supremacy is usually tested--the church where they both worshiped. although only one of five trustees, burridge had been the will of the body. always, whatever he thought, the others had almost immediately agreed to it. but now that palmer had become a power, many of those ardent in the church and beholden to him for profit became his humble followers. they elected him trustee and did what he wished, or what they thought he wished. to burridge this made them sycophants, slaves. now followed the kind of trivialities by which most human feuds are furthered. the first test of strength came when a vagrant evangelist from alabama arrived and desired to use the church for a series of evening lectures. the question had to be decided at once. palmer was absent at the time. "here is a request for the use of the church," said one of the trustees, explaining its nature. "well," said burridge, "you'd better let him have it." "do you think we ought to do anything about it," the trustee replied, "until mr. palmer returns?" although burridge saw no reason for waiting, the other trustees did, and upon that the board rested. burridge was furious. by one fell stroke he was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of palmer--and that in his own church, so to speak. "why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. this man is a king." from that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere were common. although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other. there was the question of whether the village should be made into a borough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of naming a state representative. naturally, while these things might be to the advantage of palmer or not, they were of no great import to burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express himself at various public meetings. slowly the breach widened. burridge became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. he was a "knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back. although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not help matters any. at this point, among other things the decay of the fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as that of victor and vanquished. whaling died out, then mackerel and cod were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their outfits here, and burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or smaller harbor trade for his support. coextensively, he had the dissatisfaction of seeing palmer's industries grow until eventually three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. palmer's son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded with burridge. he saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of the bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_ recalcitrant church was sound or not. when those who years before had followed him obediently now pricked him with theological pins and ventured to disagree with him, he was quick and sometimes foolish in his replies. thus, once a former friend and fellow-church-member who had gone over to the opposition came into his store one morning and said: "elihu, for a man that's as strong on religion as you are, i see you do one thing that can't quite be justified by the book." "what's that?" inquired burridge, looking up. "i see you sell tobacco." "i see you chew it," returned the host grimly. "i know i do," returned his visitor, "but i'll tell you what i'll do, elihu. if you'll quit selling, i'll quit chewing it," and he looked as if he had set a fancy trap for his straw-balancing brother, as he held him to be. "it's a bargain," said burridge on the instant. "it's a bargain!" and from that day on tobacco was not offered for sale in that store, although there was a large local demand for it. again, in the pride of his original leadership, he had accepted the conduct of the local cemetery, a thing which was more a burden than a source of profit. with his customary liberality in all things reflecting credit upon himself he had spent his own money in improving it, much more than ever the wardens of the church would have thought of returning to him. in one instance, when a new receiving vault was desired, he had added seven hundred dollars of his own to three hundred gathered by the church trustees for the purpose, and the vault was immediately constructed. frequently also, in his pride of place, he had been given to asserting he was tired of conducting the cemetery and wished he could resign. in these later evil days, therefore, the trustees, following the star of the newer power, saw fit to intimate that perhaps some one else would be glad to look after it if he was tired of it. instantly the fact that he could no longer boast as formerly came home to him. he was not essential any longer in anything. the church did not want him to have a hand in any of its affairs! the thought of this so weighed on him that eventually he resigned from this particular task, but thereafter also every man who had concurred in accepting his resignation was his bitter enemy. he spoke acidly of the seven hundred he had spent, and jibed at the decisions of the trustees in other matters. soon he became a disturbing element in the church, taking a solemn vow never to enter the graveyard again, and not long after resigned all his other official duties--passing the plate, et cetera--although he still attended services there. decoration day rolled around, the g.a.r. post of which he was an ardent member prepared for the annual memorial services over the graves of its dead comrades. early on the morning of the thirtieth of may they gathered before their lodge hall, burridge among them, and after arranging the details marched conspicuously to the cemetery where the placing of the wreaths and the firing of the salute were to take place. no one thought of burridge until the gate was reached, when, gun over shoulder and uniform in perfect trim, he fell conspicuously out of line and marched away home alone. it was the cemetery he had vowed not to enter, his old pet and protégé. men now looked askance at him. he was becoming queer, no doubt of it, not really sensible--or was he? up in northfield, a nearby town, dwelt a colonel of the civil war who had led the very regiment of which burridge was a member but who during the war had come into serious difficulty through a tangle of orders, and had been dishonorably discharged. although wounded in one of the engagements in which the regiment had distinguished itself, he had been allowed to languish almost forgotten for years and finally, failing to get a pension, had died in poverty. on his deathbed he had sent for burridge, and reminding him of the battle in which he had led him asked that after he was gone, for the sake of his family, he would take up the matter of a pension and if possible have his record purged of the stigma and the pension awarded. burridge agreed most enthusiastically. going to the local congressman, he at once began a campaign, but because of the feeling against him two years passed without anything being done. later he took up the matter in his own g.a.r. post, but there also failing to find the measure of his own enthusiasm, he went finally direct to one of the senators of the state and laying the matter before him had the records examined by congress and the dead colonel honorably discharged. one day thereafter in the local g.a.r. he commented unfavorably upon the indifference which he deemed had been shown. "there wouldn't have been half so much delay if the man hadn't been a deserter," said one of his enemies--one who was a foreman in palmer's shipyard. instantly burridge was upon his feet, his eyes aflame with feeling. always an orator, with a strangely declamatory style he launched into a detailed account of the late colonel's life and services, his wounds, his long sufferings and final death in poverty, winding up with a vivid word picture of a battle (antietam), in which the colonel had gallantly captured a rebel flag and come by his injury. when he was through there was great excitement in the post and much feeling in his favor, but he rather weakened the effect by at once demanding that the traitorous words be withdrawn, and failing to compel this, preferred charges against the man who had uttered them and attempted to have him court-martialed. so great was the bitterness engendered by this that the post was now practically divided, and being unable to compel what he considered justice he finally resigned. subsequently he took issue with his former fellow-soldiers in various ways, commenting satirically on their church regularity and professed christianity, as opposed to their indifference to the late colonel, and denouncing in various public conversations the double-mindedness and sharp dealings of the "little gods," as he termed those who ran the g.a.r. post, the church, and the shipyards. not long after his religious affairs reached a climax when the minister, once a good friend of his, following the lead of the dominant star, mr. palmer, publicly denounced him from the pulpit one sunday as an enemy of the church and of true christianity! "there is a man in this congregation," he exclaimed in a burst of impassioned oratory, "who poses as a christian and a baptist, who is in his heart's depth the church's worst enemy. hell and all its devils could have no worse feelings of evil against the faith than he, and he doesn't sell tobacco, either!" the last reference at once fixed the identity of the person, and caused burridge to get up and leave the church. he pondered over this for a time, severed his connections with the body, and having visited graylock one sunday drove there every sabbath thereafter, each time going to a different church. after enduring this for six months he generated a longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself with the baptist church of eustis. here his anchor might possibly have remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal misreading of the bible. this doubt, together with his own desire for justification according to the word, finally put the idea in his mind to make a study of the bible himself. he would read it, he said. he would study hebrew and greek, and refer all questionable readings of words and passages back to the original tongue in which it had been written. with this end in view he began a study of these languages, the importance of the subject so growing upon him that he neglected his business. day after day he labored, putting a bible and a concordance upon a pile of soap-boxes near the door of his store and poring over them between customers, the store meantime taking care of itself. he finally mastered greek and hebrew after a fashion, and finding the word "repent" frequently used, and that god had made man in the image of himself, with a full knowledge of right and wrong, he gravitated toward the belief that therefore his traducers in noank knew what they were doing, and that before he needed to forgive them--though his love might cover all--they must repent. he read the bible from beginning to end with this one feeling subconsciously dominant, and all its loving commands about loving one another, forgiving your brother seventy times seven, loving those that hate you, returning good for evil, selling all that you have and giving it to the poor, were made to wait upon the duty of others to repent. he began to give this interpretation at eustis, where he was allowed to have a sunday-school, until the minister came and told him once, "to his face," as the local report ran: "we don't want you here." meekly he went forth and, joining a church across the sound on long island, sailed over every sunday and there advanced the same views until he was personally snubbed by the minister and attacked by the local papers. leaving there he went to amherst, always announcing now that he held distinctive views about some things in the bible and asking the privilege of explaining. in this congregation he was still comfortably at rest when i knew him. "all sensitiveness," the sail-maker had concluded after his long account. "there ain't anything the matter with elihu, except that he's piqued and grieved. he wanted to be the big man, and he wasn't." i was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as i had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day being in the store, i said: "do you stand on the bible completely, mr. burridge?" "yes, sir," he replied, "i do." "believe every word of it to be true?" "yes, sir." "if your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?" "seventy times seven." "do you forgive your brothers?" "yes, sir--if they repent." "if they repent?" "yes, sir, if they repent. that's the interpretation. in matthew you will find, 'if he repent, forgive him.'" "but if you don't forgive them, even before they repent," i said, "aren't you harboring enmity?" "no, sir, i'm not treasuring up enmity. i only refuse to forgive them." i looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and earnest that i could not help smiling. "how do you reconcile that with the command, 'love one another?' you surely can't love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?" "i don't refuse to forgive them," he repeated. "if john there," indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing through the store at the time, "should do me a wrong--i don't care what it was, how great or how vile--if he should come to me and say, 'burridge, i'm sorry,'" he executed a flashing oratorical move in emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed: "it's gone! it's gone! there ain't any more of it! all gone!" i stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated with his force and feeling. so manifestly was his reading of the bible colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to tangle him with it. goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his friends and now left him to himself. "do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?" i asked him once. "i'd rather not say anything about that," he replied sternly. "but do you?" "yes, sir." "still make your annual new year round?" "yes, sir." "well, you'll get your reward for that, whatever you believe." "i've had my reward," he said slowly. "had it?" "yes, sir, had it. every hand that's been lifted to receive the little i had to offer has been my reward." he smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way: "i remember once going to a lonely woman here on new year's day and taking her a little something--basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it was. i was stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in and say 'happy new year!' leave what i have and get out--and so said, 'good morning, aunt mary!' "'good morning, elihu,' says she. "'can't stay long, aunt mary,' i said. 'just want to leave you these. happy new year!' "well, sir, you know i was just turning around and starting when she caught hold of my sleeve and says: "'elihu burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know, before i knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed it! yes, she did--kissed my hand! "now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense feeling, "you know whether i've had my reward or not, don't you?" _"vanity, vanity," saith the preacher_ sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a period. hence, to me, the importance of this one. i first met x---- at a time when american financial methods and american finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and achievements. it was the golden day of mr. morgan, senior, mr. belmont, mr. harriman, mr. sage, mr. gates, mr. brady, and many, many others who were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved by the panic of . in opposition to them and yet imitating their methods, now an old story to those who have read "frenzied finance," "lawless wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced our enormous american fortunes, were such younger men as charles w. morse (the victim of the panic), f. augustus heinze (another if less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), e.r. thomas, an ambitious young millionaire, himself born to money, david a. sullivan, and x----. i refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in the first place are absent. the person who made x---- essentially interesting to me long before i met him was one lucien de shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, paintings and furniture, things in which x---- was just then most intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on long island and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or show--those various things which the american multi-millionaire always wants to blossom or bloom into and which he does not always succeed in doing. de shay was one of those odd natures so common to the metropolis--half artist and half man of fashion who attach themselves so readily to men of strength and wealth, often as advisors and counselors in all matters of taste, social form and social progress. how this particular person was rewarded i never quite knew, whether in cash or something else. he was also a semi-confidant of mine, furnishing me "tips" and material of one sort and another in connection with the various publications i was then managing. as it turned out later, x---- was not exactly a multi-millionaire as yet, merely a fledgling, although the possibilities were there and his aims and ambitions were fast nearing a practical triumph the end of which of course was to be, as in the case of nearly all american multi-millionaires of the newer and quicker order, bohemian or exotic and fleshly rather than cultural or æsthetic pleasure, although the latter were never really exactly ignored. but even so. he was a typical multi-millionaire in the showy and even gaudy sense of the time. for if the staid and conservative and socially well-placed rich have the great houses and the ease and the luxury of paraphernalia, the bohemian rich of the x---- type have the flare, recklessness and imagination which lend to their spendings and flutterings a sparkle and a shine which the others can never hope to match. said this friend of mine to me one day: "listen, i want you to meet this man x----. you will like him. he is fine. you haven't any idea what a fascinating person he really is. he looks like a russian grand duke. he has the manners and the tastes of a medici or a borgia. he is building a great house down on long island that once it is done will have cost him five or six hundred thousand. it's worth seeing already. his studio here in the c---- studio building is a dream. it's thick with the loveliest kinds of things. i've helped buy them myself. and he isn't dull. he wrote a book at twenty, 'icarus,' which is not bad either and which he says is something like himself. he has read your book ("sister carrie") and he sympathizes with that man hurstwood. says parts of it remind him of his own struggles. that's why he wants to meet you. he once worked on the newspapers too. god knows how he is making his money, but i know how he is spending it. he's decided to live, and he's doing it splendidly. it's wonderful." i took notice, although i had never even heard of the man. there were so very, very many rich men in america. later i heard much more concerning him from this same de shay. once he had been so far down in the scale that he had to shine shoes for a living. once he had walked the streets of new york in the snow, his shoes cracked and broken, no overcoat, not even a warm suit. he had come here a penniless emigrant from russia. now he controlled four banks, one trust company, an insurance company, a fire insurance company, a great real estate venture somewhere, and what not. naturally all of this interested me greatly. when are we indifferent to a rise from nothing to something? at de shay's invitation i journeyed up to x----'s studio one wednesday afternoon at four, my friend having telephoned me that if i could i must come at once, that there was an especially interesting crowd already assembled in the rooms, that i would meet a long list of celebrities. two or three opera singers of repute were already there, among them an italian singer and sorceress of great beauty, a veritable queen of the genus adventuress, who was setting the town by the ears not only by her loveliness but her voice. her beauty was so remarkable that the sunday papers were giving full pages to her face and torso alone. there were to be several light opera and stage beauties there also, a basso profundo to sing, writers, artists, poets. i went. the place and the crowd literally enthralled me. it was so gay, colorful, thrillful. the host and the guests were really interesting--to me. not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so gorgeously decorated and furnished--it was impressive enough in that way--but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a kind of comfort disguised as elegance. the man had everything, or nearly so--friends, advisors, servants, followers. a somewhat savage and sybaritic nature, as i saw at once, was here disporting itself in velvets and silks. the iron hand of power, if it was power, was being most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one of pleasure and friendship. my host was not visible at first, but i met a score of people whom i knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most approved metropolitan bohemian character. the italian sorceress was there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded and gesticulated. de shay at once whispered in my ear that she was x----'s very latest flame and an expensive one too. "you should see what he buys her!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "god!" actresses and society women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses. the automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar. the poets and writers fascinated me with their praises of the host's munificence and taste. at a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay. if america ever presented a smarter drawing-room i never saw it. my friend de shay, being the fidus achates of the host, had the power to reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were chattering in the various rooms--music-, dining-, ball-, library and so forth--i was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always to a private exit. i wondered at once at the character of the person who could need, desire or value this. a secret bedroom, for instance; a lounging-room! in one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and a steel safe and two chairs--no more; a very bare room. i wondered at this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate here. what i also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and cared less. on my first visit, as i was leaving, i was introduced to the host just within his picture gallery, hung with many fine examples of the dutch and spanish schools. i found him to be as described: picturesque and handsome, even though somewhat plump, phlegmatic and lethargic--yet active enough. he was above the average in height, well built, florid, with a huge, round handsome head, curly black hair, keen black eyes, heavy overhanging eyebrows, full red lips, a marked chin ornamented by a goatee. in any costume ball he would have made an excellent bacchus or pan. he appeared to have the free, easy and gracious manner of those who have known much of life and have achieved, in part at least, their desires. he smiled, wished to know if i had met all the guests, hoped that the sideboard had not escaped me, that i had enjoyed the singing. would i come some evening when there was no crowd--or, better yet, dine with him and my friend de shay, whose personality appeared to be about as agreeable to him as his own. he was sorry he could not give me more attention now. interestingly enough, and from the first, i was impressed with this man; not because of his wealth (i knew richer men) but because of a something about him which suggested dreams, romance, a kind of sense or love of splendor and grandeur which one does not often encounter among the really wealthy. those cracked shoes were in my mind, i suppose. he seemed to live among great things, but in no niggardly, parsimonious or care-taking way. here was ease, largess, a kind of lavishness which was not ostentation but which seemed rather to say, "what are the minute expenses of living and pleasuring as contrasted with the profits of skill in the world outside?" he suggested the huge and aladdin-like adventures with which so many of the great financiers of the day, the true tigers of wall street, were connected. it was not long thereafter that i was once more invited, this time to a much more lavish affair and something much more sybaritic in its tone, although i was really not conscious of what it was to be like when i went there. it began at twelve midnight, and to this day it glitters in my mind as among the few really barbaric and exotic things that i have ever witnessed. not that the trappings or hangings or setting were so outré or amazing as that the atmosphere of the thing itself was relaxed, bubbling, pagan. there were so many daring and seeking people there. the thing sang and was talked of for months after--in whispers! the gayety! the abandon! the sheer intoxication, mental and physical! i never saw more daring costumes, so many really beautiful women (glitteringly so) in one place at one time, wonderful specimens of exotic and in the main fleshy or sensuous femininity. there was, among other things, as i recall, a large nickeled ice-tray on wheels packed with unopened bottles of champagne, and you had but to lift a hand or wink an eye to have another opened for you alone, ever over and over. and the tray was always full. one wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with delicate novelties in the way of food. a string quartette played for the dancers in the music-room. there were a dozen corners in different rooms screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. the dancing and singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was the conversation. as the morning wore on (for it did not begin until after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the order of expression. one was permitted to see human nature stripped of much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. at about four in the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the pièce de résistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scattering rose leaves or favors. these dancers the company itself finally joined, single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers, poets--dancing from room to room in crude bacchic imitation of their leaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying and dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. and finally, liquor and food affecting them, i suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them elsewhere--to taxis finally. but mine host, as i recall him, was always present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and untiring in his attention. he was there to keep order where otherwise there would have been none. i mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such events which covered the years -- to --. during that time, for the reason that i have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), i was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only x---- but life itself, the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in some men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outré and so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety. thus once, i remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--being assembled in his studio in new york one friday afternoon for the mere purpose of idling and drinking, he seeming to have nothing better to do for the time being, he suddenly suggested, and as though it had but now occurred to him, that we all adjourn to his country house on long island, which was not yet quite finished (or, rather, furnished), but which was in a sufficient state of completion to permit of appropriate entertainment providing the necessaries were carried out there with us. as i came to think of this afterward, i decided that after all it was not perhaps so unpremeditated as it seemed and that unconsciously we served a very useful purpose. there was work to do, suggestions to be obtained, an overseer, decorator and landscape gardener with whom consultations were absolutely necessary; and nothing that x---- ever did was without its element of calculation. why not make a gala affair of a rather dreary november task-- hence-- at any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. at once four automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one specially engaged elsewhere. there was some telephoning _in re_ culinary supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was _en rapport_ with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below. at dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into these--poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles between five-thirty and seven p.m. i often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of our host's point of view. he was always so grave, serene, watchful yet pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be. there was something so amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all he were saying to himself, "i am the master of all this, am stage-managing it for my own pleasure." i felt that he looked upon us all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art and social ideas if nothing more--hence his interest in us. also, in his estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his life, which he craved. we had done things too. nevertheless, in his own estimation, he was the master, the can grande. he could at will, "take us up or leave us out," or so he thought. we were mere toys, fine feathers, cap-and-bell artists. it was nice to, "take us around," have us with him. smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap, he looked as much the grand duke as one might wish. but i liked him, truly. and what a delicious evening and holiday, all told, he made of it for us. by leaving a trail of frightened horses, men and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his private race-track--i myself as much frightened as any at the roaring speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road--we arrived at seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most gratifying character. there was no heat in the house as yet, but from somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large fireplaces. there was no electricity as yet--a private plant was being installed--but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft glow over the great rooms. one room lacked a door, but an immense rug took its place. there were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion, many of them as yet unhung. some of the most interesting importations of furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the cases. scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical instruments--a piano among others--to give the place an air of completeness and luxury. the walls and ceilings had already been decorated--in a most florid manner, i must say. outside were great balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following morning proved, a very splendid view of a very bleak sea. the sand dunes! the distant floor of the sea! the ships! upstairs were nine suites of one- and two-rooms and bath. the basement was an intricate world of kitchen, pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. outside was a tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses. that night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, i for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. inside all was warm and flaring enough. the wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might reasonably desire. our host once out here was most gay in his mood. he was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although not intensely so. he seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making the best of everything as though it were something to go through with. with much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly enough. some of the men could play and sing. one poet recited enchanting bits of verse. for our inspection certain pieces of furniture and statuary were unpacked and displayed--a bronze faun some three feet in height, for one thing. all the time i was sensible of being in contact with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way, financially and otherwise. his mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of things. there were two syrians in paris, he said, who owned a large collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. he had an agent who was trying to secure the best of them for his new home. de shay had recently introduced him to a certain italian count who had a great house in italy but could not afford its upkeep. he was going to take over a portion of its furnishings, after due verification, of course. did i know the paintings of monticelli and mancini? he had just secured excellent examples of both. some time when his new home was further along i must come out. then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in place. he would get up a week-end party for a select group. the talk drifted to music and the stage. at once i saw that because of his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large and yet rather toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his inner life as do the concubines of an asiatic sultan. madame of the earrings, as i learned from de shay, was a source of great expense to him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. the stage and broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. did i know thus, and so--such-and-such, and one? "i'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time, something extraordinary, a real one. de shay and bielow" (naming another artist) "and myself must think it out. i know three different dancers"--and he began to enumerate their qualities. i saw plainly that even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe and embroidery to his success and power. at one a.m. we went to our rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan lovers of life and art. the next morning was wonderful--glittering, if windy. the sea sparkled beyond the waste of sand. i noted anew the richness of the furnishings, the greatness of the house. set down in so much sand and facing the great sea, it was wonderful. there was no order for breakfast; we came down as we chose. a samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table. rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. possibly because i was one of the first about, my host singled me out--he was up and dressed when i came down--and we strolled over the estate to see what we should see. curiously, although i had seen many country homes of pretension and even luxury, i never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. it was so unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic way. exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide--great smooth floors of red concrete--bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and all, struck me most favorably. only one long pier for visiting yachts was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. on one spot of land, a high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a small bleak lighthouse than anything else. in this upper portion was a room reached by small spiral concrete stairs! i could not help noting the reserve and _savoir faire_ with which my host took all this. he was so healthy, assured, interested and, i am glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me in that way--a most irritating condition. plainly he was building a very splendid thing. his life was nearing its apex. he must not only have had millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as much as was already visible here. pointing to a bleak waste of sand between the house and the sea--and it looked like a huge red and yellow bird perched upon a waste of sand--he observed, "when you come again in the spring, that will contain a garden of , roses. the wind is nearly always off the sea here. i want the perfume to blow over the verandahs. i can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will always be in bloom." we visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the house and away from the sea. next spring i came once more--several times, in fact. the rose garden was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. although this was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, strident members of the so-called really inner circles. there were artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript figures of the ultra-social world--young men principally who seemed to come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration. the scene was not without brilliance. a butler and numerous flunkeys fluttered to and fro. guests were received at the door by a footman. a housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of cleaning. one could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or another of the grounds. there were affairs, much flirting and giggling, suspicious wanderings to and fro at night--no questions asked as to who came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of decorum was maintained. it was the same on other occasions, only the house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing friends, whose machines barked in the drives. i saw as many gay and fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative talk here as anywhere i have been. during this fall and winter i was engaged in work which kept me very much to myself. during the period i read much of x----, banks he was combining, new ventures he was undertaking. yet all at once one winter's day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous financial crash of which he was the center. according to the newspapers, the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway project on long island, were all involved in the crash. curiously, although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the articles and editorials were now most vituperative. their venom was especially noticeable. he was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would glass balls. the money wherewith he gambled was not his. he had robbed the poor, deceived them. yet among all this and in the huge articles which appeared the very first day, i noted one paragraph which stuck in my mind, for i was naturally interested in all this and in him. it read: "wall street heard yesterday that superintendent h---- got his first information concerning the state in which x----'s affairs were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished because of his activity in the long island traction field. this is one of the street's 'clover patches' and the success which the newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure." another item read: "a hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the south shore to the new york and queens county system, owned by the long island railroad, at a profit of almost $ , , to x----, was the cause of all the trouble. very active displeasure on the part of certain powers in wall street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal for the railroad. they did not want him in this field, and were powerful enough to prevent it. at the same time pressure from other directions was brought to bear on him. the clearing-house refused to clear for his banks. x---- was in need of cash, but still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which he had developed to an important point. their sinister influences entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible for him to hold out." along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was organizing--tricks which were the ordinary routine of wall street and hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry. i was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's sudden end, for i understood a little of finance and its ways, also of what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. it must be dreadful. yet how could it be, i asked myself, if he really owned fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a dark villain? after all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. on the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. i read everything in connection with him with care. as the days passed various other things happened. for one thing, he tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in new york; for another, he tried to take poison. now of a sudden a bachelor sister, of whom i had never heard in all the time i had known him, put in an appearance as his nearest of kin--a woman whose name was not his own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto it. she took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered himself to the police. the names of great lawyers and other bankers began to enter the case. alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then that he was not. his sister, who was a physician and scientist of repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. to this she swore, giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to me. at the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. there were other curious features: certain eminent men in politics and finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were in close financial if not personal relations with x---- denied this completely. curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. his life on broadway, on long island, in his studio in new york, were ransacked for details. enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift life. no one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful before--especially not the eminent and hounding financiers. then from somewhere appeared a new element. in a staggeringly low tenement region in brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing to come at all. in proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were produced. it really did appear as if he and his sister, although they had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the two who had been petty bakers in brooklyn, laying up a little competence of their own. i never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason why was plain enough. the sister was laying claim to the property as the next of kin. if this could be offset, even though x---- were insane, the property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors and sold under a forced sale, of course--in other words, for a song--for their benefit. naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. but the great financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that really he was the illegitimate son of the czar of russia, boarded out originally with a poor family. now, however, the old people were brought from brooklyn and compelled to confront him. it was never really proved that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by their parents. also a perjury charge was made against the sister which effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long enough to give the financiers time for their work. naturally there was a great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when confronted by them. horrible! there were most heavily illustrated and tearful sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives of those who produced the parents were overlooked. the pictures of the parents confronting x---- and his sister portrayed very old and feeble people, and were rather moving. they insisted that they were his parents and wept brokenly in their hands. but why? and he denying it! his sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and friends. i never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. of all those i had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of finance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinking his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more than "casually" or "slightly"--oh, so slightly! when rumors as to the midnight suppers, the bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began to get abroad, there was no one whom i knew who had ever been there or knew anything about him or them. for instance, of all the people who had been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be friendly and deeply concerned was de shay, his fidus achates and literally his pensioner--yet de shay was almost the loudest in his denunciation or at least deprecation of x----, his habits and methods! although it was he who had told me of mme. ---- and her relation to x----, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially where x---- was the host, always assuring me that it would be so wonderful and that x---- was really such a great man, so generous, so worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close to x----, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not even guessed what he had actually engineered. his "did-you-hears," "did-you-knows" and "wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a tea-party. he was so shocked, especially at x----'s robbing poor children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers went i could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention of robbing anybody--that is, directly. in the usual wall street high finance style he was robbing peter to pay paul, that is, he was using the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole fabric of finance in one grand crash. be that as it may. in swift succession there now followed the so-called "legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. in the first place, by alienists representing the district attorney and the state banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for embezzlement. secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in america. next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers (what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." all the while x---- was in prison, protesting that he was really not guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the state bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the state banking department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of the ultra-rich of wall street--the street railway area in new york and brooklyn. one day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great sky-scrapers of new york, which occupied an entire floor and commanded vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane "delusion of grandeur," i presume), he was called to answer the telephone. one mr. y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminent financiers of wall street and america, was on the wire. without any preliminary and merely asking was this mr. x---- on the wire, the latter proceeded, "this is mr. y----. listen closely to what i am going to say. i want you to get out of the street railway business in new york or something is going to happen to you. i am giving you a reasonable warning. take it." then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously and superiorly at the other end. "i knew at the time," went on x----, addressing the grand jury, "that i was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in new york and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. at the same time i was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which stood to net me two million dollars clear if i closed it. at the same time i wanted to enter this field and didn't see why i shouldn't. if i didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very great loss, to me, in more ways than one. oddly enough, just at this time i was being pressed by those with whom i was associated to wind up this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. i have often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they should have become so pressing just at this time. at the same time, perhaps i was a little vain and self-sufficient. i had once got the better of some agents of another great financier in a western power deal, and i felt that i could put this thing through too. hence i refused to heed the warning. however, i found that all those who were previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several other matters, i needed considerable cash, the state banking department descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks. "you know how it is when they do this to you. cry 'fire!' and you can nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. depositors withdraw, securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. nothing is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. time will show that i was not insolvent at the time. the books will show a few technically illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, especially at this time, if quickly examined. i was doing no more than all were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did." regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and the like--x---- was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time there. at the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other eminent men, financiers all. a dispassionate examination of all the evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. he was apparently in a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his approaching rivalry. like the various usurpers of regal powers in ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the throne in his infancy. but that youth of his! the long and devious path by which he had come! among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a book agent, was a letter written to his mother (august, ), which read: "my dear parents: please answer me at once if i can have anything of you, or something of you or nothing. remember this is the first and the last time in my life that i beg of you anything. you have given to the other child not $ but hundreds, and now when i, the very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $ , are you going to be so hard-hearted as to refuse me? without these $ it is left to me to be without income for two or three weeks. "for god's sake, remember what i ask of you, and send me at once so that i should cease thinking of it. leon, as i have told you, will give me $ , $ he has already paid for the contract, and your $ will make $ . out of this i need $ for a ticket and $ for two or three weeks' board and lodging. "please answer at once. don't wait for a minute, and send me the money or write me one word 'not.' remember this only that if you refuse me i will have nothing in common with you. "your son, "----" there was another bit of testimony on the part of one henry dom, a baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some one he had known years before in williamsburgh, which read: "i easily recognize them" (x---- and his sister) "from their pictures in the newspapers. i worked for x----'s father, who was a baker in williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were written by x---- senior and his wife to dr. louise x---- who was then studying medicine in philadelphia. x---- was then a boy going to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and evenings. he did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his parents humored him in his attitude. he was very vain, liked to appear intellectual. they kept saying to their friends that he should have a fine future. five years later, after i had left them once, i met the mother and she told me that x---- was studying banking and getting along fine." some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, i was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in new york waiting for a car when i saw him. he was passing in the opposite direction, not very briskly, and, as i saw, plainly meditatively. he was not so well dressed. the clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. his hat--well, it was a hat, not a romanoff shako nor a handsome panama such as he had affected in the old days. he looked tired, a little worn and dusty, i thought. my first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had not seen me. it might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might not have even remembered me. but as he walked i thought of the great house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the , roses, the crowds at his summer place, the receptions in town and out, madame of the earrings (afterward married to a french nobleman), and then of the letter to his mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "vanity, vanity," saith the preacher. the shores of our social seas are strewn with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships. at the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. i have never seen nor heard of him since. _the mighty rourke_ when i first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in the engine-room of the repair shop at spike, and he was most unusually loud in his protestations and demands. he had with him a dozen italians, all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on the side-track next to the building. this was loaded with crushed stone, cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. he himself was standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted, coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true irish insistence, "come, matt! come, jimmie! get the shovels, now! get the picks! bring some sand here! bring some stone! where's the cement, now? where's the cement? jasus christ! i must have some cement! what arre ye all doin'? what do ye think ye're up here fer? hurry, now, hurry! bring the cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right to stand still. more or less oppressed with life myself at the time, i was against all bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this. "what a slave driver!" i thought. "what a brute!" and yet i remember thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either--quite the contrary. he was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling irish gray eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. it was much as if he had said, "i am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was. is it this that sends the irish to rule as captains of hundreds the world over? the job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was interesting. it consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to--an engine bed, no less. it was not so urgent but that it might have been conducted with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things are going forward whether they are or not? plainly this particular individual loved noise and a great stir. so eager was he to have done with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting to and fro, shouting, "come, matt! come, jimmie! hurry, now, bring the shovels! bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a perfect avalanche of orders. "up with it! down with it! front with it! back with it! in with it! out with it!" all coupled with his favorite expletive, "jasus christ," which was as innocent of evil, i subsequently came to know, as a prayer. in short, he was simply wild irish, and that was all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like namgay doola. but, as i say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a virulent specimen, and i thought, "the irish brute! to think of human beings having to work for a brute like that! to think of his driving men like that!" however, i soon began to discover that he was not so bad as he seemed, and then i began to like him. the thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the attitude of his men toward him. although he was so insistent with his commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working. they were not killing themselves, by any means. he would stand over them, crying, "up with it! up with it! up with it! up with it!" or "down with it! down with it! down with it!" until you would have imagined their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. as it was, however, they did not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock; rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that had to be, and that one was prepared for. their steps were in the main as leisurely as those of idlers on fifth avenue or broadway. they carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. one could not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. finally gathering the full import of it all, i ventured to laugh, and he turned on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort. "ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "if ye had to work as hard as these min, ye wouldn't laugh." i wanted to say, "hard work, indeed!" but instead i replied, "is that so? well, i don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either. you're not as fierce as you sound." then i explained that i was not laughing at them but at him, and he took it all in good part. since i was only a nominal laborer here, not a real one--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fell to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of friendship began. as i learned that morning, rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks for all that part of the railroad that lay between new york and fifty miles out, on three divisions. he had a dozen or so men under him and was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between the places in which he happened to be working. he was a builder of concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as necessity required. as he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven. the great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. at the same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it, in short. he had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two years, "rain or shine." darkness or storm made no difference to him. "shewer, i have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, elusive irish grin. "they're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. if ye was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av ye." "yes?" i said tolerantly. "and how much do you get, rourke?" "two an' a half a day." "you don't say!" i replied, pretending admiration. the munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. perhaps, as we say in america, he "had a right" to be happy, only i could not see it. at the same time, i could not help thinking that he was better situated than myself at the time. i had been ill, and was now earning only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the foreman for whom i was working was a torture to my soul. he was such a loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and i wanted to get out from under him. at the same time, i was not without sufficient influence so to do, providing i could find a foreman who could make use of me. the great thing was to do this, and the more i eyed this particular specimen of foreman the better i liked him. he was genial, really kindly, amazingly simple and sincere. i decided to appeal to him to take me on his staff. "how would you like to take me, mr. rourke, and let me work for you?" i asked hopefully, after explaining to him why i was here. "shewer," he replied. "ye'd do fine." "would i have to work with the italians?" i asked, wondering how i would make out with a pick and shovel. my frame was so spare at the time that the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique required for day labor. "there'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "shewer, that's no work fer white min. let the nagurs do it. look at their backs an' arrms, an' then look at yers." i was ready to blush for shame. these poor italians whom i was so ready to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors. "but why do you call them negroes, rourke?" i asked after a time. "they're not black." "well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added. "aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim." i had to smile. it was so dogmatic and unreasoning. "very well, then, they're black," i said, and we left the matter. not long after i put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, and it was granted. the day that i joined his flock, or gang, as he called it, he was at williamsbridge, a little station north on the harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. it was a pretty place, surrounded by trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. ah, the smiling morning sun, the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven! rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when i arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and when i looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled. "so here ye arre at last," he said with a grin. "yes," i laughed. "well, ye're jist in time; i waant ye to go down to the ahffice." "certainly," i replied, but before i could say more he climbed out of his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy fingers. then he held it up and looked at it defiantly. "i waant ye to go to woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts that arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, an' ship thim down to me. an' thin i waant ye to go down to the ahffice an' take thim this o.k." here again he fished around and produced another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well i came to know them!), which i soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick of wood or a nail or a bolt. the company demanded these of all foremen, in order to keep its records straight. its accounting department was useless without them. at the same time, rourke kept talking of the "nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for everything. "ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he declared irritably and defiantly. i saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the railroad men expressed it. he was in a high state of dudgeon, and as defiant and pugnacious as his royal irish temper would allow. at the same time he was pleased to think that i or some one had arrived who would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. he was not so inexperienced as not to imagine that i could help him with all this. in fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here. he flung a parting shot at his superior as i departed. "tell him that i'll sign fer thim when i get thim, an' not before," he declared. i went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. it was just the irish of it. i went off to woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which i went down to the "ahffice" and reported. there i found the chief clerk, a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because rourke, as he now explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to make up his reports. sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or more, the goods lying around somewhere until rourke could use them. he wanted to know what explanation rourke had to offer, and when i suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed. "say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands distractedly through his hair, "what does he think i am? how does he think i'm going to make up my books? he'll leave them there until he needs them, will he? well, he's a damned fool, and you go back and tell him i said so. he's been long enough on the road to know better. you go back and tell him i said that i want a signed form for everything consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and i want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of sand. i want it. he's got to come to time about this now, or something's going to drop. i'm not going to stand it any longer. how does he think i'm going to make up my books? i wish he'd let you attend to these matters while you're up there. it will save an awful lot of trouble in this office and it may save him his job. there's one thing sure: he's got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or i do." these same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out reports or calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. as i learned afterward, he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, assisting him nights on this part of the work. in addition, while they were absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was concerned--and that was really all that interested rourke--they were an essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the work at all--a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. at the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office technicalia, and it was this: if a man could only sit down and reel off a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be overlooked. in a vague way, rourke sensed this and resented it. he knew that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. apparently they aided actual construction no whit--but, of course, they did. although he was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, especially by the chief clerk. naturally, i explained that i would do my best, and came away. when i returned, however, i decided to be politic. i could not very well work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left outside of that. i therefore explained as best i could the sad plight of the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these things came in promptly. "you see how it is, rourke, don't you?" i pleaded. he seemed to see, but he was still angry. "an o.k. blank! an o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "he wants an o.k. blank, does he? well, i expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. i think the man lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. ye'd think i was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful. an o.k. blank! an o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence. a little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot thim, anyhow." the ensuing month was a busy one for us. we had a platform to lay at morrisania, a chimney to build at tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at white plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at tuckahoe. besides these, there were platforms to build at van cortlandt and mount kisco, water-towers at highbridge and ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at caryl, a culvert and an ash-pit at bronx park, and some forty concrete piers for a building at melrose--all of which required any amount of running and figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and constructing, which rourke alone could look after. it seemed ridiculous to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least some of this endless figuring off his hands. at the same time, if he had been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a clerk--carrying a clerk as a laborer--but plainly it had never occurred to him. he depended on his family. the preliminary labor alone of ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was one man's work; and yet rourke was expected to do it all. in spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker. i have never seen a better. he preferred to superintend, of course, to get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. at the same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. on the contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "come out av that! come out, now! jasus christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? put it down! put it down! what arre ye doin'? what did i tell ye? have ye no raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?" "great heavens!" i used to think, "what has happened now?" you would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, it might be nothing of any great import--a little error of some kind, more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. it might last for a few moments, during which time the italians would be seen hurrying excitedly to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and rourke would be heard to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling some old-fashioned irish "come-all-ye." but the thing in rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready grasp for the actualities of life--his full-fledged knowledge that work is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. thus, while i was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work was done. once, when i interrupted him to question him concerning some of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "the reports! the reports! what good arre the reports! ye make me sick. what have the reports to do with the work? if it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?" and i heartily echoed "where?" another thing was his charming attitude toward his men, kindly and sweet for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and fatherly. he had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which touched them. when he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was always in the cheeriest way that he began. "come, now, b'ys, ye have a good day's work before ye today. get the shovels, jimmie. bring the line, matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered. i might say in passing that matt and jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were each between forty and fifty, if they were a day--poor, gnarled, dusty, storm-tossed italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured god knows what, and were now rounding out a work-a-day existence under the sheltering wing of this same rourke, a great and protecting power to them. this same matt was a funny little italian, soft of voice and gentle of manner, whom rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. he would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing therefrom, shouts of: "put it here, i say! put it here! down with it! here! here! jasus christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"--coupled, of course, with occasional guttural growls from matt, who was by no means in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. the latter had been with rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. occasionally, not always, rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "i'll get shut av ye! i'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! what good arre ye? what work can ye do? naathin'! naathin'! i'll be shut av ye now, an' thin maybe i'll have a little p'ace." then he would dance around and threaten and growl until something else would take his attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. somehow, i always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed these rows--must fight, in short, to be happy. sometimes he would go home without saying a word to matt, a conclusion which at first i imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon i came to know better. for the next morning matt would reappear as unconcernedly as though nothing had happened, and rourke would appear not to notice or remember. once, anent all this, i said to him, "rourke, how many times have you threatened to discharge matt in the last three years?" "shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall he says aall the time." the most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the aforementioned jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken calabrian, who had the shrewdness of a machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. he lived in the same neighborhood as rourke, far out in one of those small towns on the harlem, sheltering so many italians, for, like a hen with a brood of chicks, rourke kept all his italians gathered close about him. jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family errands for him, a kind of valet to rourke, as it were--selected for some merit i could never discover, certainly not one of speed. he was nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit fresh from a sewer. on the job, however, no matter what it might be, jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. he was always above it, or busy with something else. but as he was an expert cement-mixer and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of sorts, nothing was ever said to him. if any one dared to reprove him, myself for instance (a mere interloper to jimmie), he would reply: "yeh! yeh! i know-a my biz. i been now with misha rook fifteen year. i know-a my biz." if you made any complaint to rourke, he would merely grin and say, "ha! jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "i'll get ye yet, ye fox," but more than that nothing was ever done. one day, however, jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of rourke's, which, while it resulted in no real damage, produced a most laughable and yet characteristic scene. a strict rule of the company was that no opening of any kind into which a person might possibly step or fall should be left uncovered at any station during the approach, stay, or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. rourke was well aware of this rule. he had a copy of it on file in his collection of circulars. in addition, he had especially delegated jimmie to attend to this matter, a task which just suited the italian as it gave him ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching. this it was which made the crime all the greater. on this particular occasion jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. we had been working on the platform at williamsbridge, digging a pit for a coal-bin, when a train bearing the general foreman came along. the latter got off at the station especially to examine the work that had been done so far. when the train arrived there was the hole wide open with rourke below shouting and gesticulating about something, and totally unconscious, of course, that his order had been neglected. the general foreman, who was, by the way, i believe, an admirer of rourke, came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "this won't do, rourke. you'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching. i've told you that before, you know." rourke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should have been put in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. i doubt if any one ever had a greater capacity for respecting his superiors, anyhow. instead of trying to answer, he merely choked and began to shout for jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, "what's da mat'? what's da mat'?" "what's da mat'? what's da mat'?" mocked rourke, fairly seething with a marvelous irish fury. "what the devil do ye suppose is the mat'? what do ye mane be waalkin' away an' l'avin' the hole uncovered? didn't i tell ye niver to l'ave a hole when a train's comin'? didn't i tell ye to attind to that an' naathin' else? an' now what have ye been doin'? be all the powers, what d'ye mane be l'avin' it? what else arre ye good fer? what d'ye mane be lettin' a thing like that happen, an' mr. wilson comin' along here, an' the hole open?" he was as red as a beet, purple almost, perspiring, apoplectic. during all this tirade mr. wilson, a sad, dark, anæmic-looking person, troubled with acute indigestion, i fancy, stood by with an amused, kindly, and yet mock severe expression on his face. i am sure he did not wish to be severe. jimmie, dumbfounded, scarcely knew what to say. in the face of rourke's rage and the foreman's presence, he did his best to remedy his error by covering the hole, at the same time stuttering something about going for a trowel. "a trowel!" cried rourke, glaring at him. "a trowel, ye h'athen ginny! what'd ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, an' a train comin' that close on ye it could 'a' knocked ye off the thrack? an' the hole open, an' mr. wilson right here! is that what i told ye? is that what i pay ye fer? be all the saints! a trowel, is it? i'll trowel ye! i'll break yer h'athen eyetalian skull, i will. get thim boards on, an' don't let me ketch ye l'avin' such a place as that open again. i'll get shut av ye, ye blitherin' lunatic." when it was all over and the train bearing the general foreman had gone, rourke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that kept the poor italian on tenterhooks. about an hour later, however, another train arrived, and, by reason of some intervening necessity and the idle, wandering mood of the italian, the hole was open again. jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, smoking perhaps, and rourke was, as usual, down in the hole. this time misfortune trebled itself, however, by bringing, not the general foreman, but the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom rourke stood in the greatest awe. he was so solid, so profound, so severe. i don't believe i ever saw him smile. he walked up to the hole, and looking reproachfully down, said: "is this the way you leave your excavations, rourke, when a train is coming? don't you know better than to do a thing like that?" "jimmie!" shouted rourke, leaping to the surface of the earth with a bound, "jimmie! now, be jasus, where is that bla'guard eyetalian? didn't i tell him not to l'ave this place open!" and he began shoving the planks into place himself. jimmie, suddenly made aware of this new catastrophe, came running as fast as his short legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. he was as pale as a very dark and dirty italian could be, and so wrought up that his facial expression changed involuntarily from moment to moment. rourke was in a fairly murderous mood, only he was so excited and ashamed that he could not speak. here was the supervisor, and here was himself, and conditions--necessity for order, etc.--would not permit him to kill the italian in the former's presence. he could only choke and wait. to think that he should be made a mark of like this, and that in the face of his great supervisor! his face and neck were a beet-red, and his eyes flashed with anger. he merely glared at his recalcitrant henchman, as much as to say, "wait!" when this train had departed and the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing he turned on jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper. "so ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes ago, will ye?" he shouted. "ye'll naht cover the hole! an' what'll ye be tellin' me ye was doin' now?" "i carry da waut (water) for da concrete," pleaded jimmie weakly. "waut fer the concrete," almost moaned rourke, so great was his fury, his angry face shoved close to the italian's own. "waut fer the concrete, is it? it's a pity ye didn't fall into yer waut fer the concrete, ye damned nagur, an' drown! waut fer the concrete, is it, an' me here, an' mr. mills steppin' off an' lookin' in on me, ye black-hearted son of a eyetalian, ye! i'll waut fer the concrete ye! i'll crack yer blitherin' eyetalian skull with a pick, i will! i'll chuck ye in yer waut fer the concrete till ye choke, ye flat-footed, leather-headed lunatic! i'll tache ye to waalk aaf an' l'ave the hole open, an' me in it. now, be jasus, get yer coat an' get out av this. get--i'm tellin' ye! i'll have no more thruck with ye! i'll throuble no more with ye. ye're no damned good. out with ye! an' niver show me yer face again!" and he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him limb from limb. jimmie, well aware of his dire position, was too clever, however, to let rourke seize him. during all this conversation he had been slowly backing away, always safely beyond rourke's reach, and now ran--an amazing feat for him. he had evidently been through many such scenes before. he retreated first behind the depot, and then when rourke had gone to work once more down in his hole, came back and took a safe position on guard over the hitherto sadly neglected opening. when the next train came he was there to shove the boards over before it neared the station, and nothing more was said about the matter. rourke did not appear to notice him. he did not even seem to see that he was there. the next morning, however, when the latter came to work as usual, it was, "come, matt! come, jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened. i was never more astonished in my life. an incident, even more ridiculous, but illustrative of the atmosphere in which rourke dwelt, occurred at highbridge one frosty october sunday morning, where because of seepage from a hill which threatened to undermine some tracks, rourke was ordered to hurry and build a drain--a thing which, because the order came on saturday afternoon, required sunday labor, a most unusual thing in his case. but in spite of the order, rourke, who was a good catholic, felt impelled before coming to go to at least early mass, and in addition--a regular sunday practice with him, i presume--to put on a long-skirted prince albert coat, which i had never seen before and which lent to his stocky figure some amusing lines. it was really too tight, having been worn, i presume, every sunday regularly since his wedding day. in addition, he had donned a brown derby hat which, to me at least, gave him a most unfamiliar look. i, being curious more than anything else and wishing to be out of doors as much as possible, also went up, arriving on the scene about nine. rourke did not arrive until ten. in the meantime, i proceeded to build myself a fire on the dock, for we were alongside the harlem river and a brisk wind was blowing. then rourke came, fresh from church, smiling and genial, in the most cheerful sunday-go-to-meeting frame of mind, but plainly a little conscious of his grand garb. "my," i said, surveying him, "you look fine. i never saw you dressed up before." "l'ave aaf with yer taalk," he replied. "i know well enough how i look--good enough." then he bestirred himself about the task of examining what had been done so far. but i could see, in spite of all the busy assurance with which he worked, that he was still highly conscious of his clothes and a little disturbed by what i or others might think. his every-day garb plainly suited his mood much better. everything went smoothly until noon, not a cloud in the sky, when, looking across the tracks at that hour, i beheld coming toward us with more or less uncertain step another individual, stocky of figure and evidently bent on seeing rourke--an irishman as large as rourke, younger, and, if anything, considerably coarser in fiber. he was very red-faced, smooth shaven, with a black derby hat pulled down over his eyes and wearing a somewhat faded tight-fitting brown suit. he was drunk, or nearly so, that was plain from the first. from the moment rourke beheld him he seemed beside himself with anger or irritation. his expression changed completely and he began to swell, as was customary with him when he was angry, as though suffering from an internal eruption of some kind. "the bla'guard!" i heard him mutter. "now, be gob, what'll that felly be waantin'?" and then as the stranger drew nearer, "who was it tould him i was here? maybe some waan at the ahffice." regardless of his speculations on this score, the stranger picked his way across the tracks and came directly to him, his face and manner indicating no particularly friendly frame of mind. "maybe ye'll be lettin' me have that money now," he began instanter, and when rourke made no reply, merely staring at him, he added, "i'll be waantin' to know now, when it is ye're goin' to give me the rest av me time fer that scarborough job. i've been waitin' long enough." rourke stirred irritably and aggressively before he spoke. he seemed greatly put out, shamed, to think that the man should come here so, especially on this peaceful sabbath morning. "i've tould ye before," he replied defiantly after a time, "that ye've had aall ye earned, an' more. ye left me without finishin' yer work, an' ye'll get no more time from me. if ye waant more, go down to the ahffice an' see if they'll give it to ye. i have no money fer ye here," and he resumed a comfortable position before the fire, his hands behind his back. "it's siven dollars ye still owe me," returned the other, ignoring rourke's reply, "an' i waant it now." "well, ye'll naht get it," replied my boss. "i've naathin' fer ye, i'm tellin' ye. i owe ye naathin'." "is that so?" returned the other. "well, we'll see about that. ye'll be after givin' it to me, er i'll get it out of ye somehow. it's naht goin' to be ch'ated out av me money i am." "i'm owin' ye naathin'," insisted rourke. "ye may as well go away from here. ye'll get naathin'. if ye waant anything more, go an' see the ahffice," and now he strode away to where the italians were, ignoring the stranger completely and muttering something about his being drunk. the latter followed him, however, over to where he stood, and continued the dispute. rourke ignored him as much as possible, only exclaiming once, "l'ave me be, man. ye're drunk." "i'm naht drunk," returned the other. "once an' fer all now, i'm askin' ye, arre ye goin' to give me that money?" "no," replied rourke, "i'm naht." "belave me," said the stranger, "i'll get it out av ye somehow," but for the moment he made no move, merely hanging about in an uncertain way. he seemed to have no definite plan for collecting the money, or if he had he had by now abandoned it. without paying any more attention to him, rourke, still very irritated and defiant, returned to the fire. he tried to appear calm and indifferent, but the ex-workman, a non-union mason, i judged, followed after, standing before him and staring in the defiant, irritating way a drunken man will, not quite able to make up his mind what else to do. presently rourke, more to relieve the tedium of an embarrassing situation than anything else (a number of accusatory remarks having been passed), turned and began poking at the blaze, finally bending over to lay on a stick of wood. on the instant, and as if seized by sudden inspiration, whether because the tails of rourke's long coat hung out in a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, i don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same time exclaiming: "ye'll naht pay me, will ye? ye'll naht, will ye?" on the instant a tremendous change came over the scene. it was as swift as stage play. instantly rourke was upright and faced about, shouting, "now, be gob, ye've torn me coat, have ye! now i'll tache ye! now i'll show ye! wait! get ready, now. now i'll fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, i presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. at the same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and circling in the same way around rourke, as well as around the fire, until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. round and round they went like two hopi bucks or zulu warriors, their faces displaying the most murderous cunning and intention to slay--only, instead of feathers and beads, they had on their negligible best. all the while rourke was calling, "come on, now! get ready, now! i'll show ye, now! i'll fix ye, now! it's me coat ye'll rip, is it? come on, now! get ready! make yerself ready! i'm goin' to give ye the lickin' av yer life! come on, now! come on, now! come on, now!" it was as though each had been secreted from the other and had to be sought out in some mysterious manner and in a circle. in spite of the feeling of distress that an impending struggle of this kind gives one, i could not help noting the comic condition of rourke's back--the long coat beautifully ripped straight up the back, its ends fluttering in the wind like fans, and exposing his waistcoat and sunday boiled white shirt--and laying up a laugh for the future. it was too ridiculous. the stranger had a most impressive and yet absurd air of drunken sternness written in his face, a do-or-die look. whether anything serious would really have happened i was never permitted to learn, for now, in addition to myself and the italians, all of them excited and ready to defend their lord and master, some passengers from the nearby station and the street above as well as a foreman of a section gang helping at this same task, a great hulking brute of a man who looked quite able to handle both rourke and his opponent at one and the same time, came forward and joined in this excited circle. considerable effort was made on the part of the latter to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman interposed with: "what's the trouble here? come, now! what's all this row, rourke? ye wouldn't fight here, would ye? have him arristed, er go to his home--ye say ye know him--but don't be fightin' here. supposin' waan av the bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed his great bulk between the two. rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage and disgrace, shouted, "lookit me coat! lookit what he done to me coat! see what he done to me coat! man alive, d'ye think i'm goin' to stand fer the likes av that? it's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer like that--an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. i'll fix him this time. i'll show him. i'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man when he's at his work. i'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. but the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of. "well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory mood. "ye can't be fightin' him here. sure, ye don't waant to do that. what'll the chafe think? what is it ye'll think av yerself?" at the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. seeing the crowd that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track toward mott haven. "i'll fix ye!" rourke shouted when he saw him going. "ye'll pay fer this. i'll have ye arristed. wait! ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this time." but just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man gone, and in a little while rourke left for his home at mount vernon to repair his tattered condition. i never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. afterwards, when i inquired very cautiously what he had done about it--this was a week or two later--he replied, "shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that? he has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children any." thus ended a perfect scene out of kilkenny. it was not so very long after i arrived that rourke began to tell me of a building which the company was going to erect in mott haven yard, one of its great switching centers. it was to be an important affair, according to him, sixty by two hundred feet in breadth and length, of brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily it could do work for itself rather than by outside contract, which it was always hoping to avoid. from his manner and conversation, i judged that rourke was eager to get this job, for he had been a contractor of some ability in his day before he ever went to work for the company, and felt, i am sure, that fate had done him an injustice in not allowing him to remain one. in addition, he felt a little above the odds and ends of masonry that he was now called on to do, where formerly he had done so much more important work. he was eager to be a real foreman once more, a big one, and to show the company that he could erect this building and thus make a little place for himself in the latter's good graces, although to what end i could not quite make out. he would never have made a suitable general foreman. at the same time, he was a little afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports, o.k.s and the like. "how arre ye feelin', teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than ever before. i talked of leaving, i suppose, from time to time because sheer financial necessity was about to compel it. "fine, rourke," i would say, "never better. i'm feeling better every day." "that's good. ye're the right man in the right place now. if ye was to sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. ye're too thin. ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly manner. "i niver have a sick day, meself." "that's right, rourke," i replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "i intend to stick at it as long as i can." "ye ought to; it'll do ye good. if we get the new buildin' to build, it'll be better yet for ye. ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer mind." "relieve, indeed!" i thought, but i did not say so. on the contrary i felt so much sympathy for this lusty irishman and his reasonable ambitions that i desired to help him, and urged him to get it. i suggested indirectly that i would see him through, which touched him greatly. he was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. he would have much preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though i doubt whether real failure could have come to rourke so essentially capable was he. in another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then began one of the finest exhibitions of irish domination and self-sufficiency that i have ever witnessed. we moved to mott haven yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which this new building was to be erected. rourke was given a large force of men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. he had as many as forty italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons (not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of digging for the foundation, etc. handling these, rourke was in his element. he loved to see so much brisk work going on. he would trot to and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. it was delicious to watch him. at times he would stand by the long trenches where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human satisfaction, saying, "we're goin' along fine, teddy. i can jist see me way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits. "ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "ye don't handle yer pick right; can't ye see that? hold it this way." sometimes he would get down in the trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly amused some of the workmen. frequently he would exhibit to me little tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, always adding, "ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that." when he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around to the little wooden shed, where i was keeping the mass of orders and reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over the papers in the most knowing manner. when he had satisfied himself that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "ye're jist the b'y fer the place, teddy. ye'd made a good bookkeeper. if ever i get to be prisident, i'll make ye me sicretary av state." but the thing which really interested and enthralled rourke was the coming of the masons--those hardy buccaneers of the laboring world who come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no interference. plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor--a task worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. never in my life have i seen such a gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons represented, a most astounding lot. they were--are, i suppose i should say--our modern buccaneers and captain kidds of the laboring world, demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing them. seriously, i am not against union laborers. i like them. they spell rude, blazing life. but when you have to deal with them! plainly, rourke anticipated endless rows. their coming promised him the opportunity he inmostly desired, i suppose, of once more fussing and fuming with real, strong, determined and pugnacious men like himself, who would not take his onslaughts tamely but would fight him back, as he wished strong men to do. he was never weary of talking of them. "wait till we have thirty er forty av thim on the line," he once observed to me in connection with them, "every man layin' his six hundred bricks a day, er takin' aaf his apron! thim's the times ye'll see what excitement manes, me b'y. thim's the times." "what'll i see, rourke?" i asked interestedly. "throuble enough. shewer, they're no crapin' eyetalians, that'll let ye taalk to thim as ye pl'ase. indade not. ye'll have to fight with them fellies." "well, that's a queer state of affairs," i remarked, and then added, "do you think you can handle them, rourke?" "handle thim!" he exclaimed, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation of a possible conflict. "handle thim, an' the likes av a thousand av thim! i know them aall, every waan av thim, an' their thricks. it's naht foolin' me they'll be. but, me b'y," he added instructively, "it's a fine job ye'll have runnin' down to the ahffice gettin' their time." (this is the railroad man's expression for money due, or wages.) "ye'll have plenty av that to do, i'm tellin' ye." "you don't mean to say that you're going to discharge them, rourke, do you?" i asked. "shewer!" he exclaimed authoritatively. "why shouldn't i? they're jist the same as other min. why shouldn't i?" then he added, after a pause, "but it's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time instid av me givin' it to thim, niver fear. they're not the kind that'll let ye taalk back to thim. if their work don't suit ye, it's 'give me me time.' wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', an' not feelin' just right. thim's the times ye'll find out what masons arre made av, me b'y." i confess this probability did not seem as brilliant to me as it did to him, but it had its humor. i expressed wonder that he would hire them if they were such a bad lot. "where else will ye get min?" he demanded to know. "the unions have the best, an' the most av thim. thim outside fellies don't amount to much. they're aall pore, crapin' creatures. if it wasn't fer the railroad bein' against the union i wouldn't have thim at aall, and besides," he added thoughtfully, and with a keen show of feeling for their point of view, "they have a right to do as they pl'ase. shewer, it's no common workmen they arre. they can lay their eight hundred bricks a day, if they will, an' no advice from any waan. if ye was in their place ye'd do the same. there's no sinse in allowin' another man to waalk on ye whin ye can get another job. i don't blame thim. i was a mason wanst meself." "you don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to act?" "shewer!" "well, i shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it." "i have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "what kind av a man is it that'll let himself be waalked on? there's no sinse in it. it's naht natchral. it's naht intinded that it should be so." "very well," i said, smoothing the whole thing over, and so that ended. well, the masons came, and a fine lot of pirates they surely were. such independence! such defiance! such feverish punctilio in regard to their rights and what forms and procedures they were entitled to! i stared in amazement. for the most part they were hale, healthy, industrious looking creatures, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with them. really, they would have tried the patience of a saint, let alone a healthy, contentious irish foreman-mason. "first off," as the railroad men used to say, they wanted to know whether there were any non-union men on the job, and if so, would they be discharged instanter?--if not, no work--a situation which gave rourke several splendid opportunities for altercations, which he hastened to improve, although the non-union men _went_, of course. then they wanted to know when, where, and how they were to get their money, whether on demand at any time they chose, and this led to more trouble, since the railroad paid only once a month. however, this was adjusted by a special arrangement being made whereby the building department stood ready to pay them instantly on demand, only i had to run down to the division office each time and get their pay for them at any time that they came to ask for it! then came an argument (or many of them) as to the number of bricks they were to lay an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would work--all of which was pure food and drink to rourke. he was in his element at last, shouting, gesticulating, demanding that they leave or go to ----. after all these things had been adjusted, however, they finally consented to go to work, and then of course the work flew. it was a grand scene, really inspiring--forty or fifty masons on the line, perhaps half as many helpers or mixers, the italians carrying bricks, and a score of carpenters now arriving under another foreman to set the beams and lay the joists as the walls rose upward. rourke was about all the time now, arguing and gesticulating with this man or that, fighting with this one or the other, and calling always to some mason or other to "come down" and get his "time." "come down! come down!" i would hear, and then would see him rushing for the office, a defiant and even threatening mason at his heels; rourke demanding that i make out a time-check at once for the latter and go down to the "ahffice" and get the money, the while the mason hung about attempting to seduce other men to a similar point of view. once in a while, but only on rare occasions, rourke would patch up a truce with a man. as a rule, the mason was only too eager to leave and spend the money thus far earned, while rourke was curiously indifferent as to whether he went or stayed. "'tis to drink he waants," he would declare amusedly. to me it was all like a scene out of comic opera. toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result no doubt of weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. during this time rourke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down the upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. since things were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could look his contentiousness, and did. even now he would occasionally manage to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the customary descent to the office, but not often. but one cold december day, about three weeks later, when i was just about to announce that i could no longer delay my departure, seeing that my health was now as good, or nearly so, as my purse was lean, and that, whether i would or no, i must arrange to make more money, that a most dreadful accident occurred. it appeared that rourke and a number of italians, including matt and jimmie, were down in the main room of the building, now fast nearing completion, when the boiler of the hoisting engine, which had been placed inside the building and just at the juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked out this wall and the joists of the second and third floors loose, thus precipitating all of fifteen thousand bricks, which had been placed on the third floor, into this room below. for a few moments there had been a veritable hurricane of bricks and falling timber; and then, when it was over, it was found that the mighty rourke and five italians were embedded in or under them, and all but jimmie more or less seriously injured or killed. two italians were killed outright. a third died later. rourke, in particular, was unfortunately placed and terribly injured. his body from the waist down was completely buried by a pile of bricks, and across his shoulder lay a great joist pressing where it had struck him, and cutting his neck and ear. he was a pathetic sight when we entered, bleeding and pain-wrenched yet grim and undaunted, as one might have expected. "i'm tight fast, me lad," he said when he could speak. "it's me legs that's caught, not me body. but give a hand to the min, there. the eyetalians are underneath." disregarding his suggestion, however, we began working about him, every man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it. "'tind to the min!" he insisted with all of his old firmness. "the eyetalians are under there--matt an' jimmie. can't ye see that i'll be all right till ye get thim out? come, look after the min!" we fell to this end of the work, although by now others had arrived, and soon there was a great crowd assisting--men coming from the yard and the machine shop. although embedded in this mass of material and most severely injured, there was no gainsaying him, and he still insisted on directing us as best he could. but now he was so picturesque, so much nobler, really, than he had been in his healthier, uninjured days. a fabled giant, he seemed to me, half-god, half-man, composed in part of flesh, in part of brick and stone, gazing down on our earthly efforts with the eye of a demi-god. "come, now--get the j'ists from aaf the end, there. take the bricks away from that man. can't ye see? there's where his head is--there. there! jasus christ--theyer!" you would have thought we were italians ourselves, poor wisps of nothing, not his rescuers, but slaves, compelled to do his lordly bidding. after a time, however, we managed to release him and all his five helpers--two dead, as i say, and matt badly cut about the head and seriously injured, while jimmie, the imperturbable, was but little the worse for a brick mark on one shoulder. he was more or less frightened, of course, and comic to look at, even in this dread situation. "big-a smash," he exclaimed when he recovered himself. "like-a da worl' fall. misha rook! misha rook! where misha rook?" "here i am, ye eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding rourke genially, who was still partially embedded when jimmie was released. there was, however, a touch of sorrow in his voice as he added weakly, "arre ye hurted much?" "no, misha rook. help misha rook," replied jimmie, grabbing at bricks himself, and so the rescue work of "rook" went on. finally he was released, although not without deprecating our efforts the while (this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him), and exclaiming at one point as we tugged at joists and beams rather frantically, "take yer time. take yer time. i'm naht so bad fixed as aall that. take yer time. get that board out o' the way there, jimmie." but he was badly "fixed," and "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, and as he insisted he was not. his hip was severely crushed by the timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, although we did not know how badly at the time. only after we had removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize how serious was his plight. he was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors from two ambulances worked over him. while they were examining his wounds he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were doing, and offered one or two humorous suggestions. finally, when they were ready to move him he asked how he was, and on being told that he was all right, looked curiously about until he caught my eye. i could see that he realized how critical it was with him. "i'd like to see a priest, teddy," he whispered, "and, if ye don't mind, i'd like ye to go up to mount vernon an' tell me wife. they'll be after telegraphin' her if ye don't. break it aisy, if ye will. don't let 'er think there's anything serious. there's no need av it. i'm naht hurted so bad as aall that." i promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of cocaine into his hip to relieve what he knew must be his dreadful pain. a few moments later he lost consciousness, after which i left him to the care of the hospital authorities and hurried away to send the priest and to tell his wife. for a week thereafter he lingered in a very serious condition and finally died, blood-poisoning having set in. i saw him at the hospital a day or two before, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, i frequently spoke of what i deemed the dreadful uncertainty of life and the seeming carelessness of the engineer in charge of the hoisting engine. he, however, had no complaint to make. "ye must expect thim things," was his only comment. "ye can't aalways expect to go unhurted. i niver lost a man before, nor had one come to haarm. 'tis the way av things, ye see." mighty rourke! you would have thought the whole italian population of mount vernon knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. it was a state affair for most of them, and they came in scores, packing the little brick church at which he was accustomed to worship full to overflowing. matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. he was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands. "misha rook! misha rook!" i heard him say, as they bore the body in; and when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. as they lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable. "misha rook! misha rook! i work-a for him fifteen year!" _a mayor and his people_ here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest importance to every citizen of the united states. only it was not. or was it? who really knows? anyway, he and his career are entirely forgotten by now, and have been these many years. he was the mayor of one of those dreary new england mill towns in northern massachusetts--a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without change. during that time he had worked in various of the local mills, which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. he was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in that fashion. still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times--rather good pay for that region. by temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. for a long time, or until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political attention, its members (following our regular american, unintellectual custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman, some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public affairs--their city's affairs, to be exact. we are so wise in america, so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare. they were so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone. this club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about , when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of fifty-four votes--double the number it had succeeded in polling any previous year. a year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, and the next year six hundred. then suddenly the mayor who won that year's battle died, and a special election was called. here the club polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one. in the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen hundred, and in , when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, which elected him. if this fact be registered casually here, it was not so regarded in that typically new england mill town. ever study new england--its puritan, self-defensive, but unintellectual and selfish psychology? although this poor little snip of a mayor was only elected for one year, men paused astounded, those who had not voted for him, and several of the older conventional political and religious order, wedded to their church and all the routine of the average puritanic mill town, actually cried. no one knew, of course, who the new mayor was, or what he stood for. there were open assertions that the club behind him was anarchistic--that ever-ready charge against anything new in america--and that the courts should be called upon to prevent his being seated. and this from people who were as poorly "off" commercially and socially as any might well be. it was stated, as proving the worst, that he was, or had been, a mill worker!--and, before that a grocery clerk--both at twelve a week, or less!! immediate division of property, the forcing of all employers to pay as much as five a day to every laborer (an unheard-of sum in new england), and general constraint and subversion of individual rights (things then unknown in america, of course), loomed in the minds of these conventional americans as the natural and immediate result of so modest a victory. the old-time politicians and corporations who understood much better what the point was, the significance of this straw, were more or less disgruntled, but satisfied that it could be undone later. an actual conversation which occurred on one of the outlying street corners one evening about dusk will best illustrate the entire situation. "who is the man, anyway?" asked one citizen of a total stranger whom he had chanced to meet. "oh, no one in particular, i think. a grocery clerk, they say." "astonishing, isn't it? why, i never thought those people would get anything. why, they didn't even figure last year." "seems to be considerable doubt as to just what he'll do." "that's what i've been wondering. i don't take much stock in all their talk about anarchy. a man hasn't so very much power as mayor." "no," said the other. "we ought to give him a trial, anyway. he's won a big fight. i should like to see him, see what he looks like." "oh, nothing startling. i know him." "rather young, ain't he?" "yes." "where did he come from?" "oh, right around here." "was he a mill-hand?" "yes." the stranger made inquiry as to other facts and then turned off at a corner. "well," he observed at parting, "i don't know. i'm inclined to believe in the man. i should like to see him myself. good-night." "good-night," said the other, waving his hand. "when you see me again you will know that you are looking at the mayor." the inquirer stared after him and saw a six-foot citizen, of otherwise medium proportions, whose long, youthful face and mild gray eyes, with just a suggestion of washed-out blue in them, were hardly what was to be expected of a notorious and otherwise astounding political figure. "he is too young," was the earliest comments, when the public once became aware of his personality. "why, he is nothing but a grocery clerk," was another, the skeptical and condemnatory possibilities of which need not be dilated upon here. and he was, in his way--nothing much of a genius, as such things go in politics, but an interesting figure. without much taste (or its cultivated shadow) or great vision of any kind, he was still a man who sensed the evils of great and often unnecessary social inequalities and the need of reorganizing influences, which would tend to narrow the vast gulf between the unorganized and ignorant poor, and the huge beneficiaries of unearned (yes, and not even understood) increment. for what does the economic wisdom of the average capitalist amount to, after all: the narrow, gourmandizing hunger of the average multi-millionaire? at any rate, people watched him as he went to and fro between his office and his home, and reached the general conclusion after the first excitement had died down that he did not amount to much. when introduced into his office in the small but pleasant city hall, he came into contact with a "ring," and a fixed condition, which nobody imagined a lone young mayor could change. old-time politicians sat there giving out contracts for street-cleaning, lighting, improvements and supplies of all kinds, and a bond of mutual profit bound them closely together. "i don't think he can do much to hurt us," these individuals said one to another. "he don't amount to much." the mayor was not of a talkative or confiding turn. neither was he cold or wanting in good and natural manners. he was, however, of a preoccupied turn of mind, "up in the air," some called it, and smoked a good many cigars. "i think we ought to get together and have some sort of a conference about the letting of contracts," said the president of the city council to him one morning shortly after he had been installed. "you will find these gentlemen ready to meet you half-way in these matters." "i'm very glad to hear that," he replied. "i've something to say in my message to the council, which i'll send over in the morning." the old-time politician eyed him curiously, and he eyed the old-time politician in turn, not aggressively, but as if they might come to a very pleasant understanding if they wanted to, and then went back to his office. the next day his message was made public, and this was its key-note: "all contract work for the city should be let with a proviso, that the workmen employed receive not less than two dollars a day." the dissatisfied roar that followed was not long in making itself heard all over the city. "stuff and nonsense," yelled the office jobbers in a chorus. "socialism!" "anarchy!" "this thing must be put down!" "the city would be bankrupt in a year." "no contractor could afford to pay his ordinary day laborers two a day. the city could not afford to pay any contractor enough to do it." "the prosperity of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of the council hall. "we must find contractors." "we'll see about that," said the members of the opposition. "why, the man's crazy. if he thinks he can run this town on a goody-good basis and make everybody rich and happy, he's going to get badly fooled, that's all there is to that." fortunately for him three of the eight council members were fellows of the mayor's own economic beliefs, individuals elected on the same ticket with him. these men could not carry a resolution, but they could stop one from being carried over the mayor's veto. hence it was found that if the contracts could not be given to men satisfactory to the mayor they could not be given at all, and he stood in a fair way to win. "what the hell's the use of us sitting here day after day!" were the actual words of the leading members of the opposition in the council some weeks later, when the fight became wearisome. "we can't pass the contracts over his veto. i say let 'em go." so the proviso was tacked on, that two a day was the minimum wage to be allowed, and the contracts passed. the mayor's followers were exceedingly jubilant at this, more so than he, who was of a more cautious and less hopeful temperament. "not out of the woods yet, gentlemen," he remarked to a group of his adherents at the reform club. "we have to do a great many things sensibly if we expect to keep the people's confidence and 'win again.'" under the old system of letting contracts, whenever there was a wage rate stipulated, men were paid little or nothing, and the work was not done. there was no pretense of doing it. garbage and ashes accumulated, and papers littered the streets. the old contractor who had pocketed the appropriated sum thought to do so again. "i hear the citizens are complaining as much as ever," said the mayor to this individual one morning. "you will have to keep the streets clean." the contractor, a robust, thick-necked, heavy-jawed irishman, of just so much refinement as the sudden acquisition of a comfortable fortune would allow, looked him quizzically over, wondering whether he was "out" for a portion of the appropriation or whether he was really serious. "we can fix that between us," he said. "there's nothing to fix," replied the mayor. "all i want you to do is to clean the streets." the contractor went away and for a few days after the streets were really clean, but it was only for a few days. in his walks about the city the mayor himself found garbage and paper uncollected, and then called upon his new acquaintance again. "i'm mentioning this for the last time, mr. m----," he said. "you will have to fulfill your contract, or resign in favor of some one who will." "oh, i'll clean them, well enough," said this individual, after five minutes of rapid fire explanation. "two dollars a day for men is high, but i'll see that they're clean." again he went away, and again the mayor sauntered about, and then one morning sought out the contractor in his own office. "this is the end," he said, removing a cigar from his mouth and holding it before him with his elbow at right angles. "you are discharged from this work. i'll notify you officially to-morrow." "it can't be done the way you want it," the contractor exclaimed with an oath. "there's no money in it at two dollars. hell, anybody can see that." "very well," said the mayor in a kindly well-modulated tone. "let another man try, then." the next day he appointed a new contractor, and with a schedule before him showing how many men should be employed and how much profit he might expect, the latter succeeded. the garbage was daily removed, and the streets carefully cleaned. then there was a new manual training school about to be added to the public school system at this time, and the contract for building was to be let, when the mayor threw a bomb into the midst of the old-time jobbers at the city council. a contractor had already been chosen by them and the members were figuring out their profits, when at one of the public discussions of the subject the mayor said: "why shouldn't the city build it, gentlemen?" "how can it?" exclaimed the councilmen. "the city isn't an individual; it can't watch carefully." "it can hire its own architect, as well as any contractor. let's try it." there were sullen tempers in the council chamber after this, but the mayor was insistent. he called an architect who made a ridiculously low estimate. never had a public building been estimated so cheaply before. "see here," said one of the councilmen when the plans were presented to the chamber--"this isn't doing this city right, and the gentlemen of the council ought to put their feet down on any such venture as this. you're going to waste the city's money on some cheap thing in order to catch votes." "i'll publish the cost of the goods as delivered," said the mayor. "then the people can look at the building when it's built. we'll see how cheap it looks then." to head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. so the public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for political purposes set at naught. it was the first public structure erected by the city, and by all means the cheapest and best of all the city's buildings. excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to retain the interest of his constituents he would have to set about something which would endear him and his cause to the public. "i may be honest," he told one of his friends, "but honesty will play a lone hand with these people. the public isn't interested in its own welfare very much. it can't be bothered or hasn't the time. what i need is something that will impress it and still be worth while. i can't be reëlected on promises, or on my looks, either." when he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory legislation. he had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said that no municipality could do either of these things without first voting to do so three years in succession--a little precaution taken by the corporation representing such things long before he came into power. each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a law. "i know well enough that promises are all right," he said to one of his friends, "and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public won't take excuses from me for three years. if i want to be mayor again i want to be doing something, and doing it quick." in the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $ , , and subsequently increased to $ , , which was earning that year the actual sum of $ , over and above all expenses. it was getting ready to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the extent of $ , , when it occurred to the mayor that if the corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $ , investment as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $ , to investors, and put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a more reasonable figure. there was the three years' voting law, however, behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation lay comfortable and indifferent. the mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for awhile. he found that at the state capital there was a state board, or commission, which had been created to look after gas companies in general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered themselves unjustly treated. "this is the thing for me," he said. lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas rate. when he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would generate would be something much more than local. back of the local reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the state and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question. "you mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?" asked a prominent member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him. "i represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company." "i certainly do," replied the mayor. "well," replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, after expostulating a long time and offering various "reasons" why it would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor not to proceed, "i've said all i can say. now i want to tell you that you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin. you're not dealing with this town now; you're dealing with the state, the whole nation. these corporations can't afford to let you win, and they won't. you're not the one to do it; you're not big enough." the mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that. the lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it proposed to issue had been placed. he also sent for a gas expert and set him to figuring out a case for the people. it was found by this gentleman that since the company was first organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding this fact, had paid twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends. all the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the mayor with his counsel took the train for the state capitol. never was there more excitement in political circles than when this young representative of no important political organization whatsoever arrived at the state capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the private audience room of the commission. every gas company, as well as every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as in the commission chambers in the state capitol where the hearing was to be. they wanted to know about him--why he was doing this, whether it wasn't a "strike" or the work of some rival corporation. the fact that he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe. "gentlemen," said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces in the commission chambers at the capitol, "i miscalculated but one thing in this case which i am about to lay before you, and that is the extent of public interest. i came here prepared to make a private argument, but now i want to ask the privilege of making it public. i see the public itself is interested, or should be. i will ask leave to postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow." there was considerable hemming and hawing over this, since from the point of view of the corporation it was most undesirable, but the commission was practically powerless to do aught but grant his request. and meanwhile the interest created by the newspapers added power to his cause. hunting up the several representatives and senators from his district, he compelled them to take cognizance of the cause for which he was battling, and when the morning of the public hearing arrived a large audience was assembled in the chamber of representatives. when the final moment arrived the young mayor came forward, and after making a very simple statement of the cause which led him to request a public hearing and the local condition which he considered unfair begged leave to introduce an expert, a national examiner of gas plants and lighting facilities, for whom he had sent, and whose twenty years of experience in this line had enabled him to prepare a paper on the condition of the gas-payers in the mayor's city. the commission was not a little surprised by this, but signified its willingness to hear the expert as counsel for the city, and as his statement was read a very clear light was thrown upon the situation. counsel for the various gas corporations interrupted freely. the mayor himself was constantly drawn into the argument, but his replies were so simple and convincing that there was not much satisfaction to be had in stirring him. instead, the various counsel took refuge in long-winded discussions about the methods of conducting gas plants in other cities, the cost of machinery, labor and the like, which took days and days, and threatened to extend into weeks. the astounding facts concerning large profits and the present intentions of not only this but every other company in the state could not be dismissed. in fact the revelation of huge corporation profits everywhere became so disturbing that after the committee had considered and re-considered, it finally, when threatened with political extermination, voted to reduce the price of gas to eighty cents. it is needless to suggest the local influence of this decision. when the mayor came home he received an ovation, and that at the hands of many of the people who had once been so fearful of him, but he knew that this enthusiasm would not last long. many disgruntled elements were warring against him, and others were being more and more stirred up. his home life was looked into as well as his past, his least childish or private actions. it was a case of finding other opportunities for public usefulness, or falling into the innocuous peace which would result in his defeat. in the platform on which he had been elected was a plank which declared that it was the intention of this party, if elected, to abolish local grade crossings, the maintenance of which had been the cause of numerous accidents and much public complaint. with this plank he now proposed to deal. in this of course he was hampered by the law before mentioned, which declared that no city could abolish its grade crossings without having first submitted the matter to the people during three successive years and obtained their approval each time. behind this law was not now, however, as in the case of the gas company, a small $ , corporation, but all the railroads which controlled new england, and to which brains and legislators, courts and juries, were mere adjuncts. furthermore, the question would have to be voted on at the same time as his candidacy, and this would have deterred many another more ambitious politician. the mayor was not to be deterred, however. he began his agitation, and the enemy began theirs, but in the midst of what seemed to be a fair battle the great railway company endeavored to steal a march. there was suddenly and secretly introduced into the lower house of the state legislature a bill which in deceptive phraseology declared that the law which allowed all cities, by three successive votes, to abolish grade crossings in three years, was, in the case of a particular city mentioned, hereby abrogated for a term of four years. the question might not even be discussed politically. when the news of this attempt reached the mayor, he took the first train for the state capitol and arrived there just in time to come upon the floor of the house when the bill was being taken up for discussion. he asked leave to make a statement. great excitement was aroused by his timely arrival. those who secretly favored the bill endeavored to have the matter referred to a committee, but this was not to be. one member moved to go on with the consideration of the bill, and after a close vote the motion carried. the mayor was then introduced. after a few moments, in which the silent self-communing with which he introduced himself impressed everyone with his sincerity, he said: "i am accused of objecting to this measure because its enactment will remove, as a political issue, the one cause upon which i base my hope for reëlection. if there are no elevated crossings to vote for, there will be no excuse for voting for me. gentlemen, you mistake the temper and the intellect of the people of our city. it is you who see political significance in this thing, but let me assure you that it is of a far different kind from that which you conceive. if the passing of this measure had any significance to me other than the apparent wrong of it, i would get down on my knees and urge its immediate acceptance. nothing could elect me quicker. nothing could bury the opposition further from view. if you wish above all things to accomplish my triumph you will only need to interfere with the rights of our city in this arbitrary manner, and you will have the thing done. i could absolutely ask nothing more." the gentlemen who had this measure in charge weighed well these assertions and trifled for weeks with the matter, trying to make up their minds. meanwhile election time approached, and amid the growing interest of politics it was thought unwise to deal with it. a great fight was arranged for locally, in which every conceivable element of opposition was beautifully harmonized by forces and conceptions which it is almost impossible to explain. democrats, republicans, prohibitionists, saloon men and religious circles, all were gathered into one harmonious body and inspired with a single idea, that of defeating the mayor. from some quarter, not exactly identified, was issued a call for a civic committee of fifty, which should take into its hands the duty of rescuing the city from what was termed a "throttling policy of commercial oppression and anarchy." democrats, republicans, liquor and anti-liquorites, were invited to the same central meeting place, and came. money was not lacking, nor able minds, to prepare campaign literature. it was openly charged that a blank check was handed in to the chairman of this body by the railway whose crossings were in danger, to be filled out for any amount necessary to the destruction of the official upstart who was seeking to revolutionize old methods and conditions. as may be expected, this opposition did not lack daring in making assertions contrary to facts. charges were now made that the mayor was in league with the railroad to foist upon the city a great burden of expense, because the law under which cities could compel railroads to elevate their tracks declared that one-fifth of the burden of expense must be borne by the city and the remaining four-fifths by the railroad. it would saddle a debt of $ , upon the taxpayers, they said, and give them little in return. all the advantage would be with the railroad. "postpone this action until the railroad can be forced to bear the entire expense, as it justly should," declared handbill writers, whose services were readily rendered to those who could afford to pay for them. the mayor and his committee, although poor, answered with handbills and street corner speeches, in which he showed that even with the extravagantly estimated debt of $ , , the city's tax-rate would not be increased by quite six cents to the individual. the cry that each man would have to pay five dollars more each year for ten years was thus wholesomely disposed of, and the campaign proceeded. now came every conceivable sort of charge. if he were not defeated, all reputable merchants would surely leave the city. capital was certainly being scared off. there would be idle factories and empty stomachs. look out for hard times. no one but a fool would invest in a city thus hampered. in reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits received. he, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number of those intending to vote for him. the closest calculations of the enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as sufficient to defeat him. this proved to the mayor that he must have three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. these he hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the eventual morning came. the night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least, in a blaze of glory, so to speak. dozens of speakers for both causes were about the street corners and in the city meeting room. oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. even a great parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed off as enthusiastic citizens. "horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement. next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified. not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. it was an inspiring victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. the latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised. the crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to take them off their hands at half price. for a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard of the commercial destruction of the city. gas stood, as decided, at eighty cents a thousand. a new manual training school, built at a very nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. the public waterworks had also been enlarged and the rates reduced. the streets were clean. then the mayor made another innovation. during his first term of office there had been a weekly meeting of the reform club, at which he appeared and talked freely of his plans and difficulties. these meetings he now proposed to make public. every wednesday evening for a year thereafter a spectacle of municipal self-consciousness was witnessed, which those who saw it felt sure would redound to the greater strength and popularity of the mayor. in a large hall, devoted to public gatherings, a municipal meeting was held. every one was invited. the mayor was both host and guest, an individual who chose to explain his conduct and his difficulties and to ask advice. there his constituents gathered, not only to hear but to offer counsel. "gentlemen," so ran the gist of his remarks on various of these occasions, "the present week has proved a most trying one. i am confronted by a number of difficult problems, which i will now try to explain to you. in the first place, you know my limitations as to power in the council. but three members now vote for me, and it is only by mutual concessions that we move forward at all." then would follow a detailed statement of the difficulties, and a general discussion. the commonest laborer was free to offer his advice. every question was answered in the broadest spirit of fellowship. an inquiry as to "what to do" frequently brought the most helpful advice. weak and impossible solutions were met as such, and shown to be what they were. radicals were assuaged, conservatives urged forward. the whole political situation was so detailed and explained that no intelligent person could leave, it was thought, with a false impression of the mayor's position or intent. with five thousand or more such associated citizens abroad each day explaining, defending, approving the official conduct of the mayor, because they understood it, no misleading conceptions, it was thought, could arise. men said that his purpose and current leaning in any matter was always clear. he was thought to be closer to his constituency than any other official within the whole range of the americas and that there could be nothing but unreasoning partisan opposition to his rule. after one year of such service a presidential campaign drew near, and the mayor's campaign for reëlection had to be contested at the same time. no gas monopoly evil was now a subject of contention. streets were clean, contracts fairly executed; the general municipal interests as satisfactorily attended to as could be expected. only the grade crossing war remained as an issue, and that would require still another vote after this. his record was the only available campaign argument. on the other side, however, were the two organizations of the locally defeated great parties, and the railroad. the latter, insistent in its bitterness, now organized these two bodies into a powerful opposition. newspapers were subsidized; the national significance of the campaign magnified; a large number of railroad-hands colonized. when the final weeks of the campaign arrived a bitter contest was waged, and money triumphed. five thousand four hundred votes were cast for the mayor. five thousand four hundred and fifty for the opposing candidate, who was of the same party as the successful presidential nominee. it was a bitter blow, but still one easily borne by the mayor, who was considerable of a philosopher. with simple, undisturbed grace he retired, and three days later applied to one of the principal shoe factories for work at his trade. "what? you're not looking for a job, are you?" exclaimed the astonished foreman. "i am," said the mayor. "you can go to work, all right, but i should think you could get into something better now." "i suppose i can later," he replied, "when i complete my law studies. just now i want to do this for a change, to see how things are with the rank and file." and donning the apron he had brought with him he went to work. it was not long, however, before he was discharged, largely because of partisan influence anxious to drive him out of that region. it was said that this move of seeking a job in so simple a way was a bit of "grand standing"--insincere--that he didn't need to do it, and that he was trying to pile up political capital against the future. a little later a local grocery man of his social faith offered him a position as clerk, and for some odd reason--humanitarian and sectarian, possibly--he accepted this. at any rate, here he labored for a little while. again many said he was attempting to make political capital out of this simple life in order to further his political interests later, and this possibly, even probably, was true. all men have methods of fighting for that which they believe. so here he worked for a time, while a large number of agencies pro and con continued to denounce or praise him, to ridicule or extol his so-called jeffersonian simplicity. it was at this time that i encountered him--a tall, spare, capable and interesting individual, who willingly took me into his confidence and explained all that had hitherto befallen him. he was most interesting, really, a figure to commemorate in this fashion. in one of the rooms of his very humble home--a kind of office or den, in a small house such as any clerk or working-man might occupy--was a collection of clippings, laudatory, inquiring, and abusive, which would have done credit to a candidate for the highest office in the land. one would have judged by the scrap-books and envelopes stuffed to overflowing with long newspaper articles and editorials that had been cut from papers all over the country from florida to oregon, that his every movement at this time and earlier was all-essential to the people. plainly, he had been watched, spied upon, and ignored by one class, while being hailed, praised and invited by another. magazine editors had called upon him for contributions, journalists from the large cities had sought him out to obtain his actual views, citizens' leagues in various parts of the nation had invited him to come and speak, and yet he was still a very young man in years, not over-intelligent politically or philosophically, the ex-mayor of a small city, and the representative of no great organization of any sort. in his retirement he was now comforted, if one can be so comforted, by these memories, still fresh in his mind and by the hope possibly for his own future, as well as by a droll humor with which he was wont to select the sharpest and most willful slur upon his unimpeachable conduct as an offering to public curiosity. "do you really want to know what people think of me?" he said to me on one occasion. "well, here's something. read this." and then he would hand me a bunch of the bitterest attacks possible, attacks which pictured him as a sly and treacherous enemy of the people--or worse yet a bounding anarchistic ignoramus. personally i could not help admiring his stoic mood. it was superior to that of his detractors. apparent falsehoods did not anger him. evident misunderstandings could not, seemingly, disturb him. "what do you expect?" he once said to me, after i had made a very careful study of his career for a current magazine, which, curiously, was never published. i was trying to get him to admit that he believed that his example might be fruitful of results agreeable to him in the future. i could not conclude that he really agreed with me. "people do not remember; they forget. they remember so long as you are directly before them with something that interests them. that may be a lower gas-rate, or a band that plays good music. people like strong people, and only strong people, characters of that sort--good, bad or indifferent--i've found that out. if a man or a corporation is stronger than i am, comes along and denounces me, or spends more money than i do (or can), buys more beers, makes larger promises, it is 'all day' for me. what has happened in my case is that, for the present, anyhow, i have come up against a strong corporation, stronger than i am. what i now need to do is to go out somewhere and get some more strength in some way, it doesn't matter much how. people are not so much interested in me or you, or your or my ideals in their behalf, as they are in strength, an interesting spectacle. and they are easily deceived. these big fighting corporations with their attorneys and politicians and newspapers make me look weak--puny. so the people forget me. if i could get out, raise one million or five hundred thousand dollars and give the corporations a good drubbing, they would adore me--for awhile. then i would have to go out and get another five hundred thousand somewhere, or do something else." "quite so," i replied. "yet _vox populi, vox dei_." sitting upon his own doorstep one evening, in a very modest quarter of the city, i said: "were you very much depressed by your defeat the last time?" "not at all," he replied. "action, reaction, that's the law. all these things right themselves in time, i suppose, or, anyhow, they ought to. maybe they don't. some man who can hand the people what they really need or ought to have will triumph, i suppose, some time. i don't know, i'm sure. i hope so. i think the world is moving on, all right." in his serene and youthful face, the pale blue, philosophical eyes, was no evidence of dissatisfaction with the strange experiences through which he had passed. "you're entirely philosophical, are you?" "as much as any one can be, i suppose. they seem to think that all my work was an evidence of my worthlessness," he said. "well, maybe it was. self-interest may be the true law, and the best force. i haven't quite made up my mind yet. my sympathies of course are all the other way. 'he ought to be sewing shoes in the penitentiary,' one paper once said of me. another advised me to try something that was not above my intelligence, such as breaking rock or shoveling dirt. most of them agreed, however," he added with a humorous twitch of his large, expressive mouth, "that i'll do very well if i will only stay where i am, or, better yet, get out of here. they want me to leave. that's the best solution for them." he seemed to repress a smile that was hovering on his lips. "the voice of the enemy," i commented. "yes, sir, the voice of the enemy," he added. "but don't think that i think i'm done for. not at all. i have just returned to my old ways in order to think this thing out. in a year or two i'll have solved my problem, i hope. i may have to leave here, and i may not. anyhow, i'll turn up somewhere, with something." he did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to revert to him again, and five years later, in a fairly comfortable managerial position in new york, he died. he had made a fight, well enough, but the time, the place, the stars, perhaps, were not quite right. he had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull him through. adherents did not flock to him and save him. possibly he wasn't magnetic enough--that pagan, non-moral, non-propagandistic quality, anyhow. the fates did not fight for him as they do for some, those fates that ignore the billions and billions of others who fail. yet are not all lives more or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time or another, contrasted, let us say, with what they hoped for? we compromise so much with everything--our dreams and all. as for his reforms, they may be coming fast enough, or they may not. _in medias res._ but as for him...? _w.l.s._ life's little ironies are not always manifest. we hear distant rumbling sounds of its tragedies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the reality. therefore the real incidents which i am about to relate may have some value. i first called upon w.l. s----, jr., in the winter of . i had known of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by seeing his name in one of the great sunday papers attached to several drawings of the most lively interest. these drawings depicted night scenes of the city of new york, and appeared as colored supplements, eleven by eighteen inches. they represented the spectacular scenes which the citizen and the stranger most delight in--madison square in a drizzle; the bowery lighted by a thousand lamps and crowded with "l" and surface cars; sixth avenue looking north from fourteenth street. i was a youthful editor at the time and on the lookout for interesting illustrations of this sort, and when a little later i was in need of a colored supplement for the christmas number i decided to call upon s----. i knew absolutely nothing about the world of art save what i had gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, therefore, in a mood to behold something exceedingly bizarre in the atmosphere with which i should find my illustrator surrounded. i was not disappointed. it was at the time when artists--i mean american artists principally--went in very strongly for that sort of thing. only a few years before they had all been going to paris, not so much to paint as to find out and imitate how artists _do_ and live. i was greeted by a small, wiry, lean-looking individual arrayed in a bicycle suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual look of astonishment. he had one eye which fixed you with a strange, unmoving solemnity, owing to the fact that it was glass. his skin was anything but fair, and might be termed sallow. he wore a close, sharp-pointed vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at almost right angles upon his nose. his forehead was high, his good eye alert, his hair sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole manner indicated thought, feeling, remarkable nervous energy, and, above all, a rasping and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise. i noticed no more than this on my first visit, owing to the fact that i was very much overawed and greatly concerned about the price which he would charge me, not knowing what rate he might wish to exact, and being desirous of coming away at least unabashed by his magnificence and independence. "what's it for?" he asked, when i suggested a drawing. i informed him. "you say you want it for a double-page center?" "yes." "well, i'll do it for three hundred dollars." i was taken considerably aback, as i had not contemplated paying more than one hundred. "i get that from all the magazines," he added, seeing my hesitation, "wherever a supplement is intended." "i don't think i could pay more than one hundred," i said, after a few moments' consideration. "you couldn't?" he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me. i shook my head. "well," he said, "let's see a copy of your publication." the chief value of this conversation was that it taught me that the man's manner was no indication of his mood. i had thought he was impatient and indifferent, but i saw now that he was not so, rather brusque merely. he was simply excitable, somewhat like the french, and meant only to be businesslike. the upshot of it all was that he agreed to do it for one hundred and fifty, and asked me very solemnly to say nothing about it. i may say here that i came upon s---- in the full blush of his fancies and ambitions, and just when he was verging upon their realization. he was not yet successful. a hundred and fifty dollars was a very fair price indeed. his powers, however, had reached that stage where they would soon command their full value. i could see at once that he was very ambitious. he was bubbling over with the enthusiasm of youth and an intense desire for recognition. he knew he had talent. the knowledge of it gave him an air and an independence of manner which might have been irritating to some. besides, he was slightly affected, argue to the contrary as he would, and was altogether full of his own hopes and ambitions. the matter of painting this picture necessitated my presence on several occasions, and during this time i got better acquainted with him. certain ideas and desires which we held in common drew us toward each other, and i soon began to see that he was much above the average in insight and skill. he talked with the greatest ease upon a score of subjects--literature, art, politics, music, the drama, and history. he seemed to have read the latest novels; to have seen many of the current plays; to have talked with important people. theodore roosevelt, previously police commissioner but then governor, often came to his studio to talk and play chess with him. a very able architect was his friend. he had artist associates galore, many of whom had studios in the same building or the immediate vicinity. and there were literary and business men as well, all of whom seemed to enjoy his company, and who were very fond of calling and spending an hour in his studio. i had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me a steamship he had constructed with his own hands--a fair-sized model, complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and water. i soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was great. he was a member of several engineering societies, and devoted some part of his carefully organized days to studying and keeping up with problems in mechanics. "oh, that's nothing," he observed, when i marveled at the size and perfection of the model. "i'll show you something else, if you have time some day, which may amuse you." he then explained that he had constructed several model warships, and that it was his pleasure to take them out and fight them on a pond somewhere out on long island. "we'll go out some day," he said when i showed appropriate interest, "and have them fight each other. you'll see how it's done!" i waited some time for this outing, and finally mentioned it. "we'll go tomorrow," he said. "can you be around here by ten o'clock?" ten the next morning saw me promptly at the studio, and five minutes later we were off. when we arrived at long island city we went to the first convenient arm of the sea and undid the precious fighters, in which he much delighted. after studying the contour of the little inlet for a few moments he took some measurements with a tape-line, stuck up two twigs in two places for guide posts, and proceeded to fire and get up steam in his war-ships. afterwards he set the rudders, and then took them to the water-side and floated them at the points where he had placed the twigs. these few details accomplished, he again studied the situation carefully, headed the vessels to the fraction of an inch toward a certain point of the opposite shore, and began testing the steam. "when i say ready, you push this lever here," he said, indicating a little brass handle fastened to the stern-post. "don't let her move an inch until you do that. you'll see some tall firing." he hastened to the other side where his own boat was anchored, and began an excited examination. he was like a school-boy with a fine toy. at a word, i moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began steaming out toward one another. their weight and speed were such that the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows struck with an audible crack. this threw them side by side, steaming head on together. at the same time it operated to set in motion their guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a suggestion of rapid revolver practice. quite a smoke rose, and when it rolled away one of the vessels was already nearly under water and the other was keeling with the inflow of water from the port side. s---- lost no time, but throwing off his coat, jumped in and swam to the rescue. throughout this entire incident his manner was that of an enthusiastic boy who had something exceedingly novel. he did not laugh. in all our acquaintance i never once heard him give a sound, hearty laugh. instead he cackled. his delight apparently could only express itself in that way. in the main it showed itself in an excess of sharp movements, short verbal expressions, gleams of the eye. i saw from this the man's delight in the science of engineering, and humored him in it. he was thereafter at the greatest pains to show all that he had under way in the mechanical line, and schemes he had for enjoying himself in this work in the future. it seemed rather a recreation for him than anything else. like him, i could not help delighting in the perfect toys which he created, but the intricate details and slow process of manufacture were brain-racking. for not only would he draw the engine in all its parts, but he would buy the raw material and cast and drill and polish each separate part. upon my second visit i was deeply impressed by the sight of a fine passenger engine, a duplicate of the great of the new york central, of those days. it stood on brass rails laid along an old library shelf that had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the studio. this engine was a splendid object to look upon, strong, heavy, silent-running, with the fineness and grace of a perfect sewing-machine. it was duly trimmed with brass and nickel, after the manner of the great "flyers," and seemed so sturdy and powerful that one could not restrain the desire to see it run. "how do you like that?" s---- exclaimed when he saw me looking at it. "it's splendid," i said. "see how she runs," he exclaimed, moving it up and down. "no noise about that." he fairly caressed the mechanism with his hand, and went off into a most careful analysis of its qualities. "i could build that engine," he exclaimed at last, enthusiastically, "if i were down in the baldwin company's place. i could make her break the record." "i haven't the slightest doubt in the world," i answered. this engine was a source of great expense to him, as well as the chief point in a fine scheme. he had made brass rails for it--sufficient to extend about the four sides of the studio--something like seventy feet. he had made most handsome passenger-cars with full equipment of brakes, vestibules, pintsch gas, and so on, and had painted on their sides "the great pullman line." one day, when we were quite friendly, he brought from his home all the rails, in a carpet-bag, and gave an exhibition of his engine's speed, attaching the cars and getting up sufficient steam to cause the engine to race about the room at a rate which was actually exciting. he had an arrangement by which it would pick up water and stop automatically. it was on this occasion that he confided what he called his great biograph scheme, the then forerunner of the latter day moving pictures. it was all so new then, almost a rumor, like that of the flying machine before it was invented. "i propose to let the people see the photographic representation of an actual wreck--engine, cars, people, all tumbled down together after a collision, and no imitation, either--the actual thing." "how do you propose to do it?" i asked. "well, that's the thing," he said, banteringly. "now, how do you suppose i'd do it?" "hire a railroad to have a wreck and kill a few people," i suggested. "well, i've got a better thing than that. a railroad couldn't plan anything more real than mine will be." i was intensely curious because of the novelty of the thing at that time. the "biograph" was in its infancy. "this is it," he exclaimed suddenly. "you see how realistic this engine is, don't you?" i acknowledged that i did. "well," he confided, "i'm building another just like it. it's costing me three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more. now, i'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of woods, a river, and a bridge. i'm going to make the water tumble over big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. then i'm going to lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge and off into the woods again. "i'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the bridge. just when they come into view where they can see each other, a post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump. when the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up." "then what?" i asked. "well, i've got it planned automatically so that you will see people jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. don't you believe it?" he added, as i smiled at the idea. "look here," and he produced a model of one of the occupants of the cars. he labored for an hour to show all the intricate details, until i was compelled to admit the practicability and novelty of the idea. then he explained that instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at such close range that the picture would appear life size. the actuality of the occurrence would do the rest. skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when i saw the second train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and several companies which wished to gain control of the result, i was perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized. as i have said, when i first met s---- he had not realized any of his dreams. it was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. he surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with which he went about all things. "i've got an order from the _ladies' home journal_," he said to me one day. "they came to me." "good," i said. "what is it?" "somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of new york." he had before him an academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a midnight express striking out across the jersey meadows with sparks blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. it was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms. "i want to make a good thing of this," he said. "it may do me some good." a little later he received his first order from harper's. he could not disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an air. it was just before the spanish war broke out, and the sketches he was to do related to the navy. he labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. marine construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the mechanical detail. when he made the pictures they represented all that he felt. "you know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them. "yes." "i set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when they were through." "did you get them?" "yep. it will give them more respect for what i'm trying to do," he said. not long after he illustrated one of kipling's stories. he was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. one could see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over it. at this time kipling came to his studio. it was by special arrangement, but s---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receive authors. they talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away. "it's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his feelings. "i want to do something good on this." through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to his friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics i have described. his drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, on to distinction. in the first six months of his studio life he had learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and assume the foils with one of his companions. as our friendship increased i found how many were the man's accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. he was an expert bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make an amateur envious. he could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which i heard the very day i learned that he could sing. it so happened that it was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and i invited him to come with me that especial evening. "can't do it," he replied. "all right," i said. "i'm part of an entertainment tonight, or i would," he added apologetically. "what do you do?" i inquired. "sing." "get out!" i said. "so be it," he answered. "come up this evening." to this i finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with which he rendered his solo. he had an exquisitely clear and powerful voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to acknowledge by singing again. the influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a nature. it seems to me that i could have told by his manner, day by day, the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. he was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was told in his eye. sometime in the second year of our acquaintance i called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my office door. it was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "i called," together with any word he might have to say. this day he was in his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was only a blind. he had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his personal affairs with him, and i soon saw that he had something very interesting, to himself, to communicate. at last he said,-- "i'm going to europe next summer." "is that so?" i replied. "for pleasure?" "well, partly." "what's up outside of that?" i asked. "i'm going to represent the american architectural league at the international convention." "i didn't know you were an architect," i said. "well, i'm not," he answered, "professionally. i've studied it pretty thoroughly." "well, you seem to be coming up, louis," i remarked. "i'm doing all right," he answered. he went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was doing. he had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse most entertainingly at the same time. he seemed to enjoy company under such circumstances. "you didn't know i was a baron, did you?" he finally observed. "no," i answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment. "where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?" "in germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly. then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood up. "you don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping glasses. "why, certainly i believe you, if you are serious. are you truly a baron?" "it was this way," he said. "my grandfather was a baron. my father was the younger of two brothers. his brother got the title and what was left of the estate. that he managed to go through with, and then he died. now, no one has bothered about the title--" "and you're going back to claim it?" "exactly." i took it all lightly at first, but in time i began to perceive that it was a serious ambition. he truly wanted to be baron s---- and add to himself the luster of his ancestors. with all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood as a seeker after life and new experiences. being a baron was merely a new experience, or promised to be. he had the liveliest sympathies for republican theories and institutions--only he considered his life a thing apart. he had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised. he could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to christian science. naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but was never weary of discussing the power of mind--a universal mind even--its wondrous ramifications and influences. also he was a student of the english school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. thus he worked out by means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of friendship which is too intricate to explain here. from now on i watched his career with the liveliest interest. he was a charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the obligations which such a relationship demands. i heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his triumphs, now more and more frequent. one spring he went to europe and spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here and there at the same time. he did the illustrations for one of kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the american water-color society. i shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting body. he worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to gain him a vote of admission. he mentioned it frequently and fixed me with his eyes to see what i thought of him. "go ahead," i said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many another i know. try hard." he painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. they were very interesting after their kind. two were scenes from the great railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. three of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. the third was _skyed_, but he was admitted to membership. i was delighted for his sake, for i could see, when he gave me the intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous system. not long after this we were walking on broadway, one drizzly autumn evening, on our way to the theater. life, ambition, and our future were the _small_ subjects under discussion. the street, as usual, was crowded. on every hand blazed the fire signs. the yellow lights were beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones glistening with water. when we reached greeley square (at that time a brilliant and almost sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), s---- took me by the arm. "come over here," he said. "i want you to look at it from here." he took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the converging streets, one could not only see greeley square but a large part of herald square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. it was a kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. the broad, converging walks were alive with people. a perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the horse and cable cars intersected. overhead was the elevated station, its lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds--crowds like shadows moving in a dream. "do you see the quality of that? look at the blend of the lights and shadows in there under the l." i looked and gazed in silent admiration. "see, right here before us--that pool of water there--do you get that? now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. it's a prism. don't you see the hundred points of light?" i acknowledged the variety of color, which i had scarcely observed before. "you may think one would skip that in viewing a great scene, but the artist mustn't. he must get all, whether you notice it or not. it gives feeling, even when you don't see it." i acknowledged the value of this ideal. "it's a great spectacle," he said. "it's got more flesh and blood in it than people usually think. it's easy to make it too mechanical and commonplace." "why don't you paint it?" i asked. he turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion. "that's something i want to tell you," he said. "i am. i've sketched it a half-dozen times already. i haven't got it yet. but i'm going to." i heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the spanish-american war broke out. then he was off in a great rush of war work. i scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own, but i saw his name. one day in broadway i stopped to see why a large crowd was gathered about a window in the hoffman house. it was one of s----'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been sitting at the bottom of the sea. the fishes, the green water, the hull of a massive war-ship--all were there--and about, the grim torpedoes. this put it into my head to go and see him. he was as tense and strenuous as ever. the glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was more than ever in his eye. his body was almost sore from traveling. "i am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "i am going to tampa." "be gone long?" i asked. "not this first time. i'll only be down there three weeks." "i'll see you then." "supposing we make it certain," he said. "what do you say to dining together this coming sunday three weeks?" i went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must now soon begin to come true. he was growing in reputation. some war pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. then he would paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and be a great man. three weeks later i knocked at his studio door. it was a fine springlike day, though it was in february. i expected confidently to hear his quick aggressive step inside. not a sound in reply. i knocked harder, but still received no answer. then i went to the other doors about. he might be with his friends, but they were not in. i went away thinking that his war duties had interfered, that he had not returned. nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the building in which his studio was located. i felt as if it should not be, and decided to call again. monday it was the same, and tuesday. that same evening i was sitting in the library of the salmagundi club, when a well-known artist addressed me. "you knew s----, didn't you?" he said. "yes; what of it?" "you knew he was dead, didn't you?" "what!" i said. "yes, he died of fever, this morning." i looked at him without speaking for a moment. "too bad," he said. "a clever boy, louis. awfully clever. i feel sorry for his father." it did not take long to verify his statement. his name was in the perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. no other notice of any sort. only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived. and yet it seemed _to me_ that a great tragedy had happened--he was so ambitious, so full of plans. his dreams were so near fulfillment. i saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. his desks revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these came to nothing. there was no one to continue the work. my feeling at the time was as if i had been looking at a beautiful lamp, lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. we toil so much, we dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened. we are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all which apparently we so much crave--even as, breathlessly, we are still running. [transcriber's note: typos have been corrected in this document, but spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.] microcosmography; or, a piece of the world discovered; in essays and characters. microcosmography; or, a piece of the world discovered; in essays and characters by john earle, d.d. _a reprint of dr. bliss's edition of ._ with a preface and supplementary appendix by s. t. irwin. bristol: published by w. crofton hemmons. london: simpkin, marshall, hamilton, kent & co., ltd. to the memory of the reverend david wright, "the grave divine" of these pages, whose name will live in bristol as long as men care for beauty of character, richness of thought, or distinction of speech, this bristol reprint is inscribed. "from the contagion of the world's slow stain he was secure." preface. it may be reasonably asked why dr. bliss's[a] edition of the microcosmography should require a preface, and the answer is that it does not require one. it would be difficult to have a more scholarly, more adequate, more self-sufficing edition of a favourite book. almost everything that helps the elucidation of the text, almost everything about bishop earle that could heighten our affection for him (there is nothing known to his disparagement) is to be found here.[b] and affection for the editor is conciliated by the way. it is not only his standard of equipment that secures this--a standard that might have satisfied mark pattison[c]--but also the painstaking love revealed in it, which, like every other true love, whether of men or books, will not give of that which costs it nothing. and, as a further title to our regard, dr. bliss is amusing at his own expense, and compares himself to earle's "critic," who swells books into folios with his comments. not that this humorous self-depreciation is to be pressed; for, unlike that critic, he is no "troublesome vexer of the dead." but though there is no need of a preface, i have two excuses for writing one. the first is that i was asked to do it by my friend mr. frank george, of bristol, who wished to see the book reprinted; and the second is the old _professio pietatis_, which seemed to tacitus a sufficient defence of the agricola, and may perhaps be allowed to serve humbler people as well. what earle says of men is no less true of books: "acquaintance is the first draught of a friend. men take a degree in our respect till at last they wholly possess us;" and the history of this possession must, in every case, have a sort of interest, as long as it is not carried to the point of demanding from others the superlatives we permit to ourselves. it is sufficiently common for people to like the same book for different reasons; and where an author has a secure place in english literature, his shade, like the deity of utopia, may be best pleased with a manifold and various worship.[d] the character of earle, as drawn by clarendon, is itself a guarantee for his studies of character; and the fact that lord falkland was his chosen friend is evidence of his possessing something of that sweet reasonableness of temper for which his host was so remarkable. "he was very dear" (we are told) "to the lord falkland, with whom he spent as much time as he could make his own." indeed, "mr. earles would frequently profess that he had got more useful learning by his conversation at tew than he had at oxford." of earle's conversation clarendon says that it was "so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent and so very facetious, that no man's company was more desired and more loved." walton, too, tells us of his "innocent wisdom and sanctified learning"; and another witness speaks of his "charitable heart," an epithet which is nobly borne out by the correspondence between himself and baxter printed in this volume. this is no superfluous citation of testimony. without it we might, perhaps, have suspected, though not, i think, legitimately, something almost of a cynical spirit in the severity of the punishment which he deals out to the various disguises of vice and imposture, and in the pitiless nakedness in which he leaves them. but there are even stronger reasons for recalling contemporary verdicts pronounced on earle as a man. hallam, in the "literature of europe,"[e] has a short notice of him, and though it shews some appreciation of his ability, it contains a very unworthy aspersion on his character. "the chapter on the sceptic," he says, "is witty, but an insult to the honest searcher after truth, which could only have come from one that was content to take up his own opinions for ease or profit." if we accept all that is said of earle's piety and devotion, and give its proper weight to the very significant epithet "innocent," used both by walton and clarendon, we shall, i think, be slow to suspect his motive in attacking the sceptic. the honest doubter, it must be remembered, was not the familiar--much less the fashionable--figure he has become since, and it is very certain that earle described one type of sceptic both of his day and our own. that his sketch may have done injustice to other types is likely enough; but that is no reason for calling in question the sincerity of his opinions, or attributing an interested orthodoxy to one whom bunyan might have christened mr. singleheart. the piety of the th century was not disposed to be gentle to sceptics. even bacon's enlightenment allows itself harsher language on such subjects than any to be found in earle. "none do refuse to believe in a god save those for _whom it maketh that there were no god_." and if bacon is not thought a satisfactory witness, we have an unimpeachable one very much nearer to our time. dr. johnson's occasional strictures on sceptics are well-known, but his reputation for honest thinking has never been impaired by their severity. earle knew what charity was, as the baxter correspondence shows, and he has exposed in one of his characters "the faith that has no room for it"; and if his own faith needed further enlargement in the case of a sceptic,[f] some enlargement of hallam's charity might also have been looked for in dealing with the earnestness of a militant piety. the character-sketch is naturally a thing of limited scope. "fine portraiture,"[g] it has been said, "is not possible under such conditions as it imposes. the traits, common to a class, cannot at the same time be the accurate and intimate likeness of an individual. for this, a simple enumeration of actions which such and such a man will do, is not enough. a novelist takes a long series of connected actions, and even then he has to interpret, to review from time to time whole stages of development." all this is, no doubt, true, but the character-writers differ to a remarkable extent in their individualising power--some of them achieving a high degree of success, as is subsequently admitted in the case of thackeray by the writer just quoted. it may be noticed too, by the way, that great novelists are not always equally successful in the character-sketch. one is reminded of johnson's phrase about milton's inability "to carve heads upon cherry stones" when one thinks of "theophrastus such" on the one hand, and the almost unique position of george eliot as a novelist on the other. less successful as she often is in lightness of touch when she has to pause and interpret her story, she had not prepared us for such a complete exhaustion of power as her attempt in this branch of literature (apparently of the same genus, almost of the same species, as the novel) reveals to her disappointed admirers. it may, at any rate, be said that her failure is an instructive lesson in the literary division of labour, and that these studies require a peculiar delicacy of organisation in the observer, as well as a special gift of exposition. "dolus latet in generalibus" is a salutary warning, but the character-writers, as a whole, have in most instances got creditably out of the snare, while earle, i think, has achieved something more. besides his humour and acuteness, besides even his profundity, i find in him an exceptional power of individualizing. "the contemplative man," for instance, belongs to a small class at all times; but it is only an individual we have known, and known at rare intervals, of whose wordsworthian temper we are able to say that "nature asks his approbation as it were of her works and variety." again, "the grave divine, who is not yet dean or canon, though his life is our religion's best apology," reads throughout like a personal experience. i at least so read it, or i should not have borrowed from earle for the dedication which stands at the head of this preface. yet such identifications are usually reserved for the great novelist, whose highest art, as macaulay says, is to "make the inventions of one man seem like the recollections of another." some of earle's readers appear to be chiefly impressed with his book as furnishing "a picturesque idea of a period now remote, and as possessing much of the affected quaintness of its age."[h] the picturesqueness i find, and a good deal of quaintness; but the total impression is that of a man who has got beyond words, ancient or modern, in his studies of human nature--of one who, whether "invectively he pierceth through the body of the country, city, court;" or is "anatomizing the wise man's folly," is as instructive a moralist in the end of the nineteenth century as in the beginning of the seventeenth. this, in a sense, is true of all great moralists, but the distinction of earle, as i understand it, is that his characters are so often really people of our own day, with idiosyncracies that seem almost more applicable to our own age than to his. society is almost a technical term to-day, susceptible, one would have said, of refinements of difference infinitely more various than anything that could have existed more than two hundred years ago; yet one cannot but feel that this observer would have been fully equal to drawing our microcosm as well as his own. earle's is a penetrating observation which is always fresh--so fresh that no archaism of phrase in him, and no cheery optimism in ourselves, can disguise the fact that it is our weaknesses he is probing, our motives he is discovering. there are still with us "those well-behaved ghosts Æneas met with--friends to talk with, and men to look on, but if he grasped them but air"--those shadowy creatures that "wonder at your ill-breeding,[i] that cannot distinguish between what is spoken and what is meant." we are no strangers to "the fashionable respect which loves not deeper mutualities, but though exceeding kind and friendly at your first acquaintance, is at the twentieth meeting but friendly still"; or to that similar temper which "nothing so much puts out as to trespass against the genteel way." and, to go a stage lower, the formal man still survives, whose "face is in so good a frame because he is not disjointed with other meditations--who hath staid in the world to fill a number; and when he is gone there wants one and there's an end."[j] he, to be sure, has no conversation, and that is his discretion--but others display then as now a bolder discretion, and in their talk "fly for sanctuary rather to nonsense which few descry, than to nothing which all." but literary conversation is not forgotten. it may be a stretch beyond the power of a latter-day imagination to fancy a visitor proposing to fascinate his company by some "scatterings of seneca and tacitus," or even to think ourselves back to a time when these "were good for all occasions." yet, those who say "chaucer[k] for our money above all our english poets because the voice has gone so," (or had we better substitute browning?),[l] are still common enough examples of those who desire to acquire inexpensively the reputation of good taste. and there is another variety of modern artificiality which is not spared in this book. for the many forms of busy idleness, the worship of organisation and system, and all the other hindrances to life properly so-called, which it has been the cherished labour of this age to multiply, earle would have had no reserve of patience. "the dull physician," we are told, has no leisure _to be idle_, that is, to study. "the grave divine," who has "studied to make his shoulders sufficient for his burden, comes not up thrice a week into his pulpit because _he would not be idle_"; whereas the commendation of the young raw preacher is that "he speaks without book, and, indeed, he was never used to it." we may justly boast of the superior humanity of our century; but few would deny that the elaborate apparatus of modern philanthropy has too often become an end in itself, and absorption in it a serious detriment to any worthy preparation for the work of edifying. in the absence of leisure pulpits will hardly furnish us with that "sincere erudition which can send us clear and pure away unto a virtuous and happy life."[m] nor is such a loss compensated by an endless succession of services or even a whole street of committee-rooms. one would not, however, wish to rest in negations or dwell in the last resort on earle's critical attitude. one feels that the delightful house at tew did not spend all or even its best strength on criticism. earle may have there pursued the method of verification and studied his characters in the flesh. perhaps he saw there "the staid man," and duly appraised this specimen of "nature's geometry";[n] while his obvious gifts as a rational peace-maker, if not much needed in such a company, would not be overlooked by lord falkland. "the good old man," too is a portrait so strongly individualized that i cannot help thinking some very personal experience went to the making of it--experience of a sort that was sure to be revived at tew, where "so good a relick of the old times" was not likely to be wanting. it was a house, at any rate, for the "modest man" to whom, as to the poet cowper, public appearances were so many penances; for though the world may not agree with earle as to the degree in which this quality sets off a man, there is no question of lord falkland's welcome of the modest man, even if that grave divine "mr. earles," did not point out this diffident guest as one who "had a piece of singularity," and, for all his modesty, "scorned something." and, as "the most polite and _accurate_ men of the university of oxford"[o] were to be met with at tew, we may further hope that earle there watched the social mellowing of the "downright scholar whose mind was too much taken up with his mind,"[p] and strove to carry out his own recommendation, "practising him in men, and brushing him over with good company." symposium is a word that has been much abused and vulgarised of late, but something like its true platonic sense must have been realised by the company at lord falkland's, as they "examined and refined those grosser propositions which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation":[q] for a more platonic programme it would be difficult to conceive. the pattern of the ideal republic is, we know, laid up somewhere in the heavens; but the republic of letters so far as it was represented, must have been as near the ideal in that house as it ever was on earth. and in this ideal one of earle's characters already mentioned was not only a natural but a necessary element. "the contemplative man" is solitary, we are told, in company, but he would not be so in this company. "outward show, the stream, the people," were not taken seriously at lord falkland's; and the man who "can spell heaven out of earth" would be the centre of a rare group--men upon whose fresh and eager appetites conversation that was "mysterious and inward" could not easily pall. bishop berkeley is one of the very few men who could answer with any plausibility to this last character of earle's. but the marvellous amenity of his social gifts brings him a little closer to the kindly race of men than earle thinks is usual with the contemplative student. in every other point it is an accurate piece of portraiture.[r] nature might well ask approbation of her works and variety from a man who was ever feeding his noble curiosity and never satisfying it. he, too, made a "ladder of his observations to climb to god." he, too, was "free from vice, because he had no occasion to employ it." "such gifts," said the turbulent bishop atterbury of him, "i did not think had been the portion of any but angels." after this it is no hyperbole to say, as earle does of the contemplative man, "he has learnt all can here be taught him, and comes now to heaven to see more." though clarendon does full justice to earle's personal charm, he uses the epithets "sharp and witty" to describe his published "discourses"; and the piercing severity of his wit is illustrated everywhere in this book. it is clear, however, from the sympathetic sketches that earle's was no _nil admirari_ doctrine, and that while he saw grave need on all hands for men to clear their mind of cant, and their company of those who live by it, he had great store of affection for all that is noble or noble in the making. the "modest man" and the high-spirited man" are opposite types, but there is in both the worthy pursuit and the high ideal. moreover, the second of those characters reveals a power of pathos which earle might have developed with more opportunity.[s] "the child" whom "his father has writ as his own little story" is another indication of the same mood. these sketches are full of suggestive melancholy--not the melancholy of the misanthrope, but the true melancholy--the melancholy of virgil--_invalidus etiamque tremens etiam inscius aevi._[t] there is another character drawn with a most incisive pathos, though less _virgilian_[u] in its tone. the poor man, "with whom even those that are not friends _for ends_ love not a dearness," and who, "with a great deal of virtue, obtains of himself not to hate men," is a pathetic figure, but he is something more. he is a sermon on human weakness, not drawn as some iago might have drawn it with exultant mockery, but with the painful unflinching veracity of one who is ashamed of himself and of his kind. when one thinks how often this weakness is spoken of as if it were peculiar to the moneyed class or to the uneducated, and how many people whom one knows act and think as if poverty were a vice if not a crime, though they shrink from avowing it, so unqualified an exposure indicates a conscience of no common sensitiveness. earle's wit and humour are deadly weapons, and it must be said that the trades and professions are treated with scant indulgence. he can even leave a mark like that of junius when he has a mind. thus the dull physician is present at "some desperate recovery, and is slandered with it, though he be guiltless"; and the attorney does not fear doomsday because "he hopes he has a trick to reverse judgment!" but though one would not ask on behalf of impostors or scoundrels for suspension of sentence, one does wish for more than a single picture of the young man "who sins to better his understanding." the companionship of one who by his th year "had so much dispatched the business of life that the oldest rarely attain to that knowledge and the youngest enter not the world with more innocence,"[v] might have induced earle to pourtray more than the weaknesses of immature manhood. we could not, however, have missed this or the other pictures of characterless persons whether young or "having attained no proficiency by their stay in the world." inexperience may fail to recognise them and suffer for it; or the gilding of rank and fashion may win for such persons a name in society above that which they deserve, and the moralist is bound to unmask them. these studies nevertheless are somewhat sombre;[w] and there is something much lighter and pleasanter in his presentation of some not unfamiliar phases of manners. there is the self-complacency that deals with itself like a "truant reader skipping over the harsh places"; the frank discourtesy that finds something vicious in the conventions and "circumstance" of good breeding; the patronising insolence[x] that "with much ado seems to recover your name"; the egoism of discontent that "has an accustomed tenderness not to be crossed in its fancy"; or lastly, that affectation of reticence which is as modern as anything in the book, though its illustrations look so remote. where we meet with such a temper, earle's is still the right method--"we must deal with such a man as we do with hebrew letters, spell him backwards and read him!" despite all this searching analysis and the biting wit which accompanies it, i cannot think the epithet cynical, which i have heard ascribed to earle, is defensible. there is a vast difference between recognising our frailty which is a fact, and insisting that our nature is made up of nothing else, which is not a fact. the severe critic and the cynic differ chiefly in this: the first reports distressing facts, the second invents disgraceful fictions; the one distrusts, the other insults our common nature; and in doing justice to the possibilities of that nature, no one has gone further than earle in his "contemplative man." something may be said of earle's style before this introduction is brought to an end. i do not think it is uniformly conspicuous[y] for quaintness, or that there is much that can be called affectation; though occasionally an excess of brevity has proved too tempting, or the desire to individualize runs away with him. the following passages, taken at random from the characters, seem to contain phrases that we should be well content to use to-day if we had thought of them. _he sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived._ _we look on old age for his sake as a more reverent thing._ _he has still something to distinguish him from a gentleman, though his doublet cost more._ _it is discourtesy in you to believe him._ _an extraordinary man in ordinary things._ _his businesses with his friends are to visit them._ _the main ambition of his life is not to be discredited._ _he preaches heresy if it comes in his way, though with a mind i must needs say very orthodox._ these quotations have no very unfamiliar sound, nor much flavour of archaism about them. and there are many more, surprisingly free from conceits or other oddities, if we reflect that the book was written before dryden was born, or modern prose with its precision and balance even thought of. there is one very distinguishing mark set on earle's characters, the profundity of the analysis that accompanies the sketch. he lets us know not only what the grave divine or the staid man looks like, but why they are what they are, and all this without turning his sketch into an essay. this mistake bishop hall is inclined to make, and butler actually makes. the author of hudibras, it seems, would have been too fortunate had he known where his own happiness lay--to wit in that "sting" of verse, which cowper says prose neither has nor can have. when one compares the essay in its beginnings with the essay as we know it to-day, it is not difficult to understand the change of form in the character sketch. "the character of a trimmer"[z] is a very powerful piece of writing, containing some very fine things, but halifax could not make of it that finished piece of brevity which it would have become in earle's hands. latin criticism has the right word for his work--"densus."[aa] we could not pack the thinking closer if we wished. and yet if we do not care to reason a type out, there are pictures enough unspoilt by commentary.[ab] earle has some of that delightful suddenness of illustration which selden makes so captivating in his table-talk. at once we are made to see likeness or unlikeness, we hear no comment on it; since the artist desires no more moral than is to be looked for in his art. when on the other hand earle makes more of the reason of the thing, he[ac] is literally "swift and sententious"--he never takes the opportunity to draw us into an instructive disquisition, or to assume airs of profundity. and his passing hint as to the cause of what _we see_ no more injures any picture he may draw than coleridge's prose argument at the side of the page destroys the imaginative spectacle in the ancient mariner. earle, it has been said, "is not so thoroughly at home with men of all sorts and conditions as overbury, who had probably seen far more of the world."[ad] however relatively true this may be, earle's book [published ] gives evidence of an experience of men as wide as it is intimate--an experience little short of marvellous in a resident fellow of twenty-seven, whose younger years were chiefly distinguished for "oratory, poetry, and witty fancies."[ae] (perhaps his youth may account for some of that excessive severity in handling follies which is occasionally noticeable.) the article in the "dictionary of national biography" gives a somewhat different impression of earle as an observer. "the sketches throw," it says, "_the greatest light_ upon the social condition of the time." now this is not possible for anyone to achieve whose vision requires "the spectacles of books"; though with such help it is doubtless possible to extend and improve on the observations of others, with human nature as a constant quantity. but to be at home with one's contemporaries and to record one's intimacy means to see with the eye as well as the mind. the slow inductive method of personal contact is indispensable; and no reasoning from first principles, no assimilating of secondhand experience, with whatever touches of genius, can be mistaken for it. it is not likely that the registrar's house (his father's house) at york added much to earle's sketch-book; and we have to fall back on what clarendon says of his delightful conversation, and by implication, of his delight in it. in the society of a university and in the life of a university town there would be presented to an observer of his exceptional penetration enough of the fusion or confusion of classes to furnish the analytical powers with a tolerably wide field. and earle does not suffer by comparison with his rivals. "the concise narrative manner"[af] of theophrastus, though in its way as humorously informing as we find plautus and terence, and as we should have found the new comedy which they copied, leaves us a little cold from the looseness or the connexion in the quasi-narrative: we rise a little unsatisfied from the ingenious banquet of conversational scraps; we desire more. overbury, again, says less than earle, and is more artificial in saying it. butler and bishop hall too directly suggest _the essay_[ag] and the sermon. in no one of them is brevity so obviously the soul of wit as it is in earle; no one of them is so humorously thoughtful, so lucid in conception, so striking in phrase. when one has reckoned up all these gifts, and all that his friends and contemporaries said of him, and remember also who and what these friends were, one is not startled by the eulogistic epitaph in merton college chapel; these words are as moving as they are strong: si nomen ejus necdum suboleat, lector, nomen ejus ut pretiosa unguenta; johannes earle eboracensis. but his own choicer latin in the epitaph he wrote for the learned peter heylin would serve no less well for himself; and the beautiful brevity of its closing cadences has so much of the distinction of his english, and puts so forcibly what earle deserves to have said of him, that it may fitly be the last word here: plura ejusmodi meditanti mors indixit silentium: ut sileatur efficere non potest. s.t.i. clifton, may, . footnotes: [a] it came out in . forty-four years afterwards he wrote that in his interleaved copy the list of seventeenth century characters had increased fourfold--good evidence of his affection for and interest in earle's characters. yet he despaired of anyone republishing a book so "common and unimportant" (??). (see arber's reprint of earle.) it is to the credit of bristol that this pessimism has not been justified. [b] since writing this preface i have added a small supplementary appendix; but there is nothing in it to require much qualification of the opinion here expressed. it was hardly possible, as i gather, for bliss to have known of the durham ms. [c] mr. john morley has called pattison's standard "the highest of our time." bliss's conception of an editor's duties is well illustrated in the note on p. . [d] "varium ac multiplicem expetens cultum deus."--_mori utopia lib. ii._ [e] vol. iii., pp. and . [f] were the unorthodox opinions of hobbes known to his friends as early as ? if so, earle could hardly have been very curious in scenting out heresy, for clarendon hopes earle's intercession may secure for him a book of hobbes's. (see letters of clarendon in supplementary appendix.) [g] professor jebb, in his edition of the characters of theophrastus. i rejoice to see that professor jebb assigns earle a place of far more distinction than is implied in the measured tribute of hallam. his preface furnishes lovers of earle with just those reasoned opinions with which instinctive attraction desires to justify itself; and i take this opportunity of acknowledging my great obligations to it. [h] hallam. the same tone is taken in the article on earle in the "encyclopædia britannica." [i] mr. bridges indeed, ("achilles in scyros"), finds that this character has been always with us, and gives it a place in the heroic age. the passage has almost the note of troilus and cressida:-- "my invitation, sir, was but my seal of full denial, a challenge for honor's eye not to be taken up. your master hath slipped in manners." [j] we may compare matthew arnold's travelling companion ("essays in criticism," st edition, preface), who was so nervous about railway murders, and who refused to be consoled by being reminded that though the worst should happen, there would still be the old crush at the corner of fenchurch street, and that he would not be missed: "the great mundane movement would still go on!" [k] chaucer could hardly have been well-known in , or dr. bliss would scarcely have quoted in full the most familiar character in his prologue; but i could not find courage to excise, or lay a profane hand on any of his notes. [l] it is, perhaps, superfluous to say that no disrespect is intended to the author of the "ring and the book"; but it would be difficult to find another poet who has had so many of the equivocal tributes of fashion. [m] sir thomas browne, "christian morals." [n] "so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination."--_clarendon (of lord falkland)._ [o] clarendon. [p] "a great cherisher of good parts ... and if he found men clouded with poverty, or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron."--_clarendon, ib._ [q] clarendon, _ib._ [r] between earle himself and berkeley there is much resemblance. of berkeley too it would have been said--"a person certainly of the sweetest and most obliging nature that lived in our age"; and this resemblance extends beyond their social gifts or their cast of mind, even to their language. earle's "vulgar-spirited" man, with whom "to thrive is to do well," recalls a famous passage in the siris. "he that hath not thought much about god, the human soul, and the _summum bonum_, may indeed be a _thriving_ earth-worm, but he will make a sorry patriot, and a sorry statesman." [s] is this from pliny's letters? "totum patrem mira similitudine exscripserat."--_lib._ v. xvi. [t] one may recall, too, the famous words of the sophoclean ajax to his son in connection with earle's phrases. "he is not come to his task of melancholy," "he arrives not at the mischief of being wise," read like a free translation of soph. ajax, ii. and . [u] perhaps the simile in Æn. viii. and one or two other places would justify us in calling this also virgilian, as, indeed, one may call most good things. [v] clarendon--his character of lord falkland. [w] there are certain things not at all sombre applicable not only to our day, but to our _hour_, _e.g._ "the poet (i regret to say he is 'a pot poet,') now much employed in commendations of our navy"; or this, "his father sent him to the university, because he heard there were the best fencing and dancing schools there." if we substitute athletics of some kind, we have a very modern reason for the existence of such things as universities accepted as sound by both parents and children. _cf._ too dr. bliss's note on the serving-man, and its quotation, "an' a man have not skill in the hawking and hunting languages nowadays, i'll not give a rush for him!" [x] _cf._ falconbridge in "king john": "and if his name be george i'll call him peter, for new-made honour doth forget men's names." it is this character which was the occasion of the most delightful of all stories of absence of mind, and though, doubtless, familiar to many, i cannot resist repeating it. the poet rogers was looking at a new picture in the national gallery in company with a friend. rogers was soon satisfied, but his friend was still absorbed. "i say," said rogers, "_that fellow_ [earle's insolent man] was at holland house again last night, and he came up and asked me if my name was rogers." "yes," said the friend, still intent on the picture, "_and was it_? [y] the article in the "dictionary of national biography" lays stress on the freedom from conceits in earle's few poems at a time when conceits were universal. the lines on sir john burroughs contain a couplet which is wonderfully close to wordsworth's "happy warrior": "his rage was tempered well, no fear could daunt _his reason_, his _cold_ blood was valiant." _cf._ "who in the heat of conflict keeps _the law_ in _calmness_ made." earle's standard in poetry was high. "dr. earle would not allow lord falkland to be a good poet though a great witt," yet many poets praised his verses. aubrey, who tells us of earle's opinion, confirms it. "he (lord falkland) writt not a smooth verse, but a great deal of sense." [z] "the trimmer" is no doubt a political manifesto--but no retreat from politics could have chastened halifax's style into a resemblance to earle's; when the "character" became a political weapon, its literary identity was all but at an end. "the trimmer" is commended by macaulay in his history, where it will be remembered he pays a tribute to its "vivacity." [aa] quintilian uses it of thucydides. [ab] the "she precise hypocrite" is a striking example--one of earle's most humorous pieces. _cf._ also "the plain country fellow." [ac] the pictures, with the moral attached, are best seen in places: in "the tavern, the best theatre of natures"; in "the bowl-alley, an emblem of the world where some few justle in to the mistress fortune"; in paul's walk, "where all inventions are emptied and not a few pockets!" [ad] professor jebb, preface to "the characters of theophrastus." [ae] anthony wood. [af] professor jebb. [ag] professor jebb justly replies to hallam that if la bruyère is far superior to theophrastus the scope of the two writers makes the comparison unfair. the difference between them may perhaps be expressed by saying that an essay was the last thing that the master and the first thing that the disciple was anxious to produce. contents of the supplementary appendix. ( ) the durham ms. in the cathedral library at durham is a small bound volume which contains forty-six of earle's characters, bearing date [ah],--the date of the first edition being . i was enabled by the kindness of dr. greenwell, the librarian, to take it away and examine it at leisure; and the courtesy of the university librarian, dr. fowler, furnished me with an exact collation of the ms. versions with the printed text[ai] of these forty-six characters, the original of the contributions made by him to "notes and queries," and referred to in the "dictionary of national biography." ( ) i have printed, besides, some other versions quoted by bliss from "dr. bright's ms.," and incorporated in his annotated copy of his own book. these are often the same with those of the durham ms. i should mention that though this annotated copy is in the bodleian library, the sub-librarian, mr. falconer madan, "knows of no 'bright ms.,'[aj] nor where bliss's ms. with that name is." the copy in question contains so much additional matter that i have added a few things from it, but my space was necessarily limited; there is good evidence in it of bliss's statement that he had continued collecting materials for the book for forty-four years after its publication. moreover, in the "bliss sale catalogue" in the bodleian there are some books of characters (including duplicates). i am myself in possession, as i believe, of a copy of bliss's edition which belonged to himself, and which is annotated by himself and haslewood.[ak] it contains a castrated title-page (originally bliss suppressed his name) and a notice of the book in the "monthly review" of . ( ) i have added a few "testimonies" to earle from anthony wood and others. ( ) i have printed three letters from clarendon to earle from the "clarendon state papers," with short extracts from two others; as well as two letters of earle's from the bodleian library--interesting rather as personal relics than as containing anything very significant. all that relates to its author will, i believe, be acceptable to lovers of the "cosmography." for this additional matter, as well as for other help and counsel, i am indebted to mr. charles firth, of balliol college, oxford, whose learning is always at the service of his friends, and who stands in no need of the old injunction--"not to be reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness." ( ) from a notebook of bliss's (in ms.) in my possession i have added a few titles of books of characters. i have retained in this appendix the spelling i found. bliss's text has, with a few exceptions (possibly accidental), the modern spelling. footnotes: [ah] dec. th, . [at the end, by way of colophon:] at the top of page , in a different hand, "edw. blunt author." this ms. was obviously one of "the _written copies_, passing severally from hand to hand, which grew at length to be a pretty number in a little volume." (see blount's preface to the reader.) [ai] as it appears in arber's reprint. [aj] the "bright ms." was obviously later than that in the durham cathedral library, since it contained several characters known to have been added to the first edition. [ak] joseph haslewood, antiquary. one of the founders of the roxburghe club. microcosmography; or a piece of the world discovered; in essays and characters. by john earle, d.d. of christ-church and merton colleges, oxford, and bishop of salisbury. a new edition. to which are added, notes and an appendix, by philip bliss, fellow of st. john's college, oxford. _london:_ printed for white and cochrane, fleet-street; and john harding. st. james's-street. . advertisement. the present edition of bishop earle's characters was undertaken from an idea that they were well worthy of republication, and that the present period, when the productions of our early english writers are sought after with an avidity hitherto unexampled, would be the most favourable for their appearance. the text has been taken from the edition of , collated with the first impression in . the variations from the latter are thus distinguished:--those words or passages which have been added since the first edition are contained between brackets, [and printed in the common type]; those which have received some alteration, are printed in _italic_, and the passages, as they stand in the first edition, are always given in a note. for the notes, appendix, and index, the editor is entirely answerable, and although he is fully aware that many superfluities will be censured, many omissions discovered, and many errors pointed out, he hopes that the merits of the original author will, in a great measure, compensate for the false judgment or neglect of his reviver. _january_ , . the preface [to the edition of [al].] this little book had six editions between and , without any author's name to recommend it: i have heard of an eighth in . from that of this present edition is reprinted, without altering any thing but the plain errors of the press, and the old pointing and spelling in some places. the language is generally easy, and proves our english tongue not to be so very changeable as is commonly supposed; nay, sometimes the phrase seems a little obscure, more by the mistakes of the printer than the distance of time. here and there we meet with a broad expression, and some characters are far below others; nor is it to be expected that so great a variety of portraits should all be drawn with equal excellence, though there are scarce any without some masterly touches. the change of fashions unavoidably casts a shade upon a few places, yet even those contain an exact picture of the age wherein they were written, as the rest does of mankind in general: for reflections founded upon nature will be just in the main, as long as men are men, though the particular instances of vice and folly may be diversified. paul's walk is now no more, but then good company adjourn to coffee-houses, and, at the reasonable fine of two or three pence, throw away as much of their precious time as they find troublesome. perhaps these valuable essays may be as acceptable to the public now as they were at first; both for the entertainment of those who are already experienced in the ways of mankind, and for the information of others who would know the world the best way, that is--without trying it[am]. footnotes: [al] _london: printed by e. say, anno domini_ m.dcc.xxxii. [am] a short account of earle, taken from the _athenæ oxonienses_ is here omitted. advertisement [to the edition of [an].] as this entertaining little book is become rather scarce, and is replete with so much good sense and genuine humour, which, though in part adapted to the times when it first appeared, seems, on the whole, by no means inapplicable to any æra of mankind, the editor conceives that there needs little apology for the republication. a farther inducement is, his having, from very good authority, lately discovered[ao] that these _characters_ (hitherto known only under the title of _blount's_[ap]), were actually drawn by the able pencil of john earle, who was formerly bishop of sarum, having been translated to that see from worcester, a.d. , and died at oxford, . isaac walton, in his life of hooker, delineates the character of the said venerable prelate. it appears from antony wood's athen. oxon. under the life of bishop earle, that this book was first of all published at london in , under the name of "_edward blount_." footnotes: [an] _"microcosmography; or, a piece of the world characterized; in essays and characters. london, printed a.d. . salisbury, reprinted and sold by e. easton, . sold also by g. and t. wilkie, st. paul's church-yard, london."_ [ao] i regret extremely that i am unable to put the reader in possession of this very acute discoverer's name. [ap] this mistake originated with langbaine, who, in his account of lilly, calls blount "a gentleman who has made himself known to the world by the several pieces of his own writing, (as _horæ subsecivæ_, his _microcosmography_, &c.") _dramatic poets_, vo, , p. . editions of "microcosmography." the first edition (of which the bodleian possesses a copy, vo. p. . theol.) was printed with the following title: "_microcosmographie: or, a peece of the world discovered; in essayes and characters. newly composed for the northerne parts of this kingdome. at london. printed by w. s. for ed. blount, _." this contains only fifty-four characters[aq], which in the present edition are placed first. i am unable to speak of any subsequent copy, till one in the following year, ( ), printed for robert allot[ar], and called in the title "_the first edition much enlarged_." this, as mr. henry ellis kindly informs me, from a copy in the british museum, possesses seventy-six characters. the _sixth_ was printed for allot, in , (_bodl. mar._ ,) and has seventy-eight, the additional ones being "a herald," and "a suspicious, or jealous man." the _seventh_ appeared in , for andrew crooke, agreeing precisely with the sixth; and in the _eighth_. a copy of the latter is in the curious library of mr. hill, and, as mr. park acquaints me, is without any specific edition numbered in the title. i omit that noticed by the editor of , as printed in , for if such a volume did exist, which i much doubt, it was nothing more than a copy of the eighth with a new title-page. in appeared the _ninth_, which was a reprint of the _sixth_, executed with care and judgment. i have endeavoured in vain to discover to whom we are indebted for this republication of bishop earle's curious volume, but it is probable that the person who undertook it, found so little encouragement in his attempt to revive a taste for the productions of our early writers, that he suffered his name to remain unknown. certain it is that the impression, probably not a large one, did not sell speedily, as i have seen a copy, bearing date , under the name of "_the world display'd: or several essays; consisting of the various characters and passions of its principal inhabitants_," &c. london, printed for c. ward, and r. chandler. the edition printed at salisbury, in , (which has only seventy-four characters,) with that now offered to the public, close the list. footnotes: [aq] having never seen or been able to hear of any copy of the second, third, or fourth editions, i am unable to point out when the additional characters first appeared. [ar] robert allot, better known as the editor of _england's parnassus_, appears to have succeeded blount in several of his copy-rights, among others, in that of shakspeare, as the second edition ( ) was printed for him. contents. page _preface to the reprint of _ vii. advertisement to the present edition ( ) xlv. preface to the edition of xlvii. advertisement to the edition of xlix. editions of _microcosmography_ li. blount's preface to the reader lix. a child a young raw preacher a grave divine a meer dull physician an alderman a discontented man an antiquary a younger brother a meer formal man a church papist a self-conceited man a too idly reserved man a tavern a shark a carrier a young man an old college butler an upstart country knight an idle gallant a constable a downright scholar a plain country fellow a player a detractor a young gentleman of the university a weak man a tobacco-seller a pot poet a plausible man a bowl-alley the world's wise man a surgeon a contemplative man a she precise hypocrite a sceptick in religion an attorney a partial man a trumpeter a vulgar spirited man a plodding student paul's walk a cook a bold forward man a baker a pretender to learning a herald the common singing-men in cathedral churches a shop-keeper a blunt man a handsome hostess a critic a serjeant, or catch-pole an university dun a stayed man [all from this character were added after the first edition.] a modest man a meer empty wit a drunkard a prison a serving-man an insolent man acquaintance a meer complimental man a poor fiddler a meddling-man a good old man a flatterer a high spirited man a meer gull citizen a lascivious man a rash man an affected man a profane man a coward a sordid rich man a meer great man a poor man an ordinary honest man a suspicious, or jealous man appendix. some account of bishop earle[as] characters of bishop earle list of dr. earle's works lines on sir john burroughs lines on the death of the earl of pembroke lines on mr. beaumont dedication to the latin translation of the [greek: eikôn basilikê] inscription on dr. heylin's monument correspondence between dr. earle and mr. bagster inscription in streglethorp church chronological list of books of characters, from to corrections and additions a note on bishop earle's arms, from _guillim's heraldry_ _supplementary appendix, , (durham ms., letters of earle and clarendon, etc.)_ footnotes: [as] it will be remarked, that dr. earle's name is frequently spelled _earle_ and _earles_ in the following pages. wherever the editor has had occasion to use the name himself, he has invariably called it _earle_, conceiving that to be the proper orthography. wherever it is found _earles_, he has attended strictly to the original, from which the article or information has been derived. to the reader[at]. i have (for once) adventured to play the midwife's part, helping to bring forth these infants into the world, which the father would have smothered; who having left them lapt up in loose sheets, as soon as his fancy was delivered of them, written especially for his private recreation, to pass away the time in the country, and by the forcible request of friends drawn from him: yet, passing severally from hand to hand, in written copies, grew at length to be a pretty number in a little volume: and among so many sundry dispersed transcripts, some very imperfect and surreptitious had liked to have passed the press, if the author had not used speedy means of prevention; when, perceiving the hazard he ran to be wronged, was unwillingly[au] willing to let them pass as now they appear to the world. if any faults have escaped the press (as few books can be printed without), impose them not on the author, i intreat thee; but rather impute them to mine and the printer's oversight, who seriously promise, on the re-impression hereof, by greater care and diligence for this our former default, to make thee ample satisfaction. in the mean while, i remain thine, ed. blount[av]. [illustration] footnotes: [at] _gentile, or gentle_, th edit. . [au] willingly, th edit. evidently a typographical error. [av] edward blount, who lived at the black bear, saint paul's church-yard, appears to have been a bookseller of respectability, and in some respects a man of letters. many dedications and prefaces, with as much merit as compositions of this nature generally possess, bear his name, and there is every reason to suppose that he translated a work from the italian, which is intituled "_the hospitall of incurable fooles_," &c. to. . mr. ames has discovered, from the stationer's register, that he was the son of ralph blount or blunt, merchant-taylor of london; that he was apprenticed to william ponsonby, in , and made free in . it is no slight honour to his taste and judgment, that he was one of the partners in the first edition of shakspeare. microcosmography; _or_, _a piece of the world characterized_. i. a child is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of adam before he tasted of eve or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write his character. he is nature's fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time, and much handling, dims and defaces. his soul is yet a white paper[ ] unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note-book. he is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. he arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come, by fore-seeing them. he kisses and loves all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. he plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. [[ ]all the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity.] his hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. we laugh at his foolish ports, shakspeare, of a child, says, "---- the hand of time shall draw this brief into as huge a volume." _k. john ii._ i. but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. his father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath out-lived. the elder he grows, he is a stair lower from god; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.[ ] he is the christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another. footnotes: [ ] so washbourne, in his _divine poems_, mo. : "---- ere 'tis accustom'd unto sin, _the mind white paper_ is, and will admit of any lesson you will write in it."--p. . [ ] this, and every other passage throughout the volume, [included between brackets,] does not appear in the first edition of . [ ] adam did not, to use the words of the old geneva bible, "make himself breeches," till he knew sin: the meaning of the passage in the text is merely that, as a child advances in age, he commonly proceeds in the knowledge and commission of vice and immorality. ii. a young raw preacher is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. his backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. his small standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only in boldness, out of which, and his table-book, he is furnished for a preacher. his collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up at st. mary's,[ ] he utters in the country: and if he write brachigraphy,[ ] his stock is so much the better. his writing is more than his reading, for he reads only what he gets without book. thus accomplished he comes down to his friends, and his first salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. his prayer is conceited, and no man remembers his college more at large.[ ] the pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. the labour of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made[ ] _in_ it himself, is the faces. he takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for bellarmine: yet he preaches heresy, if it comes in his way, though with a mind, i must needs say, very orthodox. his action is all passion, and his speech interjections. he has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits with a very good grace. [his stile is compounded of twenty several men's, only his body imitates some one extraordinary.] he will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose without discretion. his commendation is, that he never looks upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. he preaches but once a year, though twice on sunday; for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered: he has more tricks with a sermon, than a taylor with an old cloak, to turn it, and piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. if he have waded farther in his profession, and would shew reading of his own, his authors are postils, and his school-divinity a catechism. his fashion and demure habit gets him in with some town-precisian, and makes him a guest on friday nights. you shall know him by his narrow velvet cape, and serge facing; and his ruff, next his hair, the shortest thing about him. the companion of his walk is some zealous tradesman, whom he astonishes with strange points, which they both understand alike. his friends and much painfulness may prefer him to thirty pounds a year, and this means to a chambermaid; with whom we leave him now in the bonds of wedlock:--next sunday you shall have him again. footnotes: [ ] st. mary's church was originally built by king alfred, and annexed to the university of oxford, for the use of the scholars, when st. giles's and st. peter's (which were till then appropriated to them,) had been mined by the violence of the danes. it was totally rebuilt during the reign of henry vii., who gave forty oaks towards the materials; and is, to this day, the place of worship in which the public sermons are preached before the members of the university. [ ] _brachigraphy_, or short-hand-writing, appears to have been much studied in our author's time, and was probably esteemed a fashionable accomplishment. it was first introduced into this country by peter bales, who, in , published _the writing schoolmaster_, a treatise consisting of three parts, the first "of brachygraphie, that is, to write as fast as a man speaketh treatably, writing but one letter for a word;" the second, of orthography; and the third, of calligraphy. imprinted at london, by t. orwin, &c. . to. a second edition, "with sundry new additions," appeared in . mo. imprinted at london, by george shawe, &c. holinshed gives the following description of one of bale's performances:--"the tenth of august ( ,) a rare peece of worke, and almost incredible, was brought to passe by an englishman borne in the citie of london, named peter bales, who by his industrie and practise of his pen, contriued and writ within the compasse of a penie, in latine, the lord's praier, the creed, the ten commandements, a praier to god, a praier for the queene, his posie, his name, the daie of the moneth, the yeare of our lord, and the reigne of the queene. and on the seuenteenthe of august next following, at hampton court, he presented the same to the queene's maiestie, in the head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall; and presented therewith an excellent spectacle by him deuised, for the easier reading thereof: wherewith hir maiestie read all that was written therein with great admiration, and commended the same to the lords of the councell, and the ambassadors, and did weare the same manie times vpon hir finger." _holinshed's chronicle, page , b. edit, folio, lond. ._ [ ] it is customary in all sermons delivered before the university, to use an introductory prayer for the founder of, and principal benefactors to, the preacher's individual college, as well as for the officers and members of the university in general. this, however, would appear very ridiculous when "_he comes down to his friends_" or, in other words, preaches before a country congregation. [ ] _of_, first edit. . iii. a grave divine is one that knows the burthen of his calling, and hath studied to make his shoulders sufficient; for which he hath not been hasty to launch forth of his port, the university, but expected the ballast of learning, and the wind of opportunity. divinity is not the beginning but the end of his studies; to which he takes the ordinary stair, and makes the arts his way. he counts it not prophaneness to be polished with human reading, or to smooth his way by aristotle to school-divinity. he has sounded both religions, and anchored in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment, not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. the ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. his discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. his speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. he shoots all his meditations at one but; and beats upon his text, not the cushion; making his hearers, not the pulpit groan. in citing of popish errors, he cuts them with arguments, not cudgels them with barren invectives; and labours more to shew the truth of his cause than the spleen. his sermon is limited by the method, not the hour-glass; and his devotion goes along with him out of the pulpit. he comes not up thrice a week, because he would not be idle; nor talks three hours together, because he would not talk nothing: but his tongue preaches at fit times, and his conversation is the every day's exercise. in matters of ceremony, he is not ceremonious, but thinks he owes that reverence to the church to bow his judgement to it, and make more conscience of schism, than a surplice. he esteems the church hierarchy as the church's glory, and however we jar with rome, would not have our confusion distinguish us. in simoniacal purchases he thinks his soul goes in the bargain, and is loath to come by promotion so dear; yet his worth at length advances him, and the price of his own merit buys him a living. he is no base grater of his tythes, and will not wrangle for the odd egg. the lawyer is the only man he hinders, by whom he is spited for taking up quarrels. he is a main pillar of our church, though not yet dean or canon, and his life our religion's best apology. his death is the last sermon, where, in the pulpit of his bed, he instructs men to die by his example.[ ] footnotes: [ ] i cannot forbear to close this admirable character with the beautiful description of a "_poure persone_," _riche of holy thought and werk_, given by the father of english poetry:-- "benigne he was, and wonder diligent, and in adversite ful patient: and swiche he was ypreved often sithes. ful loth were him to cursen for his tythes, but rather wolde he yeven out of doute, unto his poure parishens aboute, of his offring, and eke of his substance. he coude in litel thing have suffisance. wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder, but he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder, in sikenesse and in mischief to visite the ferrest in his parish, moche and lite, upon his fete, and in his hand a staf. * * * * * and though he holy were, and vertuous, he was to sinful men not dispitous, ne of his speche dangerous ne digne, but in his teching discrete and benigne. to drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse, by good ensample, was his besinesse. * * * * * he waited after no pompe ne reverence, ne maked him no spiced conscience, but cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, he taught, but first he folwed it himselve." _chaucer, prol. to cant. tales, v._ . we may surely conclude with a line from the same poem, "a better preest i trowe that nowher non is." iv. a meer dull physician. his practice is some business at bedsides, and his speculation an urinal: he is distinguished from an empiric, by a round velvet cap and doctor's gown, yet no man takes degrees more superfluously, for he is doctor howsoever. he is sworn to galen and hippocrates, as university men to their statutes, though they never saw them; and his discourse is all aphorisms, though his reading be only alexis of piedmont,[ ] or the regiment of health.[ ] the best cure he has done, is upon his own purse, which from a lean sickliness he hath made lusty, and in flesh. his learning consists much in reckoning up the hard names of diseases, and the superscriptions of gally-pots in his apothecary's shop, which are ranked in his shelves, and the doctor's memory. he is, indeed, only languaged in diseases, and speaks greek many times when he knows not. if he have been but a by-stander at some desperate recovery, he is slandered with it though he be guiltless; and this breeds his reputation, and that his practice, for his skill is merely opinion. of all odours he likes best the smell of urine, and holds vespasian's[ ] rule, that no gain is unsavory. if you send this once to him you must resolve to be sick howsoever, for he will never leave examining your water, till he has shaked it into a disease:[ ] then follows a writ to his drugger in a strange tongue, which he understands, though he cannot conster. if he see you himself, his presence is the worst visitation: for if he cannot heal your sickness, he will be sure to help it. he translates his apothecary's shop into your chamber, and the very windows and benches must take physic. he tells you your malady in greek, though it be but a cold, or headach; which by good endeavour and diligence he may bring to some moment indeed. his most unfaithful act is, that he leaves a man gasping, and his pretence is, death and he have a quarrel and must not meet; but his fear is, lest the carkass should bleed.[ ] anatomies, and other spectacles of mortality, have hardened him, and he is no more struck with a funeral than a grave-maker. noble-men use him for a director of their stomach, and ladies for wantonness,[ ] especially if he be a proper man.[ ] if he be single, he is in league with his she-apothecary; and because it is the physician, the husband is patient. if he have leisure to be idle (that is to study,) he has a smatch at alcumy, and is sick of the philosopher's stone; a disease uncurable, but by an abundant phlebotomy of the purse. his two main opposites are a mountebank and a good woman, and he never shews his learning so much as in an invective against them and their boxes. in conclusion, he is a sucking consumption, and a very brother to the worms, for they are both engendered out of man's corruption. footnotes: [ ] _the secretes of the reverende maister alexis of piemount, containyng excellente remedies against diuers diseases_, &c. appear to have been a very favourite study either with the physicians, or their patients, about this period. they were originally written in italian, and were translated into english by william warde, of which editions were printed at london, in , , , and . in , a _fourth_ edition of a latin version appeared at basil; and from ward's dedication to "the lorde russell, erle of bedford," it seems that the french and dutch were not without so great a treasure in their own languages. a specimen of the importance of this publication may be given in the title of the first secret. "the maner and secrete to conserue a man's youth, and to holde back olde age, to maintaine a man always in helth and strength, as in the fayrest floure of his yeres." [ ] _the regiment of helthe_, by thomas paynell, is another volume of the same description, and was printed by thomas berthelette, in . to. [ ] _vespatian_, tenth emperor of rome, imposed a tax upon urine, and when his son titus remonstrated with him on the meanness of the act, "pecuniam," says suetonius, "ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, suscitans _num odore offenderetur_? et illo negante, atqui, inquit, e lotio est." [ ] "vpon the market-day he is much haunted with vrinals, where, if he finde any thing, (though he knowe nothing,) yet hee will say some-what, which if it hit to some purpose, with a fewe fustian words, hee will seeme a piece of strange stuffe." character of an unworthy physician. "_the good and the badde_," by nicholas breton. to. . [ ] that the murdered body bleeds at the approach of the murderer, was, in our author's time, a commonly received opinion. holinshed affirms that the corps of henry the sixth bled as it was carrying for interment; and sir kenelm digby so firmly believed in the truth of the report, that he has endeavoured to explain the reason. it is remarked by mr. steevens, in a note to _shakspeare_, that the opinion seems to be derived from the ancient swedes, or northern nations, from whom we descend; as they practised this method of trial in all dubious cases. [ ] "faith, doctor, it is well, thy study is to please the female sex, and how their corp'rall griefes to ease." goddard's "_mastif whelp_." satires. to. without date. sat. . [ ] _proper_ for handsome. v. an alderman. he is venerable in his gown, more in his beard, wherewith he sets not forth so much his own, as the face of a city. you must look on him as one of the town gates, and consider him not as a body, but a corporation. his eminency above others hath made him a man of worship, for he had never been preferred, but that he was worth thousands. he over-sees the commonwealth, as his shop, and it is an argument of his policy, that he has thriven by his craft. he is a rigorous magistrate in his ward; yet his scale of justice is suspected, lest it be like the balances in his warehouse. a ponderous man he is, and substantial, for his weight is commonly extraordinary, and in his preferment nothing rises so much as his belly. his head is of no great depth, yet well furnished; and when it is in conjunction with his brethren, may bring forth a city apophthegm, or some such sage matter. he is one that will not hastily run into error, for he treads with great deliberation, and his judgment consists much in his pace. his discourse is commonly the annals of his mayoralty, and what good government there was in the days of his gold chain, though the door posts were the only things that suffered reformation. he seems most sincerely religious, especially on solemn days; for he comes often to church to make a shew, [and is a part of the quire hangings.] he is the highest stair of his profession, and an example to his trade, what in time they may come to. he makes very much of his authority, but more of his sattin doublet, which, though of good years, bears its age very well, and looks fresh every sunday: but his scarlet gown is a monument, and lasts from generation to generation. vi. a discontented man is one that is fallen out with the world, and will be revenged on himself. fortune has denied him in something, and he now takes pet, and will be miserable in spite. the root of his disease is a self-humouring pride, and an accustomed tenderness not to be crossed in his fancy; and the occasion commonly of one of these three, a hard father, a peevish wench, or his ambition thwarted. he considered not the nature of the world till he felt it, and all blows fall on him heavier, because they light not first on his expectation. he has now foregone all but his pride, and is yet vain-glorious in the ostentation of his melancholy. his composure of himself is a studied carelessness, with his arms across, and a neglected hanging of his head and cloak; and he is as great an enemy to an hat-band, as fortune. he quarrels at the time and up-starts, and sighs at the neglect of men of parts, that is, such as himself. his life is a perpetual satyr, and he is still girding[ ] the age's vanity, when this very anger shews he too much esteems it. he is much displeased to see men merry, and wonders what they can find to laugh at. he never draws his own lips higher than a smile, and frowns wrinkle him before forty. he at last falls into that deadly melancholy to be a bitter hater of men, and is the most apt companion for any mischief. he is the spark that kindles the commonwealth, and the bellows himself to blow it: and if he turn anything, it is commonly one of these, either friar, traitor, or mad-man. footnotes: [ ] to _gird_, is to sneer at, or scorn any one. falstaff says, "men of all sorts take a pride to _gird_ at me."--_henry iv. part ._ vii. an antiquary; he is a man strangly thrifty of time past, and an enemy indeed to his maw, whence he fetches out many things when they are now all rotten and stinking. he is one that hath that unnatural disease to be enamoured of old age and wrinkles, and loves all things (as dutchmen do cheese,) the better for being mouldy and worm-eaten. he is of our religion, because we say it is most antient; and yet a broken statue would almost make him an idolater. a great admirer he is of the rust of old monuments, and reads only those characters, where time hath eaten out the letters. he will go you forty miles to see a saint's well or a ruined abbey; and there be but a cross or stone foot-stool in the way, he'll be considering it so long, till he forget his journey. his estate consists much in shekels, and roman coins; and he hath more pictures of cæsar, than james or elizabeth. beggars cozen him with musty things which they have raked from dunghills, and he preserves their rags for precious relicks. he loves no library, but where there are more spiders volumes than authors, and looks with great admiration on the antique work of cobwebs. printed books he contemns, as a novelty of this latter age, but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between every syllable. he would give all the books in his study (which are rarities all,) for one of the old roman binding, or six lines of tully in his own hand. his chamber is hung commonly with strange beasts skins, and is a kind of charnel-house of bones extraordinary; and his discourse upon them, if you will hear him, shall last longer. his very attire is that which is the eldest out of fashion, [[aw]_and you may pick a criticism out of his breeches_.] he never looks upon himself till he is grey-haired, and then he is pleased with his own antiquity. his grave does not fright him, for he has been used to sepulchers, and he likes death the better, because it gathers him to his fathers. footnotes: [aw] in the first edition it stands thus:--"_and his hat is as antient as the tower of babel_." viii. a younger brother. his elder brother was the esau, that came out first and left him like jacob at his heels. his father has done with him, as pharoah to the children of israel, that would have them make brick and give them no straw, so he tasks him to be a gentleman, and leaves him nothing to maintain it. the pride of his house has undone him, which the elder's knighthood must sustain, and his beggary that knighthood. his birth and bringing up will not suffer him to descend to the means to get wealth; but he stands at the mercy of the world, and which is worse, of his brother. he is something better than the serving-men; yet they more saucy with him than he bold with the master, who beholds him with a countenance of stern awe, and checks him oftener than his liveries. his brother's old suits and he are much alike in request, and cast off now and then one to the other. nature hath furnished him with a little more wit upon compassion, for it is like to be his best revenue. if his annuity stretch so far, he is sent to the university, and with great heart-burning takes upon him the ministry, as a profession he is condemned to by his ill fortune. others take a more crooked path yet, the king's high-way; where at length their vizard is plucked off, and they strike fair for tyburn: but their brother's pride, not love, gets them a pardon. his last refuge is the low-countries,[ ] where rags and lice are no scandal, where he lives a poor gentleman of a company, and dies without a shirt. the only thing that may better his fortunes is an art he has to make a gentlewoman, wherewith he baits now and then some rich widow that is hungry after his blood. he is commonly discontented and desperate, and the form of his exclamation is, _that churl my brother_. he loves not his country for this unnatural custom, and would have long since revolted to the spaniard, but for kent[ ] only, which he holds in admiration. footnotes: [ ] the low-countries appear to have afforded ample room for ridicule at all times. in "_a brief character of the low-countries under the states, being three weeks observation of the vices and virtues of the inhabitants_, written by owen felltham, and printed lond. , mo. we find them epitomized as a general sea-land--the great bog of europe--an universal quagmire--in short a green cheese in pickle. the sailors (in which denomination the author appears to include all the natives,) he describes as being able to "drink, rail, swear, niggle, steal, and be _lowsie_ alike. p. . [ ] _gavelkind_, or the practice of dividing lands equally among all the male children of the deceased, was (according to spelman,) adopted by the saxons, from germany, and is noticed by tacitus in his description of that nation. _gloss. archaiol._ folio. lond. . harrison, in _the description of england_, prefixed to holinshed's _chronicle_, (vol. . page ,) says, "gauell kind is all the male children equallie to inherit, and is continued to this daie in _kent_, where it is onelie to my knowledge reteined, and no where else in england." and lambarde, in his _customes of kent_, (_perambulation_, to. , page ,) thus notices it:--"the custom of grauelkynde is generall, and spreadeth itselfe throughout the whole shyre, into all landes subiect by auncient tenure vnto the same, such places onely excepted, where it is altered by acte of parleament." ix. a meer formal man is somewhat more than the shape of a man; for he has his length, breadth, and colour. when you have seen his outside, you have looked through him, and need employ your discovery no farther. his reason is merely example, and his action is not guided by his understanding, but he sees other men do thus, and he follows them. he is a negative, for we cannot call him a wise man, but not a fool; nor an honest man, but not a knave; nor a protestant, but not a papist. the chief burden of his brain is the carriage of his body and the setting of his face in a good frame; which he performs the better, because he is not disjointed with other meditations. his religion is a good quiet subject, and he prays as he swears, in the phrase of the land. he is a fair guest, and a fair inviter, and can excuse his good cheer in the accustomed apology. he has some faculty in mangling of a rabbit, and the distribution of his morsel to a neighbour's trencher. he apprehends a jest by seeing men smile, and laughs orderly himself, when it comes to his turn. his businesses with his friends are to visit them, and whilst the business is no more, he can perform this well enough. his discourse is the news that he hath gathered in his walk, and for other matters his discretion is, that he will only what he can, that is, say nothing. his life is like one that runs to the[ ]church-walk, to take a turn or two, and so passes. he hath staid in the world to fill a number; and when he is gone, there wants one, and there's an end. footnotes: [ ] _minster-walk_, st edit. x. a church-papist is one that parts his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, and comes to church not to serve god but the king. the face of the law makes him wear the mask of the gospel, which he uses not as a means to save his soul, but charges. he loves popery well, but is loth to lose by it; and though he be something scared with the bulls of rome, yet they are far off, and he is struck with more terror at the apparitor. once a month he presents himself at the church, to keep off the church-warden, and brings in his body to save his bail. he kneels with the congregation, but prays by himself, and asks god forgiveness for coming thither. if he be forced to stay out a sermon, he pulls his hat over his eyes, and frowns out the hour; and when he comes home, thinks to make amends for this fault by abusing the preacher. his main policy is to shift off the communion, for which he is never unfurnished of a quarrel, and will be sure to be out of charity at easter; and indeed he lies not, for he has a quarrel to the sacrament. he would make a bad martyr and good traveller, for his conscience is so large he could never wander out of it; and in constantinople would be circumcised with a reservation. his wife is more zealous and therefore more costly, and he bates her in tires[ ] what she stands him in religion. but we leave him hatching plots against the state, and expecting spinola.[ ] footnotes: [ ] the word _tire_ is probably here used as an abbreviation of the word _attire_, dress, ornament. [ ] _ambrose spinola_ was one of the most celebrated and excellent commanders that spain ever possessed: he was born, in , of a noble family, and distinguished himself through life in being opposed to prince maurice of nassau, the greatest general of his age, by whom he was ever regarded with admiration and respect. he died in , owing to a disadvantage sustained by his troops at the siege of cassel, which was to be entirely attributed to the imprudent orders he received from spain, and which that government compelled him to obey. this disaster broke his heart; and he died with the exclamation of "_they have robbed me of my honour_;" an idea he was unable to survive. it is probable that, at the time this character was composed, many of the disaffected in england were in expectation of an attack to be made on this country by the spaniards, under the command of spinola. xi. a self-conceited man is one that knows himself so well, that he does not know himself. two excellent well-dones have undone him, and he is guilty of it that first commended him to madness. he is now become his own book, which he pores on continually, yet like a truant reader skips over the harsh places, and surveys only that which is pleasant. in the speculation of his own good parts, his eyes, like a drunkard's, see all double, and his fancy, like an old man's spectacles, make a great letter in a small print. he imagines every place where he comes his theater, and not a look stirring but his spectator; and conceives men's thoughts to be very idle, that is, [only] busy about him. his walk is still in the fashion of a march, and like his opinion unaccompanied, with his eyes most fixed upon his own person, or on others with reflection to himself. if he have done any thing that has past with applause, he is always re-acting it alone, and conceits the extasy his hearers were in at every period. his discourse is all positions and definitive decrees, with _thus it must be_ and _thus it is_, and he will not humble his authority to prove it. his tenent is always singular and aloof from the vulgar as he can, from which you must not hope to wrest him. he has an excellent humour for an heretick, and in these days made the first arminian. he prefers ramus before aristotle, and paracelsus before galen,[ ] [_and whosoever with most paradox is commended_.] he much pities the world that has no more insight in his parts, when he is too well discovered even to this very thought. a flatterer is a dunce to him, for he can tell him nothing but what he knows before: and yet he loves him too, because he is like himself. men are merciful to him, and let him alone, for if he be once driven from his humour, he is like two inward friends fallen out: his own bitter enemy and discontent presently makes a murder. in sum, he is a bladder blown up with wind, which the least flaw crushes to nothing. footnotes: [ ] _and lipsius his hopping stile before either tully or quintilian._ first edit. xii. a too idly reserved man is one that is a fool with discretion, or a strange piece of politician, that manages the state of himself. his actions are his privy-council, wherein no man must partake beside. he speaks under rule and prescription, and dare not shew his teeth without machiavel. he converses with his neighbours as he would in spain, and fears an inquisitive man as much as the inquisition. he suspects all questions for examinations, and thinks you would pick something out of him, and avoids you. his breast is like a gentlewoman's closet, which locks up every toy or trifle, or some bragging mountebank that makes every stinking thing a secret. he delivers you common matters with great conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the ear acts of parliament. you may as soon wrest a tooth from him as a paper, and whatsoever he reads is letters. he dares not talk of great men for fear of bad comments, and _he knows not how his words may be misapplied_. ask his opinion, and he tells you his doubt; and he never hears any thing more astonishedly than what he knows before. his words are like the cards at primivist,[ ] where is , and , ; for they never signify what they sound; but if he tell you he will do a thing, it is as much as if he swore he would not. he is one, indeed, that takes all men to be craftier than they are, and puts himself to a great deal of affliction to hinder their plots and designs, where they mean freely. he has been long a riddle himself, but at last finds oedipuses; for his over-acted dissimulation discovers him, and men do with him as they would with hebrew letters, spell him backwards and read him. footnotes: [ ] _primivist_ and primero were, in all probability, the same game, although minshew, in his dictionary, calls them "two games at cardes." the latter he explains "primum et primum visum, that is, first and first seene, because hee that can shew such an order of cardes, first winnes the game." the coincidence between mr. strutt's description of the former and the passage in the text, shews that there could be little or no difference between the value of the cards in these games, or in the manner of playing them. "each player has four cards dealt to him, one by one, the _seven_ was the highest card, in point of number, that he could avail himself of, _which counted for twenty-one_, the six _counted for sixteen_, the five for fifteen, and the ace for the same," &c. (_sports and pastimes_, .) the honourable daines barrington conceived that primero was introduced by philip the second, or some of his suite, whilst in england. shakspeare proves that it was played in the royal circle. ----"i left him (henry viii.) at _primero_ with the duke of suffolk."---- _henry viii._ so decker: "talke of none but lords and such ladies with whom you have plaid at _primero_."--_gul's hornebooke_, . . among the marquis of worcester's celebrated "_century of inventions_," mo. , is one "so contrived without suspicion, that playing at primero at cards, one may, without clogging his memory, keep reckoning of all sixes, sevens, and aces, which he hath discarded."--no. . xiii. a tavern is a degree, or (if you will,) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. if the vintner's nose[ ] be at door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush: the rooms are ill breathed like the drinkers that have been washed well over night, and are smelt-to fasting next morning; not furnished with beds apt to be defiled, but more necessary implements, stools, table, and a chamber-pot. it is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musick above is answered with the clinking below. the drawers are the civilest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem of them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. 'tis the best theater of natures, where they are truly acted, not played, and the business as in the rest of the world up and down, to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. a melancholy man would find here matter to work upon, to see heads as brittle as glasses, and often broken; men come hither to quarrel, and come hither to be made friends: and if plutarch will lend me his simile, it is even telephus's sword that makes wounds and cures them. it is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer or maker-away of a rainy day. it is the torrid zone that scorches _the_[ ] face, and tobacco the gun-powder that blows it up. much harm would be done, if the charitable vintner had not water ready for these flames. a house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like those countries far in the north, where it is as clear at mid-night as at mid-day. after a long sitting, it becomes like a street in a dashing shower, where the spouts are flushing above, and the conduits running below, while the jordans like swelling rivers overflow their banks. to give you the total reckoning of it; it is the busy man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns-of-court man's entertainment, the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. it is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of canary[ ] their book, whence we leave them. footnotes: [ ] "enquire out those tauernes which are best customd, whose maistres are oftenest drunk, for that confirmes their taste, and that they choose wholesome wines."--decker's _gul's horne-booke_, . [ ] _his_, first edit. [ ] the editor of the edition in , has altered _canary_ to "_sherry_" for what reason i am at a loss to discover, and have consequently restored the reading of the first edition. venner gives the following description of this favourite liquor. "canarie-wine, which beareth the name of the islands from whence it is brought, is of some termed a sacke, with this adjunct, sweete; but yet very improperly, for it differeth not only from sacke in sweetness and pleasantness of taste, but also in colour and consistence, for it is not so white in colour as sack, nor so thin in substance; wherefore it is more nutritive than sack, and less penetrative." _via recta ad vitam longum._ to. . in howell's time, canary wine was much adulterated. "i think," says he, in one of his _letters_, "there is more canary brought into england than to all the world besides; i think also, there is a hundred times more drunk under the name of canary wine, than there is brought in; for sherries and malagas, well mingled, pass for canaries in most taverns. when sacks and canaries," he continues, "were brought in first amongst us, they were used to be drunk in aqua vitæ measures, and 'twas held fit only for those to drink who were used to _carry their legs in their hands_, _their eyes upon their noses_, and an _almanack in their bones_; but now they go down every one's throat, both young and old, like milk." howell, _letter to the lord cliff_, dated oct. , . xiv. a shark is one whom all other means have failed, and he now lives of himself. he is some needy cashiered fellow, whom the world hath oft flung off, yet still clasps again, and is like one a drowning, fastens upon anything that is next at hand. amongst other of his shipwrecks he has happily lost shame, and this want supplies him. no man puts his brain to more use than he, for his life is a daily invention, and each meal a new stratagem. he has an excellent memory for his acquaintance, though there passed but _how do you_ betwixt them seven years ago, it shall suffice for an embrace, and that for money. he offers you a pottle of sack out of joy to see you, and in requital of his courtesy you can do no less than pay for it. he is fumbling with his purse-strings, as a school-boy with his points, when he is going to be whipped, 'till the master, weary with long stay, forgives him. when the reckoning is paid, he says, it must not be so, yet is strait pacified, and cries, what remedy? his borrowings are like subsidies, each man a shilling or two, as he can well dispend; which they lend him, not with a hope to be repaid, but that he will come no more. he holds a strange tyrrany over men, for he is their debtor, and they fear him as a creditor. he is proud of any employment, though it be but to carry commendations, which he will be sure to deliver at eleven of the clock.[ ] they in courtesy bid him stay, and he in manners cannot deny them. if he find but a good look to assure his welcome, he becomes their half-boarder, and haunts the threshold so long 'till he forces good nature to the necessity of a quarrel. publick invitations he will not wrong with his absence, and is the best witness of the sheriff's hospitality.[ ] men shun him at length as they would do an infection, and he is never crossed in his way if there be but a lane to escape him. he has done with the age as his clothes to him, hung on as long as he could, and at last drops off. footnotes: [ ] we learn from harrison's _description of england_, prefixed to holinshed, that _eleven o'clock_ was the usual time for dinner during the reign of elizabeth. "with vs the nobilitie, gentrie, and students, doo ordinarilie go to dinner at _eleuen before noone_, and to supper at fiue, or between fiue and six at afternoon." (vol. i. page . edit. .) the alteration in manners at this time is rather singularly evinced, from a passage immediately following the above quotation, where we find that _merchants_ and _husbandmen_ dined and supped at a _later hour than the nobility_. [ ] alluding to the public dinners given by the sheriff at particular seasons of the year. so in _the widow_, a comedy, to. . "and as at a _sheriff's table_, o blest custome! a poor indebted gentleman may dine, feed well, and without fear, and depart so." xv. a carrier is his own hackney-man; for he lets himself out to travel as well as his horses. he is the ordinary embassador between friend and friend, the father and the son, and brings rich presents to the one, but never returns any back again. he is no unlettered man, though in shew simple; for questionless, he has much in his budget, which he can utter too in fit time and place. he is [like] the vault[ ] in gloster church, that conveys whispers at a distance, for he takes the sound out of your mouth at york, and makes it be heard as far as london. he is the young student's joy and expectation, and the most accepted guest, to whom they lend a willing hand to discharge him of his burden. his first greeting is commonly, _your friends are well_; [_and to prove it_][ ] in a piece of gold delivers their blessing. you would think him a churlish blunt fellow, but they find in him many tokens of humanity. he is a great afflicter of the high-ways, and beats them out of measure; which injury is sometimes revenged by the purse-taker, and then the voyage miscarries. no man domineers more in his inn, nor calls his host unreverently with more presumption, and this arrogance proceeds out of the strength of his horses. he forgets not his load where he takes his ease, for he is drunk commonly before he goes to bed. he is like the prodigal child, still packing away and still returning again. but let him pass. footnotes: [ ] the chapel of the virgin mary, in the cathedral church of gloucester, was founded by richard stanley, abbot, in , and finished by william farley, a monk of the monastery, in . sir robert atkyns gives the following description of the vault here alluded to. "the _whispering place_ is very remarkable; it is a long alley, from one side of the choir to the other, built circular, that it might not darken the great east window of the choir. when a person whispers at one end of the alley, his voice is heard distinctly at the other end, though the passage be open in the middle, having large spaces for doors and windows on the east side. it may be imputed to the close cement of the wall, which makes it as one entire stone, and so conveys the voice, as a long piece of timber does convey the least stroak to the other end. others assign it to the repercussion of the voice from accidental angles." _atkyns' ancient and present state of glostershire. lond. , folio, page ._ see also _fuller's worthies, in gloucestershire, page _. [ ] _then in a piece of gold_, &c. first edit. xvi. a young man; he is now out of nature's protection, though not yet able to guide himself; but left loose to the world and fortune, from which the weakness of his childhood preserved him; and now his strength exposes him. he is, indeed, just of age to be miserable, yet in his own conceit first begins to be happy; and he is happier in this imagination, and his misery not felt is less. he sees yet but the outside of the world and men, and conceives them, according to their appearing, glister, and out of this ignorance believes them. he pursues all vanities for happiness, and [ ][_enjoys them best in this fancy._] his reason serves, not to curb but understand his appetite, and prosecute the motions thereof with a more eager earnestness. himself is his own temptation, and needs not satan, and the world will come hereafter. he leaves repentance for grey hairs, and performs it in being covetous. he is mingled with the vices of the age as the fashion and custom, with which he longs to be acquainted, and sins to better his understanding. he conceives his youth as the season of his lust, and the hour wherein he ought to be bad; and because he would not lose his time, spends it. he distastes religion as a sad thing, and is six years elder for a thought of heaven. he scorns and fears, and yet hopes for old age, but dare not imagine it with wrinkles. he loves and hates with the same inflammation, and when the heat is over is cool alike to friends and enemies. his friendship is seldom so stedfast, but that lust, drink, or anger may overturn it. he offers you his blood to-day in kindness, and is ready to take yours to-morrow. he does seldom any thing which he wishes not to do again, and is only wise after a misfortune. he suffers much for his knowledge, and a great deal of folly it is makes him a wise man. he is free from many vices, by being not grown to the performance, and is only more virtuous out of weakness. every action is his danger, and every man his ambush. he is a ship without pilot or tackling, and only good fortune may steer him. if he scape this age, he has scaped a tempest, and may live to be a man. footnotes: [ ] _whilst he has not yet got them, enjoys them_, first edit. xvii. an old college butler is none of the worst students in the house, for he keeps the set hours at his book more duly than any. his authority is great over men's good names, which he charges many times with shrewd aspersions, which they hardly wipe off without payment. [his box and counters prove him to be a man of reckoning, yet] he is stricter in his accounts than a usurer, and delivers not a farthing without writing. he doubles the pains of gollobelgicus,[ ] for his books go out once a quarter, and they are much in the same nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and are out of request as soon. his comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. he divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than keckerman,[ ] and sub-divides the _à primo ortum_ so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. he is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and if he be overseen, 'tis within his own liberties, and no man ought to take exception. he is never so well pleased with his place as when a gentleman is beholden to him for shewing him the buttery, whom he greets with a cup of single beer and sliced manchet,[ ] and tells him it is the fashion of the college. he domineers over freshmen when they first come to the hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of cues and cees, and some broken latin which he has learnt at his bin. his faculties extraordinary is the warming of a pair of cards, and telling out a dozen of counters for post and pair, and no man is more methodical in these businesses. thus he spends his age till the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one is set abroach. footnotes: [ ] gallo-belgicus was erroneously supposed, by the ingenious mr. reed, to be the "first news-paper published in england;" we are, however, assured by the author of the "life of ruddiman," that it has no title to so honourable a distinction. gallo-belgicus appears to have been rather an _annual register_, or _history of its own times_, than a news-paper. it was written in latin, and entitled. "mercurij gallo-belgici: _sive, rerum in gallia, et belgio potissimum: hispania quoque, italia, anglia, germania, polonia. vicinisque locis ab anno , ad martium anni , gestarum_, nuncij." the first volume was printed in vo. at cologne, ; from which year, to about , it was published annually; and from thence to the time of its conclusion, which is uncertain, it appeared in _half-yearly_ volumes. chalmers' _life of ruddiman_, . the great request in which newspapers were held at the publication of the present work, may be gathered from burton, who, in his _anatomy of melancholy_, complains that "if any read now-a-days, it is a play-book, or a pamphlet of newes." [ ] bartholomew keckerman was born at dantzick, in prussia, , and educated under fabricius. being eminently distinguished for his abilities and application, he was, in , requested, by the senate of dantzick, to take upon him the management of their academy; an honour he then declined, but accepted, on a second application, in . here he proposed to instruct his pupils in the complete science of philosophy in the short space of three years, and, for that purpose, drew up a great number of books upon logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, metaphysics, geography, astronomy, &c. &c. till, as it is said, literally worn out with scholastic drudgery, he died at the early age of . [ ] of bread made of wheat we have sundrie sorts dailie brought to the table, whereof the first and most excellent is the _mainchet_, which we commonlie call white bread. harrison, _description of england_ prefixed to holinshed, chap. . xviii. an upstart country knight [_is a holiday clown, and differs only in the stuff of his clothes, not the stuff of himself_,][ ] for he bare the king's sword before he had arms to wield it; yet being once laid o'er the shoulder with a knighthood, he finds the herald his friend. his father was a man of good stock, though but a tanner or usurer; he purchased the land, and his son the title. he has doffed off the name of a [ ][_country fellow_,] but the look not so easy, and his face still bears a relish of churne-milk. he is guarded with more gold lace than all the gentlemen of the country, yet his body makes his clothes still out of fashion. his house-keeping is seen much in the distinct families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels, and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. a hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility,[ ] and is exceeding ambitious to seem delighted in the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses.[ ] a justice of peace he is to domineer in his parish, and do his neighbour wrong with more right.[ ] he will be drunk with his hunters for company, and stain his gentility with droppings of ale. he is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner. in sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it: and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they escape hanging, return to the place from whence they came. footnotes: [ ] _his honour was somewhat preposterous, for he bare_, &c. first edit. [ ] _clown_, first edit. [ ] the art of hawking has been so frequently and so fully explained, that it would be superfluous, if not arrogant, to trace its progress, or delineate its history, in this place. in the earliest periods it appears to have been exclusively practised by the nobility; and, indeed, the great expense at which the amusement was supported, seems to have been a sufficient reason for deterring persons of more moderate income, and of inferior rank, from indulging in the pursuit. in the _sports and pastimes_ of mr. strutt, a variety of instances are given of the importance attached to the office of falconer, and of the immense value of, and high estimation the birds themselves were held in from the commencement of the norman government, down to the reign of james i. in which sir thomas monson gave _ l._ for a cast of hawks, which consisted of only _two_. the great increase of wealth, and the consequent equalization of property in this country, about the reign of elizabeth, induced many of inferior birth to practise the amusements of their superiors, which they did without regard to expense, or indeed propriety. sir thomas elyot, in his _governour_ ( ), complains that the falkons of his day consumed so much poultry, that, in a few years, he feared there would be a great scarcity of it. "i speake not this," says he, "in disprayse of the faukons, but of them which keepeth them lyke cockneyes." a reproof, there can be no doubt, applicable to the character in the text. [ ] a term in hawking, signifying the short straps of leather which are fastened to the hawk's legs, by which she is held on the fist, or joined to the leash. they were sometimes made of silk, as appears from ¶ _the boke of hawkynge, huntynge, and fysshynge, with all the propertyes and medecynes that are necessarye to be kepte_: "hawkes haue aboute theyr legges gesses made of lether most comonly, some of sylke, which shuld be no lenger but that the knottes of them shulde appere in the myddes of the lefte hande," &c. _juliana barnes._ edit. to. "_imprynted at london in pouls chyrchyarde by me hery tab._" sig. c. ii. [ ] _this authority of his is that club which keeps them under as his dogs hereafter._ first edit. xix. an idle gallant is one that was born and shaped for his cloaths; and, if adam had not fallen, had lived to no purpose. he gratulates therefore the first sin, and fig-leaves that were an occasion of [his] bravery. his first care is his dress, the next his body, and in the uniting of these two lies his soul and its faculties. he observes london trulier than the terms, and his business is the street, the stage, the court, and those places where a proper man is best shown. if he be qualified in gaming extraordinary, he is so much the more genteel and compleat, and he learns the best oaths for the purpose. these are a great part of his discourse, and he is as curious in their newness as the fashion. his other talk is ladies and such pretty things, or some jest at a play. his pick-tooth bears a great part in his discourse, so does his body, the upper parts whereof are as starched as his linnen, and perchance use the same laundress. he has learned to ruffle his face from his boot, and takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. though his life pass somewhat slidingly, yet he seems very careful of the time, for he is still drawing his watch out of his pocket, and spends part of his hours in numbering them. he is one never serious but with his taylor, when he is in conspiracy for the next device. he is furnished with his jests, as some wanderer with sermons, some three for all congregations, one especially against the scholar, a man to him much ridiculous, whom he knows by no other definition, but a silly fellow in black. he is a kind of walking mercer's shop, and shows you one stuff to-day and another to-morrow; an ornament to the room he comes in as the fair bed and hangings be; and it is meerly ratable accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. his main ambition is to get a knight-hood, and then an old lady, which if he be happy in, he fills the stage and a coach so much longer: otherwise, himself and his cloaths grow stale together, and he is buried commonly ere he dies in the gaol, or the country. xx. a constable is a vice-roy in the street, and no man stands more upon't that he is the king's officer. his jurisdiction extends to the next stocks, where he has commission for the heels only, and sets the rest of the body at liberty. he is a scarecrow to that ale-house, where he drinks not his morning draught, and apprehends a drunkard for not standing in the king's name. beggars fear him more than the justice, and as much as the whip-stock, whom he delivers over to his subordinate magistrates, the bridewell-man, and the beadle. he is a great stickler in the tumults of double jugs, and ventures his head by his place, which is broke many times to keep whole the peace. he is never so much in his majesty as in his night-watch, where he sits in his chair of state, a shop-stall, and invironed with a guard of halberts, examines all passengers. he is a very careful man in his office, but if he stay up after midnight you shall take him napping. xxi. a down-right scholar is one that has much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which time and experience fashions and refines. he is good metal in the inside, though rough and unscoured without, and therefore hated of the courtier, that is quite contrary. the time has got a vein of making him ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and no unlucky absurdity but is put upon his profession, and done like a scholar. but his fault is only this, that his mind is [somewhat] too much taken up with his mind, and his thoughts not loaden with any carriage besides. he has not put on the quaint garb of the age, which is now a man's [_imprimis and all the item_.[ ]] he has not humbled his meditations to the industry of complement, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. his body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely and his nod worse. he cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. his smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savory, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. a very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logick of a capon. he has not the glib faculty of sliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the laughter commonly before the jest. he names this word college too often, and his discourse beats too much on the university. the perplexity of mannerliness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at an argument when he should cut his meat. he is discarded for a gamester at all games but one and thirty,[ ] and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. his fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle, but his fist clunched with the habit of disputing. he ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together. he is exceedingly censured by the inns-of-court men, for that heinous vice being out of fashion. he cannot speak to a dog in his own dialect, and understands greek better than the language of a falconer. he has been used to a dark room, and dark cloathes, and his eyes dazzle at a sattin suit. the hermitage of his study, has made him somewhat uncouth in the world, and men make him worse by staring on him. thus is he [silly and] ridiculous, and it continues with him for some quarter of a year out of the university. but practise him a little in men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall out-ballance those glisterers, as far as a solid substance does a feather, or gold, gold-lace. footnotes: [ ] _now become a man's total_, first edit. [ ] of the game called _one and thirty_, i am unable to find any mention in mr. strutt's _sports and pastimes_, nor is it alluded to in any of the old plays or tracts i have yet met with. a very satisfactory account of _tables_ may be read in the interesting and valuable publication just noticed. xxii. a plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow and untilled. he has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy. he seems to have the punishment of _nebuchadnezzar_, for his conversation is among beasts, and his tallons none of the shortest, only he eats not grass, because he loves not sallets. his hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. he expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than english. his mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, will fix here half an hour's contemplation. his habitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loopholes that let out smoak, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grandsire's time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. his dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastner on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. his religion is a part of his copy-hold, which he takes from his land-lord, and refers it wholly to his discretion: yet if he give him leave he is a good christian to his power, (that is,) comes to church in his best cloaths, and sits there with his neighbours, where he is capable only of two prayers, for rain, and fair weather. he apprehends god's blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but on _good ground_. sunday he esteems a day to make merry in, and thinks a bag-pipe as essential to it as evening-prayer, where he walks very solemnly after service, with his hands coupled behind him, and censures the dancing of his parish. [his compliment with his neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] he thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. he is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. his feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard scraping in beseeching his worship to take his money. he is sensible of no calamity but the burning a stack of corn or the overflowing of a meadow, and thinks noah's flood the greatest plague that ever was, not because it drowned the world, but spoiled the grass. for death he is never troubled, and if he get in but his harvest before, let it come when it will, he cares not. xxiii. a player. he knows the right use of the world, wherein he comes to play a part and so away. his life is not idle, for it is all action, and no man need be more wary in his doings, for the eyes of all men are upon him. his profession has in it a kind of contradiction, for none is more disliked, and yet none more applauded; and he has the misfortune of some scholar, too much wit makes him a fool. he is like our painting gentlewomen, seldom in his own face, seldomer in his cloaths; and he pleases, the better he counterfeits, except only when he is disguised with straw for gold lace. he does not only personate on the stage, but sometimes in the street, for he is masked still in the habit of a gentleman. his parts find him oaths and good words, which he keeps for his use and discourse, and makes shew with them of a fashionable companion. he is tragical on the stage, but rampant in the tiring-house,[ ] and swears oaths there which he never conned. the waiting women spectators are over-ears in love with him, and ladies send for him to act in their chambers. your inns-of-court men were undone but for him, he is their chief guest and employment, and the sole business that makes them afternoon's-men. the poet only is his tyrant, and he is bound to make his friend's friend drunk at his charge. shrove-tuesday he fears as much as the bauds, and lent[ ] is more damage to him than the butcher. he was never so much discredited as in one act, and that was of parliament, which gives hostlers priviledge before him, for which he abhors it more than a corrupt judge. but to give him his due, one well-furnished actor has enough in him for five common gentlemen, and, if he have a good body, [for six, and] for resolution he shall challenge any cato, for it has been his practice to die bravely. footnotes: [ ] the room where the performers dress, previous to coming on the stage. [ ] this passage affords a proof of what has been doubted, namely, that the theatres were not permitted to be open during lent, in the reign of james i. the restriction was waved in the next reign, as we find from the puritanical prynne:--"there are none so much addicted to stage-playes, but when they goe unto places where they cannot have them, or when, as they are suppressed by publike authority, (as in times of pestilence, and in _lent, till now of late_,) can well subsist without them," &c. _histrio-mastix_, to. _lond. . page ._ xxiv. a detractor is one of a more cunning and active envy, wherewith he gnaws not foolishly himself, but throws it abroad and would have it blister others. he is commonly some weak parted fellow, and worse minded, yet is strangely ambitious to match others, not by mounting their worth, but bringing them down with his tongue to his own poorness. he is indeed like the red dragon that pursued the woman, for when he cannot over-reach another, he opens his mouth and throws a flood after to drown him. you cannot anger him worse than to do well, and he hates you more bitterly for this, than if you had cheated him of his patrimony with your own discredit. he is always slighting the general opinion, and wondering why such and such men should be applauded. commend a good divine, he cries postilling; a philologer, pedantry; a poet, rhiming; a school-man, dull wrangling; a sharp conceit, boyishness; an honest man, plausibility. he comes to publick things not to learn, but to catch, and if there be but one soloecism, that is all he carries away. he looks on all things with a prepared sowerness, and is still furnished with a pish beforehand, or some musty proverb that disrelishes all things whatsoever. if fear of the company make him second a commendation, it is like a law-writ, always with a clause of exception, or to smooth his way to some greater scandal. he will grant you something, and bate more; and this bating shall in conclusion take away all he granted. his speech concludes still with an oh! but,--and i could wish one thing amended; and this one thing shall be enough to deface all his former commendations. he will be very inward with a man to fish some bad out of him, and make his slanders hereafter more authentick, when it is said a friend reported it. he will inveigle you to naughtiness to get your good name into his clutches; he will be your pandar to have you on the hip for a whore-master, and make you drunk to shew you reeling. he passes the more plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humour, and it is thought freeness which is malice. if he can say nothing of a man, he will seem to speak riddles, as if he could tell strange stories if he would; and when he has racked his invention to the utmost, he ends;--but i wish him well, and therefore must hold my peace. he is always listening and enquiring after men, and suffers not a cloak to pass by him unexamined. in brief, he is one that has lost all good himself, and is loth to find it in another. xxv. a young gentleman of the university is one that comes there to wear a gown, and to say hereafter, he has been at the university. his father sent him thither because he heard there were the best fencing and dancing-schools; from these he has his education, from his tutor the over-sight. the first element of his knowledge is to be shewn the colleges, and initiated in a tavern by the way, which hereafter he will learn of himself. the two marks of his seniority, is the bare velvet of his gown, and his proficiency at tennis, where when he can once play a set, he is a fresh man no more. his study has commonly handsome shelves, his books neat silk strings, which he shews to his father's man, and is loth to unty[ ] or take down for fear of misplacing. upon foul days for recreation he retires thither, and looks over the pretty book his tutor reads to him, which is commonly some short history, or a piece of euphormio; for which his tutor gives him money to spend next day. his main loytering is at the library, where he studies arms and books of honour, and turns a gentleman critick in pedigrees. of all things he endures not to be mistaken for a scholar, and hates a black suit though it be made of sattin. his companion is ordinarily some stale fellow, that has been notorious for an ingle to gold hatbands,[ ] whom he admires at first, afterward scorns. if he have spirit or wit he may light of better company, and may learn some flashes of wit, which may do him knight's service in the country hereafter. but he is now gone to the inns-of-court, where he studies to forget what he learned before, his acquaintance and the fashion. footnotes: [ ] it may not be known to those who are not accustomed to meet with old books in their original bindings, or of seeing public libraries of antiquity, that the volumes were formerly placed on the shelves with the _leaves_, not the _back_, in front; and that the two sides of the binding were joined together with _neat silk_ or other strings, and, in some instances, where the books were of greater value and curiosity than common, even fastened with gold or silver chains. [ ] a hanger-on to noblemen, who are distinguished at the university by gold tassels to their caps; or in the language of the present day, a _tuft-hunter_. xxvi. a weak man is a child at man's estate, one whom nature huddled up in haste, and left his best part unfinished. the rest of him is grown to be a man, only his brain stays behind. he is one that has not improved his first rudiments, nor attained any proficiency by his stay in the world: but we may speak of him yet as when he was in the bud, a good harmless nature, a well meaning mind[ ] [_and no more_.] it is his misery that he now wants a tutor, and is too old to have one. he is two steps above a fool, and a great many more below a wise man; yet the fool is oft given him, and by those whom he esteems most. some tokens of him are,--he loves men better upon relation than experience, for he is exceedingly enamoured of strangers, and none quicklier a weary of his friend. he charges you at first meeting with all his secrets, and on better acquaintance grows more reserved. indeed he is one that mistakes much his abusers for friends, and his friends for enemies, and he apprehends your hate in nothing so much as in good council. one that is flexible with any thing but reason, and then only perverse. [a servant to every tale and flatterer, and whom the last man still works over.] a great affecter of wits and such prettinesses; and his company is costly to him, for he seldom has it but invited. his friendship commonly is begun in a supper, and lost in lending money. the tavern is a dangerous place to him, for to drink and be drunk is with him all one, and his brain is sooner quenched than his thirst. he is drawn into naughtiness with company, but suffers alone, and the bastard commonly laid to his charge. one that will be patiently abused, and take exception a month after when he understands it, and then be abused again into a reconcilement; and you cannot endear him more than by cozening him, and it is a temptation to those that would not. one discoverable in all silliness to all men but himself, and you may take any man's knowledge of him better than his own. he will promise the same thing to twenty, and rather than deny one break with all. one that has no power over himself, over his business, over his friends, but a prey and pity to all; and if his fortunes once sink, men quickly cry, alas!--and forget him. footnotes: [ ] _if he could order his intentions_, first edit. xxvii. a tobacco-seller is the only man that finds good in it which others brag of but do not; for it is meat, drink, and clothes to him. no man opens his ware with greater seriousness, or challenges your judgment more in the approbation. his shop is the rendezvous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, and their communication is smoak.[ ] it is the place only where spain is commended and preferred before england itself. he should be well experienced in the world, for he has daily trial of men's nostrils, and none is better acquainted with humours. he is the piecing commonly of some other trade, which is bawd to his tobacco, and that to his wife, which is the flame that follows this smoak. footnotes: [ ] minshew calls a tobacconist _fumi-vendulus_, a _smoak-seller_. xxviii. a pot-poet is the dregs of wit, yet mingled with good drink may have some relish. his inspirations are more real than others, for they do but feign a god, but he has his by him. his verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. in thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together. the press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a six-pence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet. his works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; for which the printer maintains him in ale a fortnight. his verses are like his clothes miserable centoes[ ] and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanack's. the death of a great man or the _burning_[ ] of a house furnish him with an argument, and the nine muses are out strait in mourning gowns, and melpomene cries fire! fire! [his other poems are but briefs in rhime, and like the poor greeks collections to redeem from captivity.] he is a man now much employed in commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the spaniard. his frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market to a vile tune and a worse throat; whilst the poor country wench melts like her butter to hear them. and these are the stories of some men of tyburn, or a strange monster out of germany;[ ] or, sitting in a bawdy-house, he writes god's judgments. he drops away at last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himself made the verses,[ ] and his life, like a cann too full, spills upon the bench. he leaves twenty shillings on the score, which my hostess loses. footnotes: [ ] _cento_, a composition formed by joining scraps from other authors. _johnson._ camden, in his _remains_, uses it in the same sense. "it is quilted, as it were, out of shreds of divers poets, such as scholars call a _cento_." [ ] _firing_, first edit. [ ] in the hope of discovering some account of the _strange monster_ alluded to, i have looked through one of the largest and most curious collections of tracts, relating to the marvellous, perhaps in existence. that bequeathed to the bodleian, by robert burton, the author of the _anatomy of melancholy_. hitherto my researches have been unattended with success, as i have found only two tracts of this description relating to germany, both of which are in prose, and neither giving any account of a monster. . _a most true relation of a very dreadfull earthquake, with the lamentable effectes thereof, which began upon the . of december . and yet continueth most fearefull in munster in germanie. reade and tremble. translated out of dutch, by charles demetrius, publike notarie in london, and printed at rotterdame, in holland, at the signe of the white gray-hound._ (date cut off. twenty-six pages, to. with a woodcut.) . _miraculous newes from the cittie of holt, in the lordship of munster, in germany, the twentieth of september last past, . where there were plainly beheld three dead bodyes rise out of their graues admonishing the people of iudgements to come. faithfully translated (&c. &c.) london, printed for iohn barnes, dwelling in hosie lane neere smithfield, ._ ( to. twenty pages, wood-cut.) [ ] it was customary to work or paint proverbs, moral sentences, or scraps of verse on old tapestry hangings, which were called _painted cloths_. several allusions to this practice may be found in the works of our early english dramatists. see reed's _shakspeare_, viii. xxix. a plausible man is one that would fain run an even path in the world, and jut against no man. his endeavour is not to offend, and his aim the general opinion. his conversation is a kind of continued compliment, and his life a practice of manners. the relation he bears to others, a kind of fashionable respect, not friendship but friendliness, which is equal to all and general, and his kindnesses seldom exceed courtesies. he loves not deeper mutualities, because he would not take sides, nor hazard himself on displeasures, which he principally avoids. at your first acquaintance with him he is exceeding kind and friendly, and at your twentieth meeting after but friendly still. he has an excellent command over his patience and tongue, especially the last, which he accommodates always to the times and persons, and speaks seldom what is sincere, but what is civil. he is one that uses all companies, drinks all healths, and is reasonable cool in all religions. [he considers who are friends to the company, and speaks well where he is sure to hear of it again.] he can listen to a foolish discourse with an applausive attention, and conceal his laughter at nonsense. silly men much honour and esteem him, because by his fair reasoning with them as with men of understanding, he puts them into an erroneous opinion of themselves, and makes them forwarder hereafter to their own discovery. he is one _rather well_[ ] thought on than beloved, and that love he has is more of whole companies together than any one in particular. men gratify him notwithstanding with a good report, and whatever vices he has besides, yet having no enemies, he is sure to be an honest fellow. footnotes: [ ] _better_, first edit. xxx. a bowl-alley is the place where there are three things thrown away beside bowls, to wit, time, money, and curses, and the last ten for one. the best sport in it is the gamesters, and he enjoys it that looks on and bets not. it is the school of wrangling, and worse than the schools, for men will cavil here for a hair's breadth, and make a stir where a straw would end the controversy. no antick screws men's bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless, to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in intreaties for a good cast. the betters are the factious noise of the alley, or the gamesters beadsmen that pray for them. they are somewhat like those that are cheated by great men, for they lose their money and must say nothing. it is the best discovery of humours, especially in the losers, where you have fine variety of impatience, whilst some fret, some rail, some swear, and others more ridiculously comfort themselves with philosophy. to give you the moral of it; it is the emblem of the world, or the world's ambition: where most are short, or over, or wide or wrong-biassed, and some few justle in to the mistress fortune. and it is here as in the court, where the nearest are most spited, and all blows aimed at the toucher. xxxi. the world's wise man is an able and sufficient wicked man: it is a proof of his sufficiency that he is not called wicked, but wise. a man wholly determined in himself and his own ends, and his instruments herein any thing that will do it. his friends are a part of his engines, and as they serve to his works, used or laid by: indeed he knows not this thing of friend, but if he give you the name, it is a sign he has a plot on you. never more active in his businesses, than when they are mixed with some harm to others; and it is his best play in this game to strike off and lie in the place: successful commonly in these undertakings, because he passes smoothly those rubs which others stumble at, as conscience and the like; and gratulates himself much in this advantage. oaths and falshood he counts the nearest way, and loves not by any means to go about. he has many fine quips at this folly of plain dealing, but his "tush!" is greatest at religion; yet he uses this too, and virtue and good words, but is less dangerously a devil than a saint. he ascribes all honesty to an unpractisedness in the world, and conscience a thing merely for children. he scorns all that are so silly to _trust_[ ] him, and only not scorns his enemy, especially if as bad as himself: he fears him as a man well armed and provided, but sets boldly on good natures, as the most vanquishable. one that seriously admires those worst princes, as sforza, borgia, and richard the third; and calls matters of deep villany things of difficulty. to whom murders are but resolute acts, and treason a business of great consequence. one whom two or three countries make up to this compleatness, and he has travelled for the purpose. his deepest indearment is a communication of mischief, and then only you have him fast. his conclusion is commonly one of these two, either a great man, or hanged. footnotes: [ ] _hate_, first edit. xxxii. a surgeon is one that has some business about this building or little house of man, whereof nature is as it were the tiler, and he the plaisterer. it is ofter out of reparations than an old parsonage, and then he is set on work to patch it again. he deals most with broken commodities, as a broken head or a mangled face, and his gains are very ill got, for he lives by the hurts of the commonwealth. he differs from a physician as a sore does from a disease, or the sick from those that are not whole, the one distempers you within, the other blisters you without. he complains of the decay of valour in these days, and sighs for that slashing age of sword and buckler; and thinks the law against duels was made meerly to wound his vocation. he had been long since undone if the charity of the stews had not relieved him, from whom he has his tribute as duly as the pope; or a wind-fall sometimes from a tavern, if a quart pot hit right. the rareness of his custom makes him pitiless when it comes, and he holds a patient longer than our [spiritual] courts a cause. he tells you what danger you had been in if he had staid but a minute longer, and though it be but a pricked finger, he makes of it much matter. he is a reasonable cleanly man, considering the scabs he has to deal with, and your finest ladies are now and then beholden to him for their best dressings. he curses old gentlewomen and their charity that makes his trade their alms; but his envy is never stirred so much as when gentlemen go over to fight upon calais sands,[ ] whom he wishes drowned e'er they come there, rather than the french shall get his custom. footnotes: [ ] _calais sands_ were chosen by english duellists to decide their quarrels on, as being out of the jurisdiction of the law. this custom is noticed in an epigram written about the period in which this book first appeared. "when boasting bembus challeng'd is to fight, he seemes at first a very diuell in sight: till more aduizde, will not defile [his] hands, vnlesse you meete him vpon _callice_ sands." _the mastive or young whelpe of the olde dog. epigrams and satyrs._ to. _lond._ (_printed, as warton supposes, about ._) a passage in _the beau's duel: or a soldier for the ladies_, a comedy, by mrs. centlivre, to. , proves, that it existed so late as at that day. "your only way is to send him word you'll meet him on _calais sands_; duelling is unsafe in england for men of estates," &c. see also other instances in dodsley's _old plays_, edit. . vii. .--xii. . xxxiii. a contemplative man is a scholar in this great university the world; and the same his book and study. he cloysters not his meditations in the narrow darkness of a room, but sends them abroad with his eyes, and his brain travels with his feet. he looks upon man from a high tower, and sees him trulier at this distance in his infirmities and poorness. he scorns to mix himself in men's actions, as he would to act upon a stage; but sits aloft on the scaffold a censuring spectator. [he will not lose his time by being busy, or make so poor a use of the world as to hug and embrace it.] nature admits him as a partaker of her sports, and asks his approbation as it were of her own works and variety. he comes not in company, because he would not be solitary, but finds discourse enough with himself, and his own thoughts are his excellent playfellows. he looks not upon a thing as a yawning stranger at novelties, but his search is more mysterious and inward, and he spells heaven out of earth. he knits his observations together, and makes a ladder of them all to climb to god. he is free from vice, because he has no occasion to imploy it, and is above those ends that make man wicked. he has learnt all can here be taught him, and comes now to heaven to see more. xxxiv. a she precise hypocrite is one in whom good women suffer, and have their truth misinterpreted by her folly. she is one, she knows not what her self if you ask her, but she is indeed one that has taken a toy at the fashion of religion, and is enamoured of the new fangle. she is a nonconformist in a close stomacher and ruff of geneva print,[ ] and her purity consists much in her linnen. she has heard of the rag of rome, and thinks it a very sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of babylon for a very naughty woman. she has left her virginity as a relick of popery, and marries in her tribe without a ring. her devotion at the church is much in the turning up of her eye; and turning down the leaf in her book, when she hears named chapter and verse. when she comes home, she commends the sermon for the scripture, and two hours. she loves preaching better then praying, and of preachers, lecturers; and thinks the week day's exercise far more edifying than the sunday's. her oftest gossipings are sabbath-day's journeys, where, (though an enemy to superstition,) she will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a better sermon in her own parish. she doubts of the virgin mary's salvation, and dares not saint her, but knows her own place in heaven as perfectly as the pew she has a key to. she is so taken up with faith she has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are wrought on the sampler. she accounts nothing vices but superstition and an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear _by my truly_. she rails at other women by the names of jezebel and dalilah; and calls her own daughters rebecca and abigail, and not ann but hannah. she suffers them not to learn on the virginals,[ ] because of their affinity with organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes sake, since they were reformed to the tune of a psalm. she overflows so with the bible, that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids without scripture. it is a question whether she is more troubled with the devil, or the devil with her: she is always challenging and daring him, and her weapon [[ ]_is the practice of piety_.] nothing angers her so much as that women cannot preach, and in this point only thinks the brownist erroneous; but what she cannot at the church she does at the table, where she prattles more than any against sense and antichrist, 'till a capon's wing silence her. she expounds the priests of baal, reading ministers, and thinks the salvation of that parish as desperate as the turks. she is a main derider to her capacity of those that are not her preachers, and censures all sermons but bad ones. if her husband be a tradesman, she helps him to customers, howsoever to good cheer, and they are a most faithful couple at these meetings, for they never fail. her conscience is like others lust, never satisfied, and you might better answer scotus than her scruples. she is one that thinks she performs all her duties to god in hearing, and shews the fruits of it in talking. she is more fiery against the may-pole than her husband, and thinks she might do a phineas' act to break the pate of the fidler. she is an everlasting argument, but i am weary of her. footnotes: [ ] strict devotees were, i believe, noted for the smallness and precision of their _ruffs_, which were termed _in print_ from the exactness of the folds. so in mynshul's _essays_, to. . "i vndertooke a warre when i adventured to speake in _print_, (not in _print as puritan's ruffes_ are set.)" the term of _geneva print_ probably arose from the minuteness of the type used at geneva. in the _merry devil of edmonton_, a comedy, to. , is an expression which goes some way to prove the correctness of this supposition:--"i see by thy eyes thou hast bin reading _little geneua print_;"--and, that _small ruffs_ were worn by the puritanical set, an instance appears in mayne's _city match_, a comedy, to. . ----"o miracle! out of your _little ruffe_, dorcas, and in the fashion! dost thou hope to be saved?" from these three extracts it is, i think, clear that a _ruff of geneva print_ meant a _small, closely-folded ruff_, which was the distinction of a non-conformist. [ ] a virginal, says mr. malone, was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano-forte: the mode of playing on this instrument was therefore similar to that of the organ. [ ] _weapons are spells no less potent than different, as being the sage sentences of some of her own sectaries._ first edit. xxxv. a sceptick in religion is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions, whereof not one but stirs him and none sways him. a man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of every thing, that he fully believes nothing. each religion scares him from its contrary: none persuades him to itself. he would be wholly a christian, but that he is something of an atheist, and wholly an atheist, but that he is partly a christian; and a perfect heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. he finds reason in all opinions, truth in none: indeed the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. he is at most a confused and wild christian, not specialized by any form, but capable of all. he uses the land's religion, because it is next him, yet he sees not why he may not take the other, but he chuses this, not as better, but because there is not a pin to choose. he finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and is always too hard for himself. his learning is too much for his brain, and his judgment too little for his learning, and his over-opinion of both, spoils all. pity it was his mischance of being a scholar; for it does only distract and irregulate him, and the world by him. he hammers much in general upon our opinion's uncertainty, and the possibility of erring makes him not venture on what is true. he is troubled at this naturalness of religion to countries, that protestantism should be born so in england and popery abroad, and that fortune and the stars should so much share in it. he likes not this connection of the common-weal and divinity, and fears it may be an arch-practice of state. in our differences with rome he is strangely unfixed, and a new man every new day, as his last discourse-book's meditations transport him. he could like the gray hairs of popery, did not some dotages there stagger him: he would come to us sooner, but our new name affrights him. he is taken with their miracles, but doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, but it seems too empty and naked. he cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription of truth to our corner, and is as hardly persuaded to think their old legends true. he approves well of our faith, and more of their works, and is sometimes much affected at the zeal of amsterdam. his conscience interposes itself betwixt duellers, and whilst it would part both, is by both wounded. he will sometimes propend much to us upon the reading a good writer, and at bellarmine[ ] recoils as far back again; and the fathers justle him from one side to another. now socinus[ ] and vorstius[ ] afresh torture him, and he agrees with none worse than himself. he puts his foot into heresies tenderly, as a cat in the water, and pulls it out again, and still something unanswered delays him; yet he bears away some parcel of each, and you may sooner pick all religions out of him than one. he cannot think so many wise men should be in error, nor so many honest men out of the way, and his wonder is double when he sees these oppose one another. he hates authority as the tyrant of reason, and you cannot anger him worse than with a father's _dixit_, and yet that many are not persuaded with reason, shall authorise his doubt. in sum, his whole life is a question, and his salvation a greater, which death only concludes, and then he is resolved. footnotes: [ ] robert bellarmin, an italian jesuit, was born at monte pulciano, a town in tuscany, in the year , and in entered himself among the jesuits. in he was honoured with a cardinal's hat, and in was presented with the arch-bishopric of capua: this, however, he resigned in , when pope paul v. desired to have him near himself. he was employed in the affairs of the court of rome till , when, leaving the vatican, he retired to a house belonging to his order, and died september , in the same year. bellarmin was one of the best controversial writers of his time; few authors have done greater honour to their profession or opinions, and certain it is that none have ever more ably defended the cause of the romish church, or contended in favour of the pope with greater advantage. as a proof of bellarmin's abilities, there was scarcely a divine of any eminence among the protestants who did not attack him: bayle aptly says, "they made his name resound every where, ut littus styla, styla, omne sonaret." [ ] faustus socinus is so well known as the founder of the sect which goes under his name, that a few words will be sufficient. he was born in , at sienna, and imbibed his opinions from the instruction of his uncle, who always had a high opinion of, and confidence in, the abilities of his nephew, to whom he bequeathed all his papers. after living several years in the world, principally at the court of francis de medicis, socinus, in , went into germany, and began to propagate the principles of his uncle, to which, it is said, he made great additions and alterations of his own. in the support of his opinions, he suffered considerable hardships, and received the greatest insults and persecutions; to avoid which, he retired to a place near cracow, in poland, where he died in , at the age of sixty-five. [ ] conrade vorstius, a learned divine, who was peculiarly detested by the calvinists, and who had even the honour to be attacked by king james the first, of england, was born in . being compelled, through the interposition of james's ambassador, to quit leiden, where he had attained the divinity-chair, and several other preferments, he retired to toningen, where he died in , with the strongest tokens of piety and resignation. xxxvi. an attorney. his antient beginning was a blue coat, since a livery, and his hatching under a lawyer; whence, though but pen-feathered, he hath now nested for himself, and with his boarded pence purchased an office. two desks and a quire of paper set him up, where he now sits in state for all corners. we can call him no great author, yet he writes very much and with the infamy of the court is maintained in his libels.[ ] he has some smatch of a scholar, and yet uses latin very hardly; and lest it should accuse him, cuts it off in the midst, and will not let it speak out. he is, contrary to great men, maintained by his followers, that is, his poor country clients, that worship him more than their landlords, and be they never such churls, he looks for their courtesy. he first racks them soundly himself, and then delivers them to the lawyer for execution. his looks are very solicitous, importing much haste and dispatch, he is never without his hands full of business, that is--of paper. his skin becomes at last as dry as his parchment, and his face as intricate as the most winding cause. he talks statutes as fiercely as if he had mooted[ ] seven years in the inns of court, when all his skill is stuck in his girdle, or in his office-window. strife and wrangling have made him rich, and he is thankful to his benefactor, and nourishes it. if he live in a country village, he makes all his neighbours good subjects; for there shall be nothing done but what there is law for. his business gives him not leave to think of his conscience, and when the time, or term of his life is going out, for dooms-day he is secure; for he hopes he has a trick to reverse judgment. footnotes: [ ] _his style is very constant, for it keeps still the former aforesaid; and yet it seems he is much troubled in it, for he is always humbly complaining--your poor orator._ first edit. [ ] to _moote_ a terme vsed in the innes of the court; it is the handling of a case, as in the vniuersitie their disputations, &c. so _minshew_, who supposes it to be derived from the french, _mot, verbum, quasi verba facere, aut sermonem de aliqua re habere_. _mootmen_ are those who, having studied seven or eight years, are qualified to practise, and appear to answer to our term of barristers. xxxvii. a partial man is the opposite extreme to a defamer, for the one speaks ill falsely, and the other well, and both slander the truth. he is one that is still weighing men in the scale of comparisons, and puts his affections in the one balance and that sways. his friend always shall do best, and you shall rarely hear good of his enemy. he considers first the man and then the thing, and restrains all merit to what they deserve of him. commendations he esteems not the debt of worth, but the requital of kindness; and if you ask his reason, shews his interest, and tells you how much he is beholden to that man. he is one that ties his judgment to the wheel of fortune, and they determine giddily both alike. he prefers england before other countries because he was born there, and oxford before other universities, because he was brought up there, and the best scholar there is one of his own college, and the best scholar there is one of his friends. he is a great favourer of great persons, and his argument is still that which should be antecedent; as,--he is in high place, therefore virtuous;--he is preferred, therefore worthy. never ask his opinion, for you shall hear but his faction, and he is indifferent in nothing but conscience. men esteem him for this a zealous affectionate, but they mistake him many times, for he does it but to be esteemed so. of all men he is worst to write an history, for he will praise a sejanus or tiberius, and for some petty respect of his all posterity shall be cozened. xxxviii. a trumpeter is the elephant with the great trunk, for he eats nothing but what comes through this way. his profession is not so worthy as to occasion insolence, and yet no man so much puft up. his face is as brazen as his trumpet, and (which is worse,) as a fidler's, from whom he differeth only in this, that his impudence is dearer. the sea of drink and much wind make a storm perpetually in his cheeks, and his look is like his noise, blustering and tempestuous. he was whilom the sound of war, but now of peace; yet as terrible as ever, for wheresoever he comes they are sure to pay for it. he is the common attendant of glittering folks, whether in the court or stage, where he is always the prologue's prologue.[ ] he is somewhat in the nature of a hogshead, shrillest when he is empty; when his belly is full he is quiet enough. no man proves life more to be a blast, or himself a bubble, and he is like a counterfeit bankrupt, thrives best when he is blown up. footnotes: [ ] the prologue to our ancient dramas was ushered in by trumpets. "present not yourselfe on the stage (especially at a new play) untill the quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor into his cheekes, and is ready to giue the trumpets their cue that hee's vpon point to enter." decker's _gul's hornbook_, . p. . "doe you not know that i am the prologue? do you not see this long blacke veluet cloke vpon my backe? _haue you not sounded thrice?_" heywood's _foure prentises of london_. to. . xxxix. a vulgar-spirited man is one of the herd of the world. one that follows merely the common cry, and makes it louder by one. a man that loves none but who are publickly affected, and he will not be wiser than the rest of the town. that never owns a friend after an ill name, or some general imputation, though he knows it most unworthy. that opposes to reason, "thus men say;" and "thus most do;" and "thus the world goes;" and thinks this enough to poise the other. that worships men in place, and those only; and thinks all a great man speaks oracles. much taken with my lord's jest, and repeats you it all to a syllable. one that justifies nothing out of fashion, nor any opinion out of the applauded way. that thinks certainly all spaniards and jesuits very villains, and is still cursing the pope and spinola. one that thinks the gravest cassock the best scholar; and the best cloaths the finest man. that is taken only with broad and obscene wit, and hisses any thing too deep for him. that cries, chaucer for his money above all our english poets, because the voice has gone so, and he has read none. that is much ravished with such a nobleman's courtesy, and would venture his life for him, because he put off his hat. one that is foremost still to kiss the king's hand, and cries, "god bless his majesty!" loudest. that rails on all men condemned and out of favour, and the first that says "away with the traitors!"--yet struck with much ruth at executions, and for pity to see a man die, could kill the hangman. that comes to london to see it, and the pretty things in it, and, the chief cause of his journey, the bears. that measures the happiness of the kingdom by the cheapness of corn, and conceives no harm of state, but ill trading. within this compass too, come those that are too much wedged into the world, and have no lifting thoughts above those things; that call to thrive, to do well; and preferment only the grace of god. that aim all studies at this mark, and shew you poor scholars as an example to take heed by. that think the prison and want a judgment for some sin, and never like well hereafter of a jail-bird. that know no other content but wealth, bravery, and the town-pleasures; that think all else but idle speculation, and the philosophers madmen. in short, men that are carried away with all outwardnesses, shews, appearances, the stream, the people; for there is no man of worth but has a piece of singularity, and scorns something. xl. a plodding student is a kind of alchymist or persecutor of nature, that would change the dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with success many times as unprosperous, or at least not quitting the cost, to wit, of his own oil and candles. he has a strange forced appetite to learning, and to atchieve it brings nothing but patience and a body. his study is not great but continual, and consists much in the sitting up till after midnight in a rug-gown and a night-cap, to the vanquishing perhaps of some six lines; yet what he has, he has perfect, for he reads it so long to understand it, till he gets it without book. he may with much industry make a breach into logick, and arrive at some ability in an argument; but for politer studies he dare not skirmish with them, and for poetry accounts it impregnable. his invention is no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few gleanings there; and his disposition of them is as just as the bookbinders, a setting or glewing of them together. he is a great discomforter of young students, by telling them what travel it has cost him, and how often his brain turned at philosophy, and makes others fear studying as a cause of duncery. he is a man much given to apothegms, which serve him for wit, and seldom breaks any jest but which belongs to some lacedemonian or roman in lycosthenes. he is like a dull carrier's horse, that will go a whole week together, but never out of a foot pace; and he that sets forth on the saturday shall overtake him. xli. paul's walk[ ] is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of great britain. it is more than this, the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. it is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker babel. the noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. it is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. it is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. it is the antick of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. it is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. it is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church. all inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. the best sign of a temple in it is, that it is the thieves sanctuary, which rob more safely in the crowd than a wilderness, whilst every searcher is a bush to hide them. it is the other expence of the day, after plays, tavern, and a bawdy-house; and men have still some oaths left to swear here. it is the ear's brothel, and satisfies their lust and itch. the visitants are all men without exceptions, but the principal inhabitants and possessors are stale knights and captains[ ] out of service; men of long rapiers and breeches, which after all turn merchants here and traffick for news. some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for a stomach; but thriftier men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap.[ ] of all such places it is least haunted with hobgoblins, for if a ghost would walk more, he could not. footnotes: [ ] st. paul's cathedral was, during the reigns of elizabeth and james, a sort of exchange and public parade, where business was transacted between merchants, and where the fashionables of the day exhibited themselves. the reader will find several allusions to this custom in the _variorum_ edition of shakspeare, _k. henry iv._ part . osborne, in his _traditional memoires on the reigns of elizabeth and james_, mo. , says, "it was the fashion of those times (james i.) and did so continue till these, (the interregnum,) for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions, not merely mechanicks, to meet in _st. paul's_ church by eleven, and walk in the middle isle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six; during which time some discoursed of business, others of news." weever complains of the practice, and says, "it could be wished that walking in the middle isle of _paules_ might be forborne in the time of diuine seruice." _ancient funeral monuments_, , page . [ ] in the _dramatis personæ_ to ben jonson's _every man in his humour_, bobadil is styled a _paul's man_; and falstaff tells us that he bought bardolph in _paul's_. _king henry iv._ part . [ ] ----you'd not doe like your penurious father, who was wont _to walke his dinner out in paules_. mayne's _city match_, . xlii. a cook. the kitchen is his hell, and he the devil in it, where his meat and he fry together. his revenues are showered down from the fat of the land, and he interlards his own grease among to help the drippings. cholerick he is not by nature so much as his art, and it is a shrewd temptation that the chopping-knife is so near. his weapons, ofter offensive, are a mess of hot broth and scalding water, and woe be to him that comes in his way. in the kitchen he will domineer and rule the roast in spight of his master, and curses in the very dialect of his calling. his labour is meer blustering and fury, and his speech like that of sailors in a storm, a thousand businesses at once; yet, in all this tumult, he does not love combustion, but will be the first man that shall go and quench it. he is never a good christian till a hissing pot of ale has slacked him, like water cast on a firebrand, and for that time he is tame and dispossessed. his cunning is not small in architecture, for he builds strange fabricks in paste, towers and castles, which are offered to the assault of valiant teeth, and like darius' palace in one banquet demolished. he is a pittiless murderer of innocents, and he mangles poor fowls with unheard-of tortures; and it is thought the martyrs persecutions were devised from hence: sure we are, st. lawrence's gridiron came out of his kitchen. his best faculty is at the dresser, where he seems to have great skill in the tacticks, ranging his dishes in order military, and placing with great discretion in the fore-front meats more strong and hardy, and the more cold and cowardly in the rear; as quaking tarts and quivering custards, and such milk-sop dishes, which scape many times the fury of the encounter. but now the second course is gone up and he down in the cellar, where he drinks and sleeps till four o'clock[ ] in the afternoon, and then returns again to his regiment. footnotes: [ ] the time of supper was about five o'clock. see note at page . xliii. a bold forward man is a lusty fellow in a crowd, that is beholden more to his elbow than his legs, for he does not go, but thrusts well. he is a good shuffler in the world, wherein he is so oft putting forth, that at length he puts on. he can do some things, but dare do much more, and is like a desperate soldier, who will assault any thing where he is sure not to enter. he is not so well opinioned of himself, as industrious to make others, and thinks no vice so prejudicial as blushing. he is still citing for himself, that a candle should not be hid under a bushel; and for his part he will be sure not to hide his, though his candle be but a snuff or rush-candle. those few good parts he has, he is no niggard in displaying, and is like some needy flaunting goldsmith, nothing in the inner room, but all on the cupboard. if he be a scholar, he has commonly stepped into the pulpit before a degree, yet into that too before he deserved it. he never defers st. mary's beyond his regency, and his next sermon is at paul's cross,[ ] [and that printed.] he loves publick things alive; and for any solemn entertainment he will find a mouth, find a speech who will. he is greedy of great acquaintance and many, and thinks it no small advancement to rise to be known. [he is one that has all the great names at court at his fingers ends, and their lodgings; and with a saucy, "my lord," will salute the best of them.] his talk at the table is like benjamin's mess, five times to his part, and no argument shuts him out for a quarreller. of all disgraces he endures not to be non-plussed, and had rather fly for sanctuary to nonsense which few descry, than to nothing which all. his boldness is beholden to other men's modesty, which rescues him many times from a baffle; yet his face is good armour, and he is dashed out of any thing sooner than countenance. grosser conceits are puzzled in him for a rare man; and wiser men though they know him [yet] take him [in] for their pleasure, or as they would do a sculler for being next at hand. thus preferment at last stumbles on him, because he is still in the way. his companions that flouted him before, now envy him, when they see him come ready for scarlet, whilst themselves lye musty in their old clothes and colleges. footnotes: [ ] paul's cross stood in the church-yard of that cathedral, on the north side, towards the east end. it was used for the preaching of sermons to the populace; and holinshed mentions two instances of public penance being performed here; in by some of the adherents of elizabeth barton, well known as _the holy maid of kent_, and in by sir thomas newman, a priest, who "_bare a faggot at paules crosse for singing masse with good ale_." xliv. a baker. no man verifies the proverb more, that it is an alms-deed to punish him; for his penalty is a dole,[ ] and does the beggars as much good as their dinner. he abhors, therefore, works of charity, and thinks his bread cast away when it is given to the poor. he loves not justice neither, for the weigh-scale's sake, and hates the clerk of the market as his executioner; yet he finds mercy in his offences, and his basket only is sent to prison.[ ] marry a pillory is his deadly enemy, and he never hears well after. footnotes: [ ] _dole_ originally signified the portion of alms that was given away at the door of a nobleman. steevens, note to _shakspeare_. sir john hawkins affirms that the benefaction distributed at lambeth palace gate, is to this day called the _dole_. [ ] that is, the contents of his basket, if discovered to be of light weight, are distributed to the needy prisoners. xlv. a pretender to learning is one that would make all others more fools than himself, for though he know nothing, he would not have the would know so much. he conceits nothing in learning but the opinion, which he seeks to purchase without it, though he might with less labour cure his ignorance than hide it. he is indeed a kind of scholar-mountebank, and his art our delusion. he is tricked out in all the accoutrements of learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. he is oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he hears you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry as interrupted. you find him in his _slippers_[ ] and a pen in his ear, in which formality he was asleep. his table is spread wide with some classick folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath laid open in the same page this half year. his candle is always a longer sitter up than himself, and the _boast_[ ] of his window at midnight. he walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a book still before his face in the fields. his pocket is seldom without a greek testament or hebrew bible, which he opens only in the church, and that when some stander-by looks over. he has sentences for company, some scatterings of seneca and tacitus, which are good upon all occasions. if he reads any thing in the morning, it comes up all at dinner; and as long as that lasts, the discourse is his. he is a great plagiary of tavern wit, and comes to sermons only that he may talk of austin. his parcels are the meer scrapings from company, yet he complains at parting what time he has lost. he is wondrously capricious to seem a judgment, and listens with a sower attention to what he understands not. he talks much of scaliger, and casaubon, and the jesuits, and prefers some unheard-of dutch name before them all. he has verses to bring in upon these and these hints, and it shall go hard but he will wind in his opportunity. he is critical in a language he cannot conster, and speaks seldom under arminius in divinity. his business and retirement and caller away is his study, and he protests no delight to it comparable. he is a great nomenclator of authors, which he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title, and goes seldom so far as the dedication. he never talks of any thing but learning, and learns all from talking. three encounters with the same men pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. he has taken pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar, and is at length discovered and laughed at. footnotes: [ ] _study_, first edit. [ ] the first edition reads _post_, and, i think, preferably. xlvi. a herald is the spawn or indeed but the resultancy of nobility, and to the making of him went not a generation but a genealogy. his trade is honour, and he sells it and gives arms himself, though he be no gentleman. his bribes are like those of a corrupt judge, for they are the prices of blood. he seems very rich in discourse, for he tells you of whole fields of gold and silver, or, and argent, worth much in french but in english nothing. he is a great diver in the streams or issues of gentry, and not a by-channel or bastard escapes him; yea he does with them like some shameless queen, fathers more children on them than ever they begot. his traffick is a kind of pedlary-ware, scutchions, and pennons, and little daggers and lions, such as children esteem and gentlemen; but his penny-worths are rampant, for you may buy three whole brawns cheaper than three boar's heads of him painted. he was sometimes the terrible coat of mars, but is now for more merciful battles in the tilt-yard, where whosoever is victorious, the spoils are his. he is an art in england but in wales nature, where they are born with heraldry in their mouths, and each name is a pedigree. xlvii. the common singing-men in cathedral churches are a bad society, and yet a company of good fellows, that roar deep in the quire, deeper in the tavern. they are the eight parts of speech which go to the syntaxis of service, and are distinguished by their noises much like bells, for they make not a concert but a peal. their pastime or recreation is prayers, their exercise drinking, yet herein so religiously addicted that they serve god oftest when they are drunk. their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old hebrew names are little beholden to them, for they mis-call them worse than one another. though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs. upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. their gowns are laced commonly with streamings of ale, the superfluities of a cup or throat above measure. their skill in melody makes them the better companions abroad, and their anthems abler to sing catches. long lived for the most part they are not, especially the base, they overflow their bank so oft to drown the organs. briefly, if they escape arresting, they die constantly in god's service; and to take their death with more patience, they have wine and cakes at their funeral, and now they keep[ ] the church a great deal better, and help to fill it with their bones as before with their noise. footnotes: [ ] _keep_ for attend. xlviii. a shop-keeper. his shop is his well stuft book, and himself the title-page of it, or index. he utters much to all men, though he sells but to a few, and intreats for his own necessities, by asking others what they lack. no man speaks more and no more, for his words are like his wares, twenty of one sort, and he goes over them alike to all commers. he is an arrogant commender of his own things; for whatsoever he shews you is the best in the town, though the worst in his shop. his conscience was a thing that would have laid upon his hands, and he was forced to put it off, and makes great use of honesty to profess upon. he tells you lies by rote, and not minding, as the phrase to sell in, and the language he spent most of his years to learn. he never speaks so truely as when he says he would use you as his brother; for he would abuse his brother, and in his shop thinks it lawful. his religion is much in the nature of his customers, and indeed the pander to it: and by a mis-interpreted sense of scripture makes a gain of his godliness. he is your slave while you pay him ready money, but if he once befriend you, your tyrant, and you had better deserve his hate than his trust. xlix. a blunt man is one whose wit is better pointed than his behaviour, and that coarse and impolished, not out of ignorance so much as humour. he is a great enemy to the fine gentleman, and these things of complement, and hates ceremony in conversation, as the puritan in religion. he distinguishes not betwixt fair and double dealing, and suspects all smoothness for the dress of knavery. he starts at the encounter of a salutation as an assault, and beseeches you in choler to forbear your courtesy. he loves not any thing in discourse that comes before the purpose, and is always suspicious of a preface. himself falls rudely still on his matter without any circumstance, except he use an old proverb for an introduction. he swears old out-of-date innocent oaths, as, by the mass! by our lady! and such like, and though there be lords present, he cries, my masters! he is exceedingly in love with his humour, which makes him always profess and proclaim it, and you must take what he says patiently, because he is a plain man. his nature is his excuse still, and other men's tyrant; for he must speak his mind, and that is his worst, and craves your pardon most injuriously for not pardoning you. his jests best become him, because they come from him rudely and unaffected; and he has the luck commonly to have them famous. he is one that will do more than he will speak, and yet speak more than he will hear; for though he love to touch others, he is touchy himself, and seldom to his own abuses replies but with his fists. he is as squeazy[ ] of his commendations, as his courtesy, and his good word is like an eulogy in a satire. he is generally better favoured than he favours, as being commonly well expounded in his bitterness, and no man speaks treason more securely. he chides great men with most boldness, and is counted for it an honest fellow. he is grumbling much in the behalf of the commonwealth, and is in prison oft for it with credit. he is generally honest, but more generally thought so, and his downrightness credits him, as a man not well bended and crookned to the times. in conclusion, he is not easily bad, in whom this quality is nature, but the counterfeit is most dangerous, since he is disguised in a humour, that professes not to disguise. footnotes: [ ] _squeazy_, niggardly. l. a handsome hostess is the fairer commendation of an inn, above the fair sign, or fair lodgings. she is the loadstone that attracts men of iron, gallants and roarers, where they cleave sometimes long, and are not easily got off. her lips are your welcome, and your entertainment her company, which is put into the reckoning too, and is the dearest parcel in it. no citizen's wife is demurer than she at the first greeting, nor draws in her mouth with a chaster simper; but you may be more familiar without distaste, and she does not startle at bawdry. she is the confusion of a pottle of sack more than would have been spent elsewhere, and her little jugs are accepted to have her kiss excuse them. she may be an honest woman, but is not believed so in her parish, and no man is a greater infidel in it than her husband. li. a critic is one that has spelled over a great many books, and his observation is the orthography. he is the surgeon of old authors, and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. he converses much in fragments and _desunt multa's_, and if he piece it up with two lines he is more proud of that book than the author. he runs over all sciences to peruse their syntaxis, and thinks all learning comprised in writing latin. he tastes stiles as some discreeter palates do wine; and tells you which is genuine, which sophisticate and bastard. his own phrase is a miscellany of old words, deceased long before the cæsars, and entombed by varro, and the modernest man he follows is plautus. he writes _omneis_ at length, and _quidquid_, and his gerund is most inconformable. he is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up to the judgment of his castigations. he is one that makes all books sell dearer, whilst he swells them into folios with his comments.[ ] footnotes: [ ] on this passage, i fear, the present volume will be a sufficient commentary. lii. a sergeant, or catch-pole is one of god's judgments; and which our roarers do only conceive terrible. he is the properest shape wherein they fancy satan; for he is at most but an arrester, and hell a dungeon. he is the creditor's hawk, wherewith they seize upon flying birds, and fetch them again in his tallons. he is the period of young gentlemen, or their full stop, for when he meets with them they can go no farther. his ambush is a shop-stall, or close lane, and his assault is cowardly at your back. he respites you in no place but a tavern, where he sells his minutes dearer than a clock-maker. the common way to run from him is through him, which is often attempted and atchieved,[ ] [_and no man is more beaten out of charity_.] he is one makes the street more dangerous than the highways, and men go better provided in their walks than their journey. he is the first handsel of the young rapiers of the templers; and they are as proud of his repulse as an hungarian of killing a turk. he is a moveable prison, and his hands two manacles hard to be filed off. he is an occasioner of disloyal thoughts in the commonwealth, for he makes men hate the king's name worse than the devil's. footnotes: [ ] _and the clubs out of charity knock him down_, first edit. liii. an university dun is a gentleman's follower cheaply purchased, for his own money has hired him. he is an inferior creditor of some ten shillings downwards, contracted for horse-hire, or perchance for drink, too weak to be put in suit, and he arrests your modesty. he is now very expensive of his time, for he will wait upon your stairs a whole afternoon, and dance attendance with more patience than a gentleman-usher. he is a sore beleaguerer of chambers, and assaults them sometimes with furious knocks; yet finds strong resistance commonly, and is kept out. he is a great complainer of scholar's loytering, for he is sure never to find them within, and yet he is the chief cause many times that makes them study. he grumbles at the ingratitude of men that shun him for his kindness, but indeed it is his own fault, for he is too great an upbraider. no man puts them more to their brain than he; and by shifting him off they learn to shift in the world. some chuse their rooms on purpose to avoid his surprisals, and think the best commodity in them his prospect. he is like a rejected acquaintance, hunts those that care not for his company, and he knows it well enough, and yet will not keep away. the sole place to supple him is the buttery, where he takes grievous use upon your name,[ ] and he is one much wrought with good beer and rhetorick. he is a man of most unfortunate voyages, and no gallant walks the streets to less purpose. footnotes: [ ] that is, _runs you up a long score_. liv. a stayed man is a man: one that has taken order with himself, and sets a rule to those lawlesnesses within him: whose life is distinct and in method, and his actions, as it were, cast up before; not loosed into the world's vanities, but gathered up and contracted in his station: not scattered into many pieces of businesses, but that one course he takes, goes through with. a man firm and standing in his purposes, not heaved off with each wind and passion: that squares his expence to his coffers, and makes the total first, and then the items. one that thinks what he does, and does what he says, and foresees what he may do before he purposes. one whose "if i can" is more than another's assurance; and his doubtful tale before some men's protestations:--that is confident of nothing in futurity, yet his conjectures oft true prophecies:--that makes a pause still betwixt his ear and belief, and is not too hasty to say after others. one whose tongue is strung up like a clock till the time, and then strikes, and says much when he talks little:--that can see the truth betwixt two wranglers, and sees them agree even in that they fall out upon:--that speaks no rebellion in a bravery, or talks big from the spirit of sack. a man cool and temperate in his passions, not easily betrayed by his choler:--that vies not oath with oath, nor heat with heat, but replies calmly to an angry man, and is too hard for him too:--that can come fairly off from captain's companies, and neither drink nor quarrel. one whom no ill hunting sends home discontented, and makes him swear at his dogs and family. one not hasty to pursue the new fashion, nor yet affectedly true to his old round breeches; but gravely handsome, and to his place, which suits him better than his taylor: active in the world without disquiet, and careful without misery; yet neither ingulphed in his pleasures, nor a seeker of business, but has his hour for both. a man that seldom laughs violently, but his mirth is a cheerful look: of a composed and settled countenance, not set, nor much alterable with sadness or joy. he affects nothing so wholly, that he must be a miserable man when he loses it; but fore-thinks what will come hereafter, and spares fortune his thanks and curses. one that loves his credit, not this word reputation; yet can save both without a duel. whose entertainments to greater men are respectful, not complementary; and to his friends plain, not rude. a good husband, father, master; that is, without doting, pampering, familiarity. a man well poised in all humours, in whom nature shewed most geometry, and he has not spoiled the work. a man of more wisdom than wittiness, and brain than fancy; and abler to any thing than to make verses. lv. a modest man is a far finer man than he knows of, one that shews better to all men than himself, and so much the better to all men, as less to himself;[ ] for no quality sets a man off like this, and commends him more against his will: and he can put up any injury sooner than this (as he calls it) your irony. you shall hear him confute his commenders, and giving reasons how much they are mistaken, and is angry almost if they do not believe him. nothing threatens him so much as great expectation, which he thinks more prejudicial than your under-opinion, because it is easier to make that false, than this true. he is one that sneaks from a good action, as one that had pilfered, and dare not justify it; and is more blushingly reprehended in this, than others in sin: that counts all publick declarings of himself, but so many penances before the people; and the more you applaud him, the more you abash him, and he recovers not his face a month after. one that is easy to like any thing of another man's, and thinks all he knows not of him better than that he knows. he excuses that to you, which another would impute; and if you pardon him, is satisfied. one that stands in no opinion because it is his own, but suspects it rather, because it is his own, and is confuted and thanks you. he sees nothing more willingly than his errors, and it is his error sometimes to be too soon persuaded. he is content to be auditor, where he only can speak, and content to go away, and think himself instructed. no man is so weak that he is ashamed to learn of, and is less ashamed to confess it; and he finds many times even in the dust, what others overlook and lose. every man's presence is a kind of bridle to him, to stop the roving of his tongue and passions: and even impudent men look for this reverence from him, and distaste that in him, which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill-favoured, and shews more scurvily than another. a bawdy jest shall shame him more than a bastard another man, and he that got it shall censure him among the rest. and he is coward to nothing more than an ill tongue, and whosoever dare lye on him hath power over him; and if you take him by his look, he is guilty. the main ambition of his life is not to be discredited; and for other things, his desires are more limited than his fortunes, which he thinks preferment, though never so mean, and that he is to do something to deserve this. he is too tender to venture on great places, and would not hurt a dignity to help himself: if he do, it was the violence of his friends constrained him, how hardly soever he obtain it, he was harder persuaded to seek it. footnotes: [ ] this, as well as many other passages in this work, has been appropriated by john dunton, the celebrated bookseller, as his own. see his character of mr. samuel hool, in _dunton's life and errors_, vo. . p. . lvi. a meer empty wit is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out it self. a good conceit or two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his brain recovers it not a year after. the rest of him are bubbles and flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. he speaks best on the present apprehension, for meditation stupifies him, and the more he is in travel, the less he brings forth. his things come off then, as in a nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and convulsions, and some astonishing bombasts, which men only, till they understand, are scared with. a verse or some such work he may sometimes get up to, but seldom above the stature of an epigram, and that with some relief out of martial, which is the ordinary companion of his pocket, and he reads him as he were inspired. such men are commonly the trifling things of the world, good to make merry the company, and whom only men have to do withal when they have nothing to do, and none are less their friends than who are most their company. here they vent themselves over a cup some-what more lastingly; all their words go for jests, and all their jests for nothing. they are nimble in the fancy of some ridiculous thing, and reasonable good in the expression. nothing stops a jest when it's coming, neither friends, nor danger, but it must out howsoever, though their blood come out after, and then they emphatically rail, and are emphatically beaten, and commonly are men reasonable familiar to this. briefly they are such whose life is but to laugh and be laughed at; and only wits in jest and fools in earnest. lvii. a drunkard is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better. one that hath let go himself from the hold and stay of reason, and lies open to the mercy of all temptations. no lust but finds him disarmed and fenceless, and with the least assault enters. if any mischief escape him, it was not his fault, for he was laid as fair for it as he could. every man sees him, as cham saw his father the first of this sin, an uncovered man, and though his garment be on, uncovered; the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. his body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. he is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. all the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; for his drinking is but a scooping in of so many quarts, which are filled out into his body, and that filled out again into the room, which is commonly as drunk as he. tobacco serves to air him after a washing, and is his only breath and breathing while. he is the greatest enemy to himself, and the next to his friend, and then most in the act of his kindness, for his kindness is but trying a mastery, who shall sink down first: and men come from him as a battle, wounded and bound up. nothing takes a man off more from his credit, and business, and makes him more retchlesly[ ] careless what becomes of all. indeed he dares not enter on a serious thought, or if he do, it is such melancholy that it sends him to be drunk again. footnotes: [ ] rechlesse, _negligent_. saxon, rectlerre. chaucer uses it also as an adjective: "i may not in this cas be _reccheles_." _clerkes tale_, v. . lviii. a prison is the grave of the living,[ ] where they are shut up from the world and their friends; and the worms that gnaw upon them their own thoughts and the jaylor. a house of meagre looks and ill smells, for lice, drink, and tobacco are the compound. pluto's court was expressed from this fancy; and the persons are much about the same parity that is there. you may ask, as menippus in lucian, which is nireus, which thersites, which the beggar, which the knight;--for they are all suited in the same form of a kind of nasty poverty. only to be out at elbows is in fashion here, and a great indecorum not to be thread-bare. every man shews here like so many wracks upon the sea, here the ribs of a thousand pound, here the relicks of so many mannors, a doublet without buttons; and 'tis a spectacle of more pity than executions are. the company one with the other is but a vying of complaints, and the causes they have to rail on fortune and fool themselves, and there is a great deal of good fellowship in this. they are commonly, next their creditors, most bitter against the lawyers, as men that have had a great stroke in assisting them hither. mirth here is stupidity or hard-heartedness, yet they feign it sometimes to slip melancholy, and keep off themselves from themselves, and the torment of thinking what they have been. men huddle up their life here as a thing of no use, and wear it out like an old suit, the faster the better; and he that deceives the time best, best spends it. it is the place where new comers are most welcomed, and, next them, ill news, as that which extends their fellowship in misery, and leaves few to insult:--and they breath their discontents more securely here, and have their tongues at more liberty than abroad. men see here much sin and much calamity; and where the last does not mortify, the other hardens; as those that are worse here, are desperately worse, and those from whom the horror of sin is taken off and the punishment familiar: and commonly a hard thought passes on all that come from this school; which though it teach much wisdom, it is too late, and with danger: and it is better be a fool than come here to learn it. footnotes: [ ] "a prison is a graue to bury men aliue, and a place wherein a man for halfe a yeares experience may learne more law then he can at westminster for an hundred pound." mynshul's _essays and characters of a prison_. to. . lix. a serving man is one of the makings up of a gentleman as well as his clothes, and somewhat in the same nature, for he is cast behind his master as fashionably as his sword and cloak are, and he is but _in querpo_[ ] without him. his properness[ ] qualifies him, and of that a good leg; for his head he has little use but to keep it bare. a good dull wit best suits with him to comprehend common sense and a trencher; for any greater store of brain it makes him but tumultuous, and seldom thrives with him. he follows his master's steps, as well in conditions as the street; if he wench or drink, he comes him in an under kind, and thinks it a part of his duty to be like him. he is indeed wholly his master's; of his faction,--of his cut,--of his pleasures:--he is handsome for his credit, and drunk for his credit, and if he have power in the cellar, commands the parish. he is one that keeps the best company, and is none of it; for he knows all the gentlemen his master knows, and picks from thence some hawking and horse-race terms,[ ] which he swaggers with in the ale-house, where he is only called master. his mirth is bawdy jests with the wenches, and, behind the door, bawdy earnest. the best work he does is his marrying, for it makes an honest woman, and if he follows in it his master's direction, it is commonly the best service he does him. footnotes: [ ] _in querpo_ is a corruption from the spanish word _cuérpo_. "_en cuérpo, a man without a cloak._" pineda's _dictionary_, . the present signification evidently is, that a gentleman without his serving-man, or attendant, is but half dressed:--he possesses only in part the appearance of a man of fashion. "_to walk in cuerpo, is to go without a cloak._" _glossographia anglicana nova_, vo. . [ ] _proper_ was frequently used by old writers for comely, or handsome. shakspeare has several instances of it: "i do mistake my person all this while: upon my life, she finds, although i cannot, myself to be a marvellous _proper_ man." _k. richard iii._ act i. sc. . &c. [ ] "why you know an'a man have not skill in the hawking and hunting languages now-a-days, i'll not give a rush for him." _master stephen._ _every man in his humour._ lx. an insolent man is a fellow newly great and newly proud; one that hath put himself into another face upon his preferment, for his own was not bred to it. one whom fortune hath shot up to some office or authority, and he shoots up his neck to his fortune, and will not bate you an inch of either. his very countenance and gesture bespeak how much he is, and if you understand him not, he tells you, and concludes every period with his place, which you must and shall know. he is one that looks on all men as if he were angry, but especially on those of his acquaintance, whom he beats off with a surlier distance, as men apt to mistake him, because they have known him; and for this cause he knows not you 'till you have told him your name, which he thinks he has heard, but forgot, and with much ado seems to recover. if you have any thing to use him in, you are his vassal for that time, and must give him the patience of any injury, which he does only to shew what he may do. he snaps you up bitterly, because he will be offended, and tells you, you are sawcy and troublesome, and sometimes takes your money in this language. his very courtesies are intolerable, they are done with such an arrogance and imputation; and he is the only man you may hate after a good turn, and not be ungrateful; and men reckon it among their calamities to be beholden unto him. no vice draws with it a more general hostility, and makes men readier to search into his faults, and of them, his beginning; and no tale so unlikely but is willingly heard of him and believed. and commonly such men are of no merit at all, but make out in pride what they want in worth, and fence themselves with a stately kind of behaviour from that contempt which would pursue them. they are men whose preferment does us a great deal of wrong, and when they are down, we may laugh at them without breach of good-nature. lxi. acquaintance is the first draught of a friend, whom we must lay down oft thus, as the foul copy, before we can write him perfect and true: for from hence, as from a probation, men take a degree in our respect, till at last they wholly possess us: for acquaintance is the hoard, and friendship the pair chosen out of it; by which at last we begin to impropriate and inclose to ourselves what before lay in common with others. and commonly where it grows not up to this, it falls as low as may be; and no poorer relation than old acquaintance, of whom we only ask how they do for fashion's sake, and care not. the ordinary use of acquaintance is but somewhat a more boldness of society, a sharing of talk, news, drink, mirth together; but sorrow is the right of a friend, as a thing nearer our heart, and to be delivered with it. nothing easier than to create acquaintance, the mere being in company once does it; whereas friendship, like children, is ingendered by a more inward mixture, and coupling together; when we are acquainted not with their virtues only, but their faults, their passions, their fears, their shame,--and are bold on both sides to make their discovery. and as it is in the love of the body, which is then at the height and full when it has power and admittance into the hidden and worst parts of it; so it is in friendship with the mind, when those _verenda_ of the soul, and those things which we dare not shew the world, are bare and detected one to another. some men are familiar with all, and those commonly friends to none; for friendship is a sullener thing, is a contractor and taker up of our affections to some few, and suffers them not loosely to be scattered on all men. the poorest tie of acquaintance is that of place and country, which are shifted as the place, and missed but while the fancy of that continues. these are only then gladdest of other, when they meet in some foreign region, where the encompassing of strangers unites them closer, till at last they get new, and throw off one another. men of parts and eminency, as their acquaintance is more sought for, so they are generally more staunch of it, not out of pride only, but fear to let too many in too near them: for it is with men as with pictures, the best show better afar off and at distance, and the closer you come to them the coarser they are. the best judgment of a man is taken from his acquaintance, for friends and enemies are both partial; whereas these see him truest because calmest, and are no way so engaged to lie for him. and men that grow strange after acquaintance, seldom piece together again, as those that have tasted meat and dislike it, out of a mutual experience disrelishing one another. lxii. a meer complimental man is one to be held off still at the same distance you are now; for you shall have him but thus, and if you enter on him farther you lose him. methinks virgil well expresses him in those well-behaved ghosts that Æneas met with, that were friends to talk with, and men to look on, but if he grasped them, but air.[ ] he is one that lies kindly to you, and for good fashion's sake, and tis discourtesy in you to believe him. his words are so many fine phrases set together, which serve equally for all men, and are equally to no purpose. each fresh encounter with a man puts him to the same part again, and he goes over to you what he said to him was last with him: he kisses your hands as he kissed his before, and is your servant to be commanded, but you shall intreat of him nothing. his proffers are universal and general, with exceptions against all particulars. he will do any thing for you, but if you urge him to this, he cannot, or to that, he is engaged; but he will do any thing. promises he accounts but a kind of mannerly words, and in the expectation of your manners not to exact them: if you do, he wonders at your ill breeding, that cannot distinguish betwixt what is spoken and what is meant. no man gives better satisfaction at the first, and comes off more with the elogy of a kind gentleman, till you know him better, and then you know him for nothing. and commonly those most rail at him, that have before most commended him. the best is, he cozens you in a fair manner, and abuses you with great respect. footnotes: [ ] ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum: ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, par leuibus ventis, volucrique simillima somno. _virgil_ Æn. vi. _v._ . edit. heyne, . lxiii. a poor fiddler is a man and a fiddle out of case, and he in worse case than his fiddle. one that rubs two sticks together (as the indians strike fire), and rubs a poor living out of it; partly from this, and partly from your charity, which is more in the hearing than giving him, for he sells nothing dearer than to be gone. he is just so many strings above a beggar, though he have but two; and yet he begs too, only not in the downright 'for god's sake,' but with a shrugging 'god bless you,' and his face is more pined than the blind man's. hunger is the greatest pain he takes, except a broken head sometimes, and the labouring john dory.[ ] otherwise his life is so many fits of mirth, and tis some mirth to see him. a good feast shall draw him five miles by the nose, and you shall track him again by the scent. his other pilgrimages are fairs and good houses, where his devotion is great to the christmas; and no man loves good times better. he is in league with the tapsters for the worshipful of the inn, whom, he torments next morning with his art, and has their names more perfect than their men. a new song is better to him than a new jacket, especially if bawdy, which he calls merry; and hates naturally the puritan, as an enemy to this mirth. a country wedding and whitson-ale are the two main places he domineers in, where he goes for a musician, and overlooks the bag-pipe. the rest of him is drunk, and in the stocks. footnotes: [ ] probably the name of some difficult tune. lxiv. a meddling man is one that has nothing to do with his business, and yet no man busier than he, and his business is most in his face. he is one thrusts himself violently into all employments, unsent for, unfeed, and many times unthanked; and his part in it is only an eager bustling, that rather keeps ado than does any thing. he will take you aside, and question you of your affair, and listen with both ears, and look earnestly, and then it is nothing so much yours as his. he snatches what you are doing out of your hands, and cries "give it me," and does it worse, and lays an engagement upon you too, and you must thank him for his pains. he lays you down an hundred wild plots, all impossible things, which you must be ruled by perforce, and he delivers them with a serious and counselling forehead; and there is a great deal more wisdom in this forehead than his head. he will woo for you, solicit for you, and woo you to suffer him; and scarce any thing done, wherein his letter, or his journey, or at least himself is not seen; if he have no task in it else, he will rail yet on some side, and is often beaten when he need not. such men never thoroughly weigh any business, but are forward only to shew their zeal, when many times this forwardness spoils it, and then they cry they have done what they can, that is, as much hurt. wise men still deprecate these men's kindnesses, and are beholden to them rather to let them alone; as being one trouble more in all business, and which a man shall be hardest rid of. lxv. a good old man is the best antiquity, and which we may with least vanity admire. one whom time hath been thus long a working, and like winter fruit, ripened when others are shaken down. he hath taken out as many lessons of the world as days, and learnt the best thing in it; the vanity of it. he looks over his former life as a danger well past, and would not hazard himself to begin again. his lust was long broken before his body, yet he is glad this temptation is broke too, and that he is fortified from it by this weakness. the next door of death sads him not, but he expects it calmly as his turn in nature; and fears more his recoiling back to childishness than dust. all men look on him as a common father, and on old age, for his sake, as a reverent thing. his very presence and face puts vice out of countenance, and makes it an indecorum in a vicious man. he practises his experience on youth without the harshness of reproof, and in his counsel his good company. he has some old stories still of his own seeing to confirm what he says, and makes them better in the telling; yet is not troublesome neither with the same tale again, but remembers with them how oft he has told them. his old sayings and morals seem proper to his beard; and the poetry of cato does well out of his mouth, and he speaks it as if he were the author. he is not apt to put the boy on a younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity from a sour look; and the less testy he is, the more regarded. you must pardon him if he like his own times better than these, because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and conjecture those times by so good a relick. he is a man capable of a dearness with the youngest men, yet he not youthfuller for them, but they older for him; and no man credits more his acquaintance. he goes away at last too soon whensoever, with all men's sorrow but his own; and his memory is fresh, when it is twice as old. lxvi. a flatterer is the picture of a friend, and as pictures flatter many times, so he oft shews fairer than the true substance: his look, conversation, company, and all the outwardness of friendship more pleasing by odds, for a true friend dare take the liberty to be sometimes offensive, whereas he is a great deal more cowardly, and will not let the least hold go, for fear of losing you. your meer sour look affrights him, and makes him doubt his casheering. and this is one sure mark of him, that he is never first angry, but ready though upon his own wrong to make satisfaction. therefore he is never yoked with a poor man, or any that stands on the lower ground, but whose fortunes may tempt his pains to deceive him. him he learns first, and learns well, and grows perfecter in his humours than himself, and by this door enters upon his soul, of which he is able at last to take the very print and mark, and fashion his own by it, like a false key to open all your secrets. all his affections jump[ ] even with your's; he is before-hand with your thoughts, and able to suggest them unto you. he will commend to you first what he knows you like, and has always some absurd story or other of your enemy, and then wonders how your two opinions should jump in that man. he will ask your counsel sometimes as a man of deep judgment, and has a secret of purpose to disclose to you, and whatsoever you say, is persuaded. he listens to your words with great attention, and sometimes will object that you may confute him, and then protests he never heard so much before. a piece of wit bursts him with an overflowing laughter, and he remembers it for you to all companies, and laughs again in the telling. he is one never chides you but for your vertues, as, _you are too good, too honest, too religious_, when his chiding may seem but the earnester commendation, and yet would fain chide you out of them too; for your vice is the thing he has use of, and wherein you may best use him; and he is never more active than in the worst diligences. thus, at last, he possesses you from yourself, and then expects but his hire to betray you: and it is a happiness not to discover him; for as long as you are happy, you shall not. footnotes: [ ] _jump_ here signifies to coincide. the old play of _soliman and perseda_, to. _without date_, uses it in the same sense: "wert thou my friend, thy mind would _jump_ with mine." so in _pierce penilesse his supplication to the divele_:--"not two of them jump in one tale." p. . lxvii. a high-spirited man is one that looks like a proud man, but is not: you may forgive him his looks for his worth's sake, for they are only too proud to be base. one whom no rate can buy off from the least piece of his freedom, and make him digest an unworthy thought an hour. he cannot crouch to a great man to possess him, nor fall low to the earth to rebound never so high again. he stands taller on his own bottom, than others on the advantage ground of fortune, as having solidly that honour, of which title is but the pomp. he does homage to no man for his great stile's sake, but is strictly just in the exaction of respect again, and will not bate you a complement. he is more sensible of a neglect than an undoing, and scorns no man so much as his surly threatener. a man quickly fired, and quickly laid down with satisfaction, but remits any injury sooner than words: only to himself he is irreconcileable, whom he never forgives a disgrace, but is still stabbing himself with the thought of it, and no disease that he dies of sooner. he is one had rather perish than be beholden for his life, and strives more to be quit with his friend than his enemy. fortune may kill him but not deject him, nor make him fall into an humbler key than before, but he is now loftier than ever in his own defence; you shall hear him talk still after thousands, and he becomes it better than those that have it. one that is above the world and its drudgery, and cannot pull down his thoughts to the pelting businesses of life. he would sooner accept the gallows than a mean trade, or any thing that might disparage the height of man in him, and yet thinks no death comparably base to hanging neither. one that will do nothing upon command, though he would do it otherwise; and if ever he do evil, it is when he is dared to it. he is one that if fortune equal his worth puts a luster in all preferment; but if otherwise he be too much crossed, turns desperately melancholy, and scorns mankind. lxviii. a meer gull citizen is one much about the same model and pitch of brain that the clown is, only of somewhat a more polite and finical ignorance, and as sillily scorns him as he is sillily admired by him. the quality of the city hath afforded him some better dress of clothes and language, which he uses to the best advantage, and is so much the more ridiculous. his chief education is the visits of his shop, where if courtiers and fine ladies resort, he is infected with so much more eloquence, and if he catch one word extraordinary, wears it for ever. you shall hear him mince a complement sometimes that was never made for him; and no man pays dearer for good words,--for he is oft paid with them. he is suited rather fine than in the fashion, and has still something to distinguish him from a gentleman, though his doublet cost more; especially on sundays, bridegroom-like, where he carries the state of a very solemn man, and keeps his pew as his shop; and it is a great part of his devotion to feast the minister. but his chiefest guest is a customer, which is the greatest relation he acknowledges, especially if you be an honest gentleman, that is trust him to cozen you enough. his friendships are a kind of gossipping friendships, and those commonly within the circle of his trade, wherein he is careful principally to avoid two things, that is poor men and suretiships. he is a man will spend his six-pence with a great deal of imputation,[ ] and no man makes more of a pint of wine than he. he is one bears a pretty kind of foolish love to scholars, and to cambridge especially for sturbridge[ ] fair's sake; and of these all are truants to him that are not preachers, and of these the loudest the best; and he is much ravished with the noise of a rolling tongue. he loves to hear discourses out of his element, and the less he understands the better pleased, which he expresses in a smile and some fond protestation. one that does nothing without his chuck[ ], that is his wife, with whom he is billing still in conspiracy, and the wantoner she is, the more power she has over him; and she never stoops so low after him, but is the only woman goes better of a widow than a maid. in the education of his child no man fearfuller, and the danger he fears is a harsh school-master, to whom he is alledging still the weakness of the boy, and pays a fine extraordinary for his mercy. the first whipping rids him to the university, and from thence rids him again for fear of starving, and the best he makes of him is some gull in plush. he is one loves to hear the famous acts of citizens, whereof the gilding of the cross[ ] he counts the glory of this age, and the four[ ] prentices of london above all the nine[ ] worthies. he intitles himself to all the merits of his company, whether schools, hospitals, or exhibitions, in which he is joint benefactor, though four hundred years ago, and upbraids them far more than those that gave them: yet with all this folly he has wit enough to get wealth, and in that a sufficienter man than he that is wiser. footnotes: [ ] _imputation_ here must be used for _consequence_; of which i am, however, unable to produce any other instance. [ ] _sturbridge fair_ was the great mart for business, and resort for pleasure, in bishop earle's day. it is alluded to in randolph's _conceited pedlar_, to. . "i am a pedlar, and i sell my ware this braue saint barthol. or _sturbridge faire_." edward ward, the facetious author of _the london spy_, gives a whimsical account of a journey to _sturbridge_, in the second volume of his works. [ ] this silly term of endearment appears to be derived from _chick_, or _my chicken_. shakspeare uses it in macbeth, act iii. scene . "be innocent of the knowledge, dearest _chuck_." [ ] the great cross in west cheap, was originally erected in , by edward i. in commemoration of the death of queen ellinor, whose body rested at that place, on its journey from herdeby, in lincolnshire, to westminster, for interment. it was rebuilt in , and again in . in , the images and ornaments were destroyed by the populace; and in , the top of the cross was taken down, the timber being rotted within the lead, and fears being entertained as to its safety. by order of queen elizabeth, and her privy council, it was repaired in , when, says stow, "a cross of timber was framed, set up, covered with lead, _and gilded_," &c. stow's _survey of london_, by strype, book iii. p. . edit, folio, lond. . [ ] this must allude to the play written by heywood with the following title: _the foure prentises of london. with the conquest of ierusalem. as it hath bene diuerse times acted at the red bull, by the queene's maiesties seruants._ to. lond. . in this drama, the _four prentises_ are godfrey, grey, charles, and eustace, sons to the _old earle of bullen_, who, having lost his territories, by assisting william the conqueror in his descent upon england, is compelled to live like a private citizen in london, and binds his sons to a mercer, a goldsmith, a haberdasher, and a grocer. the _four prentises_, however, prefer the life of a soldier to that of a tradesman, and, quitting the service of their masters, follow robert of normandy to the holy land, where they perform the most astonishing feats of valour, and finally accomplish the _conquest of ierusalem_. the whole play abounds in bombast and impossibilities, and, as a composition, is unworthy of notice or remembrance. [ ] _the history of the nine worthies of the world; three whereof were gentiles: . hector, son of priamus, king of troy. . alexander the great, king of macedon, and conqueror of the world. . julius cæsar, first emperor of rome. three jews. . joshua, captain general and leader of israel into canaan. . david, king of israel. . judas maccabeus, a valiant jewish commander against the tyranny of antiochus. three christians. . arthur, king of britain, who courageously defended his country against the saxons. . charles the great, king of france and emperor of germany. . godfrey of bullen, king of jerusalem. being an account of their glorious lives, worthy actions, renowned victories, and deaths._ mo. no date. lxix. a lascivious man is the servant he says of many mistresses, but all are but his lust, to which only he is faithful, and none besides, and spends his best blood and spirits in the service. his soul is the bawd to his body, and those that assist him in this nature the nearest to it. no man abuses more the name of love, or those whom he applies this name to; for his love is like his stomach to feed on what he loves, and the end of it to surfeit and loath, till a fresh appetite rekindle him; and it kindles on any sooner than who deserve best of him. there is a great deal of malignity in this vice, for it loves still to spoil the best things, and a virgin sometimes rather than beauty, because the undoing here is greater, and consequently his glory. no man laughs more at his sin than he, or is so extremely tickled with the remembrance of it; and he is more violence to a modest ear than to her he defloured. a bawdy jest enters deep into him, and whatsoever you speak he will draw to baudry, and his wit is never so good as here. his unchastest part is his tongue, for that commits always what he must act seldomer; and that commits with all which he acts with few; for he is his own worst reporter, and men believe as bad of him, and yet do not believe him. nothing harder to his persuasion than a chaste man, no eunuch; and makes a scoffing miracle at it, if you tell him of a maid. and from this mistrust it is that such men fear marriage, or at least marry such as are of bodies to be trusted, to whom only they sell that lust which they buy of others, and make their wife a revenue to their mistress. they are men not easily reformed, because they are so little ill-persuaded of their illness, and have such pleas from man and nature. besides it is a jeering and flouting vice, and apt to put jests on the reprover. the pox only converts them, and that only when it kills them. lxx. a rash man is a man too quick for himself; one whose actions put a leg still before his judgement, and out-run it. every hot fancy or passion is the signal that sets him forward, and his reason comes still in the rear. one that has brain enough, but not patience to digest a business, and stay the leisure of a second thought. all deliberation is to him a kind of sloth and freezing of action, and it shall burn him rather than take cold. he is always resolved at first thinking, and the ground he goes upon is, _hap what may_. thus he enters not, but throws himself violently upon all things, and for the most part is as violently upon all off again; and as an obstinate "_i will_" was the preface to his undertaking, so his conclusion is commonly "_i would i had not_;" for such men seldom do any thing that they are not forced to take in pieces again, and are so much farther off from doing it, as they have done already. his friends are with him as his physician, sought to only in his sickness and extremity, and to help him out of that mire he has plunged himself into; for in the suddenness of his passions he would hear nothing, and now his ill success has allayed him he hears too late. he is a man still swayed with the first reports, and no man more in the power of a pick-thank than he. he is one will fight first, and then expostulate, condemn first, and then examine. he loses his friend in a fit of quarrelling, and in a fit of kindness undoes himself; and then curses the occasion drew this mischief upon him, and cries, god mercy! for it, and curses again. his repentance is meerly a rage against himself, and he does something in itself to be repented again. he is a man whom fortune must go against much to make him happy, for had he been suffered his own way, he had been undone. lxxi. an affected man is an extraordinary man in ordinary things. one that would go a strain beyond himself, and is taken in it. a man that overdoes all things with great solemnity of circumstance; and whereas with more negligence he might pass better, makes himself with a great deal of endeavour ridiculous. the fancy of some odd quaintnesses have put him clean beside his nature; he cannot be that he would, and hath lost what he was. he is one must be point-blank in every trifle, as if his credit and opinion hung upon it; the very space of his arms in an embrace studied before and premeditated, and the figure of his countenance of a fortnight's contriving; he will not curse you without-book and extempore, but in some choice way, and perhaps as some great man curses. every action of his cries,--"_do ye mark me?_" and men do mark him how absurd he is: for affectation is the most betraying humour, and nothing that puzzles a man less to find out than this. all the actions of his life are like so many things bodged in without any natural cadence or connection at all. you shall track him all through like a schoolboy's theme, one piece from one author and this from another, and join all in this general, that they are none of his own. you shall observe his mouth not made for that tone, nor his face for that simper; and it is his luck that his finest things most misbecome him. if he affect the gentleman as the humour most commonly lies that way, not the least punctilio of a fine man, but he is strict in to a hair, even to their very negligences, which he cons as rules. he will not carry a knife with him to wound reputation, and pay double a reckoning, rather than ignobly question it: and he is full of this--ignobly--and nobly--and genteely;--and this meer fear to trespass against the genteel way puts him out most of all. it is a humour runs through many things besides, but is an ill-favoured ostentation in all, and thrives not:--and the best use of such men is, they are good parts in a play. lxxi. a profane man is one that denies god as far as the law gives him leave; that is, only does not say so in downright terms, for so far he may go. a man that does the greatest sins calmly, and as the ordinary actions of life, and as calmly discourses of it again. he will tell you his business is to break such a commandment, and the breaking of the commandment shall tempt him to it. his words are but so many vomitings cast up to the loathsomeness of the hearers, only those of his company[ ] loath it not. he will take upon him with oaths to pelt some tenderer man out of his company, and makes good sport at his conquest over the puritan fool. the scripture supplies him for jests, and he reads it on purpose to be thus merry: he will prove you his sin out of the bible, and then ask if you will not take that authority. he never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. one that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as "_rat_, _black-coat_" and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "_god mercy_" in mockery, for he must do it. he is one seems to dare god in all his actions, but indeed would out-dare the opinion of him, which would else turn him desperate; for atheism is the refuge of such sinners, whose repentance would be only to hang themselves. footnotes: [ ] those of the same habits with himself; his associates. lxxiii. a coward is the man that is commonly most fierce against the coward, and labouring to take off this suspicion from himself; for the opinion of valour is a good protection to those that dare not use it. no man is valianter than he is in civil company, and where he thinks no danger may come on it, and is the readiest man to fall upon a drawer and those that must not strike again: wonderful exceptious and cholerick where he sees men are loth to give him occasion, and you cannot pacify him better than by quarrelling with him. the hotter you grow, the more temperate man is he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him, the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest quiet man. the sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the stroke, for before that come he is dead already. every man is his master that dare beat him, and every man dares that knows him. and he that dare do this is the only man can do much with him; for his friend he cares not for, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for this cause only is more potent with him of the two: and men fall out with him of purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a reconcilement. a man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him bewray both the room and it. he is a christian meerly for fear of hell-fire; and if any religion could fright him more, would be of that. lxxiv. a sordid rich man is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth we may say as of other men's unthriftiness, that it has brought him to this: when he had nothing he lived in another kind of fashion. he is a man whom men hate in his own behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself, it is but justice, for he deserves it. every accession of a fresh heap bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree nearer starving. his body had been long since desperate, but for the reparation of other men's tables, where he hoards meats in his belly for a month, to maintain him in hunger so long. his clothes were never young in our memory; you might make long epochas from them, and put them into the almanack with the dear year[ ] and the great frost,[ ] and he is known by them longer than his face. he is one never gave alms in his life, and yet is as charitable to his neighbour as himself. he will redeem a penny with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and his reason is, he will not be undone. he never pays any thing but with strictness of law, for fear of which only he steals not. he loves to pay short a shilling or two in a great sum, and is glad to gain that when he can no more. he never sees friend but in a journey to save the charges of an inn, and then only is not sick; and his friends never see him but to abuse him. he is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantick thrift, and one of the strangest things that wealth can work. footnotes: [ ] the _dear year_ here, i believe, alluded to, was in , and is thus described by that faithful and valuable historian holinshed:--"this yeare, about lammas, wheat was sold at london for three shillings the bushell: but shortlie after, it was raised to foure shillings, fiue shillings, six shillings, and, before christmas, to a noble, and seuen shillings; which so continued long after. beefe was sold for twentie pence, and two and twentie pence the stone; and all other flesh and white meats at an excessiue price; all kind of salt fish verie deare, as fiue herings two pence, &c.; yet great plentie of fresh fish, and oft times the same verie cheape. pease at foure shillings the bushell; ote-meale at foure shillings eight pence; baie salt at three shillings the bushell, &c. all this dearth notwithstanding, (thanks be given to god,) there was no want of anie thing to them that wanted not monie." holinshed, _chronicle_, vol. , page , a. edit. folio, . [ ] on the st of december, , began a frost referred to by fleming, in his index to _holinshed_, as the "_frost called the great frost_," which lasted till the rd of january, . it was so severe that the thames was frozen over, and the passage on it, from london-bridge to westminster, as easy as, and more frequented than that on dry land. lxxv. a meer great man is so much heraldry without honour, himself less real than his title. his virtue is, that he was his father's son, and all the expectation of him to beget another. a man that lives meerly to preserve another's memory, and let us know who died so many years ago. one of just as much use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak himself, and save the fellow of westminster[ ] a labour: and he remembers nothing better than what was out of his life. his grandfathers and their acts are his discourse, and he tells them with more glory than they did them; and it is well they did enough, or else he had wanted matter. his other studies are his sports and those vices that are fit for great men. every vanity of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his servants. he talks loud, and baudily, and scurvily as a part of state, and they hear him with reverence. all good qualities are below him, and especially learning, except some parcels of the chronicle and the writing of his name, which he learns to write not to be read. he is meerly of his servants' faction, and their instrument for their friends and enemies, and is always least thanked for his own courtesies. they that fool him most do most with him, and he little thinks how many laugh at him bare-head. no man is kept in ignorance more of himself and men, for he hears nought but flattery; and what is fit to be spoken, truth with so much preface that it loses itself. thus he lives till his tomb be made ready, and is then a grave statue to posterity. footnotes: [ ] the person who exhibits westminster abbey. lxxvi. a poor man is the most impotent man, though neither blind nor lame, as wanting the more necessary limbs of life, without which limbs are a burden. a man unfenced and unsheltered from the gusts of the world, which blow all in upon him, like an unroofed house; and the bitterest thing he suffers is his neighbours. all men put on to him a kind of churlisher fashion, and even more plausible natures are churlish to him, as who are nothing advantaged by his opinion. whom men fall out with before-hand to prevent friendship, and his friends too to prevent engagements, or if they own him 'tis in private and a by-room, and on condition not to know them before company. all vice put together is not half so scandalous, nor sets off our acquaintance farther; and even those that are not friends for ends do not love any dearness with such men. the least courtesies are upbraided to him, and himself thanked for none, but his best services suspected as handsome sharking and tricks to get money. and we shall observe it in knaves themselves, that your beggarliest knaves are the greatest, or thought so at least, for those that have wit to thrive by it have art not to seem so. now a poor man has not vizard enough to mask his vices, nor ornament enough to set forth his virtues, but both are naked and unhandsome; and though no man is necessitated to more ill, yet no man's ill is less excused, but it is thought a kind of impudence in him to be vicious, and a presumption above his fortune. his good parts lye dead upon his hands, for want of matter to employ them, and at the best are not commended but pitied, as virtues ill placed, and we may say of him, "tis an honest man, but tis pity;" and yet those that call him so will trust a knave before him. he is a man that has the truest speculation of the world, because all men shew to him in their plainest and worst, as a man they have no plot on, by appearing good to; whereas rich men are entertained with a more holy-day behaviour, and see only the best we can dissemble. he is the only he that tries the true strength of wisdom, what it can do of itself without the help of fortune; that with a great deal of virtue conquers extremities, and with a great deal more his own impatience, and obtains of himself not to hate men. lxxvii. an ordinary honest man is one whom it concerns to be called honest, for if he were not this, he were nothing: and yet he is not this neither, but a good dull vicious fellow, that complies well with the deboshments[ ] of the time, and is fit for it. one that has no good part in him to offend his company, or make him to be suspected a proud fellow; but is sociably a dunce, and sociably a drinker. that does it fair and above-board without legermain, and neither sharks[ ] for a cup or a reckoning: that is kind over his beer, and protests he loves you, and begins to you again, and loves you again. one that quarrels with no man, but for not pledging him, but takes all absurdities and commits as many, and is no tell-tale next morning, though he remember it. one that will fight for his friend if he hear him abused, and his friend commonly is he that is most likely, and he lifts up many a jug in his defence. he rails against none but censurers, against whom he thinks he rails lawfully, and censurers are all those that are better than himself. these good properties qualify him for honesty enough, and raise him high in the ale-house commendation, who, if he had any other good quality, would be named by that. but now for refuge he is an honest man, and hereafter a sot: only those that commend him think him not so, and those that commend him are honest fellows. footnotes: [ ] minshew interprets the verb _deboshe_, "to corrupt, make lewde, vitiate." when the word was first adopted from the french language, (says mr. steevens, in a note to the _tempest_,) it appears to have been spelt according to the pronunciation, and therefore wrongly; but ever since it has been spelt right, it has been uttered with equal impropriety. [ ] the verb _to shark_ is frequently used, by old writers, for to _pilfer_, and, as in the present instance, to _spunge_. lxxviii. a suspicious or jealous man is one that watches himself a mischief, and keeps a lear eye still, for fear it should escape him. a man that sees a great deal more in every thing than is to be seen, and yet he thinks he sees nothing: his own eye stands in his light. he is a fellow commonly guilty of some weaknesses, which he might conceal if he were careless:--now his over-diligence to hide them makes men pry the more. howsoever he imagines you have found him, and it shall go hard but you must abuse him whether you will or no. not a word can be spoke, but nips him somewhere; not a jest thrown out, but he will make it hit him. you shall have him go fretting out of company, with some twenty quarrels to every man, stung and galled, and no man knows less the occasion than they that have given it. to laugh before him is a dangerous matter, for it cannot be at any thing but at him, and to whisper in his company plain conspiracy. he bids you speak out, and he will answer you, when you thought not of him. he expostulates with you in passion, why you should abuse him, and explains to your ignorance wherein, and gives you very good reason at last to laugh at him hereafter. he is one still accusing others when they are not guilty, and defending himself when he is not accused: and no man is undone more with apologies, wherein he is so elaborately excessive, that none will believe him; and he is never thought worse of, than when he has given satisfaction. such men can never have friends, because they cannot trust so far; and this humour hath this infection with it, it makes all men to them suspicious. in conclusion, they are men always in offence and vexation with themselves and their neighbours, wronging others in thinking they would wrong them, and themselves most of all in thinking they deserve it. end of the characters. appendix. no. i. some account of bishop earle[ax]. all the biographical writers who have taken notice of john earle agree in stating, that he was born in the city of york, although not one of them has given the exact date of his birth, or any intelligence relative to his family, or the rank in life of his parents. it is, however, most probable, that they were persons of respectability and fortune, as he was sent, at an early age, to oxford, and entered as a commoner of christ-church college[ay], where his conduct was so exemplary, his attention to his studies so marked, and his general deportment and manners so pleasing, that he became a successful candidate at merton-college, and was admitted a probationary fellow on that foundation in , being then, according to wood[az], about nineteen years of age. he took the degree of master of arts, july , , and in served the office of proctor of the university, about which time he was also appointed chaplain to philip earl of pembroke, then chancellor of oxford. during the earlier part of our author's life, he appears to have possessed considerable reputation as a poet, and to have been as remarkable for the pleasantry of his conversation, as for his learning, virtues, and piety. wood[ba] tells us that "his younger years were adorned with oratory, poetry, and witty fancies, his elder with quaint preaching and subtile disputes." the only specimens of his poetry which can be recovered at this time, are three funeral tributes, which will be found in the appendix, and of which two are now printed, i believe, for the first time. soon after his appointment to be lord pembroke's chaplain, he was presented by that nobleman to the rectory of bishopstone, in wiltshire; nor was this the only advantage he reaped from the friendship of his patron, who being at that time lord chamberlain of the king's household[bb], was entitled to a lodging in the court for his chaplain, a circumstance which in all probability introduced mr. earle to the notice of the king, who promoted him to be chaplain and tutor to prince charles, when dr. duppa, who had previously discharged that important trust, was raised to the bishopric of salisbury. in earle took his degree of doctor in divinity, and in the year following was actually elected one of the assembly of divines appointed by the parliament to new model the church. this office, although it may be considered a proof of the high opinion even those of different sentiments from himself entertained of his character and merit, he refused to accept, when he saw that there was no probability of assisting the cause of religion, or of restraining the violence of a misguided faction, by an interference among those who were "declared and avowed enemies to the doctrine and discipline of the church of england; some of them infamous in their lives and conversations, and most of them of very mean parts in learning, if not of scandalous ignorance[bc]." on the th of february, , dr. earle was elected chancellor of the cathedral of salisbury[bd], of which situation, as well as his living of bishopstone, he was shortly after deprived by the ill success of the royal cause[be]. when the defeat of the king's forces at worcester compelled charles the second to fly his country, earle attached himself to the fallen fortunes of his sovereign, and was among the first of those who saluted him upon his arrival at rouen in normandy, where he was made clerk of the closet, and king's chaplain[bf]. nor was his affection to the family of the stuarts, and his devotion to their cause evinced by personal services only, as we find by a letter from lord clarendon to dr. barwick, that he assisted the king with money in his necessities[bg]. during the time that charles was in scotland, dr. earle resided in antwerp, with his friend dr. morley[bh], from whence he was called upon to attend the duke of york (afterwards james ii.) at paris[bi], in order that he might heal some of the breaches which were then existing between certain members of the duke's household[bj]; and here it is probable he remained till the recal of charles the second to the throne of england. upon the restoration, dr. earle received the reward of his constancy and loyalty, he was immediately promoted to the deanery of westminster, a situation long designed for him by the king[bk]. in he was appointed one of the commissioners for a review of the liturgy[bl], and on november , , was consecrated bishop of worcester, from which see he was translated, september , , to the dignity of salisbury[bm]. little more remains to be added.--bishop earle appears to have continued his residence with the royal family after the acquisition of his well-deserved honours; and when the court retired to oxford, during the plague in , he attended their majesties to the place of his early education, and died at his apartments in university college, on the th of november. he was buried on the th, near the high altar, in merton college chapel; and was, according to wood, "accompanied to his grave, from the public schools, by an herald at arms, and the principal persons of the court and university." his monument, which stands at the north-east corner of the chapel, is still in excellent preservation, and possesses the following inscription:-- "amice, si quis hic sepultus est roges, ille, qui nec meruit, unquá--nec quod majus est, habuit inimicum; qui potuit in aulâ vivere, et mundum spernere concionator educatus inter principes, et ipse facile princeps inter concionatores, evangelista indefessus, episcopus pientissimus; ille qui una cum sacratissimo rege, cujus & juvenilium studiorum, et animæ deo charæ curam a beatissimo patre demandatam gessit, nobile ac religiosum exilium est passus; ille qui hookeri ingentis politiam ecclesiasticam, ille qui caroli martyris [greek: eiko'na basilikÊ'n], (volumen quò post apocalypsin divinius nullum) legavit orbi sic latinè redditas, ut uterque unius fidei defensor, patriam adhuc retineat majestatem. si nomen ejus necdum tibi suboleat, lector, nomen ejus ut unguenta pretiosa: johannes earle eboracensis, serenissimo carolo ^{do} regij oratorij clericus, {aliquando westmonasteriensi, decanus, ecclesiæ {deinde wigorniensis} {tandem sarisburiensis} angelus. {et nunc triumphantis} obiit oxonij novemb. ^o. anno {d[=o]ni: ^{to}. {Ætatis suæ ^{to}. voluitq. in hoc, ubi olim floruerat, collegio, ex Æde christi hue in socium ascitus, ver magnum, ut reflorescat, expectare." footnotes: [ax] the following brief memoir pretends to be nothing more than an enumeration of such particulars relative to the excellent prelate, whose _characters_ are here offered to the public, as could be gathered from the historical and biographical productions of the period in which he flourished. it is hoped that no material occurrence has been overlooked, or circumstance mis-stated; but should any errors appear to have escaped his observation, the editor will feel obliged by the friendly intimation of such persons as may be possessed of more copious information than he has been able to obtain, in order that they may be acknowledged and corrected in another place. [ay] he took the degree of bachelor of arts whilst a member of this society, july , , and appears to have been always attached to it. in he gave twenty pounds towards repairing the cathedral and college. _wood. hist. et antiq. univ. oxon._ lib. ii. p. . [az] _athenæ oxon._ ii. . [ba] _athenæ oxon._ ii. . [bb] collins' _peerage_, iii. . [bc] clarendon. _history of the rebellion_, ii. . edit. _oxford_, . [bd] walker. _sufferings of the clergy_, fol. , part ii. page . [be] during the early part of the civil wars, and whilst success was doubtful on either side, he appears to have lived in retirement, and to have employed himself in a translation of hooker's _ecclesiastical polity_ into latin, which, however, was never made public. at the appearance of charles the first's [greek: eikôn basilikê], he was desired by the king (ch. ii.) to execute the same task upon that production, which he performed with great ability. it was printed for distribution on the continent in . [bf] wood. _ath. oxon._ ii. . [bg] _life of dr. john barwick_, vo. lond. . p. . [bh] dr. george morley was chaplain to charles the first, and canon of christ church, oxford. at the restoration he was made, first dean of christ church, then bishop of worcester, and lastly bishop of winchester, he died at farnham-castle, october , . see wood. _athen. oxon._ ii. . [bi] wood. _athenæ_, ii. . [bj] clarendon's _rebellion_, iii. . [bk] _life of barwick_, . [bl] kennet's _register_, folio, , page . [bm] wood. _athenæ_, ii. . no. ii. characters of bishop earle. ----"he was a person very notable for his elegance in the greek and latin tongues; and being fellow of merton college in oxford, and having been proctor of the university, and some very witty and sharp discourses being published in print without his consent, though known to be his, he grew suddenly into a very general esteem with all men; being a man of great piety and devotion; a most eloquent and powerful preacher; and of a conversation so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that no man's company was more desired, and more loved. no man was more negligent in his dress, and habit, and mein; no man more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse; insomuch as he had the greater advantage when he was known, by promising so little before he was known. he was an excellent poet both in latin, greek, and english, as appears by many pieces yet abroad; though he suppressed many more himself, especially of english, incomparably good, out of an austerity to those sallies of his youth. he was very dear to the lord falkland, with whom he spent as much time as he could make his own; and as that lord would impute the speedy progress he made in the greek tongue to the information and assistance he had from mr. earles, so mr. earles would frequently profess that he had got more useful learning by his conversation at tew (the lord falkland's house,) than he had at oxford. in the first settling of the prince his family, he was made one of his chaplains, and attended on him when he was forced to leave the kingdom. he was amongst the few excellent men who never had, nor ever could have, an enemy, but such a one who was an enemy to all learning and virtue, and therefore would never make himself known." lord clarendon. _account of his own life_, folio, oxford, , p. . * * * * * ----"this is that dr. earle, who from his youth (i had almost said from his childhood,) for his natural and acquired abilities was so very eminent in the university of oxon; and after was chosen to be one of the first chaplains to his majesty (when prince of wales): who knew not how to desert his master, but with duty and loyalty (suitable to the rest of his many great virtues, both moral and intellectual,) faithfully attended his majesty both at home and abroad, as chaplain, and clerk of his majesty's closet, and upon his majesty's happy return, was made dean of westminster, and now lord bishop of worcester, (for which, december , he did homage to his majesty,) having this high and rare felicity by his excellent and spotless conversation, to have lived so many years in the court of england, so near his majesty, and yet not given the least offence to any man alive; though both in and out of pulpit he used all christian freedom against the vanities of this age, being honoured and admired by all who have either known, heard, or read him." white kennett (bishop of peterborough) _register and chronicle ecclesiastical and civil_, folio, london, , page . * * * * * ----"dr. earle, now lord bishop of salisbury, of whom i may justly say, (and let it not offend him, because it is such a truth as ought not to be concealed from posterity, or those that now live and yet know him not,) that, since mr. hooker died, none have lived whom god hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper: so that this excellent person seems to be only like himself, and our venerable richard hooker." walton. _life of mr. richard hooker_, vo. oxford, , i. . * * * * * ----"this dr. earles, lately lord bishop of salisbury.--a person certainly of the sweetest, most obliging nature that lived in our age." hugh cressey. _epistle apologetical to a person of honour_ (lord clarendon), vo. , page . * * * * * ----"dr. earle, bishop of salisbury, was a man that could do good against evil; forgive much, and of a charitable heart." pierce. _conformist's plea for nonconformity_, to. , page . no. iii. list of dr. earle's works. . _microcosmography, or a piece of the world discovered, in essays and characters. london._ . &c. &c. mo. . _hooker's ecclesiastical polity_, translated into latin. this, says wood, "is in ms. and not yet printed." in whose possession the ms. was does not appear, nor have i been able to trace it in the catalogue of any public or private collection. . _hortus mertonensis_, a latin poem, of which wood gives the first line "hortus deliciæ domus politæ." it is now supposed to be lost. . _lines on the death of sir john burroughs_; now printed for the first time. see appendix, no. iv. . _lines on the death of the earl of pembroke_; now printed for the first time. see appendix, no. v. . _elegy upon francis beaumont_; first printed at the end of _beaumont's poems, london_, . to. see appendix, no. vi. . [greek: eikôn basilikê], _vel imago regis caroli_, _in illis suis Ærumnis et solitudine. hagæ-comitis._ typis s. b. &c. . mo. see appendix, no. vii.[bn] footnotes: [bn] besides the pieces above noticed, several smaller poems were undoubtedly in circulation during earle's life, the titles of which are not preserved. wood supposes (_ath. oxon._) our author to have contributed to "_some of the figures, of which about ten were published_" but is ignorant of the exact numbers to be attributed to his pen. in the bodleian[bo] is "_the figvre of fovre: wherein are sweet flowers, gathered out of that fruitfull ground, that i hope will yeeld pleasure and profit to all sorts of people. the second part, london, printed for iohn wright, and are to bee sold at his shop without newgate, at the signe of the bible, ._" this, however, was undoubtedly one of breton's productions, as his initials are affixed to the preface. it is in mo. and consists of twenty pages, not numbered. the following extracts will be sufficient to shew the nature of the volume. "there are foure persons not to be believed: a horse-courser when he sweares, a whore when shee weepes, a lawyer when he pleads false, and a traveller when he tels wonders. "there are foure great cyphers in the world: hee that is lame among dancers, dumbe among lawyers, dull among schollers and rude amongst courtiers "foure things grievously empty: a head without braines, a wit without judgment, a heart without honesty, and a purse without money." ant. wood possessed the _figure of six_, which, however, is now not to be found among his books left to the university of oxford, and deposited in ashmole's museum. that it once was there, is evident from the ms. catalogue of that curious collection. [bo] vo. l. . art. no. iv. lines on sir john burroughs, killed by a bullet at reez[bp]. [_from a ms. in the bodleian_.]--(_rawl. poet_. .) why did we thus expose thee? what's now all that island to requite thy funeral? though thousand french in murder'd heaps do lie, it may revenge, it cannot satisfy: we must bewail our conquest when we see our price too dear to buy a victory. he whose brave fire gave heat to all the rest, that dealt his spirit in t' each english breast, from whose divided virtues you may take so many captains out, and fully make them each accomplish'd with those parts, the which, jointly, did his well-furnish'd soul enrich. not rashly valiant, nor yet fearful wise, his flame had counsel, and his fury, eyes. not struck in courage at the drum's proud beat, or made fierce only by the trumpet's heat-- when e'en pale hearts above their pitch do fly, and, for a while do mad it valiantly. his rage was tempered well, no fear could daunt his reason, his cold blood was valiant. alas! these vulgar praises injure thee; which now a poet would as plenteously give some brag-soldier, one that knew no more than the fine scabbard and the scarf he wore. fathers shall tell their children [this] was he, (and they hereafter to posterity,) rank'd with those forces scourged france of old, burrough's and talbot's[bq] names together told. j. earles. footnotes: [bp] for an account of the unsuccessful expedition to the isle of ré, under the command of the duke of buckingham, see carte's _history of england_, vol. iv. page , folio, _lond_. . sir john burroughs, a general of considerable renown, who possessed the chief confidence of the duke, fell in an endeavour to reconnoitre the works of the enemy, aug. . [bq] sir john talbot, first earl of shrewsbury, of whom see collins' _peerage_, iii. . holinshed, rapin, carte, &c. no. v. on the death of the earl of pembroke[br]. [_from the same ms._] come, pembroke lives! oh! do not fright our ears with the destroying truth! first raise our fears and say he is not well: that will suffice to force a river from the public eyes, or, if he must be dead, oh! let the news speak in astonish'd whispers: let it use some phrase without a voice, and be so told, as if the labouring sense griev'd to unfold its doubtfull woe. could not the public zeal conquer the fates, and save your's? did the dart of death, without a preface, pierce your heart? welcome, sad weeds--but he that mourns for thee, must bring an eye that can weep elegy. a look that would save blacks: whose heavy grace chides mirth, and bears a funeral in his face. whose sighs are with such feeling sorrows blown, that all the air he draws returns a groan. thou needst no gilded tomb--thy memory, is marble to itself--the bravery of jem or rich enamel is mis-spent-- thy noble corpse is its own monument! mr. earles, merton. footnotes: [br] william, third earl of pembroke, son of henry, earl of pembroke, and mary, sister to sir philip sidney, was the elder brother of earle's patron, and chancellor of oxford. he died at baynard's castle, april , . no. vi. on mr. beaumont. written thirty years since, presently after his death. [_from "comedies and tragedies written by francis beaumont and john fletcher, gentlemen" folio. london. ._] beaumont lies here: and where now shall we have a muse like his to sigh upon his grave? ah! none to weep this with a worthy tear, but he that cannot, _beaumont_ that lies here. who now shall pay thy tomb with such a verse as thou that lady's didst, fair _rutland's_ herse. a monument that will then lasting be, when all her marble is more dust than she. in thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want hath seiz'd on wit, good epitaphs are scant. we dare not write thy elegy, whilst each fears he ne'er shall match that copy of thy tears. scarce in an age a poet, and yet he scarce live the third part of his age to see, but quickly taken off and only known, is in a minute shut as soon as shown. why should weak nature tire herself in vain in such a piece, to dash it straight again? why should she take such work beyond her skill, which, when she cannot perfect, she must kill? alas! what is't to temper slime and mire? but nature's puzzled when she works in fire. great brains (like brightest glass) crack straight, while those of stone or wood hold out, and fear not blows; and we their ancient hoary heads can see whose wit was never their mortality. _beaumont_ dies young, so _sidney_ did before, there was not poetry he could live to more, he could not grow up higher, i scarce know if th' art itself unto that pitch could grow, were't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the height of all that wit could reach, or nature might. o when i read those excellent things of thine, such strength, such sweetness couched in ev'ry line, such life of fancy, such high choice of brain, nought of the vulgar wit or borrow'd strain, such passion, such expressions meet my eye, such wit untainted with obscenity, and these so unaffectedly exprest, all in a language purely flowing drest, and all so born within thyself, thine own, so new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon: i grieve not now that old _menander's_ vein is ruin'd to survive in thee again; such, in his time, was he of the same piece, the smooth, even, nat'ral wit and love of greece. those few sententious fragments shew more worth, than all the poets athens e'er brought forth; and i am sorry we have lost those hours on them, whose quickness comes far short of ours, and dwell not more on thee, whose ev'ry page may be a pattern for their scene and stage. i will not yield thy works so mean a praise; more pure, more chaste, more sainted than are plays: nor with that dull supineness to be read, to pass a fire, or laugh an hour in bed. how do the muses suffer every where, taken in such mouth's censure, in such ears, that 'twixt a whiff, a line or two rehearse, and with their rheume together spaul a verse? this all a poem's leisure after play, drink, or tobacco, it may keep the day: whilst ev'n their very idleness they think is lost in these, that lose their time in drink. pity then dull we, we that better know, will a more serious hour on thee bestow. why should not _beaumont_ in the morning please, as well as _plautus_, _aristophanes_? who, if my pen may as my thoughts be free, were scurril wits and buffoons both to thee; yet these our learned of severest brow will deign to look on, and to note them too, that will defy our own, 'tis english stuff, and th' author is not rotten long enough, alas! what phlegm are they compar'd to thee, in thy _philaster_, and _maid's-tragedy_? where's such a humour as thy _bessus_? pray let them put all their _thrasoes_ in one play, he shall out-bid them; their conceit was poor, all in a circle of a bawd or whore; a coz'ning dance; take the fool away and not a good jest extant in a play. yet these are wits, because they'r old, and now being greek and latin, they are learning too: but those their own times were content t'allow a thirsty fame, and thine is lowest now. but thou shalt live, and, when thy name is grown six ages older, shall be better known, when th' art of _chaucer's_ standing in the tomb, thou shalt not share, but take up all his room. john earle. no. vii. dedication to the latin translation of the [greek: eikôn basilikê]. "serenissimo et potentissimo monarchæ, carolo secundo. dei gratia magnæ britanniæ, franciæ et hiberniæ regi, fidei defensori, &c. serenissime rex, prodeat jam sub tuis auspiciis illa patris tui gloriosissimi imago, illa quâ magis ad dei similitudinem, quàm quà rex aut homo accedit. prodeat vero eo colore peregrino, quo facta omnibus conspectior fiat publica. ita enim tu voluisti, ut sic lingua omnium communi orbi traderem, in qua utinam feliciorem tibi operam navare licuisset, ut illam nativam elegantiam, illam vim verborum et lumina, illam admirabilem sermonis structuram exprimerem. quod cum fieri (fortasse nec a peritissimis) à me certè non possit, præstat interim ut cum aliqua venustatis injuria magnam partem europæ alloquatur, quam intra paucos suæ gentis clausa apud cæteros omnes conticescat. sunt enim hic velut quædam dei magnalia quæ spargi expedit humano generi, et in omnium linguis exaudiri: id pro mea facultate curavi, ut si non sensa tanti authoris ornatè, at perspicuè et fidè traderem, imo nec ab ipsa dictione et phrasi (quantum latini idiomatis ratio permittit) vel minimum recederem. sacri enim codicis religiosum esse decet interpretem: et certe proxime ab illo sacro et adorando codice, (qui in has comparationes non cadit,) spera non me audacem futurum, si dixero nullum inter cæteros mortalium, vel autore vel argumento illustriorem, vel in quo viva magis pietas et eximie christiana spiratur. habet vero sanctitas regia nescio quid ex fortunæ suæ majestate sublimius quiddain et augustius, et quæ imperium magis obtinet in mentes hominum, et reverentia majore accipitur: quare et his maxime instrumentis usus est deus, qui illam partem sacræ paginæ ad solennem dei cultum pertinentem, psalmos scilicet, et hymnos: cæteraque ejusmodi perpetuis ecclesiæ usibus inservitura, transmitterent hominibus, et auctoritatem quandam conciliarent. quid quod libentius etiam arripiunt homines sic objectam et traditam pietatem. quod et libro huic evenit, et erit magis eventurum, quo jam multo diffusior plures sui capaces invenerit. magnum erat profecto sic meditari, sic scribere; multo majus sic vivere, sic mori: ut sit hæc pene nimia dictu pietas exemplo illius superata. scit hæc illa orbis pars miserrima jam et contaminatissima. utinam hanc maturius intellexissent virtutem, quam jam sero laudant, et admirantur amissam, nec illâ opus fuisset dirâ fornace, quâ tam eximia regis pietas exploraretur, ex qua nos tantum miseri facti sumus, ille omnium felicissimus; cujus illa pars vitæ novissima et ærumnosissima et supremus dies, (in quo hominibus, et angelis spectaculum factus stetit animo excelso et interrito, summum fidei, constantiæ, patientiæ exemplar, superior malis suis, et totâ simul conjestâ inferni malitiâ) omnes omnium triumphos et quicquid est humanæ gloriæ, susuperavit. nihil egistis o quot estis, hominum! (sed nolo libro sanctissimo quicquam tetrius præfari, nec qaos ille inter preces nominat, maledicere) nihil, inquam, egistis hoc parricidio, nisi quod famam illius et immortalitatem cum æterno vestro probro et scelere conjunxistis. nemo unquam ab orbe condito tot veris omnium lacrymis, tot sinceris laudibus celebratus est. nulli unquam principum in secundis agenti illos fictos plausus vel metus dedit, vel adulatio vendidit, quàm hic verissimos expressere fuga, carcer, theatrum et illa omnium funestissima securis, qua obstupe, fecit hostes moriens et cæsus triumphavit. tu interim (rex augustissime) vera et viva patris effigies, (cujus inter summas erat felicitates humanas, et in adversis solatium te genuisse, in quo superstite mori non potest) inflammeris maxime hoc mortis illius exemplo, non tam in vindictæ cupidinem, (in quem alii te extimulent, non ego) quam in heroicæ virtutis, et constantiæ zelum: hanc vero primum adeas quam nulla vis tibi invito eripiet, hæreditariam pietatem; et quo es in tuos omnes affectu maxime philostorgo, hunc librum eodem tecum genitore satum amplectere; dic sapientiæ, soror mea es, et prudentiam affinem voca; hanc tu consule, hanc frequens meditare, hanc imbibe penitus, et in animam tuam transfunde. vides in te omnium conjectos oculos, in te omnium bonorum spes sitas, ex te omnium vitas pendere, quas jamdiu multi tædio projecissent, nisi ut essent quas tibi impenderent. magnum onus incumbit, magna urget procella, magna expectatio, major omnium, quam quæ unquam superius, virtutum necessitas: an sit regnum amplius in britannia futurum, an religio, an homines, an deus, ex tua virtute, tua fortuna dependet: immo, sola potius ex deo fortuna; cujus opem quo magis hic necessariam agnoscis, præsentaneam requiris, eo magis magisque, (quod jam facis) omni pietatis officio promerearis: et illa quæ in te largè sparsit bonitatis, prudentiæ, temperantiæ, justitiæ, et omnis regiæ virtutis semina foveas, augeas, et in fructum matures, ut tibi deus placatus et propitius, quod detraxit patri tuo felicitatis humanæ, tibi adjiciat, et omnes illius ærumnas conduplicatis in te beneficiis compenset, et appelleris ille restaurator, quem te unicé optant omnes et sperant futurum, et ardentissimis precibus expetit. majestatis tuæ humillimus devotissimusque subditus et sacellanus, jo. earles. no. viii. inscription on dr. peter heylin's[bs] monument in westminster-abbey. [_written by dr. earle, then dean of westminster._] depositum mortale petri heylyn, s. th. d. hujus ecclesiæ prebendarii et subdecani, viri plane memorabilis, egregiis dotibus instructissimi, ingenio acri et foecundo, judicio subacto, memoria ad prodigium tenaci, cui adjunxit incredibilem in studiis patientiam quæ cessantibus oculis non cessarunt. scripsit varia et plurima, quæ jam manibus hominum teruntur; et argumentis non vulgaribus stylo non vulgari suffecit. et majestatis regiæ assertor nec florentis magis utriusque quàm afflictæ, idemque perduellium et scismaticæ factionis impugnator acerrimus. contemptor invidiæ et animo infracto plura ejusmodi meditanti mors indixit silentium: ut sileatur efficere non potest. obiit anno Ætatis , et die maii, a. d. . possuit hoc illi mæstissima conjux. footnotes: [bs] peter heylin was born at burford, in oxfordshire, nov. , and received the rudiments of his education at the free school in that place, from whence he removed to harthall, and afterwards obtained a fellowship at magdalen college, oxford. by the interposition of bishop laud, to whom he was recommended by lord danvers, he was presented first to the rectory of hemingford, in huntingdonshire, then to a prebend of westminster, and lastly to the rectory of houghton in the spring, in the diocese of durham, which latter he exchanged for alresford, in hampshire. in he proceeded d. d. and in , became rector of south warnborough, hampshire, by exchange with mr. atkinson, of st. john's college, for islip, in oxfordshire. in he was chosen clerk of the convocation for westminster, and in followed the king to oxford. after the death of charles, he lost all his property, and removing with his family from place to place, subsisted by the exercise of his pen till the restoration, when he regained his livings, and was made sub-dean of westminster. his constancy and exertions were supposed by many to merit a higher reward, from a government, in whose defence he had sacrificed every prospect; but the warmth of his temper, and his violence in dispute, were such as rendered his promotion to a higher dignity in the church impolitic in the opinion of the ministers. he died may , , and was interred in westminster-abbey, under his own stall. a list of his numerous publications, as well as a character of him, may be found in wood's _athenæ oxonienses_, ii. . no. ix. correspondence between dr. earle and mr. baxter. [_see kennet's register, folio, lond. , page ._] mr. baxter to dr. earle. "reverend sir, "by the great favour of my lord chancellor's reprehension, i came to understand how long a time i have suffered in my reputation with my superiors by your misunderstanding me, and misinforming others; as if when i was to preach before the king, i had scornfully refused the tippet as a toy; when, as the searcher and judge of hearts doth know, that i had no such thought or word. i was so ignorant in those matters as to think that a tippet had been a proper ensign of a doctor of divinity, and i verily thought that you offered it me as such: and i had so much pride as to be somewhat ashamed when you offered it me, that i must tell you my want of such degrees; and therefore gave you no answer to your first offer, but to your second was forced to say, "it belongeth not to me, sir." and i said not to you any more; nor had any other thought in my heart than with some shame to tell you that i had no degrees, imagining i should have offended others, and made myself the laughter or scorn of many, if i should have used that which did not belong to me. for i must profess that i had no more scruple to wear a tippet than a gown, or any comely garment. sir, though this be one of the smallest of all the mistakes which of late have turned to my wrong, and i must confess that my ignorance gave you the occasion, and i am far from imputing it to any ill will in you, having frequently heard, that in charity, and gentleness, and peaceableness of mind you are very eminent; yet because i must not contemn my estimation with my superiors, i humbly crave that favour and justice of you, (which i am confident you will readily grant me,) as to acquaint those with the truth of this business, whom, upon mistake, you have misinformed, whereby in relieving the innocence of your brother, you will do a work of charity and justice, and therefore not displeasing unto god, and will much oblige, sir, your humble servant, richard baxter. _june , ._ _p. s._ i have the more need of your justice in this case, because my distance denieth me access to those that have received these misreports, and because any public vindication of myself, whatever is said of me, is taken as an unsufferable crime, and therefore i am utterly incapable of vindicating my innocency, or remedying their mistakes. "to the reverend and much honoured dr. earles, dean of westminster, &c. these." dr earle, in reply. _hampton-court, june ._ "sir, [sidenote: o that they were all such.--_note by mr. baxter._] "i received your letter, which i would have answered sooner, if the messenger that brought it had returned. i must confess i was a little surprized with the beginning of it, as i was with your name; but when i read further i ceased to be so. sir, i should be heartily sorry and ashamed to be guilty of any thing like malignity or uncharitableness, especially to one of your condition, with whom, though i concur not perhaps in point of judgment in some particulars, yet i cannot but esteem for your personal worth and abilities; and, indeed, your expressions in your letter are so civil and ingenuous, that i am obliged thereby the more to give you all the satisfaction i can. [sidenote: these words i heard not, being in the passage from him.--_note by mr. baxter._] as i remember, then, when you came to me to the closet, and i told you i would furnish you with a tippet, you answered me something to that purpose as you write, but whether the same numerical words, or but once, i cannot possibly say from my own memory, and therefore i believe yours. only this i am sure of, that i said to you at my second speaking, that some others of your persuasion had not scrupled at it, which might suppose (if you had not affirmed the contrary), that you had made me a formal refusal; of which giving me then no other reason than that "it belonged not to you," i concluded that you were more scrupulous than others were. and, perhaps, the manner of your refusing it (as it appeared to me) might make me think you were not very well pleased with the motion. and this it is likely i might say, either to my lord chancellor or others; though seriously i do not remember that i spake to my lord chancellor at all concerning it. but, sir, since you give me now that modest reason for it, (which, by the way, is no just reason in itself, for a tippet may be worn without a degree, though a hood cannot; and it is no shame at all to want these formalities for him that wanteth not the substance,) but, sir, i say, since you give that reason for your refusal, i believe you, and shall correct that mistake in myself, and endeavour to rectify it in others, if any, upon this occasion, have misunderstood you. in the mean time i shall desire your charitable opinion of myself, which i shall be willing to deserve upon any opportunity that is offered me to do you service, being, sir, your very humble servant, jo. earles." "to my honoured friend, mr. richard baxter, these." no. x. monumental inscription in streglethorp church, near newark-upon-trent, in lincolnshire. [from le neve's _monumenta anglicana_[bt]. vo. lond. . vol. iii. p. .] stay, reader, and observe death's partial doom, a spreading virtue in a narrow tombe; a generous mind, mingled with common dust, like burnish'd steel, cover'd, and left to rust. dark in the earth he lyes, in whom did shine all the divided merits of his line. the lustre of his name seems faded here, no fairer star in all that fruitful sphere. in piety and parts extreamly bright, clear was his youth, and fill'd with growing light, a morn that promis'd much, yet saw no noon; none ever rose so fast, and set so soon. all lines of worth were centered here in one, yet see, he lies in shades whose life had none. but while the mother this sad structure rears,} a double dissolution there appears--} he into dust dissolves, she into tears.} richardus earle[bu], barn^{tus}. obijt decimo tertio die aug^{ti} anno dom. . Ætatis suæ . footnotes: [bt] two other epitaphs appear in this collection, on the earles of norfolk, with whom i cannot find our author to have had the least connection. a full account of this family may be seen in blomefield's _history of norfolk_, vol. iii. p. . [bu] the title was created by charles the first, july , , and, i believe, became extinct at the decease of this person. no. xi. chronological list of books of characters. no. i. _a caueat for commen cvr setors vulgarely called uagabones, set forth by thomas harman. esquier. for the vtiliteand proffyt of hys naturall countrey. newly agmented and jmprinted anno domini._ m.d.lxujj. ¶ _vewed, examined, and allowed, according vnto the queenes maiestyes iniunctions_ [roughly-executed wood-cut, of two persons receiving punishment at the cart's tail from the hands of a beadle.] _imprinted at london in fletestret at the signe of the faulcon by wylliam gryffith, and are to be solde at his shoppe in saynt dunstones churche yarde in the west._ [ to. black letter, containing thirty folios, very incorrectly numbered.] i commence my list of _characters_, with a volume, which, although earlier than the period i originally intended to begin from, is of sufficient curiosity and interest to warrant introduction, and, i trust, to obtain pardon from the reader for the additional trouble i am thus preparing for him. mr. warton, in his _history of english poetry_, (iv. .) has given, with some trifling errors, a transcript of the title, and says he has a faint remembrance of a collection of epigrams, by the author, printed about : these i have never been fortunate enough to meet with, nor do they appear in the collections of ames or herbert, neither of whom had seen a copy of the present work, although they mention griffith's licence to print it as dated in [bv]. it is dedicated to elizabeth, countess of shrewsbury; mr. warton thinks "with singular impropriety," although the motive appears at least to justify the measure, if it does not entitle the author to commendation. he addresses this noble lady as a person of extreme benevolence, and "as also aboundantly powrynge out dayly [her] ardent and bountifull charytie vppon all such as commeth for reliefe."--"i thought it good," he continues, "necessary, and my bounden dutye, to acquaynte your goodnes with the abhominable, wycked, and detestable behauor of all these rowsey, ragged rabblement of rake helles, that vnder the pretence of great misery, dyseases, and other innumerable calamites whiche they fayne through great hipocrisye, do wyn and gayne great almes in all places where they wyly wander."--on this account, therefore, and to preserve the kindness and liberality of the countess from imposition, harman dedicates his book to that lady. the notorious characters mentioned, are a "ruffler[bw]; a upright man[bx]; a hoker or angglear[by]; a roge[bz]; a wylde roge[ca]; a prygger of prauncers; a pallyarde[cb]; a frater[cc]; a abraham man[cd]; a fresh water mariner, or whipiacke; a counterfet cranke[ce]; a dommerar[cf]; a dronken tinckar[cg]; a swadder or pedler; a jarke man, and a patrico[ch]; a demaunder for glymmar[ci]; a bawdy basket[cj]; a antem morte[ck]; a walking morte; a doxe; a dell; a kynchin morte; and a kynchen co." from such a list, several instances of the tricks, as well as specimens of the language of the thieves of the day, might with ease be extracted, did not the limits of my little volume compel me to refrain from entering at large into this history of rogues; a restriction i the more regret, from its containing several passages illustrating the manners of that period, and which would be found of material use towards explaining many of the allusions met with in our early english dramas and now but imperfectly understood. "¶ prygger of prauncers. (sign. c. iii. b.) "a prigger of prauncers be horse stealers, for to prigge signifieth in their language to steale, and a prauncer is a horse, so beinge put together, the matter is plaine. these go commonly in jerkins of leather or of white frese, & carry little wandes in their hands, and will walke through grounds and pasturs, to search and se horses mete for their purpose. and if thei chaunce to be met and asked by the owners of the grounde what they make there, they fayne straighte that they have loste theyr waye, and desyre to be enstructed the beste way to suche a place. these will also repayre to gentlemens houses, and aske theyr charitye, and will offer theyr seruice. and if you aske them what they can doe, they wil saye that they can kepe two or three geldinges, and waite vppon a gentleman. these haue also theyr women that, walkinge from them in other places, marke where and what they see abrode, and sheweth these priggars therof, when they meete, whych is wythin a weeke or two. and loke, where they steale any thynge, they conuey the same at the leaste three score miles of, or more. there was a gentleman, a verye friende of myne, rydynge from london homewarde into kente, hauinge within three myles of his house busynesse, alyghted of his horse, and hys man also, in a pretye village, where diuers houses were, and looked about hym where he myghte haue a conuenyent person to walke his horse, because he would speak we a farmer that dwelte on the backe side of the sayde village, little aboue a quarter of a myle from the place where he lighted, and had his man to waight vpon hym, as it was mete for his callynge: espieng a priggar there standing, thinkinge the same to dwel there, charging this prity prigginge person to walke his horse well, and that they might not stande still for takynge of colde, and at his returne (which he saide should not be longe,) he would geue him a peny to drinke, and so wente about his busines. thys peltynge priggar, proude of his praye, walketh hys horses vp and downe, till he sawe the gentleman out of sighte, and leapes him into the saddell, and awaye be goeth a mayne. this gentleman returning, and findyng not his horses, sente his man to the one ende of the village, & he went himselfe vnto the other ende, and enquired as he went for hys horses that were walked, and began somewhat to suspecte, because neither he nor his man coulde neyther see nor fynde him. then this gentleman diligently enquired of three or foure towne dwellers there whether any such person, declaring his stature, age, apparel, and so manye linamentes of his body as he coulde call to remembraunce. and _vna voce_, all sayde that no such man dwelte in their streate, neither in the parish that they knewe of, but some did wel remember that suche a one they sawe there lyrkinge and huggeringe[cl] two houres before the gentleman came thether and a straunger to them. j had thought, quoth this gentleman, he had here dwelled, and marched home mannerly in his botes: farre from the place he dwelt not. j suppose at his comming home he sente such wayes as he suspected or thought mete to search for this prigger, but hetherto he neuer harde any tidinges againe of his palfreys. j had the best gelding stolen out of my pasture that j had amogst others, while this boke was first a printing." at the end of the several characters, the author gives a list of the names of the most notorious thieves of his day, a collection of the cant phrases used by them, with their significations; and a dialogue between an _uprighte man_ and a _roge_, which i shall transcribe:-- "the vpright cose canteth to the roger. _the vprighte man spaketh to the roge._ _man._ bene lyghtmans to thy quarromes in what lipk[=e] hast thou lipped in this darkemanes; whether in a lybbege or in the strummell? _god morrowe to thy bodye, in what house hast thou lyne in all night whether in a bed, or in the strawe?_ _roge._ j couched a hogeshed in a skypper this darkemans. _i laye me down to sleepe in a barne this night._ _man._ j towre ye strummell tryne vpon thy nabcher & togman. _i see the straw hange upon thy cap and coate._ _roge._ j saye by the salomon j wyll lage it of with a gage of bene bouse then cut to my nose watch. _j sweare by the masse j wyll wash it of with a quart of drinke, then saye to me what thou wilt._ _man._ why, hast thou any lowre in thy bouge to bouse? _why, hast thou any money in thy purse to drinke?_ _roge._ but a flagge, a wyn, and a make. _but a grot, a penny, and a halfe-penny._ _man._ why where is the kene that hath the bene bouse? _where is the house that hath the good drinke?_ _roge._ a bene mort hereby at the signe of the prauncer. _a good wyfe here by at the signe of the hors._ _man._ j cutt it is quyer bouse j bousd a flagge the laste darkemans. _j saye it is small and naughtye drynke, j dranke a groate there the last night._ _roge._ but bouse there a bord, and thou shalt haue beneship. 	_but drinke there a shyllinge, and thou shalt haue very good._ tower ye, yander is the kene, dup the gygger, and maund that is beneshype. _se you, yonder is the house, open the doore, and aske for the best._ _man._ this bouse is as benshyp as rome bouse. _this drinke is as good as wyne._ now j tower that bene bouse makes nase nabes. _now j se that good drynke makes a dronken heade._ maunde of this morte what bene pecke is in her ken. _aske of this wyfe what good meate shee hath in her house._ _roge._ she hath a cacling chete, a grunting chete, ruff pecke, cassan, and popplarr of yarum. _she hath a hen, a pyg, baken, chese and mylke porrage._ _man._ that is beneshyp to oure watche. _that is very good for vs._ now we haue well bousd, let vs strike some chete. _nowe we haue well dronke, let vs steale some thinge._ yonder dwelleth a quyere cuffen it were beneshype to myll hym. _yonder dwelleth a hoggeshe and choyrlyshe man it weare very well donne to robbe him._ _roge._ nowe, bynge we a waste to the hygh pad, the ruff-manes is by. _naye, let vs go hence to the hygh waye, the wodes is at hande._ _man._ so may we happen on the harmanes and cly the jarke, or to the quyer ken and skower quyaer cramprings and so to tryning on the chates. _so we maye chaunce to set in the stockes, eyther be whypped, eyther had to prison-house, and there be shackeled with bolttes and fetters, and then to hange on the gallowes._ [_rogue._] gerry gan the ruffian clye thee. _a corde in thy mouth, the deuyll take thee._ _man._ what! stowe you bene cofe and cut benar whydds; and byng we to some vyle to nyp a bong, so shall we haue lowre for the bousing ken and when we byng back to the deuseauye, we wyll fylche some duddes of the ruffemans, or myll the ken for a lagge of dudes. _what! holde your peace, good fellowe, and speake better wordes; and go we to london to cut a purse, then shal we haue money for the ale-house, and when we come backe agayne into the countrey, we wyll steale some lynnen clothes of one hedges, or robbe some house for a bucke of clothes._" i have been induced, from the curiosity and rarity of this tract, to extend my account of it farther, perhaps, than many of my readers may think reasonable, and shall, therefore, only add a specimen of harman's poetry, with which the original terminates. "--> thus j conclude my bolde beggar's booke, that all estates most playnely maye see; as in a glasse well pollyshed to looke, their double demeaner in eche degree; their lyues, their language, their names as they be; that with this warning their myndes may be warmed to amende their mysdeedes, and so lyue vnharmed." another tract of the same description is noticed in herbert's ames (p. .) as printed so early as in . a copy of the second edition in the bodleian library, possesses the following title:--"_the fraternitye of uacabondes. as wel of ruflyng vacabondes, as of beggerly, of women as of men, of gyrles as of boyes, with their proper names and qualities. with a description of the crafty company of cousoners and shifters. whereunto also is adioyned the xxv orders of knaues, otherwyse called a quartern of knaues. confirmed for euer by cocke lorell[cm], &c. imprinted at london by iohn awdeley, dwellyng in little britayne streete without aldersgate. ._" this, although much shorter than harman's, contains nearly the same characters, and is therefore thus briefly dismissed. an account of it, drawn up by the editor of the present volume, may be found in brydges' _british bibliographer_, vol. ii. p. . it may not be amiss to notice in this place, that a considerable part of _the belman of london, bringing to light the most notorious villanies that are now practised in the kingdom, &c._ to. , is derived from harman's _caveat_. among the books bequeathed to the bodleian, by burton, ( to. g. . art. bs.) is a copy of the _belman_, with the several passages so borrowed, marked in the hand-writing of the author of the _anatomy of melancholy_, who has also copied the _canting dialogue_ just given, and added several notes of his own on the margin. footnotes: [bv] in the epistle to the reader, the author terms it "this _second_ impression." [bw] a _ruffler_ seems to have been a bully as well as a beggar, he is thus described in the _fraternitye of vacabondes_; (see p. .) "a ruffeler goeth wyth a weapon to seeke seruice, saying he hath bene a seruitor in the wars, and beggeth for his reliefe. but his chiefest trade is to robbe poore way-faring men and market-women." in _new custome_ a morality, , creweltie, one of the characters, is termed a _ruffler_. see also decker's _belman of london_. sign. c. iv. [bx] "an _upright man_ is one that goeth wyth the trunchion of a staffe, which staffe they cal a flitchm[=a]. this man is of so much authority, that meeting with any of his profession, he may cal them to accompt, and comaund a share or snap vnto himselfe of al that they have gained by their trade in one moneth." _fraternitye of vacabondes._ [by] this worthy character approaches somewhat near to a shop-lifter. decker tells us that "their apparele in which they walke is commonly freize jerkins and gallye slops." _belman._ sign. c. iv. [bz] a rogue, says burton, in his ms. notes to decker's _belman of london_, "is not so stoute and [hardy] as the vpright man." [ca] a person whose parents were rogues. [cb] "these be called also _clapperdogens_" and "go with patched clokes." sign. c. iv. [cc] a _frater_ and a _whipiacke_, are persons who travel with a counterfeite license, the latter in the dress of a sailor. see _fraternitye, belman_, &c. [cd] "an _abraham-man_ is he that walketh bare-armed, and bare-legged, and fayneth hymselfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or such lyke toy, and nameth himselfe poore tom." _fraternitye of vacabondes._ [ce] a person who asks charity, and feigns sickness and disease. [cf] one who pretends to be dumb. in harman's time they were chiefly welsh-men. [cg] an artificer who mends one hole, and makes twenty. [ch] a _jarke man_ can read and write, and sometimes understands a little latin. a _patrico_ solemnizes their marriages. [ci] these are commonly women who ask assistance, feigning that they have lost their property by fire. [cj] a woman who cohabits with an _upright man_, and professes to sell thread, &c. [ck] "these _antem mortes_ be maried wemen, as there be but a fewe: for _antem_, in their language is a churche--" &c. _harman_. sign. e. iv. a _walking morte_ is one unmarried: a _doxe_, a _dell_, and a _kynchin morte_, are all females; and a _kynchen co_ is a young boy not thoroughly instructed in the art of _canting_ and _prigging_. [cl] in florio's _italian dictionary_, the word _dinascoso_ is explained "secretly, hiddenly, in _hugger-mugger_." see also reed's _shakspeare_, xviii. . _old plays_, . viii. . [cm] herbert notices _cock lorelles bote_, which he describes to be a satire in verse, in which the author enumerates all the most common trades and callings then in being. it was printed, in black letter, wynken de worde, to. without date. _history of printing_ ii. , and percy's _reliques_, i. , edit. . ii. _picture of a puritane, vo._ . [dr. farmer's _sale catalogue_, page , no. .] iii. _"a wife novv the widdow of sir thomas overbvrye. being a most exquisite and singular poem of the choice of a wife. wherevnto are added many witty characters, and conceited newes, written by himselfe and other learned gentlemen his friends. dignum laude virum musa vetat mori, cælo musa beat. hor. car. lib. . london printed for lawrence lisle, and are to bee sold at his shop in paule's church-yard, at the signe of the tiger's head. ."_[cn] [ to. pp. , not numbered.] of sir thomas overbury's life, and unhappy end, we have so full an account in the _biographia_, and the various historical productions, treating of the period in which he lived, that nothing further will be expected in this place. his _wife_ and _characters_ were printed, says wood, several times during his life, and the edition above noticed, was supposed, by the oxford biographer, to be the fourth or fifth[co]. having never seen a copy of the early editions, i am unable to fix on any character undoubtedly the production of overbury, and the printer confesses some of them were written by "other learned gentlemen." these were greatly encreased in subsequent impressions, that of having only twenty-one characters, and that in containing no less than eighty. a courtier,--(_sign. c. . b._) to all men's thinking is a man, and to most men the finest: all things else are defined by the understanding, but this by the sences; but his surest marke is, that hee is to bee found onely about princes. hee smells; and putteth away much of his judgement about the scituation of his clothes. hee knowes no man that is not generally knowne. his wit, like the marigold, openeth with the sunne, and therefore he riseth not before ten of the clocke. hee puts more confidence in his words than meaning, and more in his pronuntiation than his words. occasion is his cupid, and hee hath but one receipt of making loue. hee followes nothing but inconstancie, admires nothing but beauty, honours nothing but fortune. loues nothing. the sustenance of his discourse his newes, and his censure like a shot depends vpon the charging. hee is not, if he be out of court, but, fish-like, breathes destruction, if out of his owne element. neither his motion, or aspect are regular, but he mooues by the vpper spheres, and is the reflexion of higher substances. if you finde him not heere, you shall in paules with a pick-tooth in his hat, a cape cloke, and a long stocking. footnotes: [cn] in appeared _the husband_, a _poeme_, expressed in a compleat man. see _censura literaria_, v. . john davies, of hereford, wrote _a select second hvsband for sir thomas overbvries wife, now a matchlesse widow_. vo. lond. . and in was published, _the illustrious wife, viz. that excellent poem, sir thomas overbvrie's wife, illustrated by giles oldisworth, nephew to the same sir t. o._ [co] it was most probably the fifth, as mr. capel, who has printed the _wife_, in his very curious volume, entitled _prolusions_, vo. lond. , notices two copies in , one in vo. which i suppose to be the third, and one in to. stated in the title to be the fourth edition: the sixth was in the following year, ; the seventh, eighth, and ninth were in , the eleventh in , twelfth in , thirteenth , fourteenth, , fifteenth, , sixteenth, , and mr. brand possessed a copy, the specific edition of which i am unable to state, printed in . _catalogue_, no. . iv. "_satyrical essayes, characters, and others, or accurate and quick descriptions, fitted to the life of their subiects._ [greek: tôn êthôn dê phylattesthai mallon dei hê tous hecheis]. theophras. aspice et hæc, si forte aliquid decoctius audis, jude vaporata lector mihi ferucat aure. iuuen. _plagosus minime plagiarius._ _john stephens. london, printed by nicholas okes, and are to be sold by roger barnes, at his shop in st. dunstane's church-yard. ._" [ vo. pp. . title, preface, &c. more.] in a subsequent impression of this volume, vo. in the same year, and with a fresh title page, dated [cp], we find the author to be "john stephens the younger, of lincoln's inn:" no other particulars of him appear to exist at present, excepting that he was the author of a play entitled, _cinthia's revenge; or, mænander's extasie_. lond. for barnes, , to. "which," says langbaine, "is one of the longest plays i ever read, and withal the most tedious." ben jonson addressed some lines[cq] to the author, whom he calls "his much and worthily esteemed friend," as did f. c. g. rogers, and thomas danet. stephens dedicates his book to thomas turner, esq. for the sake of a little variety i give one of his "three satyricall essayes on cowardlinesse," which are written in verse. essay i. "feare to resist good virtue's common foe, and feare to loose some lucre, which doth grow by a continued practise; makes our fate banish (with single combates) all the hate, which broad abuses challenge of our spleene. for who in vertue's troope was euer seene, that did couragiously with mischiefes fight, without the publicke name of hipocrite? vaine-glorious, malapert, precise, deuout, be tearmes which threaten those that go about to stand in opposition of our times with true defiance, or satyricke rimes. cowards they be, branded among the worst, who (through contempt of atheisme), neuer durst crowd neere a great man's elbow to suggest smooth tales with glosse, or enuy well addrest. these be the noted cowards of our age; who be not able to instruct the stage with matter of new shamelesse impudence who cannot almost laugh at innocence; and purchase high preferment by the waies, which had bene horrible in nero's dayes. they are the shamefull cowards, who contemne vices of state, or cannot flatter them; who can refuse advantage, or deny villanous courses, if they can espye some little purchase to inrich their chest though they become vncomfortably blest. we still account those cowards, who forbeare (being possess'd with a religious feare) to slip occasion, when they might erect hornes on a tradesman's noddle, or neglect the violation of a virgin's bed with promise to requite her maiden-head. basely low-minded we esteeme that man who cannot swagger well, or (if he can) who doth not with implacable desire, follow revenge with a consuming fire. extortious rascals, when they are alone, bethinke how closely they have pick'd each bone, nay, with a frolicke humour, they will brag, how blancke they left their empty client's bag. which dealings if they did not giue delight, or not refresh their meetings in despight, they would accounted be both weake, vnwise, and, like a timorous coward, too precise. your handsome-bodied youth (whose comely face may challenge all the store of nature's grace,) if, when a lustfull lady doth inuite, by some lasciuious trickes his deere delight, if then he doth abhorre such wanton ioy; whose is not almost ready to destroy ciuility with curses, when he heares the tale recited? blaming much his years, or modest weaknesse, and with cheeks ful-blown each man will wish the case had beene his own. graue holy men, whose habite will imply nothing but honest zeale, or sanctity, nay so vprighteous will their actions seeme, as you their thoughts religion will esteeme. yet these all-sacred men, who daily giue such vowes, wold think themselves vnfit to liue, if they were artlesse in the flattering vice, euen as it were a daily sacrifice: children deceiue their parents with expence: charity layes aside her conscience, and lookes vpon the fraile commodity of monstrous bargaines with a couetous eye: and now the name of _generosity_, of _noble cariage_ or _braue dignity_, keepe such a common skirmish in our bloud, as we direct the measure of things good, by that, which reputation of estate, glory of rumor, or the present rate of sauing pollicy doth best admit. we do employ materials of wit, knowledge, occasion, labour, dignity, among our spirits of audacity, nor in our gainefull proiects do we care for what is pious, but for what we dare. good humble men, who haue sincerely layd saluation for their hope, we call _afraid_. but if you will vouchsafe a patient eare, you shall perceiue, men impious haue most feare." the second edition possesses the following title--"_new essayes and characters, with a new satyre in defence of the common law, and lawyers: mixt with reproofe against their enemy ignoramus, &c. london, ._" it seems not improbable that some person had attacked stephens's first edition, although i am unable to discover the publication alluded to. i suspect him to be the editor of, or one of the contributors to, the later copies of sir thomas overbury's _wife_, &c.: since one of stephens's friends, (a mr. i. cocke) in a poetical address prefixed to his _new essayes_, says "i am heere enforced to claime characters following the wife[cr]; viz. the _tinker_, the _apparatour_, and _almanack-maker_, that i may signify the ridiculous and bold dealing of an vnknowne botcher: but i neede make no question what he is; for his hackney similitudes discouer him to be the rayler above-mentioned, whosoeuer that rayler be." footnotes: [cp] coxeter, in his mss. notes to gildon's _lives of the eng. dram. poets_, in the bodleian, says that the second edition was in vo. , "_essays and characters, ironical and instructive_," but this must be a mistake. [cq] "who takes thy volume to his vertuous hand, must be intended still to vnderstand: who bluntly doth but looke vpon the same, may aske, _what author would conceale his name?_ who reads may roaue, and call the passage darke, yet may, as blind men, sometimes hit the marke. who reads, who roaues, who hopes to vnderstand, may take thy volume to his vertuous hand. who cannot reade, but onely doth desire to vnderstand, hee may at length admire. b. i." [cr] these were added to the sixth edition of the _wife_, in . v. _caracters upon essaies, morall and diuine, written for those good spirits that will take them in good part, and make use of them to good purpose. london: printed by edw. griffin for john guillim, and are to be sold at his shop in britaines burse._ . mo. [censura literaria, v. . monthly mirror, xi. .] vi. _the good and the badde, or descriptions of the worthies and vnworthies of this age. where the best may see their graces, and the worst discerne their basenesse. london, printed by george purslowe for iohn budge, and are to be sold at the great south-dore of paules, and at brittaines bursse._ . [ to. containing pp. , title, dedication "to sir gilbert houghton, knight," and preface six more. a second edition appeared in , under the title of _england's selected characters_, &c.] the author of these characters[cs] was nicholas breton, who dedicates them to sir gilbert houghton, of houghton, knight. of breton no particulars are now known, excepting what may be gained from an epitaph in norton church, northamptonshire[ct], by which we learn that he was the son of captain breton, of tamworth, in staffordshire, and served himself in the low countries, under the command of the earl of leicester. he married anne, daughter of sir edward legh, or leigh, of rushell, staffordshire, by whom he had five sons and four daughters, and having purchased the manor of norton, died there june , [cu]. breton appears to have been a poet of considerable reputation among his contemporaries, as he is noticed with commendation by puttenhem and meres: sir samuel egerton brydges declares that his poetical powers were distinguished by a simplicity, at once easy and elegant. specimens of his productions in verse, may be found in percy's _reliques_, ellis's _specimens_, cooper's _muses' library, censura literaria_; and an imperfect list of his publications is given by ritson, in the _bibliographia poetica_, which is augmented by mr. park, in the _cens. lit._ ix. [cv]. a worthie priuie counceller. a worthy priuie counceller is the pillar of a realme, in whose wisedome and care, vnder god and the king, stands the safety of a kingdome; he is the watch-towre to giue warning of the enemy, and a hand of prouision for the preseruation of the state: hee is an oracle in the king's eare, and a sword in the king's hand, an euen weight in the ballance of justice, and a light of grace in the loue of truth: he is an eye of care in the course of lawe, a heart of loue in the seruice of his soueraigne, a mind of honour in the order of his seruice, and a braine of inuention for the good of the common-wealth; his place is powerful, while his seruice is faithfull, and his honour due in the desert of his employment. in summe, he is as a fixed planet mong the starres of the firmament, which through the clouds in the ayre, shewes the nature of his light. an vnworthie counceller. an vnworthie counceller is the hurt of a king, and the danger of a state, when the weaknes of judgement may commit an error, or the lacke of care may give way to vnhappinesse: he is a wicked charme in the king's eare, a sword of terror in the aduice of tyranny: his power is perillous in the partiality of will, and his heart full of hollownesse in the protestation of loue: hypocrisie is the couer of his counterfaite religion, and traiterous inu[=e]tion is the agent of his ambition: he is the cloud of darknesse, that threatneth foule weather, and if it growe to a storme, it is feareful where it falls: hee is an enemy to god in the hate of grace, and worthie of death in disloyalty to his soueraigne. in summe, he is an vnfit person for the place of a counceller, and an vnworthy subject to looke a king in the face. an effeminate fool. an effeminate foole is the figure of a baby: he loues nothing but gay, to look in a glasse, to keepe among wenches, and to play with trifles; to feed on sweet meats, and to be daunced in laps, to be inbraced in armes, and to be kissed on the cheeke: to talke idlely, to looke demurely, to goe nicely, and to laugh continually: to be his mistresse' servant, and her mayd's master, his father's love, and his mother's none-child: to play on a fiddle, and sing a loue-song, to weare sweet gloues, and look on fine things: to make purposes and write verses, deuise riddles, and tell lies: to follow plaies, and study daunces, to heare newes, and buy trifles: to sigh for loue, and weepe for kindnesse, and mourne for company, and bee sicke for fashion: to ride in a coach, and gallop a hackney, to watch all night, and sleepe out the morning: to lie on a bed, and take tobacco, and to send his page of an idle message to his mistresse; to go vpon gigges, to haue his ruffes set in print, to picke his teeth, and play with a puppet. in summe, hee is a man-childe, and a woman's man, a gaze of folly, and wisedome's griefe[cw]. "the chesse play." very aptly deuised by n. b. gent. [from "_the phoenix nest. built vp with the most rare and refined workes of noble men, woorthy knights, gallant gentlemen, masters of arts, and braue schollers," &c. "set foorth by r. s. of the inner temple, gentleman." to. london, by iohn iackson, , page ._] a secret many yeeres vnseene, in play at chesse, who knowes the game, first of the king, and then the queene, knight, bishop, rooke, and so by name, of euerie pawne i will descrie, the nature with the qualitie. the king. the king himselfe is haughtie care, which ouerlooketh all his men, and when he seeth how they fare he steps among them now and then, whom, when his foe presumes to checke, his seruants stand, to giue the necke. the queene. the queene is queint, and quicke conceit, which makes hir walke which way she list, and rootes them vp, that lie in wait to worke hir treason, ere she wist: hir force is such against hir foes that whom she meetes, she ouerthrowes. the knight. the knight is knowledge how to fight against his prince's enimies, he neuer makes his walke outright, but leaps and skips, in wilie wise, to take by sleight a traitrous foe, might slilie seeke their ouerthrowe. the bishop. the bishop he is wittie braine, that chooseth crossest pathes to pace, and euermore he pries with paine, to see who seekes him most disgrace: such straglers when he findes astraie he takes them vp, and throwes awaie. the rookes. the rookes are reason on both sides, which keepe the corner houses still, and warily stand to watch their tides, by secret art to worke their will, to take sometime a theefe vnseene, might mischiefe meane to king or queene. the pawnes. the pawne before the king, is peace, which he desires to keepe at home, practise, the queene's, which doth not cease amid the world abroad to roame, to finde, and fall upon each foe, whereas his mistres meanes to goe. before the knight, is perill plast, which he, by skipping ouergoes, and yet that pawne can worke a cast, to ouerthrow his greatest foes; the bishop's prudence, prieng still which way to worke his master's will. the rooke's poore pawnes, are sillie swaines, which seeldome serue, except by hap, and yet those pawnes, can lay their traines, to catch a great man, in a trap: so that i see, sometime a groome may not be spared from his roome. the nature of the chesse men. the king is stately, looking hie; the queene doth beare like maiestie: the knight is hardie, valiant, wise: the bishop prudent and precise. the rookes no raungers out of raie[cx], the pawnes the pages in the plaie. lenvoy. then rule with care, and quicke conceit, and fight with knowledge, as with force; so beare a braine, to dash deceit, and worke with reason and remorse. forgive a fault when young men plaie, so giue a mate, and go your way. and when you plaie beware of checke, know how to saue and giue a necke: and with a checke beware of mate; but cheefe, ware had i wist too late: loose not the queene, for ten to one, if she be lost, the game is gone." footnotes: [cs] these are a king; a queen; a prince; a privy-counsellor; a noble man; a bishop; a judge; a knight; a gentleman; a lawyer; a soldier; a physician; a merchant (their good and bad characters); a good man, and an atheist or most bad man; a wise man and a fool; an honest man and a knave; an usurer; a beggar; a virgin and a wanton woman; a quiet woman; an unquiet woman; a good wife; an effeminate fool; a parasite; a bawd; a drunkard; a coward; an honest poor man; a just man; a repentant sinner; a reprobate; an old man; a young man, and a holy man. [ct] it is by no means certain that this may not be intended to perpetuate the memory of some other person of the same names, although mr. gough, in a note to the second volume of _queen elizabeth's progresses_, seems to think it belongs to our author. [cu] bridges' _northamptonshire_, vol. ii. page , s. shaw's _staffordshire_, vol. i. page . [cv] to these lists of breton's productions may be added, . _a solemne passion of the soule's loue._ to. lond. . . _the mother's blessing_, to. lond. . . _a true description of vnthankfulnesse; or an enemie to ingratitude._ to. lond. . . _breton's longing_, to. title lost in the bodleian copy; prefixed are verses by h. t. gent. . _a poste with a packet of mad letters_, to. , dedicated by nicholas breton to maximilian dallison of hawlin, kent. the last tract excepted, all the above are in a volume bequeathed by bishop tanner to the university of oxford, which contains many of the pieces noticed by ritson, and, in addition, _the passion of a discontented minde._ to. lond. , which i should have no hesitation in placing to breton. at the end of the volume are _the passions of the spirit_, and _excellent vercis worthey imitation of euery christian in thier conuersiation_, both in manuscript, and, if we may judge from the style, evidently by the author before-mentioned. for the _figures_, in the composition of which he had certainly a share, see page . [cw] i am not aware that the following specimen of his versification, which is curious, has been reprinted. [cx] _raie_, for _array_; order, rank. so spencer. "and all the damzels of that towne in _ray_, came dauncing forth, and ioyous carrols song:" _faerie queene_, book v. canto xi. . vii. _essayes and characters of a prison and prisoners. written by g. m. of grayes'-inne, gent._ (woodcut of a keeper standing with the hatch of a prison open, in his left hand a staff, the following lines at the side; "those that keepe mee, i keepe; if can, will still: hee's a true iaylor strips the diuell in ill.") _printed at london for mathew walbancke and are to be solde at his shops at the new and old gate of grayes-inne._ . [ to. pp. . title, dedication, &c. eight more.] a second edition appeared in , and, as the title informs us, "with some new additions:" what these were i am not able to state, as my copy, although it appears perfect, contains precisely the same with that of . of geffray mynshul, as he signs his name to the dedication, i can learn no particulars, but i have reason to suppose him descended from an ancient and highly respectable family, residing at minshull, in the county of chester[cy], during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. by what mishap he became an inmate of the king's-bench prison, from when he dates[cz] his _essayes_, it is impossible to conjecture, but as he talks of usury and extortion, as well as of severe creditors; and advises those who are compelled to borrow, to pay as soon as they can, we may suppose that imprudence and extravagance assisted in reducing him to the situation he attempts to describe. in the dedication to his uncle, "mr. matthew mainwaring[da], of namptwich, in cheshire," he says:--"since my comming into this prison, what with the strangenesse of the place, and strictnesse of my liberty, i am so transported that i could not follow that study wherein i tooke great delight and cheife pleasure, and to spend my time idley would but adde more discontentments to my troubled brest, and being in this chaos of discontentments, fantasies must arise, which will bring forth the fruits of an idle braine, for _e malis minimum_. it is farre better to giue some accompt of time, though to little purpose, than none at all. to which end i gathered a handfull of essayes, and few characters of such things as by my owne experience i could say _probatum est_: not that thereby i should either please the reader, or shew exquisitenes of inuention, or curious stile; seeing what i write of is but the child of sorrow, bred by discontentments, and nourisht vp with misfortunes, to whosc help melancholly saturne gaue his iudgement, the night-bird her inuention, and the ominous rauen brought a quill taken from his owne wing, dipt in the inke of misery, as chiefe ayders in this architect of sorrow." "character of a prisoner. a prisoner is an impatient patient, lingring vnder the rough hands of a cruell phisitian: his creditor hauing cast his water knowes his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. he is like tantalus, who hath freedome running by his doore, yet cannot enioy the least benefit thereof. his greatest griefe is that his credit was so good and now no better. his land is drawne within the compasse of a sheepe's skin, and his owne hand the fortification that barres him of entrance: hee is fortunes tossing-bal, an obiect that would make mirth melancholy: to his friends an abiect, and a subiect of nine dayes' wonder in euery barber's shop, and a mouthfull of pitty (that he had no better fortune) to midwiues and talkatiue gossips; and all the content that this transitory life can giue him seemes but to flout him, in respect the restraint of liberty barres the true vse. to his familiars hee is like a plague, whom they dare scarce come nigh for feare of infection, he is a monument ruined by those which raysed him, he spends the day with a _hei mihi! ve miserum_! and the night with a _nullis est medicabilis herbis_." footnotes: [cy] in the church of st. mary, at nantwich, in that county, is a monument erected by geofry minshull, of stoke, esq. to the memory of his ancestors. _historical account of nantwich_, vo. , page . king, in his _vale royal of england_, folio, _lond._ , page , speaks of minshall-hall, "a very ancient seat, which hath continued the successions of a worshipfull race in its own name"--&c. [cz] this place of residence was omitted in the second edition. [da] the mainwarings were an old family of repute, being mentioned as residing near nantwich, by leland, _itin._ vol. . pt. i. fol. . see also the list of escheators of cheshire, in leycester's _historical antiquities_, folio, lond. , p. . viii. _cvres for the itch. characters. epigrams. epitaphs. by h. p. scalpat qui tangitur. london, printed for thomas iones, at the signs of the blacke rauen in the strand._ . [ vo. containing pp. , not numbered.] i have little doubt but that the initials h. p. may be attributed with justice to _henry parrot_, author of _laquei ridiculosi: or, springes for woodcocks_, a collection of epigrams, printed at london in [db], vo. and commended by mr. warton, who says, that "many of them are worthy to be revived in modern collections"[dc]. to the same person i would also give _the mastive, or young whelpe of the old dogge. epigrams and satyrs._ lond. (date cut off in the bodleian copy,) to.--_the mouse trap, consisting of epigrams_, to. .--_epigrams by h. p._ to. .--and _the more the merrier: containing three-score and odde headlesse epigrams, shot (like the fooles bolt) amongst you, light where they will_, to. [dd]. it appears from the preface to _cvres for the itch_, that the _epigrams and epitaphs_ were written in , during the author's residence in the country, at the "_long vacation_," and the _characters_[de], which are "not so fully perfected as was meant," were composed "of later times." the following afford as fair a specimen of this part of the volume as can be produced. "a scold. (b. .) is a much more heard of, then least desired to bee seene or knowne, she-kinde of serpent; the venom'd sting of whose poysonous tongue, worse then the biting of a scorpion, proues more infectious farre then can be cured. shee's of all other creatures most vntameablest, and couets more the last word in scoulding, then doth a combater the last stroke for victorie. she lowdest lifts it standing at her door, bidding, w^{th} exclamation, flat defiance to any one sayes blacke's her eye. she dares appeare before any iustice, nor is least daunted with the sight of counstable, nor at worst threatnings of a cucking-stoole. there's nothing mads or moues her more to outrage, then but the very naming of a wispe, or if you sing or whistle when she is scoulding. if any in the interim chance to come within her reach, twenty to one she scratcheth him by the face; or doe but offer to hold her hands, sheel presently begin to cry out murder. there's nothing pacifies her but a cup of sacke, which taking in full measure of digestion, shee presently forgets all wrongs that's done her, and thereupon falls streight a weeping. doe but intreat her with faire words, or flatter her, she then confesseth all her imperfections, and layes the guilt vpon the whore her mayd. her manner is to talke much in her sleepe, what wrongs she hath indured of that rogue her husband whose hap may be in time to dye a martyr; and so i leaue them." "a good wife, is a world of happiness, that brings with it a kingdom in conceit, and makes a perfect adiunct in societie; shee's such a comfort as exceeds content, and proues so precious as canot be paralleld, yea more inestimable then may be valued. shee's any good man's better second selfe, the very mirror of true constant modesty, the carefull huswife of frugalitie, and dearest obiect of man's heart's felicitie. she commands with mildnesse, rules with discretion, liues in repute, and ordereth all things that are good or necessarie. shee's her husband's solace, her house's ornament, her children's succor, and her seruant's comfort. shee's (to be briefe) the eye of warinesse, the tongue of silence, the hand of labour, and the heart of loue. her voice is musicke, her countenance meeknesse; her minde vertuous, and her soule gratious. shee's a blessing giuen from god to man, a sweet companion in his affliction, and ioynt co-partner upon all occasions. shee's (to conclude) earth's chiefest paragon, and will bee, when shee dyes, heauen's dearest creature." footnotes: [db] mr. steevens quotes an edition in , but the preface expressly states, that they were composed in .--"_duo propemodum anni elapsi sunt, ex quo primum epigrammata hæc (qualiacunque) raptim et festinanter perficiebam_"--&c. [dc] _history of english poetry_, iv. . [dd] _censura literaria_, iii. , . [de] these consist of a ballad-maker; a tapster; a drunkard; a rectified young man; a young nouice's new yonger wife; a common fidler; a broker; a iouiall good fellow; a humourist; a malepart yong upstart; a scold; a good wife, and a selfe-conceited parcell-witty old dotard. ix. _characters of vertves and vices. in two bookes. by ios. hall. imprinted at london, ._ the above is copied from a separate title in the collected works of bishop hall, printed in folio, and dedicated to james the first. the book, i believe, originally appeared in vo. [df]. of this edition i have in vain endeavoured to procure some information, although i cannot fancy it to be of any peculiar rarity. the volume contains a dedication to edward lord denny, and james lord hay, a premonition of the title and use of characters, the proemes, eleven virtuous characters, and fifteen of a different discription. as bishop hall's collected works have so lately appeared in a new edition, and as mr. pratt[dg] proposes to add a life of the author in a subsequent volume, i shall forbear giving any specimen from the works or biographical notices of this amiable prelate, recommending the perusal of his excellent productions, to all who admire the combination of sound sense with unaffected devotion. footnotes: [df] see brand's _sale catalogue_, vo. , page , no. . [dg] see the _gentleman's magazine_ for october, , lxxxi. . x. _micrologia. characters, or essayes, of persons, trades, and places, offered to the city and country. by r. m. printed at london by t. c. for michael sparke, dwelling at the blue bible, in greene arbor. ._ [ vo. containing pages, not numbered.] the characters in this volume are "a fantasticke taylor; a player; a shooe-maker; a rope-maker; a smith; a tobacconist; a cunning woman; a cobler; a tooth-drawer; a tinker; a fidler; a cunning horse-courser; bethlem; ludgate; bridewell; (and) newgate."-- "a player.--(_sign. b._ iii.) is a volume of various conceits or epitome of time, who by his representation and appearance makes things long past seeme present. he is much like the compters in arithmeticke, and may stand one while for a king, another while a begger, many times as a mute or cypher. sometimes hee represents that which in his life he scarse practises--to be an honest man. to the point, hee oft personates a rover, and therein comes neerest to himselfe. if his action prefigure passion, he raues, rages, and protests much by his painted heauens, and seemes in the heighth of this fit ready to pull ioue out of the garret, where pershance hee lies leaning on his elbowes, or is imployed to make squips and crackers to grace the play. his audience are often-times iudicious, but his chiefe admirers are commonly young wanton chamber-maids, who are so taken with his posture and gay clothes, they neuer come to be their owne women after. hee exasperates men's enormities in publike view, and tels them their faults on the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still hee might finde more occasions to worke on. he is the generall corrupter of spirits, yet vntainted, inducing them by gradation to much lasciuious deprauity. he is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices, as otherwise they had haply nere heard of. he is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and is indeed what hee seemes not. and if hee lose one of his fellow stroules, in the summer he turnes king of the gipsies: if not, some great man's protection is a sufficient warrant for his peregrination, and a meanes to procure him the town-hall, where hee may long exercise his qualities, with clown-claps of great admiration, in a tone sutable to the large eares of his illiterate auditorie. hee is one seldome takes care for old age, because ill diet and disorder, together with a consumption, or some worse disease, taken vp in his full careere, haue onely chalked out his catastrophe but to a colon: and he scarsely suruiues to his naturall period of dayes." xi. _whimzies: or, a new cast of characters. nova, non nota delectant. london, printed by f. k. and are to be sold by ambrose rithirdon, at the signe of the bull's-head, in paul's church-yard. ._ [ mo. containing in all, pp. .] the dedication to this volume, which is inscribed to sir _alexander radcliffe_, is signed "_clitus--alexandrinus_;" the author's real name i am unable to discover. it contains twenty-four characters[dh], besides "_a cater-character, throwne out of a boxe by an experienced gamester_[di];" and some lines "vpon the birth-day of his sonne iohn," of which the first-will be sufficient to satisfy all curiosity. "god blesse thee, iohn, and make thee such an one that i may ioy in calling thee my son. thou art my ninth, and by it i divine that thou shalt live to love the muses nine."--&c. &c. "a corranto-coiner--(p. .) is a state newes-monger; and his owne genius is his intelligencer. his mint goes weekely, and he coines monie by it. howsoeuer, the more intelligent merchants doe jeere him, the vulgar doe admire him, holding his novels oracular: and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissiue curtsies betwixt city and countrey. hee holds most constantly one forme or method of discourse. he retaines some militarie words of art, which hee shootes at randome; no matter where they hitt, they cannot wound any. he ever leaves some passages doubtfull, as if they were some more intimate secrecies of state, clozing his sentence abruptly with--_heereafter you shall heare more_. which words, i conceive, he onely useth as baites, to make the appetite of the reader more eager in his next week's pursuit for a more satisfying labour. some generall-erring relations he pickes up, as crummes or fragments, from a frequented ordinarie: of which shreads he shapes a cote to fit any credulous foole that will weare it. you shall never observe him make any reply in places of publike concourse; hee ingenuously acknowledges himselfe to bee more bounden to the happinesse of a retentive memory, than eyther ability of tongue, or pregnancy of conceite. he carryes his table-booke still about with him, but dares not pull it out publikely. yet no sooner is the table drawne, than he turnes notarie; by which meanes hee recovers the charge of his ordinarie. paules is his walke in winter; moorfields[dj] in sommer. where the whole discipline, designes, projects, and exploits of the states, netherlands, poland, switzer, crimchan and all, are within the compasse of one quadrangle walke most judiciously and punctually discovered. but long he must not walke, lest hee make his newes-presse stand. thanks to his good invention, he can collect much out of a very little: no matter though more experienced judgements disprove him; hee is anonymos, and that wil secure him. to make his reports more credible or, (which he and his stationer onely aymes at,) more vendible, in the relation of every occurrent he renders you the day of the moneth; and to approve himselfe a scholler, he annexeth these latine parcells, or parcell-gilt sentences, _veteri stylo, novo stylo_. palisados, parapets, counterscarfes, forts, fortresses, rampiers, bulwarks, are his usual dialect. hee writes as if he would doe some mischiefe, yet the charge of his shot is but paper. hee will sometimes start in his sleepe, as one affrighted with visions, which i can impute to no other cause but to the terrible skirmishes which he discoursed of in the day-time. he has now tyed himselfe apprentice to the trade of minting, and must weekly performe his taske, or (beside the losse which accrues to himselfe,) he disappoints a number of no small fooles, whose discourse, discipline, and discretion, is drilled from his state-service. these you shall know by their mondai's morning question, a little before exchange time; _stationer, have you any newes?_ which they no sooner purchase than peruse; and, early by next morning, (lest their countrey friend should be deprived of the benefit of so rich a prize,) they freely vent the substance of it, with some illustrations, if their understanding can furnish them that way. he would make you beleeve that hee were knowne to some forraine intelligence, but i hold him the wisest man that hath the least faith to beleeve him. for his relations he stands resolute, whether they become approved, or evinced for untruths; which if they bee, hee has contracted with his face never to blush for the matter. hee holds especiall concurrence with two philosophicall sects, though hee bee ignorant of the tenets of either: in the collection of his observations, he is _peripateticall_, for hee walkes circularly; in the digestion of his relations he is _stoicall_, and sits regularly. hee has an alphabeticall table of all the chiefe commanders, generals, leaders, provinciall townes, rivers, ports, creekes, with other fitting materials to furnish his imaginary building. whisperings, muttrings, and bare suppositions, are sufficient grounds for the authoritie of his relations. it is strange to see with what greedinesse this ayrie chameleon, being all lungs and winde, will swallow a receite of newes, as if it were physicall: yea, with what frontlesse insinuation he will scrue himselfe into the acquaintance of some knowing _intelligencers_, who, trying the cask by his hollow sound, do familiarly gull him. i am of opinion, were all his voluminous centuries of fabulous relations compiled, they would vye in number with the iliads of many forerunning ages. you shall many times finde in his gazettas, pasquils, and corrantos miserable distractions; here a city taken by force long before it bee besieged; there a countrey laid waste before ever the enemie entered. he many times tortures his readers with impertinencies, yet are these the tolerablest passages throughout all his discourse. he is the very landskip of our age. he is all ayre; his eare alwayes open to all reports, which, how incredible soever, must passe for currant, and find vent, purposely to get him currant money, and delude the vulgar. yet our best comfort is, his chymeras live not long; a weeke is the longest in the citie, and after their arrival, little longer in the countrey; which past, they melt like _butter_, or match a pipe, and so _burne_[dk]. but indeede, most commonly it is the height of their ambition to aspire to the imployment of stopping mustard-pots, or wrapping up pepper, pouder, staves-aker, &c. which done, they expire. now for his habit, wapping and long-lane will give him his character. hee honours nothing with a more indeered observance, nor hugges ought with more intimacie than antiquitie, which he expresseth even in his cloathes. i have knowne some love fish best that smelled of the panyer; and the like humour reignes in him, for hee loves that apparele best that has a taste of the broker. some have held him for a scholler, but trust mee such are in a palpable errour, for hee never yet understood so much latine as to construe _gallo-belgicus_. for his librarie (his owne continuations excepted,) it consists of very few or no bookes. he holds himselfe highly engaged to his invention if it can purchase him victuals; for authors hee never converseth with them, unlesse they walke in paules. for his discourse it is ordinarie, yet hee will make you a terrible repetition of desperate commanders, unheard of exployts; intermixing withall his owne personall service. but this is not in all companies, for his experience hath sufficiently informed him in this principle--that as nothing workes more on the simple than things strange and incredibly rare; so nothing discovers his weaknesse more among the knowing and judicious than to insist, by way of discourse, on reports above conceite. amongst these, therefore, hee is as mute as a fish. but now imagine his lampe (if he be worth one,) to be neerely burnt out; his inventing genius wearied and surfoote with raunging over so many unknowne regions; and himselfe, wasted with the fruitlesse expence of much paper, resigning his place of weekly collections to another, whom, in hope of some little share, hee has to his stationer recommended, while he lives either poorely respected, or dyes miserably suspended. the rest i end with his owne cloze:--_next weeke you shall heare more_." footnotes: [dh] an almanack-maker; a ballad-monger; a corranto-coiner; a decoy; an exchange man; a forrester; a gamester; an hospitall-man; a iayler; a keeper; a launderer; a metall man; a neuter; an ostler; a post-master: a quest-man; a ruffian; a sailor; a trauller; an vnder sheriffe; a wine-soaker; a xantippean; a yealous neighbour; a zealous brother. [di] this _cater-character_, which possesses a separate title page, contains delineations of an apparator; a painter; a pedler; and a piper. [dj] _moorfields_ were a general promenade for the citizens of london, during the summer months. the ground was left to the city by mary and catherine, daughters of sir william fines, a knight of rhodes, in the reign of edward the confessor. richard johnson, a poetaster of the sixteenth century, published in , _the pleasant walkes of moore-fields. being the guift of two sisters, now beautified, to the continuing fame of this worthy citty_. to. black-letter, of which mr. gough, (_brit. topog._) who was ignorant of the above, notices an impression in . [dk] this is certainly intended as a pun upon the names of two news-venders or _corranto-coiners_ of the day. nathaniel _butter_, the publisher of "_the certain newes of this present week_," lived at the _pyde-bull_, st. austin's-gate, and was the proprietor of several of the _intelligencers_, from to about . nicholas _bourne_ was a joint partner with _butter_ in _the sweedish intelligencer_, to. _lond._ . xii. _picturæ loquentes: or pictures drawne forth in characters. with a poeme of a maid. by wye saltonstall. ne sutor ultra crepidam. london: printed by t. coles, &c. . mo._ i have copied the above title from an article in the _censura literaria_[dl], communicated by mr. park, of whose copious information, and constant accuracy on every subject connected with english literature, the public have many specimens before them. saltonstall's[dm] _characters_, &c. reached a second edition in . a copy of this rare volume is in the possession of mr. douce, who, with his accustomed liberality, permitted my able and excellent friend, mr. john james park, to draw up the following account of it for the present volume. to "the epistle dedicatory" of this impression, the initials (or such like) of dedicatee's name only are given, for, says the dedicator, "i know no fame can redound unto you by these meane essayes, which were written, _ocium magis foventes, quam studentes gloriæ_, as sheapheards play upon their oaten pipes, to recreate themselves, not to get credit." "to the reader.--since the title is the first leafe that cometh under censure, some, perhaps, will dislike the name of pictures, and say, i have no _colour_ for it, which i confesse, for these pictures are not drawne in colours, but in characters, representing to the eye of the minde divers severall professions, which, if they appeare more obscure than i coulde wish, yet i would have you know that it is not the nature of a character, to be as smooth as a bull-rush, but to have some fast and loose knots, which the ingenious reader may easily untie. the first picture is the description of a maide, which young men may read, and from thence learn to know, that vertue is the truest beauty. the next follow in their order, being set together in this _little_ book, that in winter you may reade them _ad ignem_, by the fire-side, and in summer _ad umbram_, under some shadie tree, and therewith passe away the tedious howres. so hoping of thy favourable censure, knowing that the least judicious are most ready to judge, i expose them to thy view, with apelles motto, _ne sutor, ultra crepidam_. lastly, whether you like them, or leave them, yet the author bids you welcome. "thine as mine, w.s." _the original characters are_, . the world. . an old man. . a woman. . a widdow. . a true lover. . a countrey bride. . a plowman. . a melancholy man. . a young heire. . a scholler in the university. . a lawyer's clarke. . a townsman in oxford. . an usurer. . a wandering rogue. . a waterman. . a shepheard. . a jealous man. . a chamberlaine. . a mayde. . a bayley. . a countrey fayre. . a countrey alehouse. . a horse-race. . a farmer's daughter. . a keeper. . a gentleman's house in the countrey. _the additions to the second edition are_, . a fine dame. . a country dame. . a gardiner. . a captaine. . a poore village. . a merry man. . a scrivener. . the tearme. . a mower. . a happy man. . an arrant knave. . an old waiting gentlewoman. "the tearme is a time when justice keeps open court for all commers, while her sister equity strives to mitigate the rigour of her positive sentence. it is called the tearme, because it does end and terminate busines, or else because it is the _terminus_ ad quem, that is, the end of the countrey man's journey, who comes up to the tearme, and with his hobnayle shooes grindes the faces of the poore stones, and so returnes againe. it is the soule of the yeare, and makes it quicke, which before was dead. inkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shelfish doe for salt water after a low ebbe. it sends forth new bookes into the world, and replenishes paul's walke with fresh company, where _quid novi?_ is their first salutation, and the weekely newes their chiefe discourse. the tavernes are painted against the tearme, and many a cause is argu'd there and try'd at that barre, where you are adjudg'd to pay the costs and charges, and so dismist with 'welcome gentlemen.' now the citty puts her best side outward, and a new play at the blackfryers is attended on with coaches. it keepes watermen from sinking and helpes them with many a fare voyage to westminster. your choyse beauties come up to it onely to see and be seene, and to learne the newest fashion, and for some other recreations. now monie that has beene long sicke and crasie, begins to stirre and walke abroad, especially if some young prodigalls come to towne, who bring more money than wit. lastly, the tearme is the joy of the citty, a deare friend to countrymen, and is never more welcome than after a long vacation." footnotes: [dl] vol. , p. . mr. park says that the plan of the characters was undoubtedly derived from that of overbury, but, he adds, the execution is greatly superior. four stanzas from the poem entitled, _a maid_, are printed in the same volume. [dm] an account of the author may be found in the _athenæ oxon._ vol. . col. . xiii. _london and country corbonadoed and quartered into seuerall characters. by donald lupton, vo. ._ [see british bibliographer, i. ; and brand's sale catalogue, page , no. .] xiv. _character of a gentleman_, appended to brathwait's _english gentleman_, to. _london, by felix kyngston, &c. ._ xv. "_a strange metamorphosis of man, transformed into a wildernesse. deciphered in characters. london, printed by thomas harper, and are to be sold by lawrence chapman at his shop in holborne, ._" [ mo. containing pp. , not numbered.] this curious little volume has been noticed by mr. haslewood, in the _censura literaria_ (vii. .) who says, with justice, that a rich vein of humour and amusement runs through it, and that it is the apparent lucubration of a pen able to perform better things. of the author's name i have been unable to procure the least intelligence. "the horse (no. .) is a creature made, as it were, in waxe. when nature first framed him, she took a secret complacence in her worke. he is even her master-peece in irracionall things, borrowing somewhat of all things to set him forth. for example, his slicke bay coat hee tooke from the chesnut; his necke from the rainbow, which perhaps make him rain so wel. his maine belike he took from _pegasus_, making him a hobbie to make this a compleat gennet[dn], which main he weares so curld, much after the women's fashions now adayes; this i am sure of howsoever, it becomes them, [and] it sets forth our gennet well. his legges he borrowed of the hart, with his swiftnesse, which makes him a true courser indeed. the starres in his forehead hee fetcht from heaven, which will not be much mist, there being so many. the little head he hath, broad breast, fat buttocke, and thicke tayle are properly his owne, for he knew not where to get him better. if you tell him of the hornes he wants to make him most compleat, he scornes the motion, and sets them at his heele. he is well shod especially in the upper leather, for as for his soles, they are much at reparation, and often faine to be removed. nature seems to have spent an apprentiship of yeares to make you such a one, for it is full seven yeares ere hee comes to this perfection, and be fit for the saddle: for then (as we,) it seemes to come to the yeares of discretion, when he will shew a kinde of rationall judgement with him, and if you set an expert rider on his backe, you shall see how sensiblie they will talke together, as master and scholler. when he shall be no sooner mounted and planted in the seat with the reins in one hand, a switch in the other, and speaking with his spurres in the horse's flankes, a language he wel understands, but he shall prance, curvet, and dance the canaries[do] halfe an houre together in compasse of a bushell, and yet still, as he thinkes, get some ground, shaking the goodly plume on his head with a comely pride. this will our bucephalus do in the lists: but when hee comes abroad into the fields, hee will play the countrey gentleman as truly, as before the knight in turnament. if the game be up once, and the hounds in chase, you shall see how he will pricke up his eares streight, and tickle at the sport as much as his rider shall, and laugh so loud, that if there be many of them, they will even drowne the rurall harmony of the dogges. when he travels, of all innes he loves best the signe of the silver bell, because likely there he fares best, especially if hee come the first, and get the prize. he carries his eares upright, nor seldome ever lets them fall till they be cropt off, and after that, as in despight, will never weare them more. his taile is so essentiall to him, that if he loose it once hee is no longer an horse, but ever stiled a curtall. to conclude, he is a blade of vulcan's forging, made for mars of the best metall, and the post of fame to carrie her tidings through the world, who, if he knew his own strength, would shrewdly put for the monarchie of our wildernesse." footnotes: [dn] mr. steevens, in a note to othello, explains a jennet to be a spanish horse; but from the passage just given, i confess it appears to me to mean somewhat more. perhaps a jennet was a horse kept solely for pleasure, whose mane was suffered to grow to a considerable length, and was then ornamented with platting, &c.--a hobby might answer to what we now term a _hogged_ poney. [do] _the canaries_ is the name of an old dance, freqnently alluded to in our early english plays. shakspeare uses it in _all's well that ends well_-- ----"i have seen a medicine, that's able to breathe life into a stone; quicken a rock, and make you _dance canary_ with spritely fire and motion;" sir john hawkins, in his _history of musick_, iv. . says that it occurs in the opera of _dioclesian_, set to music by purcell, and explains it to be "a very sprightly movement of two reprises, or strains, with eight bars in each: the time three quarters in a bar, the first pointed." i take this opportunity of mentioning, that among dr. rawlinson's mss. in the bodleian, [_poet._ .] is a volume which contains a variety of figures of old dances, written, as i conjecture, between the years and . besides several others are the _pavyan_; _my lord of essex measures_; _tyntermell_; _the old allmayne_; _the longe pavian_; _quanto dyspayne_; _the nyne muses_, &c. as the pavian is mentioned by shakspeare, in the _merry wives of windsor_, and as the directions for dancing the figure have not been before discovered, i shall make no apology for offering them in the present note. "the longe pavian, ij singles, a duble forward; ij singles syde, a duble forward; rep[=i]nce backe once, ij singles syde, a duble forward, one single backe twyse, ij singles, a duble forward, ij singles syde, prerince backe once; ij singles syde, a duble forward, reprince backe twyse." xvi. _the true character of an untrue bishop; with a recipe at the end how to recover a bishop if hee were lost. london, printed in the yeare [dp]._ [ to. pp. , besides title.] footnotes: [dp] i have a faint recollection of a single character in a rare volume, entitled "_a boulster lecture_," &c. lond. . xvii. _character of a projector, by ---- hogg. to. ._ xviii. _character of an oxford incendiary. printed for robert white in ._ to. [reprinted in the harleian miscellany, v. . edit. .] xix. _the reformado precisely charactered (with a frontispiece.)_ [see the sale catalogue of george steevens, esq. vo. lond. . page . no. .] xx. "_a new anatomie, or character of a christian or round-head. expressing his description, excellencie, happiness and innocencie. wherein may appear how far this blind world is mistaken in their unjust censures of him. virtus in arduis. proverbs xii. ; and jude _, quoted.) _imprimatur john downame. london, printed for robert leybourne, and are to be sold at the star, under peter's church in corn-hill, ._ vo. pp. . [in ashmole's museum.] xxi. in lord north's _forest of varieties, london, printed by richard cotes_, , are several _characters_, as lord orford informs us, "in the manner of sir thomas overbury." _royal and noble authors_, iii. . of this volume a second edition appeared in , neither of these, however, i have been able to meet with. for some account of the work, with extracts, see brydges' _memoirs of the peers of england_, vo. _london._ . page . xxii. _characters and elegies[dq]. by francis wortley, knight and baronet. printed in the yeere ._" to. the characters are as follow: . the character of his royall majestie; . the character of the queene's majestie; . the hopeful prince; . a true character of the illustrious james duke of york; . the character of a noble general; . a true english protestant; . an antinomian, or anabaptisticall independent; . a jesuite; . the true character of a northerne lady, as she is wife, mother, and sister; . the politique neuter; . the citie paragon; . a sharking committee-man; . britanicus his pedigree--a fatall prediction of his end; . the phoenix of the court. _britanicus his pedigree--a fatall prediction of his end._ i dare affirme him a jew by descent, and of the tribe of benjamin, lineally descended from the first king of the jewes, even saul, or at best he ownes him and his tribe, in most we reade of them. first, of our english tribes, i conceive his father's the lowest, and the meanest of that tribe, stocke, or generation, and the worst, how bad soever they be; melancholy he is, as appeares by his sullen and dogged wit; malicious as saul to david, as is evident in his writings; he wants but saul's javelin to cast at him; he as little spares the king's friends with his pen, as saul did jonathan his sonne in his reproach; and would be as free of his javelin as his pen, were his power sutable to his will, as ziba did to mephibosheth, so does he by the king, he belies him as much to the world, as he his master to david, and in the day of adversitie is as free of his tongue as shimei was to his soveraigne, and would be as humble as he, and as forward to meet the king as he was david, should the king returne in peace. abithaes there cannot want to cut off the dog's head, but david is more mercifull then shimei can be wicked; may he first consult with the witch of endor, but not worthy of so noble a death as his own sword, die the death of achitophel for feare of david, then may he be hang'd up as the sonnes of saul were against the sunne, or rather as the amelekites who slew isbosheth, and brought tidings and the tokens of the treason to david; may his hands and his feet be as sacrifices cut off, and so pay for the treasons of his pen and tongue; may all heads that plot treasons, all tongues that speake them, all pens that write them, be so punisht. if sheba paid his head for his tongue's fault, what deserves britannicus to pay for his pen and trumpet? is there never a wise woman in london? we have abishaes. * * * * * francis wortley, was the son of sir richard wortley, of wortley, in yorkshire, knight. at the age of seventeen he became a commoner of magdalen college, oxford; in he was knighted, and on the th of june in the following year, was created a baronet; being then, as wood says, esteemed an ingenious gentleman. during the civil wars he assisted the royal cause, by raising a troop of horse in the king's service; but at their conclusion he was taken prisoner, and confined in the tower of london, where it seems he composed the volume just noticed. in the _catalogue of compounders_ his name appears as "of carleton, yorkshire," and from thence we learn that he paid _l._ for his remaining property. in the _athenæ oxonienses_ may be found a list of his works, but i have been unable to trace the date of his decease. mr. granger says that "anne, his daughter, married the second son of the first earl of sandwich, who took the name of wortley," and adds that the late countess of bute was descended from him. _biographical history_, ii. . footnotes: [dq] the elegies, according to wood, are upon the loyalists who lost their lives in the king's service, at the end of which are epitaphs. xxiii. _the times anatomiz'd, in severall characters. by t. f_[ord, seruant to mr. sam. man[dr].] _difficile est satyram non scribere. juv. sat. . london, printed for w. l. anno ._" [ mo. in the british museum.] _the contents of the severall characters._ . a good king. . rebelion. . an honest subject. . an hypocritical convert of the times. . a souldier of fortune. . a discontented person. . an ambitious man. . the vulgar. . errour. . truth. . a selfe-seeker. . pamphlets. . an envious man. . true valour. . time. . a newter. . a turn-coat. . a moderate man. . a corrupt committee-man. . a sectary. . warre. . peace. . a drunkard. . a novice-preacher. . a scandalous preacher. . a grave divine. . a selfe-conceited man. . religion. . death. "pamphlets are the weekly almanacks, shewing what weather is in the state, which, like the doves of aleppo, carry news to every part of the kingdom. they are the silent traytors that affront majesty, and abuse all authority, under the colour of an _imprimatur_. ubiquitary flies that have of late so blistered the eares of all men, that they cannot endure any solid truth. the ecchoes, whereby what is done in part of the kingdome, is heard all over. they are like the mushromes, sprung up in a night, and dead in a day; and such is the greedinesse of men's natures (in these athenian dayes) of new, that they will rather feigne then want it." footnotes: [dr] (ms. interlineation in a copy among the king's pamphlets.) xxiv. _character of a london diurnal_, to. . [this was written by cleveland, and has been printed in the various editions of his poems.] xxv. _character of an agitator. printed in the yeare . to. pp. ._ this concludes with the following epitome--"hee was begotten of lilburne (with overton's helpe) in newgate, nursed up by cromwell, at first by the army, tutored by mr. peters, counselled by mr. walwin and musgarve, patronised by mr. martin, (who sometimes sits in counsell with them, though a member) and is like to dye no where but at tyburne, and that speedily, if hee repent not and reforme his erronious judgement, and his seditious treasonable practises against king, parliament, and martiall discipline itselfe. finis." xxvi. in mr. brand's sale catalogue, no. , we have _the surfeit to a.b.c._ vo. lond. , which is there represented to consist of _characters_. xxvii. _characters of a temporizer and an antiquary._ [in "_naps upon parnassus_," vo. . see the censura literaria, vol. vi. p. ; vol. vii. p. .] xxviii. _satyrical characters, and handsom descriptions, in letters_, vo. . [catalogue of thomas britton the small coal man, to, p. . no. .] xxix. _a character of england, as it was lately presented in a letter to a noble-man of france. with reflections upon gallus castratus. the third edition. london. printed for john crooke, and are to be sold at the ship in st. paul's church-yard, ._ ( mo. pp. , title and preface more.) this very severe satire upon the english nation was replied to in the following publication. xxx. _a character of france, to which is added gallus castratus, or an answer to a late slanderous pamphlet, called the character of england. si talia nefanda et facinora quis non democritus? london, printed for nath. brooke, at the angel in cornhill, ._ xxxi. _a perfect description of the people and country of scotland. london. printed for j. s. ._ ( mo. pp. . besides the title.) xxxii. _a brief character of the low countries under the states, being three weeks observation of the vices and vertues of the inhabitants. non seria semper. london, printed for h. s. and are to be sold by h. lowndes, at the white lion in st. paul's church yard, neer the little north door, ._ ( mo. pp. . title, &c. more.) written by owen feltham, and appended to the several folio editions of his _resolves_. xxxiii. _the character of italy: or, the italian anatomiz'd by an english chirurgion. difficile est satyram non scribere. london: printed for nath. brooke, at the angel in cornhil. ._ [ mo. pp. , title and preface more.] xxxiv. _the character of spain: or, an epitome of their virtues and vices._ ---- _adeo sunt multa, loquacem ut lassare queant fabium._ _london: printed for nath. brooke, at the angel in cornhil. ._ [ mo. pp. , title, &c. more.] xxxv. _essayes and characters, by l. g._ vo. . [see brand's _sale catalogue_, no. .] xxxvi. _the assembly-man. written in the year . london: printed for richard marriot, and are to be sold at his shop under st. dunstan's church, in fleet-street, - [ds]._ [ to. pp. .] sir john birkenhead was the author of this character, which was printed again in , and in with the following title, "_the assembly-man. written in the year ; but proves the true character of (cerberus) the observator_, mdcciv." it was also reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, v. . for an account of the author, see the _biographia britannica_, edit. kippis, ii. . footnotes: [ds] with a very curious and rare frontispiece. xxxvii. _fifty-five[dt] enigmatical characters, all very exactly drawn to the life, from several persons, humours, dispositions. pleasant and full of delight. by r. f. esq.; london: printed for william crook, at the sign of the three bibles on fleet-bridge. [du]._" [ vo. pp. , title, index, &c. not numbered, more.] richard flecknoe, the author of these characters, is more known from having his name affixed to one of the severest satires ever written by dryden, than from any excellence of his own as a poet or dramatic writer. mr. reed conceives him to have been a jesuit, and pope terms him an irish priest. langbaine says, that "his acquaintance with the nobility was more than with the muses, and he had a greater propensity to rhyming, than a genius to poetry." as a proof of the former assertion the duke of newcastle prefixed two copies of verses to his characters, in which he calls flecknoe "his worthy friend," and says: "flecknoe, thy characters are so full of wit and fancy, as each word is throng'd with it. each line's a volume, and who reads would swear whole libraries were in each character. nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet lights in the starry skies are thicker set, nor quills upon the armed porcupine, than wit and fancy in this work of thine. w. newcastle." to confirm the latter, requires only the perusal of his verses, which were published in , under the title of _miscellania_. besides these, he wrote five[dv] dramatic pieces, the titles of which may be found in the _biographia dramatica_; a collection of _epigrams_, vo. ; _ten years travels in europe.--a short discourse of the english stage_, affixed to _love's dominion_, vo. ; _the idea of his highness oliver, late lord protector, &c._ vo. . &c. &c.[dw] "character of a valiant man."--(page .) "he is onely a man; your coward and rash being but tame and savage beasts. his courage is still the same, and drink cannot make him more valiant, nor danger lesse. his valour is enough to leaven whole armies, he is an army himself worth an army of other men. his sword is not alwayes out like children's daggers, but he is alwayes last in beginning quarrels, though first in ending them. he holds honour (though delicate as chrystall) yet not so slight and brittle to be broak and crackt with every touch; therefore (though most wary of it,) is not querilous nor punctilious. he is never troubled with passion, as knowing no degree beyond clear courage, and is alwayes valiant, but never furious. he is the more gentle i' th' chamber, more fierce he's in the field, holding boast (the coward's valour,) and cruelty (the beast's,) unworthy a valiant man. he is only coward in this, that he dares not do an unhandsome action. in fine, he can onely be evercome by discourtesie, and has but one deffect--he cannot talk much--to recompence which he dos the more." footnotes: [dt] i omit to particularize these characters, as many of the titles are extremely long--"of a lady of excellent conversation. of one that is the foyle of good conversation." &c. &c. [du] mr. reed possessed a copy, dated in . see his _catalogue_, no. . [dv] langbaine notices a prologue intended for a play, called _the physician against his will_, which he thinks was never published. a ms. note in my copy of the _dramatic poets_, says it was printed in . [dw] the bodleian library contains "_the affections of a pious soule, unto our saviour-christ. expressed in a mixed treatise of verse and prose. by richard flecknoe._" vo. . this i can scarcely consent to give to _mac_ flecknoe, as in the address "to the town reader," the author informs us that, "ashamed of the many idle hours he has spent, and to avoid the expence of more, he has retired from the town"--and we are certain that _mac_ resided there long after. xxxviii. _the character of a coffee-house, with the symptoms of a town-witt. with allowance. april , . london, printed for jonathan edwin, at the three roses in ludgate-street, ._ [folio, reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, with an answer to it, vol. vi. - .] xxxix. _essays of love and marriage: being letters written by two gentlemen, one dissuading from love, the other an answer thereunto. with some characters, and other passages of wit._ ---- _si quando gravabere curis, hæc lege, pro moestæ medicamine mentis habeto._ _london, printed for h. brome, at the gun in st. paul's church-yard, ._ [ mo. pp. , title, &c. more.] xl. _the character of a fanatick. by a person of quality. london. ._ [ to. pp. . reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, vii. .] xli. _character of a towne gallant } of a towne miss } of an honest drunken curr } of a pilfering taylor } of an exchange wench } of a sollicitor } . of a scold } of an ill husband } of a dutchman } of a pawnbroker } of a tally man_ } [ to. see _sale catalogue_ of george steevens, esq. vo. london, , page , no. .] xlii. _a whip for a jockey: or, a character of an horse-courser. . london, printed for r. h. ._ [ vo. pp. .] xliii. _four for a penny, or poor robin's character of an unconscionable pawnbroker, and ear-mark of an oppressing tally-man; with a friendly description of a bum-bailey, and his merciless setting cur, or follower. with allowance. london, printed for l. c. ._ [ to. reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, vol. iv. p. .] xliv. _character of an ugly woman: or, a hue and cry after beauty_, in prose, written (by the duke of buckingham) in . see lord orford's _royal and noble authors_, by park, iii. . xlv. _character of a disbanded courtier. ingenium galbæ male habitat. ._ [folio, pp. . reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, i. .] xlvi. _character of a certain ugly old p----. london, printed in the year ._ [in oldham's _works_, vo. london, .] xlvii. _twelve ingenious characters: or pleasant descriptions of the properties of sundry persons and things, viz._ _an importunate dunn; a serjeant or bailiff; a paunbroker; a prison; a tavern; a scold; a bad husband; a town-fop; a bawd; a fair and happy milk-maid; the quack's directory; a young enamourist._ _licensed, june the d, . r. p. london, printed for s. norris, and are to be sold by most booksellers, ._ [ mo. pp. .] xlviii. _character of a trimmer. by sir william coventry. ._ [ to. see _bibliotheca harleiana_, v. .] this was written long before publication, as is proved by the following. xlix. _character of a tory in , in answer to that of a trimmer (never published) both written in king charles's reign._ [reprinted in the _works of george villiers, second duke of buckingham_. to. lond. .] l. _characters addressed to ladies of age._ vo. _lond._ . [brand's _sale catalogue_, p. , no. .] li. _the ceremony-monger, his character, in six chapters, &c. &c. by e. hickeringill, rector of the rectory of all-saints, in colchester. london, printed and are to be sold by george larkin, at the two swans, without bishopsgate. ._ [ to. pp. .] lii. _character of a jacobite. ._ [ to. see _bibl. harl._ v. no. .] * * * * * the following are without date, but were probably printed before [dx]. footnotes: [dx] in butler's _remains_, published by thyer, vols. vo. , are several _characters_ by the author of _hudibras_, and consequently written previously to this date, but as they do not appear to have been printed so early, they cannot, with propriety, be included in this list. liii. _character of an ill-court-favourite, translated from the french._ [ to. reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, ii. .] liv. _character of an honest and worthy parliament-man._ [folio, reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_, ii. .] lv. _characterism, or the modern age displayed._ [brand's _sale catalogue_, no. .] _character of the presbyterian pastors and people of scotland._ [_bibl. harleiana_, v. no. .] vii. _character of a compleat physician or naturalist[dy]._ [_bibl. harleiana_, v. no. .] footnotes: [dy] in the extracts made from the foregoing series of _characters_, the original orthography has been most scrupulously attended to, in order to assist in shewing the progress and variation of the english language. additional notes and corrections. page , line , for _ports_ read _sports_. , line , "_table-book._" the custom of writing in table-books, or, as it was then expressed, "in tables," is noticed, and instances given in reed's _shakspeare_, vi, . xii, . xviii, . dr. farmer adduces a passage very applicable to the text, from hall's character of the _hypocrite_. "he will ever sit where he may be seene best, and in the midst of the sermon pulles out his _tables_ in haste, as if he feared to loose that note," &c. decker, in his _guls hornebooke_, page , speaking to his readers, says, "out with your _tables_," &c. , note .--this is also mentioned in _whimzies_, vo. , p. . "hee must now betake himself to prayer and devotion; _remember the founder, benefactors, head, and members of that famous foundation_: all which he performes with as much zeale as an actor after the end of a play, when hee prayes for his majestie, the lords of his most honourable privie councell, and all that love the king." , note .--from a subsequent edition, obligingly pointed out to me by the rev. mr. arch-deacon nares, i find that this also is a translation: _regimen sanitatis salerni. this booke teachyng all people to gouerne the in health, is translated out of the latine tongue into englishe, by thomas paynell, whiche booke is amended, augmented, and diligently imprinted. ._ colophon. ¶ _jmprynted at london, by wyllyam how, for abraham ueale._ the preface says, that it was compiled for the use "of the moste noble and victorious kynge of england, and of fraunce, by all the doctours in phisicke of the uniuersitie of salerne." , line , "_door-posts_."--it was usual for public officers to have painted or gilded posts at their doors, on which proclamations, and other documents of that description, were placed, in order to be read by the populace. see various allusions to this custom, in reed's _shakspeare_, v. . _old plays_, iii. . the _reformation_ means that they were, in the language of our modern churchwardens, "repaired and beautified," during the reign of our alderman. , line , for _gollobelgicus_ read _gallobelgicus_. , line . "_post and pair_" was a game at cards, of which i can give no description. the author of the _compleat gamester_ notices it as "very much played in the west of england." see dodsley's _old plays_, . vii. . , line --"_guarded with more gold lace_." the word _guarded_ is continually used by the writers of the sixteenth century for _fringed_ or _adorned_. see reed's _shakspeare_, vii. . _old plays_, iv. . , line , "_clout_." shakspeare (cymbeline, act iv. scene .) uses the expression of _clouted brogues_, which mr. steevens explains to be "shoes strengthened with _clout_ or _hob-nails_." , line , "_dragon that pursued the woman._" evidently an allusion to _revelations_, xii. . , note , line , for _styla_ read _hyla_ in both instances. , note , line , for _leiden_ read _leyden_. , line , "their humanity is a _leg to the residencer_." a _leg_ here signifies a _bow_. decker says, "a jewe neuer weares his cap threedbare with putting it off; neuer bends i' th' hammes with _casting away a leg_, &c." _guls hornebooke._ p. . , note , for _spunge_ read _sponge_. , line , for _spera_ read _spero_. ib. line , for _conjesta_ read _congesta_. ib. line , for _susuperavit_ read _superavit_. , line , for _jude_ read _inde_: for _ferucat_ read _ferueat_. , line , for _whosc_ read _whose_. several errors and inaccuracies of less consequence than those here pointed out, will probably be discovered. these were occasioned by the editor's distance from the press, and he requests the gentle reader to pardon and correct them. [transcriber's note: despite a valiant effort to the contrary some additional transcription errors may have slipped through during the preparation of this e-text. we can't blame the distance between the editor and the press. please forward any corrections to project gutenberg errata.] the _inscription_, no. x. of the _appendix_, should have been entirely omitted. the following extract from guillim's _heraldry_, shews that bishop earle could not have been connected with the streglethorp family, since, if he had, there would have been no occasion for a new grant of armorial bearings. "he beareth _ermine_, on a chief indented sable, three eastern crowns or, by the name of _earles_. this coat was granted by _sir edward walker_, garter, the st of august, , to the reverend dr. _john earles_, son of _thomas earles_, gent, sometime register of the archbishop's court at york. he was dean of _westminster_, and clerk of the closet to his majesty king _charles_ the second; and in the year , made bishop of _salisbury_." guillim's _heraldry_, folio. lond. . p. . it is almost unnecessary to add that i was not aware of this grant, when i compiled the short account of earle, at page , and spoke of my inability to give any information relative to his parents. index. abishaes, . abithaes, . abraham-man, . achitophel, . acquaintance, character of, . aeneas, . affected man, character of, . _affections of a pious soule_, by richard flecknoe, . alderman, character of, . aleppo, . alexis of piedmont, . alfred, king, . allmayne, . _all's well that ends well_, by shakspeare, . allot, robert, li. almanack in the bones, . alresford, hampshire, . ames, mr. lx, , . amsterdam, . _anatomy of melancholly_, by burton, , , . angglear, . antem-morte, . antiquary, character of, . aristophanes, . aristotle, , . arminian, . arminius, . ashmole's museum, oxford, , . atkinson, mr. . atkyns, sir robert, . _athenæ oxonienses_, by wood, l, , , . attorney, character of, . austin, . awdeley, john, . baal, priests of, . babel, tower of, , . bagster, richard, . baker, character of a, . bales, peter, . bardolph, . barnes, john, . barnes, juliana, . barrington, daines, . barton, elizabeth, . barwick, dr. . _life of_, . bawdy-basket, . bayle, . beaumont, francis, , , , . _beau's duel_, by mrs. centlivre, . bedford, earl of, . bellarmine, cardinal, , . _belman of london_, by decker, . copy, with burton's ms. notes, . benar, . bene, . benjamin, . benjamin's mess, . bessus, . bethlem, . _bible_, printed at geneva, . _bibliographia poetica_, by ritson, . _bibliotheca harleiana_, , , . _biographia britannica_, . _biographia dramatica_, . birkenhead, sir john, . bishopstone, , . blackfriar's, play at, . blomefield's _history of norfolk_, . blount, edward, xlix, l, li, lx. blount, ralph, lx. blunt man, character of, . bobadil, . bodleian library, oxford, , , , , , , . _boke of hawkynge, huntynge, and fysshinge_, . bold forward man, character of, . bong, . books, mode of placing them in old libraries, . bord, . borgia, . bouge, . _boulster, lecture_, . bourne, nicholas, . bouse, , . bousing-ken, . bowl-alley, character of, . brachigraphy, . brand, mr. , , , , , . bread used in england in the sixteenth century, . breeches, . breton, captain, . breton, nicholas, , , , . _life of_, _breton's longing_, . bridewell, . britannicus, his pedigree, . _british bibliographer_, by brydges, , . british museum, li, . _british topography_, by gough, an addition to, . britton, thomas, . brownist, . brydges, sir samuel egerton, , , . bucephalus, . bukingham, duke of, , , . bullen, earl of, . burford, oxfordshire, . burroughs, sir john, . _lines on_, , . burton, robert, , , . butler, samuel, . butter, nathaniel, . buttery, . byng, . c. f. . caeling cheat, . cæsar, . cæsars, the, . calais sands, , . cambridge, . camden, . canaries, a dance, . canary, , . cant phrases, , , , , . capel, mr. . carrier, character of a, . carte, . casaubon, . cassan, . cassel, siege of, . _catalogue of compounders for their estates_, . cato, , . _caveat for commen cursetors_, . _censura literaria_, , , , , , . centlivre, mrs. . centoes, . _century of inventions_, by the marquis of worcester, . cerberus, . chalmers, mr. . cham, . chandler, r. lii. _character of an agitator_, . _character of an antiquary_, . _character of an assemblyman_, . _character of an untrue bishop_, . _character of a ceremony-monger_, . _character of a coffee-house_, . _character of a disbanded courtier_, . _character of an ill-court-favourite_, . _character of an honest drunken cur_, . _character of a dutchman_, . _character of england_, . _character of an exchange-wench_, . _character of a fanatic_, . _character of france_, . _character of a town-gallant_, . _character of a horse-courser_, . _character of an ill husband_, . _character of the hypocrite_, . _character of a jacobite_, . _character of italy_, . _character of a london diurnal_, . _character of the low countries_, . _character of an oxford incendiary_, . _character of a certain ugly old p----_, . _character of an honest and worthy parliament man_, . _character of a pawn-broker_, . _character of a complete physician, or naturalist_, . _character of the presbyterian pastors and people of scotland_, . _character of a projector_, . _character of a scold_, . _character of scotland_, . _character of a solicitor_, . _character of spain_, . _character of a tally-man_, . _character of a pilfering taylor_, . _character of a temporizer_, . _character of a tory_, . _character of a town miss_, . _character of a trimmer_, . _character of an ugly woman_, . characters: list of books containing characters, . characters, by butler, . _characters and elegies_, by wortley, . _characters upon essaies_, . _characters addressed to ladies_, . _characters of virtues and vices, by bishop hall_, . _characterism, or the modern age displayed_, . _characters, twelve ingenious; or pleasant descriptions_, . charles i. , , , , . charles ii. , , , , . charles, prince, . chates, . chaucer, , , , . cheap, cross in, . chess-play, verses on, by breton, . chete, . child, character of, . christ-church, oxford, , . christmas, . chuck, . church-papist, character of, . _cinthia's revenge_, by stephens, . citizen, character of a mere gull, . _city match_, by mayne, , . clarendon, lord, , . his character of earle, . _clerke's tale_, by chaucer, . cleveland, . cliff, lord, . clitus-alexandrinus, . clout, , . clye, . cocke, j. . cocke lorell, . _cocke lorelles bote_, . cofe, , . colchester, . college butler, character of, . comments on books, . _compleat gamester_, . complimental man, character of, . conceited man, character of, . _conceited pedlar_, by randolph, . constable, character of, . constantinople, . contemplative man, character of, . cook, character of a, . cooper, mrs. . corranto-coiner, character of, . couched, . coventry, sir william, . councellor, character of a worthy, . councellor, character of an unworthy, . counterfet cranke, . country knight, character of, . courtier, character of, . coward, character of, . cowardliness, essay on, in verse, . coxeter, . cranke, . cressey, hugh, his character of earle, . cramprings, . crimchan, . critic, character of, . cromwell, . crooke, andrew, lii. cuffen, . cupid, . _cure for the itch_, by h. p. . cut, , . dallison, maximilian, . dances, old, . danet, thomas, . danvers, lord, . darius, . darkemans, . david, , . davies of hereford, . dear year, . deboshments, . decker, , , , , , . dele, . demaunder for glymmar, . demetrius, charles, . denny, lord edward, . _description of unthankfulnesse_, by breton, . detractor, character of a, . deuseauyel, . digby, sir kenelm, . dinascoso, . dining in pauls, . dinners given by the sheriff, . dioclesian, . discontented man, character of, . _discourse of the english stage_, by flecknoe, . divine, character of a grave, . dole, . dommerar, . door-posts, , . douce, mr. . doves of aleppo, . doxe, . dragon that pursued the woman, . _dramatic poets_, by langbaine, xlix. drugger, . drunkard, character of, . dryden, . dudes, . dunton, john, . duppa, dr. . dutchmen, their love for rotten cheese, . earle, bishop, xlviii, l, lii: life of, , &c. characters of, , , , : list of his works, : name of earle, lvii. earle, sir richard, . earle, thomas, . earthquake in germany, . _ecclesiastical polity_, by hooker, , , , translated into latin, . edward i. . effeminate fool, character of, . [greek: eikôn basilikê] , , , dedication to the latin translation, . eleven of the clock, . elizabeth, queen, , , , . ellinor, queen, . ellis, . ellis, henry, li. empty wit, character of an, . endor, witch of, . england, , . _england's selected characters_, . _english gentleman_, by brathwait, . _epigrams_, by flecknoe, . _epigrams_, by h. p. . esau, . _essayes and characters_, by l. g. . _essays and characters of a prison_, by mynshul, , . _essays of love and marriage_, . essex, lord, , "lord of essex' measures," a dance, . _every man in his humour_, by ben jonson, , . euphormio, . _excellent vercis worthey imitation_, supposed by breton, . eyes upon noses, . elyot, sir thomas, . f. r. . f. t. . fabricius, . falcons, . falstaff, , . farley, william, . farmer, dr. . feltham, owen, . fiddler, character of a poor, . _fifty-five enigmatical characters_, by r. f. . _figures_, by breton, , . _figure of foure_, by breton, . fines, catherine, . fines, mary, . fines, sir william, . finical, . fires, . _fishing_, treatise on, . flagge, . flatterer, character of a, . flecknoe, richard, , , . fleming, . fletcher, john, . flitchman, . florio, . ford, t. . formal man, character of, . four of the clock, . _four for a penny; or poor robin's characters_, . _four prentises of london_, by heywood, , . france, . frater, . _fraternitye of vacabondes_, , . fresh-water mariner, . freze, white, . frieze jerkins, . frost, great, , . _funeral monuments_, by weever, . g. l. . gage, . galen, , . gallant, character of an idle, . gallobelgicus, . _gallus castratus_, . gallye slops, . gavel-kind, . gee and ree, . geneva bible, . geneva print, . gennet, . germany, , . gerry, . gigges, . gilding of the cross, . gildon's _lives of the english dramatic poets_, . giles's, st. church, oxford, . girding, . _glossographia anglicana nova_, . gloucester cathedral, . _gloucestershire, history of_, by atkyns, . goddard, author of the _mastif-whelp_, . god's judgments, . gold hat-bands, . gold tassels, worn by noblemen at the university, . _good and the bad_, by breton, , . _governour_, by sir thomas elyot, . gough, mr. , . gown of an alderman, . granger, mr. . great man, character of a meer, . greek's collections, . grunting chete, . gryffith, william, . guarded with gold lace, . guillim, john, . gull in plush, . _gul's hornebooke_, by decker, , , , , . gygger, . hall, bishop, , . _harleian miscellany_, , , , , . harman, thomas, . harmanes, . harrison, william, , , . hart-hall, oxford, . haslewood, mr. . hawking, , . hawkins, sir john, , . hay, james lord, . hederby, . hemingford, huntingdonshire, . _henry the fourth_, by shakspeare, . henry vi. . henry vii. . henry viii. . herald, character of an, . _heraldry_, treatise on, by guillim, . herbert, mr. , . heylin, peter, account of, --inscription on his monument, . heyne, . heywood, , . hickeringill, e. . high-spirited man, character of, . hill, mr. lii. hippocrates, . _history of england_, by carte, . _histrio-mastix_, by prynne, . hobby, . hogeshed, . hogg, . hogged poney, . hoker, . holinshed, raphael, , , , , , , , . holt, in germany, . honest man, character of an ordinary, . hooker, richard, , , , . hool, samuel, . _horæ subsecivæ_, xlix. horse-race terms, . _hortus mertonensis_, a poem by earle, . _hospitall of incurable fooles_, lx. hostess, character of a handsome, . houghton, sir gilbert, . houghton in the spring, . howell, james, . _hudibras_, . huggeringe, . hugger-mugger, . hungarian, . hunting, . _husband_, a poem, . hygh-pad, . hypocrite, character of a she precise, . jacob, . jail-bird, . james i. , , , . james ii. . jarke, . jarke-man, . _idea of his highness oliver_, by flecknoe, . jealous man, character of, . jennet, . jerusalem, . jesses, . jesuits, , . ignoramus, . _illustrious wife_, by giles oldisworth, . imputation, , . inquisition, . insolent man, character of, . john dory, . john's, st. college, oxford, . johnson, richard, . jonathan, . jonson, ben, : lines by, . jordans, . isbosheth, . islip, oxfordshire, . juliana barnes, or berners, . jump, . keckerman, bartholomew, . keep, . ken or kene, , , . kennett, white, : his character of earle, . kent, , . kent, maid of, . king's bench prison, . kippis, dr. . knight, character of a country, . kynchin-co, . kynchin-morte, . lage, . lagge, . lambarde, . lambeth-palace, . langbaine, xlix, , . _laquei ridiculosi_, by h. p. . lascivious man, character of, . laud, bishop, . laurence, st. . leg to the residencer, , . legs in hands, . legerdemain, . legh, anne, . legh, sir edward, . leicester, earl of, . leigh, see legh. le neve, . lent, . _letters_, by howell, . _life and errors of john dunton_, by himself, . _life of ruddiman_, by chalmers, . lilburne, . lilly, xlix. lipken, . lipped, . lipsius, . london, , . london-bridge, . _london and country carbonadoed_, by lupton, . _london spy_, by ward, . long-lane, . long pavian, a dance, . _love's dominion_, by flecknoe, . low countries, , , : _brief character of_, by _felltham_, . lowre, , . lucian, . ludgate, . lupton, donald, . lybbege, . lycosthenes, . lyghtmans, . m. g. . m. r. . _macbeth_, by shakspeare, . mac-flecknoe, . machiavel, . magdalen college, oxford, , . _maid, a poem of_, by salstonstall, . _maid's tragedy_, by beaumont and fletcher, . mainwaring, matthew, : family of, ib. make, . malaga wine, . malone, mr. . man, samuel, . manchet, . mars, . martial, . martin, . mary's, st. church, oxford, , . _mastif whelp_, . _mastive or young whelpe of the old dogge_, . maund, . maurice of nassau, . mayne, , . meddling-man, character of, . medicis, francis de, . melpomene, . _memoirs of the peers of england_, by brydges, . menander, . menippus, . mephibosheth, . meres, . _merry devil of edmonton_, a comedy, . merton-college, oxford, , , , . _microcosmography_, . editions of, li. _micrologia_, by r. m. . minshall-hall, . minshew, , , . _miraculous newes from the cittie of holt_, . _miscellania_, by flecknoe, . modest man, character of, . monson, sir thomas, . monster out of germany, . _monthly mirror_, . monument of earle, . _monumenta anglicana_, by le neve, . moorfields, . mooted, . _more the merrier_, . morley, dr. . mort, . _mother's blessing_, by breton, . _mouse-trap_, by h. p. . munster, . murdered bodies supposed to bleed at the approach of the murderer, . musgarve, . _musick, history of_, by sir john hawkins, . myll, , . mynshul, , . mynshul, geffray, , . nabeker, . nabes, . namptwich, cheshire, . _naps upon parnassus_, . nares, mr. . nase, . navy of england, . nero, . netherlands, . _new anatomie, or character of a christian or round-head_, . newcastle, duke of, : lines by, ib. _new custome_, . _newes of this present week_, . newgate, , . newman, sir thomas, . nine muses, a dance, . _nine worthies_, . nireus, . noah's flood, . nonconformist, . _norfolk, history of_, by blomefield, . north, lord, . northern nations, . norton, northamptonshire, . nose, . nyp, . oldham, mr. . oldisworth giles, . old man, character of a good, . one and thirty, . orford, lord, , . osborne, francis, . overbury, sir thomas, , , , . overton, . oxford, , , , , , , . p. h. . pad, . painted cloth, . pallyarde, . pamphlets, character of, . paracelsus, . park, mr. lii. , , . park, mr. john james, . parrot, henry, . parson, character of a poor, from chaucer, . partial man, character of, . _passion of a discontented minde_, supposed by breton, . _passions of the spirit_, supposed by breton, . patrico, . pavian, . paul v. pope, . paul's, st. church, , , , , . paul's-cross, ; penance at, . paul's man, . paul's walk, character of, . paul's walk, xlviii: time of walking there, . paynell, thomas, , . pecke, . pegasus, . pembroke, henry, earl of, . pembroke, philip, earl of, , . pembroke, william, earl of, : lines on, . percy, bishop, . peters, . peter's, st. church, oxford, . pharoah, . _philaster_, by beaumont and fletcher, . philip ii. of spain, . _phoenix nest_, by r. s. . _physician against his will_, by flecknoe, . physician, character of a dull, . pick-thank, . _picturæ loquentes_, by saltonstall, . pierce, character of earle, . _pierce penilesse_, . pineda, . plausible man, character of, . plautus, , . player, characters of, , . _pleasant walkes of moorefields_, . plodding student, character of, . plutarch, . pluto, . points, . poland, . ponsonby, william, lx. poor man, character of, . poor tom, . pope, a. . popplar of yarum, . _poste_, by breton, . post and pair, . pot-poet, character of, . _practice of piety_, . pratt, mr. . prauncer, . prayer for the college, . prayer at the end of a play, . prayer used before the university, . preacher, character of a young raw, . pretender to learning, character of, . prigger, see prygger. primero, , . primivist, . print, set in, . prison, character of a, . prisoner, character of a, . privy councellor, character of a worthy, . profane man, character of, . _progresses of queen elizabeth_, . prologue, . _prolusions_, by capel, . prygger of prauncers, character of a, . prynne, . puritan, , . _puritan, picture of a_, . puttenham, . quanto dyspayne, a dance, . quarromes, . querpo, . quintilian, . quyer, or quyaer, , . radcliffe, sir alexander, . raie, . ramus, . randolph, dr. . rash man, character of, . rat, black-coat, terms of contempt towards the clergy, . rawlinson, dr. . rè, isle of, : expedition to, ib. _rebellion, history of_, by clarendon, . reed, isaac, , , , . _reformado precisely charactered_, . _regiment of health_, . _regimen sanitatis salerni_, . _remains_, butler's, . _remains_, camden's, . reserved man, character of, . _resolves_, by feltham, . retchlessly, . richard iii. . rich man, character of a sordid, . ritson, mr. . robert of normandy, . roge, . roger, . rogers, g. . rogue, see roge. rome, , , . rome-bouse, . round breeches, . _royal and noble authors_, by lord orford, . _ruddiman, life of_, by chalmers, . ruff of geneva, print, . ruffs, . ruffian, . ruffler, . ruffmanes, . ruffe-pecke, . russell, earl of bedford, . rutland, lady, . s. r. . sack, , , , . salerne, . salisbury, . salomon, . saltonstall, wye, . sandwich, earl of, . _satyrical characters_, . _satyrical essayes_, by stephens, , . saul, . saxons, . say, e. xlvii. saye, . scaliger, . sceptick in religion, character of, . scholar, character of a, . scold, character of a, . scotus, . sejanus, . _select second husband for sir thomas overburie's wife_, by davies of hereford, . seneca, . sergeant, or catchpole, character of, . serving-man, character of, . sforza, . shakspeare, lx, , , , , , , , , , , , . shark, character of a, . shark to, . sharking, . sheba, . sheriff's hospitality, and table, . sherry wine, , . shimei, . ship, . shop-keeper, character of, . short-hand, . shrewsbury, elizabeth countess of, . shrove tuesday, . sidney, sir philip, , . silk strings to books, . singing-men in cathedral churches, character of, . skower, . skypper, . socinus, faustus, . _solemne passion of the soule's love_, by breton, . _soliman and perseda_, . sordid rich man, character of, . spaniards, . _specimens of early english poets_, by ellis, . spelman, sir henry, . spinola, . _sports and pastimes_, by strutt, , , . _springes for woodcocks_, by h. p. . squeazy, . stanley, richard, . stayed-man, character of a, . steevens, george, , , , , , . stephen, master, . stephens, john, , . stews, . stowe, . stow's _survey of london_, . _strange metamorphosis of man_, . streglethorp church, : family, . strike, . strummell, . strutt, mr. , , . strype, mr. . sturbridge-fair, . suetonius, . _sufferings of the clergy_, by walker, . _surfeit to a. b. c._ . surgeon, character of a, . suspicious or jealous man, character of, . swadder, . swedes, . _sweedish intelligencer_, . switzer, . table-book, . tables, . tacitus, . talbot, sir john, . tamworth, staffordshire, . tanner, bishop, . tantalus, . tavern, character of a, . telephus, . _tempest_, by shakspeare, . tennis, . _ten years' travel_, by flecknoe, . term, character of the, . thersites, . thyer, mr. . tiberius, . _times anatomized_, . tinckar, or tinker, . tiring-house, . titus, . tobacco, . tobacco-seller, character of, : called a smoak-seller, ib. togman, . tower, . town-precisian, . _traditional memoires_, by osborne, . trumpeter, character of a, . tryne, . tryning, . tuft-hunter, . tully (see cicero), , . turk, . turner, thomas, . tyburn, , , . tyntermell, a dance, . valiant man, character of, . varro, . vault at gloucester, . velvet of a gown, . venner, . vespatian, . villiers, george, duke of buckingham, . virgil, . virginals, . university college, oxford, . university dun, character of a, . university, character of a young gentleman of the, . university statutes, . vorstius, conrade, . upright man, , . urinal, . urine, custom of examining it by physicians, : tax on, . vulcan, . vulgar-spirited man, character of, . vyle, . wales, . walker, dr. . walker, sir edward, . walton, isaac, l: his character of earle, . walwin, . wapping, . ward, c. lii. ward, edward, . warde, william, . warnborough, south, . warton, thomas, , . washbourne, r. his _divine poems_, . waste, . watch, , . weak man, character of, . weever, . westminster, , , , , , . westminster, the fellow of, . _whimzies; or a new cast of characters_, , . _whip for a jockey_, . _whipjacke_, . whitson ale, . whydds, . _widow_, a comedy, . wife, character of a good, . _wife, now the widdow, of sir thomas overbury_, , , editions of, . william i. . wood, anthony à, l, , , , , , , . worcester, marquis of, . _world displayed_, lii. world's wise man, character of, . wortley, anne, . wortley, sir francis, , . wortley, sir richard, . _writing school-master_, by bales, . wyn, . yarum, . york, , , . york, james, duke of, afterwards james ii. , . young gentleman of the university, character of, . young man, character of, . younger brother, character of, . ziba, . the end. erratum. page li. line , for _first_, read _fift_. supplementary appendix. various readings and versions from the durham ms. a childe. . "his soul is yet a white _page_" (paper). an ordinary physitian. . after the words "take physicke." "he drives away ye time if he cannot ye maladie, and is furnished with an hundred merrie tales for the purpose. he is no faithful friend for he leaves a man gasping, and his pretence is, death and he are enemies." a selfe-conceited man. (_ in bliss_). "a parasite is a stale to him," for "_a flatterer is a dunce to him_." a reserved man. (_ in bliss_). "never speaks above the audit of a whisper," for "_whispers you in the ear acts_." a doune-right scholler. ( in _bliss_). after "language of a falconer." "he is frigging up and doune, and composeth not his body to a settled posture. gallants mock him for ushering gentlewomen and indeed he hath not squired it in their allies." a pott poet. (_ in bliss_). after "patches," "yet their footemanshippe is not altogether shuffling." after "his other poems are but briefs." "at more leisur'd times he makes disticks on noblemen which are put under their twopenny pictures that hang in the bookbinders' shops." a forward, bold man. (_ in bliss_). _for_ "like a desperate soldier," read "like our north-west merchants, will venture where he cannot goe." also "saint _laurence_" _for_ "st. maries." a plaine countrie fellowe. (_ in bliss_). after "sallets." "he will talk with his oxen very soberly and expostulates with his hindes, and then in the same language he guides the plow, and the plough guides his thoughts, and his bounde or landmarke is the very limitts of his cogitation." a sergeant, (serieant). (_ in bliss_). after "attempted and atchieved," "clubbes out of charity knocke him doune; next an hereticke he is the worst man to follow for he leads by the arme to destruction; his most dangerous place is chancery lane's end where he hansells now and then." a partiall man. (_ in bliss_). after "colledge." "the puritane is most guilty of this humour, for he takes the opinion of one dutch commentatour before a legion of fathers; and, which is worse, his own before them both." a trumpetter. (_ in bliss_). "in short he is a bubble _and his life a blast_." a paules walke. (_ in bliss_). "properest," for "_perfectest_ motion." after "a-foot." "it hath its tempests like the sea, and as violent, and men are ship-wrack't upon pillars like great rocks." and _at the end_ after "could not"--"ffinally it is used for a church of these two only, sharkes and cut purses, the one comes thither to fast, the other to prey." a dun. (_ in bliss_). after "shift in the world," comes "he is like a frivlous suitor, _haunting_, _haunting_ (sic) those ..." (in place of the sentence in bliss beginning "some chuse," which is transposed in ms. with very slight changes so as to follow the sentence ending with "find them within.") a plausible man. (_ in bliss_). "he supples all and discommends none, except where his commendations might crosse the company, and then he holds his peace,"--after the words "what is civil." a baker. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "his condition is the same with all other men, for he lives by bread which from a rude and undigested heape he putts into lumpe and forme. his kneading tub and his pavin are the two misteries of his occupation and he is a filcher by his trade, but the miller is before him. thrive he cannot much in the world, for his cake is oft dow bak't and will never be a man of valour he is still so meall-mouth'd, he is observed for a great lyer for he is seldome true in his tale, though the score be many times on his pate for better reckoning, one vertue he hath that he is charitable, for his bread is often given to the poore. a clarke of the market he abhorres, and a pair of weight scales over-throwes him, yet he finds mercy in his offences, and his basket only is sent to prison. many a pillery is his deadly enemie, and they never meete but they goe together by the eares." _the additional matter in the "bright ms." is found here also._ an herauld.[dz] (_almost identical with the version in the "bright ms."_) _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "he gives armes himselfe though he be no gentleman, and therefore hath good reason to dispence with other; his trade and profession is honour, and doth that which few noble can doe, thrive by the title. you would think he had the indian mines, for he tells of the fesse[ea] of gold and silver, but believe him not for they are but devises to get money: he seemes only to deale with gentry, but his chiefest purchases are on them that are none, whose bounty he conceales yet blazons: his bribes are like those of a corrupt judge, for they are the prizes[eb] of blood. his traffiques are like children's gew-gawes, pendants, and scutchions and little daggars, and his penniworths are extraordinary deare ffor he holdes three boares heads higher than three brawnes in the market. he was sometime the coate of mars, but is now for more mercifull battailes in the tilt yard where whosoever is victorious the spoyles are his. his is an art in england but nature in wales, where they are borne with herauldry in their mouthes, and each name is a pedigree." a young raw preacher. . "_till ye clocke stop him._" "little instructions shall you have though great store of doctrines and many uses to small purpose; he putts much zeale into his booke, and belabours his tongue exceedingly. the only thing he makes himselfe in his sermons is faces, his action is all passions, and his speach interiections. he hath an excellent faculty in crying 'ah!' and spits with a very good grace." "_he will not, etc._" "he cites pastills for authors, perkins for fathers, and some catechisme is his schoole divinity." a grave divine. . "arts his way." "he thinks he ought to become learned to learne so high a mystery, w^{ch} like ye dye of scarlet is not set well upon a raw cloath, but requires a former tincture."[ec] "_he accounts, etc._" for "ballast" read "_last blast_" (in the first sentence). an antiquary. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "his life was in this age, his conversation long before, and his acquaintance of some thousand yeares before he was borne. he is a great enemy to the man of time, and fetches many a morsell againe out of his stomacke, when it is now all rotten and stinking. old women should like him very well for he is much enamoured of wrinckles, and loves all things, as dutchmen doe cheese, ye better for being mouldy and worm-eaten." "_he is of our religion, etc._" a player. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "_upon him._" "he hath reason to be experienced in the world, for he hath passed through more shapes then pythagoras his soule, and knows all conditions from y^e king to the cobler, he is qualified and hath many good parts, but he is condemned for one boasting humour, that he will speake them himselfe." "_he hath one, etc._" "_never con'd._" "a true man he can hardly be, for he pleaseth the better he counterfeits, except only when he is disguised with straw for gold lace. his comings in are tollerable, yet in small money, and like halifax great viccaridge most of it in two pences." "_the waisting woman, etc._" "_gentlemen_," "and may become the bench in time as well they. he neadeth not feare death, for killing is but his sport, and his chiefe practice hath beene to dye bravely." a young gentleman in the university. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "_spend next day._" "if you speake to him as a schooler, he telleth you you mistake him he is a gentleman and loath to marre his stile with that title. sometime upon intreaty he vouchsafeth to be a batchelour, and thinks he hath done the degree great grace in taking it." "_his companion, etc._" above this, and after the word "misplacing." "he comes often to his bookes but seldome to his study, unless he be taken with stepheus or paris printe, which endeares the booke unto him. yet sometimes he will...." { viccars (ms.) { singing men. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "_to sing catches._" "in their election of a brother they are respectfull of his gifts, that is, of his bottles of sacke, and he that is most liberall to them heere makes them sure. if they get a church their faces are the richer, and they are men of more reckoning at the bush or read lattice." "long lived, etc." a shop-keeper. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "he examines the necessity of passengers, and beggs in the phrase of the giver 'with what do you lacke?'" "... _abuse his brother_. his prizes are like new playes, very dear at first view, but after you goe over them they still fall lower, and he is one who of all men you shoulde not take of his worde." "_he is your slave, etc._" a bowl alley. _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "say nothing." "it is their as it is at skirmishes the first man doth much, and no victory without a good leader." "_it is, etc._" after the first sentence comes in ms. "fortune is never pox't louder nor the deuill oftener sent about errands; he is the companion that goes with every bowle, and with him the bowlers." a she precise hypocrite. (the shee puritane _in the ms._) _ in ms._ (_ in bliss_). "owne parish." "and if her husband be so profaine that he will not carrie her on horsebacke to heare another preach shee will goe as far on foote to heare her selfe pray." "_she doubts, etc._" "scruples." "shee dareth not give a penny to a beggar for feare he be a reprobate, but shee thinkes usury lawfull upon strangers that be not her brethren." "_shee is more fierce, etc._" "shee is discovered though shee weare a vaile," after "_geneva print_." "reads that shee hath noted, and applauds herselfe for a noble woman of berea," after "_comes home_." after "_gossippings_," "unlesse to exercises." after "_sampler_," "save that once a year she workes a black-wrought night-cap for some reverend good man to weare, because it is against the cannon, and then she thinkes him a bishop's fellow." after "_weapons_" (weapon), "is the practice of piety, or else shee is armed with the sixt to the ephesians." for "the brownist" read "thinks that amsterdam is erroneous." the weak man. in the bright ms. there are some important additions and variations in "_the weak man_." after the words "his brain stays behind," it goes on "he is for wit as your young travellers for languages, as much as will call for necessities and hardly that. he is not crafty enough to be a knave, nor wise enough to be honest, but the midway betwixt; a kind of harmless man. his whole vice is his indiscretion, and yet this makes him seem guilty of all." after the word "reserved" in bliss, the ms. goes on: "he will part with anything in a humour, but in a good cause with nothing, and you may better entice him than persuade him. he is often perverse, never resolute and inexorable to nothing so much as reason. he loves wits and scholars to his cost, for he never has their company but invited. his friendships commonly are begun in a supper and lost in lending money. the way to gain his regard is to neglect him, for if he once be in good estimation, he grows proud upon it and contemns you." after the words "laid to his charge." "he puts in his verdict at all discourses, and whatsoever reason you urge, he holds his conclusion." again, after the words "breaks forth with all." "his fear is his most violent persuader, which makes him do more upon the authority of one he hates, than the suit of his friend. he is one not to live in this world, for each man is his ambush, and his friend to abuse him. he has been long in contempt, and at last out of money, and then men cry 'alas!' and forget him." a sceptick in religion. p. . this character also is so varied from the printed copies in the bright ms. that it is given from the latter entire. "he is defined by a genus without a difference; for he is a christian at large, and no more. he uses the land's religion because it is next him; yet he sees not why he may not take the other yet he chooses this not as better, but because there is not a pin to choose. he is wondrous loth to hazard his credulity, and whilst he fears to believe amiss, believes nothing. the opinion of an over judgment wrongs him, which makes him too wise for the truth. he finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and has always some argument to nonplus himself. the least religion is enough to perplex him, and the best will not satisfy him. he hammers too much in general upon our opinion's incertainty, and the possibility of erring makes him not venture on what is true. he cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription of religion into our corner, and yet, the absurdity of popery staggers him again. he could like the protestant better were it not for the puritan, and the papist but for the jesuit. he thinks we are more rational, and likes the life of the other. he thinks so many wise men would not believe but on good ground, and so many honest men cannot be on the wrong side; yet he sees not their reason notwithstanding, nor assents to their honesty without it. he is taken with their miracles yet doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, yet it seems too empty and naked. he prefers their charity, and commends our zeal, yet suspects that for blindness, and this but humour. he sees rather what to fly than to follow, and wishes there were no sides that he might take one. he will sometimes propend to us upon the reading a good writer, and at bellarmine recoils as far back again; and the fathers justle him from one side to another. his conscience interposes itself betwixt two duellers, and whilst it would part both, is by both wounded. he hates authority as the tyrant of reason, and you cannot anger him worse than with a luther or calvin's dixit, yet that wise men are not persuaded with reason, shall authorize his doubt. in sum, his whole life is a question, and his salvation a greater, wherein he is so long a disputing, till death make the conclusion, and then he is resolved." [from bliss's annotated copy of earle's microcosmography.] a gallant. p. . (_in the bodleian, , e. ._) [this version is almost identical with that in the durham ms. till the last few sentences.] the variations between the printed copy and dr. bright's ms. are so considerable, that the latter text is here given entire. "a gallant is a heavy loader of himself, for he lays more upon his back than it is able to bear, and so at last breaks it. his first care is his clothes, and the next his body, and in the uniting of these two lyes his judgment. he is no singular man, for he is altogether in the fashion, and his very look and beard are squared to a figure conformable. his face and his boot are ruffled much alike, and he takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. though his life pass somewhat slidingly, yet he seems very carefull of the tyme, for he is always drawing his watch out of his pocket, and spends part of his hours in numbering them. his chiefest toil is how to spin out the day, and get a match for cards or the bowl alley, and his worst companion is himself, for then he is desperate and knows not what to do. the labour of doing nothing had made him long since weary of his life, if tobacco and drink did not out of charity employ him. he is furnished with jests, as some wanderer with sermons, some three for all companies, and when these are expired, his discourse survives in oaths and laughter. he addresses himself to ladies with the wagging of his lock, and complements like euphues or the knights of the sun; yet his phrase is the worst apparalled thing about him, for it is plain fustian.[ed] his thigh is always well apointed with a rapier, yet peaceable enough, and makes[ee] a wound in nothing but the scabard, yet[ef] rather than point the field, hee'l pull it out in the street. he is weaponed rather in the street, than the highway, for he fears not a thief, but a serjeant. his clothes and himself grow stale together, and the last act of his life is invisible, for he is buried commonly before he dies, in the jail or the[eg] country." the following character may serve as an illustrative commentary on part of earle's character of an attorney. the character of an attorney. p. . (_from a ms. in the bodleian, sheldon papers_), circa . an ms. notebook of bliss's in my possession, containing some pages filled with the titles of books of characters, has this one among them, in th century hand-writing (pasted on to the page). when this was acquired he does not say. "an atturney is a broker at law for hee sels wordes and counsell at the second hand, studies but one language that hee may not bee thought double tonged, and when vpon necessitie hee reades latin, 'tis with a quaking hast soe feare fully you wold thinke him a fellon at his miserere. hee speakes nothing but reports, statutes and obligations, and 'tis to bee thought wooes soe too; lady i hold of you in capite and was by the fates enacted yours in decimo of the ringe; his prayers are soloecismes for peace, and yet for contention; hee beleeues in littleton or the present cheefe-justice and against this fayth hee thinkes the chancery hoeerticall, especially if he speake in a rocket; his degrees are to proceed either a court-keeper or an under-shrieue and then a judges nod qualifies him; hee may hold two or three clyents the more; to conclude hee is a very noune adiectiue whom noe man dares trust to stand by himselfe, but requires a counsellour to bee ioyned with him."--deane. two letters of earle's. [tanner ms., vol. , no. .] saru[(m] sept. . . "my lord "i recyvd your lordshipp's letter this day from my lord of sarum and give you my most humble and harty thankes for the great favour you intended me, as likewise for your good opinion of me! as well as your affection, that you thinke me capable of such a place in the church. but my lord i that understand my self better, though all things els worse, then any other frend, find those causes within me why i should not accept this offer, that i can no way answer, but must absolutely decline it. your lordshipp may remember when you were pleas'd to propose it to me before the last bishop had it, what i said to you then, how unfitted i was for it in many respects. the same reasons hold good still and the rather, as i am now both elder and infirmer, and i am afraid more desperately so, then i beleevd my self to be at that time. when i come to london, as i hope to doe with in little more then a fortnight, i shall satisfy you more particularly, as i conceyve i have done already my lord of saru[(m], whose judgement as i should submitt to assoone as any mans, and sooner then my owne if it were different from mine. so i am more confirm'd in my owne opinion, when i find it conformable to his, being satisfyed with these reasons i had to refuse it. seriously if i thought i could doe that service to the church, which many hundreds could not doe better, i would preferre the doing it with trouble before any ease or convenience of my owne but in the condition that i am, and the many imperfections upon me, i do not speak it modestly, i cannot have such a thought. i am hartily sorry for the death of that bishop,[eh] he was a man of excellent parts and though there was something to be desired in him, yett take him alltogether he was both able and likely to good service in that place which i pray god may loose nothing by his successor! my lord i beseech your lordship to present my most humble duty and thankes to my gracious master, the thinking me worthy of such a preferment, and that frankness and kindness which you speak of in his expressing it, was worth to me a great deale more then any thing els he could give me. i pray for him daylie, and most hartily, as i doe likewise for your lordship to whom i am a moste affectionate servant my lord jo: earles." [_addressed_] "for the right reverend father in god gilbert lord bishopp of london these at whitehall." footnotes: [dz] it is curious to find this character in the durham ms. bliss, in his account of the editions, speaks of the th edition ( ) as having two _additional_ characters, one of them being "the herald." the edition of , also called "the th edition augmented," i possess. it contains seventy-six characters (numbered as seventy-seven by mistake), but neither of the two "additional ones." bliss's knowledge of editions, as well as his acquisition of them was increased largely in the years that followed the publication of his book. when he had acquired the st edition he wrote pathetically in his annotated copy, "i have been more than fifty years looking for this book!" by that time too he knew that what he here calls the _ nd_ edition of was really the _fifth_. (see _arber's reprint_, where a table of the editions is given.) [ea] "fields."--_bright ms._ [eb] "prices."--_bright ms._ [ec] this sentence by itself would make the durham ms. a treasure. [ed] "he is of great account with his mercer and in no man's books so much: who is so sure a friend to him that he will not lose him."--_durham ms._ [ee] "he is a great derider of schollers and censures their steeple hats for not being set on so good a blocke as his."--_durham ms._ [ef] "he will pull it out in the streets."--_durham ms._ [eg] "counter."--_durham ms._ [eh] bp. gauden, of worcester, died in the beg. of sept., . [clarendon state papers, no. .] mr. earles to mr. hyde.[ei] "well sir! i will grumble no more, since you have vouchsaft to answer me at last, i was afraid you had thought you could not be enimy to the court of honour enough, except you renounc'd all civilitye. i could be verie angry with mr. vaughan for defrauding me of your punctuale letter, by not taking his leave of you, but he tells me, he was at your chamber in the temple every day, and not finding you there, knew not where to seek you. well i hope one day you will meet with some trustye messenger whose pockett may be capable of the great _arcana_[ej] of your letter. i am not altogether without some intelligence how things passe, though by no such authenticall men as you are, yet such as g. morley, who though he was not a man of such imployment, yet was one of less leasure then you for this fortnight, being to make a much longer speech then you, and in as good companye, for which i heare he is not thankd, as perchance nor you neyther. may you not trust with a carier, the telling me how he did, or how my lord of falkland does, since he is resolved i shall understand nothing of him by himselfe. i will not unthriftily spill my letters any more there, where they returne me no fruit. my father is your servant, for sir _cph_[ek] widington, i hope he will compose this quarell without a suite. is t. triplett at london yett, or have you any great occasion to draw him up. these are all safe things to be convey'd by a porter to a carier, and by him to me, though my lord marshalls himself had feed them to intercept, or brake open your letters. well when you are most idle, for i must confesse the thinking of me is not worth any time, wherein you may doe any thing els, say something to me. i that have leasure for us both, (as indeed what business here can fill a man's leasure that does not hunt nor drinke nor play at cardes) am content with so much patience from you as to read me when you will not write to your most humble servant jo. earles." [el] "bishopston." "bish. dec. ." "pray remember my service to mrs. hyde and mr. harding." _an original endorsed by mr. hyde._[em] [addressed] to my most honor'd frend mr. edward hyde at sir thomas aylesburies house in westminster in the deans yard. [endorsed by hyde] mr. earles ber. . letters of clarendon to earle, a.d. . sir edward hyde to dr. john earles. "sir, "though i believe you have received two or three letters from me since you writ any, yet since your's of your new year's eve came to my hands since i writ last, i reckon it my turn to write againe; and shall either convert you to a more sedulous correspondence, or make you so much ashamed (which is a modesty lazy men are very inclinable to), that you shall give over writing at all. i always send you word of the date of those which i receive from you, so that you can only tell whether i have had that which you say was pretty long and troublesome; for i have not thought any one half long enough, nor troublesome; otherwise than (which on my conscience was not your sense) under the notion of the vile caracters, which is almost cipher without a key: besides that commonly the ink and paper do so throughly incorporate, that the letters are hardly discernable. it is possible the scots may take their money, if the other will pay it; but if upon that consideration they leave the kingdom, or suffer the king to leave them, i will no more pretend to divination. let not those apprehensions startle you nor be troubled that they seem sometimes to make propositions which you do not like; it being safe and profitable to them to offer anything which they foresee must be denied by their jealous brethren. look upon their covenant, their avowed gloss upon that covenant published to the world, and tell me if any contradications in philosophy be more diametrically opposite and impossible to be reconciled to the ends of the independents than those extremes. i wish i were as sure that the king would not desert himself and his pious and honourable principles (of which, truly i have a great confidence) as that the scots will stick to him, when they are fully convinced that he is not to be removed. "must i believe _h. cressy's_[en] resolution to be peremptory whilst he remains in such company? truly i am exceedingly troubled for it. "what scruples or scandals could work this odious alteration (for methinks, apostacy is too cholerick a word towards a friend) which you could not remove? it is a great loss to the church, but a greater to his friends, dead and alive; for the dead suffer where their memory and reputation is objected to question and reproach. "is it a necessary consequence to the conscience, that if a man turn to that church, he must take orders in it? methinks there is a duty incumbent to the function, that might well terrify a man that feels not a very strong impulsion, though he were never so well satisfied in the religion itself. "if we can not keep him a minister of our church, i wish he would continue a layman in their's, which would somewhat lessen the defection, and it may be, preserve a _greater proportion of his innocence_. "i am very glad (for my own sake) that you have the happiness to be known to my lord newcastle. i commit the managing what concerns me, both in substance and circumstance, wholly to your direction and dexterity: i told you how far i was advanced by my lord withrington. i pray remember my service to mr. hobbs by the same token that sydney godolphin hath left to him by his will, a legacy of £ , and desire him for old aquaintance sake, and for your intercession, to bestow one of his books upon me, which i have never seen since it was printed, and therefore know not how much it is the same, which i had the favour to read in english. i thank you for your wishing your self here. i am sure i would purchase you at any price i could pay or promise, if it were as fit for the prince, as it would be for me. in the mean time i pray god he thinks your company as good as they know it to be who cannot get it. but will the good bishop of salisbury never come to relieve you? what does he? where is he? what do you answer to the other thousand questions i have asked you? "god send you a good new year that may yield you a decent plenty, till it may give you an honest peace, and me meat enough against hunger, and cloathes enough against cold. "and then if the stationers do not sue out a commission of bankruptcy against me for their arrears for paper and ink, i shall not fear any other creditors, nor the exception in the first where i will not give my place for the best amongst the compounders, nor the worst (that is the greatest) amongst the committee: less the title of being. sir, yours, etc." "jersey, the st of january." a copy of mr. edgeman, - . sir edward hyde to dr. john earles. "well, admit you do spend three hours every day, that you may spend one with the prince, allow two hours to your dinner, and two hours in the projecting where to get one, you have still a fair time to yourself, and one half hour in a week, without question, to tell me that you are alive, and that in this dismal time of mutation, you are so far from change, that you continue even the same to me. "i am not willing to tell you, that though you owe me no letters, you have three or four of mine unanswered, but i must tell you the last packet from paris brought me none from you though i found by some i received, that mine thither had not miscarried; so you were not without provocation. "indeed you are to blame to trust me so much with myself in this terrible conflict; with which most men are so unworthily appalled: for truly your advice and approbation is of singular comfort and encouragement to me. and now i pray tell me what is that '_charitas patriae_' which all moral and divine authors have so much magnified. that i must not concur in the acts of impiety and injustice of my country, though never so generally practised, or do a thing in itself wicked to save or preserve my country from any suffering, is i doubt not very clear. but is that charitas patriæ utterly to be abolished and extinguished, for its practise of that impiety and injustice? should i wish their irreligion destroyed by an army of turks, or their licence subdued by a power that would make them slaves? was it well said of alcibiades, that he is truly a lover of his country, not that refuseth to invade the country he hath wrongfully lost but desires so much to be in it, as by any means he can he will attempt to recover it? was not jocasta more christian to her son polynices; _petendo patriam perdis; ut fiat tua, vis esse nullam_. "i pray, say somewhat to me of this argument; that i may really know how far i may comply with passion and provocation; and whether as no infirmity or impiety in my prince can warrant or excuse my declension of allegiance towards him, there be not some candour and kindness to remain towards a man's country, though infected with the most raging rebellion." god preserve you! th of january . a rough draught, corrected, and endorsed by himself. sir edward hyde to dr. john earles. "sir, "i told you long since that when i came to speak of that unhappy battle of newbury, i would enlarge upon the memory of our dear friend that perished there: to which i concieve myself obliged, not more by the rights of friendship than of history, which ought to transmit the virtue of excellent persons to posterity: and therefore i am careful to do justice to every man that hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as you will find by what i have said of mr. hambden himself. "i am now past that point, and being quickened by your most elegant and ([eo]political) commemoration of him and from hints there, thinking it necessary to say somewhat for his vindication in such particulars as may possibly have made impression in good men, it may be i have insisted longer upon the argument than may be agreeable to the rules to be observed in such a work, though it be not much longer than livy is in recollecting the virtues of one of the scipio's after his death. i wish it were with you that you might read it, for if you thought it unproportionable for the place where it is i could be willingly diverted to make it a piece by itself, and inlarge it into the whole size of his life; and that way it would sooner be communicated to the world. and you know tacitus published the life of julius agricola before either his annals or his history. "i am contented you should laugh at me for a fop in talking of livy and tacitus; when all i can hope for is to side hollingshead, and stow, or (because he is a poor knight too, and worse than either of them) sir richard baker. but if i had not hooked them in this way, how should i have been able to tell you, that i have this year read over livy and tacitus; which will never be found by the language and less by the latin. we have had no boat out of normandy these ten days, so that we have heard nothing from the isle of wight since the kings first message thence. god send us good news that we may again (in what condition soever) enjoy one another; which will be a very great satisfaction to; your most affectionate humble servant." "jersey this dec. st. vet." a copy, endorsed by himself. * * * * * there are two very long letters of feb. th and march th, --too long to quote in full--from which i have thought it worth while to make extracts. concerning the subject of the charitas patriæ, "i cannot" he says, "rejoice at foreign powers being at peace" that there might be "forces vacant for the reduction of england,"--but he appeals to earle for "advice and direction; upon whose judgment, discretion, and conscience i do so much depend that i do really suspect my own when i find it at all differ from yours." he speaks too of earle's company being so comforting to his fellow-exiles. jersey feb. th. in the letter of march th, speaking of possible deterioration of character--of "innocence destroyed," of "wiping out the old loved prints," he adds that the "shame of communicating his thoughts" to earle [in case of his (the writer's) falling away] will, he hopes, keep him from any "alteration." in the same letter there is another reference to what earle had written about lord falkland--no such work i understand survives--"i would desire you at your leisure to send me that discourse of your own which you read to me in the end of your _contemplations upon the proverbs_ in memory of my lord falkland: of whom, in its place, i intend to speak largely--"so far from being an indecorum (it will be) no less the business of history than the truth of things." anthony wood's opinion [bliss's reference to wood is very brief] of earle may be added to clarendon's testimonies: "this dr. earl was a [ep]_very genteel man_, a contemner of the world, religious, and most worthy of the office of a bishop." he is elsewhere styled by him "learned and godly,"--but the epithet "genteel" gives an extra touch that we should be loth to lose. in reference to his latin translation of hooker's ecclesiastical polity he adds: "he was only the fit man to make the learned of all nations happy." of the hortus mertonensis he tells us that it was one "of several copies of his ingenuity and poetry that were greedily gathered up" at the university. i have said in the preface that nothing is known to earle's disparagement. it is true that ludlow says[eq]: "dr. earle told me that by abolishing episcopacy we took away all the encouragement to learning; for that men would not send their sons to the university had they not some hopes that they would attain preferment." and he is very severe on "this sordid principle and consideration." that it was not the recommendation of learning to earle is abundantly proved by the microcosmography--but he might well think the university ought not to lose the advantage of any material inducements such as might appeal to ordinary men. earle, moreover, was a humourist, and may have amused himself with arguments which seemed good enough for his audience. lord macaulay must not be supposed indifferent to learning because he told his nephew to "get a good degree at college and become a fellow--_for then_ he would have almonds and raisins for the rest of his life for nothing!" my interleaved copy of bliss has on the fly-leaf the words "the castrated title and leaf are preserved, with the addition of a proof title page with dr. bliss's name omitted." the copy is announced in a catalogue slip pasted in at the end of the book as containing[er] ms. notes by joseph haslewood and dr. bliss. the words above the title--ex dono _editoris_ (altered to _impressoris_)--have the initials j. h. below them. there are also three advertisements of bliss's book, "published this day," two of them on coloured paper pasted in the beginning; the third is supplemented by a notice from the monthly review, feb. , which runs as follows:--"we recommend the perusal of this work to every class of readers, since it is in truth a store house of wit and wisdom ... the old fashioned dress in which these acute strictures on human life appear, while it takes little or nothing from their intelligibility, adds much to their force and liveliness. the lovers of proverbial wit, for many of these characters are strings of judicious adages, are therefore greatly obliged to mr. bliss for his pleasing republication of so pregnant a volume. the notes are instructive without prolixity: the index is extremely useful, for it is really astonishing[es] _how large a quantity of good matter_ is scattered up and down the present _duodecimo_ (the advt. calls it _octavo_), and the appendix contains an ample store of black-letter information, and will introduce almost every reader to some new acquaintances, who have singularity at least, if nothing else to recommend them. the life of the bishop, and the list of his works are particularly interesting." all readers of cowper will remember what a weight of authority the criticism of the monthly review carried with it, and the pathetic appeal of the author to the editor--"but oh!, dear mr. griffith, let me pass for a genius at olney."[et] the notes and illustrations which dr. bliss did _not_ make use of in his edition are as follows.[eu] two are on the serving-man, 'in querpo.' "i am borne sweet lady to a poore fortune that will keep myself and footman, as you see, to bear my sword in cuerpo after me." --_mayne's city match, a comedy, to, ._ "you shall see him in the morning in the gallery--first, at noon in the bullion, in the evening in quirpo."--massinger's fatal dowry. "dr. johnson explains querpo, which he says is corrupted from cuerpo (spanish), as a dress close to the body. dryden uses it." on the same character he has a quotation from religio regis, mo, : king james in his advice to his son henry, prince of wales, says "hawking is not to be condemned, but nevertheless, give me leave to say, it is more uncertain than the others (hunting), and subject to mischances." on the "she-precise hypocrite" he has a note--on "geneva." like a geneva weaver in black, who left the loom and entered into the ministry for conscience sake.--_mayne's city match._ on 'door-posts' in 'the aldermen' he quotes, "a pair of such brothers were fitter for posts without dore indeed, to make a shew at a new-chosen magistrate's gate."--_the widow_, to, . of 'paul's walk' there is yet one more illustration. "walk in the middle ile in paul's, and gentlemen's teeth walk not faster at ordinaries than there a whole day togeather about inquirie after newes."--theeves falling out true men come by their good, or the belman wanted a clapper, _ to, lond., ._ on the pot-poet he has a quotation from _whimzies, a new cast of characters_, vo, lond., , an illustration of the "_strange monster out of germany_." "nor comes his invention farre short of his imagination: for want of truer relations, for a neede he can find a sussex dragone, some sea or inland monster, drawn out by some shoe lane man in a gorgon-like feature, to enforce more horror in the beholder." at the end of the characters there is an extract from a letter of clarendon which mentions that the deanery of westminster "was designed to a person of very known and confessed merit," (most probably dr. john earle) _written below_. he quotes anthony wood on the other side of this leaf for earle's friendships, with henry cary, first earle of monmouth--with george morley, afterwards bishop of winchester. morley and earle lived together at antwerp till they were called to attend on the duke of york in france. two passages of anthony wood, which he does not quote, are worth recalling. morley was sent by charles ii. to "thank salmasius for his apology for his martyrd father, but not with a purse of gold as joh. milton, the impudent lyer, reported." henry cary was "well skill'd in the modern languages, and a general scholar"; and thus "was capacitated [by a forced retiredness in the troublesome times of rebellion] to exercise himself in studies, while others of the nobility were fain to truckle to their inferiors for company sake." i have only given two title-pages of editions in the year of publication. a table of editions is given on the next page. [_title-page of first edition of ._] micro-cosmographie; or, a peece of the world discovered; in essayes and characters. [here is inserted in ms.--"written by john earles of merton coll."] _newly composed for the northerne parts of this kingdome._ at london: printed by w. s., for ed. blount. . [_title-page of rd edition of ._] micro-cosmographie; or, a peece of the world discovered; in essayes and characters. london: printed by william stansbury, for robert allot, . [w. h. allnutt, in a ms. note inserted in the bodleian copy of arber's reprint of the characters, states that arber has mistaken the order of priority of the three edd. arber places the ed. with the above title-page second, and that of which the title is copied on p. , third. the second ed., called by arber the first, is not in the bodleian.] the last written page of the durham ms. has by way of colophon finis. december anno do this th mini day . "this little volume in calf binding, about mo size, is doubtless one of those referred to by ed. blount in his address to the reader. the ms. is written in an exceedingly neat and small hand on the pages of the previously bound book, with margin lines ruled in red. at the top of the first page is written in a different hand, 'edw. blunt, author.' the ms. contains characters in all, and is free from some evident blunders in the first printed copies, as if they had been done from dictation." this ms. in the durham cathedral library is entered in the catalogue (of the hunter mss.) as "characters by edward blunt," and dated "about ," the date _in the ms._ having been overlooked. dr. fowler in _notes and queries_, nov. th, . earle's microcosmography. --------------------------------------+------+----------+-----+-------+-------- | | |bliss| | |bliss,| bliss, |sale,|british| edition. | .| - . | .|museum |bodleian --------------------------------------+------+----------+-----+-------+-------- "w. stansby for edward blount,"[ev] | | | | | (_a_) | no | yes | yes | yes | yes "w. stansby for robert allot," | | | | | (_b_)[ew] | no | yes | yes | yes | no "w. s. for ed. blount," (_c_)[ex]| yes | | yes | yes | yes th | no | no | no | no | no th | yes | | yes | yes | yes th | no | no | no | yes | no " th" | yes | | yes | yes | yes th | yes | | yes | yes | yes (a reprint of one of the | | | | | first four) | yes | | yes | yes | yes (very doubtful) | no |"mr. | no | no | no | |gilchrist"| | | | |told him | | | | |he possessed a | | | |copy by the same| | | |printers as in | | | | but with | | | |" ." | | | th | no | yes | yes | yes | no th | no | yes | yes | yes | no ( edition, with new title) | no | yes | yes | no | no (reprint of edition) | yes | | yes | yes | yes ( edition, with new title | | | | | and small changes) | yes | | yes | yes | yes (reprint of edition) | yes | | yes | yes | no (bliss's edition) | | | yes | yes | yes (arber's edition) or | | | | yes | yes --------------------------------------+------+----------+-----+-------+-------- _british museum._ _bodleian._ _bliss._ _as to the three editions_-- a is regarded as st nd rd b " " nd rd nd c " " rd st st c has "newly composed for the northerne parts of this kingdome." f. madan, _sub-librarian bodleian library_, _february th, ._ this table was compiled for me most kindly by mr. madan. it answers the question, what editions bliss knew of at _various times_. the following passage from evelyn's diary adds one more testimony to earle. _nov. th, ._ "invited by the deane of westminster (dr. earle) to his consecration dinner and ceremony on his being made bishop of worcester. dr. bolton preached in the abbey church--then followed the consecration.... after this was one of the most plentiful and magnificent dinners that in my life i ever saw. it cost neere £ .... here were the judges, nobility, clergy, and gentlemen innumerable, this bishop being universally belov'd for his sweete and gentle disposition. he was author of those characters which go under the name of blount. he translated his late majesty's icon into latine, was clerk of his closet, chaplaine, deane of westminster, and yet a most humble, meeke, but cheerful man, an _excellent scholar_,[ey] and rare preacher. i had the honour to be loved by him. he married me at paris, during his majesties and the churches exile. when i tooke leave of him he brought me to the cloysters in his episcopal habit." he elsewhere speaks of "going to st. germans to desire of dr. earle," then in attendance at the prince of wales' court, that he would marry him "at the chapel of his majesty's resident at the court of france," june th, . a sermon of earle's, "my deare friend now deane of westminster" is mentioned on christmas day . it was one "condoling the breache made in the public joy by the lamented death of the princess of orange." my attention was drawn to these passages by a friend who claims descent from bishop earle--mr. w. b. alt, of new college, oxford. a testimony from another _hand_[ez] is quoted in bliss's annotated copy. "how well he understood the world in his younger days appears by his smart characters; how little he valued it was seen in the careless indifference of his holy contemplative life." in burnet's history of his own times we are told that charles ii. "who had a secret pleasure in finding out anything that lessened a man esteemed eminent for piety, yet had a value for him (earle) beyond all the men of his order." (see arber's reprint.) on the other hand the parliament in had named him as one to be summoned to the assembly of divines, but he declined to come.[fa] in there was printed at the hague an elzevir volume--"morum exemplar," _latin_ characters by one louis du moulin. he aspires he says in the preface to be the virgil or seneca to earle's theocritus or menander. this is his testimony to the characters. "et sane salivam primum mihi movit vester earles cujus characteribus, non puto quicquam exstare vel severius ubi seria tractat, vel festivius quands _innoxie_ jocatur: ant pictorem unquam penicillo propius ad nativam speciem expressisse hominis vultus, quam ille ejus mores patria lingua descripserit." it may be of interest to mention in connection with the title of earle's book that the phrase of menenius agrippa in coriolanus.--"the _map_ of my microcosm" actually occurs as a title of a book of characters by h. broune, , the alternative description being "a morall description of man newly compiled into essays. bliss's ms. book illustrates what i have said in the preface of the change in the character-sketch. the essay and the pamphlet gradually usurp the place of social studies. the great mass of the "characters" of the last half of the seventeenth century are political or religious. on the other hand, while the only _prose_ character in bliss of the sixteenth century deals with the criminal classes, "a discoverie of ten english leapers verie noisome and hurtfull to the church and commonwealth," quoted in his ms. notebook, mixes such characters with "the simoniacke," "the murmurer," "the covetous man." the date is . (the tincker of torvey ( ) also exhibits this mixture.) it may be worth while to add a few titles of books of characters, as illustrating the range of this class of literature, or as being in themselves interesting. they are from bliss's own notes in his own copy of his book or in the ms. note book before referred to. . "the coffee-house--a character." {when coffee once was vended here, prefatory {the alc'ran shortly did appear, verses. {... reformers were such widgeons, {new liquors brought in new religions. . also a character of coffee and coffee-houses. "it was first brought into england when the palats of the english were as fanaticall as their brains.... the englishman will be a la mode de france. with the barbarous indian he smooks tobacco: with the turk he drinks coffee." . news from the new exchange. the commonwealth of ladies. printed in the _year of women with out grace_, . . there are many countries characterized--italy, spain, holland, scotland. 'holland' is in verse. it bears out earle's contemptuous references to the dutch. it is here called "the offscouring of the british land." "this indigested vomit of the sea fell to the dutch by just propriety." . [it will be found among marvell's satires, but bliss does not mention this.] . "scotland characteriz'd: in a letter to a young gentleman to dissuade him from an intended journey thither, ." . "the noble cavalier characterized," "& a rebellious caviller cauterized," _or_ . an answer to wither's campo musæ. a vigorous preface says--"to begin roundly, soundly, and profoundly, the cavalier is a gentleman." by john taylor. . lucifer's lacky: the true character of a dissembling brownist, . . "the tincker of torvey: a scholler, a cobler, a tincker, a smith; with bluster, a seaman, travel from billingsgate to gravesend." . . "the interpreter," , deals with "three principall terms of state--a puritan, a protestant, a papist." . "the joviall crew; or the devill turn'd ranter." . . [greek: ta diapheronta]; or divine characters, in two parts, will have an interest for bristol readers; it is "by that late burning and shining lamp, master samuel crook, b.d., late pastor of wrington in somerset, who being dead yet speaketh." . . "a character of the religion and manners of phanatiques in generall," , includes in the list "seekers and enthusiasts." the last sounds strange as _a species_. . "the character of an ignoramus doctor," , recalls the microcosmography. . the captive captain, or the restrained cavalier," , also, in part, suggests earle. "of a prison," "the anatomy of a jayler," "the lean prisoner," "the restrained cavalier and his melancholy." . bliss also mentions "the character of a learned man," and gives some choice extracts. "our sottish and idle enthusiasts are to be reproved who call learning but a _splendidum peccatum_." "alexander commanded his soldiers neither to damnify pindarus, the poet, nor any of his family." . "a wandering jew telling fortunes to englishmen." . . "the spiritual navigators bound for the holy land." . . "the picture of a modern whig: a dialogue between whiglove and double, at tom's coffee-house." . . in "le vice ridicule" appeared. a sort of translation of earle's characters. . pictures of passions, fancies, and affections, poetically deciphered in variety of characters (no date). . characters of gentlemen that have put in to the ladies invention. this begins--"a little beau of the city strain." . characters of several ingenious designing gentlewomen, who have lately put in to the ladies invention, which is intended to be drawn as soon as full. (there is no date to either of these.) one or two extracts may be added from anthony wood. "lord falkland, when he became one of the gentlemen of his majesty's privy chamber, had frequent retirements to great tew and sometimes to oxon, for the company of and conversation with learned and witty men. william chillingworth (author of the religion of protestants), joh. earle,[fb] charles gataker (son of thomas gataker [the editor of marcus aurelius] and anthony wood thinks chaplain to lord falkland); thomas triplet, a very witty man of christ church; hugh cressey, and others.[fc] cressey wrote a number of theological works, and in one of them occurs the testimony to earle given in bliss." the saturnine anthony wood is amusingly illustrated in two passages from his notice of earle. "john earle received his first being in this vain and transitory world within the city of york.... his elegy on beaumont was printed at the end of the quarto edition of beaumont's poems--put out with a poetical epistle before them, subscribed by a _presbyterian bookbinder_--afterwards an informer to the court of sequestration ... _and a beggar defunct in prison_"! in the notice of morley he tells us that "his banishment was made less tedious to him by the company of dr. joh. earle, his dearest friend." it is sad to find that the translation of hooker which was "to make the learned of all nations happy" was "utterly destroyed"--the loose papers being taken by the servants after earle's death "to light their fires or else to put under their bread and pies." this translation "was earle's entertainment during a part of his exile at cologne." see the bodleian letters quoted in arber's reprint. to that reprint i have been much indebted for help of various kinds. my warmest thanks are due to professor rowley, of university college, bristol, whom i have constantly consulted while preparing this issue of dr. bliss's edition. if one may be allowed a slight twist of a shakspearian phrase, i would say of such help as his--"ripeness is all." it is this quality that makes one at least of professor rowley's friends so grateful and so importunate. s. t. i. clifton, april, . footnotes: [ei] in a later hand. [ej] arcana in margin. [ek] th. in margin, _i.e._, th[omas]. [el] in a later hand. [em] in the later hand. [en] a fellow of merton with earle. his testimony to earle is quoted by bliss. anthony wood says of him, "that when he lost his most beloved lord falkland, at newbury fight, he travelled as a tutor, and upon a freight that the church of england would terminate through the endeavours of the peevish and restless presbyterians, began to think of settling himself in the church of rome." he recanted his errors publicly at rome in . [eo] poetical? [ep] this epithet with clarendon's "wary and cultivated" must be set against what clarendon tells us of his "negligence in dress, habit and mien." earle can never have been awkward. his courtesy was born with him, and he can never have needed (like "the downright scholar") "brushing over with good company." [eq] memoirs, vol. i, p. , ed. c. firth. [er] i ought to say that mr. madan, who was kind enough to look at my copy, does not think many of the notes are in bliss's hand-writing. [es] "more care, attention, accuracy and valuable enlargement from an inexhaustible stock of materials has rarely been witnessed than in the editorial labours of dr. bliss."--dibdin, speaking of bliss's edition of the athenæ oxonienses. [et] cowper's letters, june th, . [eu] some of the ms. notes in my copy are the same as those in the printed volume. [ev] to bliss's notice of {blount blunt}; it may be added that "pericles" was printed for him in ; and the first edition of marlow's "hero and leander" in ["printed for edward blunt by adam islip" (philemon holland's printer)]. marlow's "first book of lucan" ( ) has a humorous and complimentary dedication to blunt from another bookseller, thomas thorpe. see "earlier history of english bookselling." (sampson and low.) [ew] the second folio shakespeare ( ) was printed for him. [ex] the edition of hero and leander was printed by w. stansby for ed. blunt. he also published some of ben jonson's works. [ey] sir henry savile, provost of eton, and editor of the famous chrysostom, recognised earle's scholarship. "when a young scholar was recommended to him for a good witt,--out upon him! i'll have nothing to do with him--he would say, give me the plodding student. if i would look for witts, i would go to newgate--there be the witts! and john earle was the only scholar that ever he took as recommended for a witt."--_aubrey._ [ez] david lloyd, "memoirs," , folio. [fa] "the very parliament naming him as worthy ... though he thought not it worthy of him."--_ib._ [fb] aubrey calls him "an ingeniose young gent, but no writer." [fc] "ben jonson, edmund waller, esq., mr. th. hobbes, and all the excellent witts of that peaceable time."--_aubrey._ james pethel by max beerbohm i was shocked this morning when i saw in my newspaper a paragraph announcing his sudden death. i do not say that the shock was very disagreeable. one reads a newspaper for the sake of news. had i never met james pethel, belike i should never have heard of him: and my knowledge of his death, coincident with my knowledge that he had existed, would have meant nothing at all to me. if you learn suddenly that one of your friends is dead, you are wholly distressed. if the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have recently seen, you are disconcerted, pricked is your sense of mortality; but you do find great solace in telling other people that you met "the poor fellow" only the other day, and that he was "so full of life and spirits," and that you remember he said--whatever you may remember of his sayings. if the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have not seen for years, you are touched so lightly as to find solace enough in even such faded reminiscence as is yours to offer. seven years have passed since the day when last i saw james pethel, and that day was the morrow of my first meeting with him. i had formed the habit of spending august in dieppe. the place was then less overrun by trippers than it is now. some pleasant english people shared it with some pleasant french people. we used rather to resent the race-week--the third week of the month--as an intrusion on our privacy. we sneered as we read in the paris edition of "the new york herald" the names of the intruders, though by some of these we were secretly impressed. we disliked the nightly crush in the baccarat-room of the casino, and the croupiers' obvious excitement at the high play. i made a point of avoiding that room during that week, for the special reason that the sight of serious, habitual gamblers has always filled me with a depression bordering on disgust. most of the men, by some subtle stress of their ruling passion, have grown so monstrously fat, and most of the women so harrowingly thin. the rest of the women seem to be marked out for apoplexy, and the rest of the men to be wasting away. one feels that anything thrown at them would be either embedded or shattered, and looks vainly among them for one person furnished with a normal amount of flesh. monsters they are, all of them, to the eye, though i believe that many of them have excellent moral qualities in private life; but just as in an american town one goes sooner or later--goes against one's finer judgment, but somehow goes--into the dime-museum, so year by year, in dieppe's race-week, there would be always one evening when i drifted into the baccarat-room. it was on such an evening that i first saw the man whose memory i here celebrate. my gaze was held by him for the very reason that he would have passed unnoticed elsewhere. he was conspicuous not in virtue of the mere fact that he was taking the bank at the principal table, but because there was nothing at all odd about him. he alone, among his fellow-players, looked as if he were not to die before the year was out. of him alone i said to myself that he was destined to die normally at a ripe old age. next day, certainly, i would not have made this prediction, would not have "given" him the seven years that were still in store for him, nor the comparatively normal death that has been his. but now, as i stood opposite to him, behind the croupier, i was refreshed by my sense of his wholesome durability. everything about him, except the amount of money he had been winning, seemed moderate. just as he was neither fat nor thin, so had his face neither that extreme pallor nor that extreme redness which belongs to the faces of seasoned gamblers: it was just a clear pink. and his eyes had neither the unnatural brightness nor the unnatural dullness of the eyes about him: they were ordinarily clear eyes, of an ordinary gray. his very age was moderate: a putative thirty-six, not more. ("not less," i would have said in those days.) he assumed no air of nonchalance. he did not deal out the cards as though they bored him, but he had no look of grim concentration. i noticed that the removal of his cigar from his mouth made never the least difference to his face, for he kept his lips pursed out as steadily as ever when he was not smoking. and this constant pursing of his lips seemed to denote just a pensive interest. his bank was nearly done now; there were only a few cards left. opposite to him was a welter of party-colored counters that the croupier had not yet had time to sort out and add to the rouleaux already made; there were also a fair accumulation of notes and several little stacks of gold--in all, not less than five-hundred pounds, certainly. happy banker! how easily had he won in a few minutes more than i, with utmost pains, could win in many months! i wished i were he. his lucre seemed to insult me personally. i disliked him, and yet i hoped he would not take another bank. i hoped he would have the good sense to pocket his winnings and go home. deliberately to risk the loss of all those riches would intensify the insult to me. "messieurs, la banque est aux encheres." there was some brisk bidding while the croupier tore open and shuffled two new packs. but it was as i feared: the gentleman whom i resented kept his place. "messieurs, la banque est faite. quinze-mille francs a la banque. messieurs, les cartes passent. messieurs, les cartes passent." turning to go, i encountered a friend, one of the race-weekers, but in a sense a friend. "going to play?" i asked. "not while jimmy pethel's taking the bank," he answered, with a laugh. "is that the man's name?" "yes. don't you know him? i thought every one knew old jimmy pethel." i asked what there was so wonderful about "old jimmy pethel" that every one should be supposed to know him. "oh, he's a great character. has extraordinary luck--always." i do not think my friend was versed in the pretty theory that good luck is the subconscious wisdom of them who in previous incarnations have been consciously wise. he was a member of the stock exchange, and i smiled as at a certain quaintness in his remark. i asked in what ways besides luck the "great character" was manifested. oh, well, pethel had made a huge "scoop" on the stock exchange when he was only twenty-three, and very soon had doubled that and doubled it again; then retired. he wasn't more than thirty-five now, and then? oh, well, he was a regular all-round sportsman; had gone after big game all over the world and had a good many narrow shaves. great steeple-chaser, too. rather settled down now. lived in leicestershire mostly. had a big place there. hunted five times a week. still did an occasional flutter, though. cleared eighty-thousand in mexicans last february. wife had been a barmaid at cambridge; married her when he was nineteen. thing seemed to have turned out quite well. altogether, a great character. possibly, thought i. but my cursory friend, accustomed to quick transactions and to things accepted "on the nod," had not proved his case to my slower, more literary intelligence. it was to him, though, that i owed, some minutes later, a chance of testing his opinion. at the cry of "messieurs, la banque est aux encheres," we looked round and saw that the subject of our talk was preparing to rise from his place. "now one can punt," said grierson (this was my friend's name), and turned to the bureau at which counters are for sale. "if old jimmy pethel punts," he added, "i shall just follow his luck." but this lode-star was not to be. while my friend was buying his counters, and i was wondering whether i, too, could buy some, pethel himself came up to the bureau. with his lips no longer pursed, he had lost his air of gravity, and looked younger. behind him was an attendant bearing a big wooden bowl--that plain, but romantic, bowl supplied by the establishment to a banker whose gains are too great to be pocketed. he and grierson greeted each other. he said he had arrived in dieppe this afternoon, was here for a day or two. we were introduced. he spoke to me with empressement, saying he was a "very great admirer" of my work. i no longer disliked him. grierson, armed with counters, had now darted away to secure a place that had just been vacated. pethel, with a wave of his hand toward the tables, said: "i suppose you never condescend to this sort of thing." "well--" i smiled indulgently. "awful waste of time," he admitted. i glanced down at the splendid mess of counters and gold and notes that were now becoming, under the swift fingers of the little man at the bureau, an orderly array. i did not say aloud that it pleased me to be, and to be seen, talking on terms of equality to a man who had won so much. i did not say how wonderful it seemed to me that he, whom i had watched just now with awe and with aversion, had all the while been a great admirer of my work. i did but say, again indulgently, that i supposed baccarat to be as good a way of wasting time as another. "ah, but you despise us all the same." he added that he always envied men who had resources within themselves. i laughed lightly, to imply that it was very pleasant to have such resources, but that i didn't want to boast. and, indeed, i had never felt humbler, flimsier, than when the little man at the bureau, naming a fabulous sum, asked its owner whether he would take the main part in notes of mille francs, cinq-mille, dix-mille--quoi? had it been mine, i should have asked to have it all in five-franc pieces. pethel took it in the most compendious form, and crumpled it into his pocket. i asked if he were going to play any more to-night. "oh, later on," he said. "i want to get a little sea air into my lungs now." he asked, with a sort of breezy diffidence, if i would go with him. i was glad to do so. it flashed across my mind that yonder on the terrace he might suddenly blurt out: "i say, look here, don't think me awfully impertinent, but this money's no earthly use to me. i do wish you'd accept it as a very small return for all the pleasure your work has given me, and-- there, please! not another word!"--all with such candor, delicacy, and genuine zeal that i should be unable to refuse. but i must not raise false hopes in my reader. nothing of the sort happened. nothing of that sort ever does happen. we were not long on the terrace. it was not a night on which you could stroll and talk; there was a wind against which you had to stagger, holding your hat on tightly, and shouting such remarks as might occur to you. against that wind acquaintance could make no headway. yet i see now that despite that wind, or, rather, because of it, i ought already to have known pethel a little better than i did when we presently sat down together inside the cafe of the casino. there had been a point in our walk, or our stagger, when we paused to lean over the parapet, looking down at the black and driven sea. and pethel had shouted that it would be great fun to be out in a sailing-boat to-night, and that at one time he had been very fond of sailing. as we took our seats in the cafe, he looked about him with boyish interest and pleasure; then squaring his arms on the little table, he asked me what i would drink. i protested that i was the host, a position which he, with the quick courtesy of the very rich, yielded to me at once. i feared he would ask for champagne, and was gladdened by his demand for water. "apollinaris, st. galmier, or what?" i asked. he preferred plain water. i ventured to warn him that such water was never "safe" in these places. he said he had often heard that, but would risk it. i remonstrated, but he was firm. "alors," i told the waiter, "pour monsieur un verre de l'eau fraiche, et pour moi un demi blonde." pethel asked me to tell him who every one was. i told him no one was any one in particular, and suggested that we should talk about ourselves. "you mean," he laughed, "that you want to know who the devil i am?" i assured him that i had often heard of him. at this he was unaffectedly pleased. "but," i added, "it's always more interesting to hear a man talked about by himself." and indeed, since he had not handed his winnings over to me, i did hope he would at any rate give me some glimpses into that "great character" of his. full though his life had been, he seemed but like a rather clever schoolboy out on a holiday. i wanted to know more. "that beer looks good," he admitted when the waiter came back. i asked him to change his mind, but he shook his head, raised to his lips the tumbler of water that had been placed before him, and meditatively drank a deep draft. "i never," he then said, "touch alcohol of any sort." he looked solemn; but all men do look solemn when they speak of their own habits, whether positive or negative, and no matter how trivial; and so, though i had really no warrant for not supposing him a reclaimed drunkard, i dared ask him for what reason he abstained. "when i say i never touch alcohol," he said hastily, in a tone as of self-defense, "i mean that i don't touch it often, or, at any rate--well, i never touch it when i'm gambling, you know. it--it takes the edge off." his tone did make me suspicious. for a moment i wondered whether he had married the barmaid rather for what she symbolized than for what in herself she was. but no, surely not; he had been only nineteen years old. nor in any way had he now, this steady, brisk, clear-eyed fellow, the aspect of one who had since fallen. "the edge off the excitement?" i asked. "rather. of course that sort of excitement seems awfully stupid to you; but--no use denying it--i do like a bit of a flutter, just occasionally, you know. and one has to be in trim for it. suppose a man sat down dead-drunk to a game of chance, what fun would it be for him? none. and it's only a question of degree. soothe yourself ever so little with alcohol, and you don't get quite the full sensation of gambling. you do lose just a little something of the proper tremors before a coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish after a coup. you're bound to, you know," he added, purposely making this bathos when he saw me smiling at the heights to which he had risen. "and to-night," i asked, remembering his prosaically pensive demeanor in taking the bank, "were you feeling these throes and thrills to the utmost?" he nodded. "and you'll feel them again to-night?" "i hope so." "i wonder you can stay away." "oh, one gets a bit deadened after an hour or so. one needs to be freshened up. so long as i don't bore you--" i laughed, and held out my cigarette-case. "i rather wonder you smoke," i murmured, after giving him a light. "nicotine's a sort of drug. doesn't it soothe you? don't you lose just a little something of the tremors and things?" he looked at me gravely. "by jove!" he ejaculated, "i never thought of that. perhaps you're right. 'pon my word, i must think that over." i wondered whether he were secretly laughing at me. here was a man to whom--so i conceived, with an effort of the imagination--the loss or gain of a few hundred pounds could hardly matter. i told him i had spoken in jest. "to give up tobacco might," i said, "intensify the pleasant agonies of a gambler staking his little all. but in your case--well, i don't see where the pleasant agonies come in." "you mean because i'm beastly rich?" "rich," i amended. "all depends on what you call rich. besides, i'm not the sort of fellow who's content with three per cent. a couple of months ago--i tell you this in confidence--i risked virtually all i had in an argentine deal." "and lost it?" "no; as a matter of fact, i made rather a good thing out of it. i did rather well last february, too. but there's no knowing the future. a few errors of judgment, a war here, a revolution there, a big strike somewhere else, and--" he blew a jet of smoke from his lips, and then looked at me as at one whom he could trust to feel for him in a crash already come. my sympathy lagged, and i stuck to the point of my inquiry. "meanwhile," i suggested, "and all the more because you aren't merely a rich man, but also an active taker of big risks, how can these tiny little baccarat risks give you so much emotion?" "there you rather have me," he laughed. "i've often wondered at that myself. i suppose," he puzzled it out, "i do a good lot of make-believe. while i'm playing a game like this game to-night, i imagine the stakes are huge. and i imagine i haven't another penny in the world." "ah, so that with you it's always a life-and-death affair?" he looked away. "oh, no, i don't say that." "stupid phrase," i admitted. "but"--there was yet one point i would put to him--"if you have extraordinary luck always--" "there's no such thing as luck." "no, strictly, i suppose, there isn't. but if in point of fact you always do win, then--well, surely, perfect luck driveth out fear." "who ever said i always won?" he asked sharply. i waved my hands and said, "oh, you have the reputation, you know, for extraordinary luck." "that isn't the same thing as always winning. besides, i haven't extraordinary luck, never have had. good heavens!" he exclaimed, "if i thought i had any more chance of winning than of losing, i'd--i'd--" "never again set foot in that baccarat-room to-night," i soothingly suggested. "oh, baccarat be blowed! i wasn't thinking of baccarat. i was thinking of--oh, lots of things; baccarat included, yes." "what things?" i ventured to ask. "what things?" he pushed back his chair. "look here," he said with a laugh, "don't pretend i haven't been boring your head off with all this talk about myself. you've been too patient. i'm off. shall i see you to-morrow? perhaps you'd lunch with us to-morrow? it would be a great pleasure for my wife. we're at the grand hotel." i said i should be most happy, and called the waiter; at sight of whom my friend said he had talked himself thirsty, and asked for another glass of water. he mentioned that he had brought his car over with him: his little daughter (by the news of whose existence i felt idiotically surprised) was very keen on motoring, and they were all three starting the day after to-morrow on a little tour through france. afterward they were going on to switzerland "for some climbing." did i care about motoring? if so, we might go for a spin after luncheon, to rouen or somewhere. he drank his glass of water, and, linking a friendly arm in mine, passed out with me into the corridor. he asked what i was writing now, and said that he looked to me to "do something big one of these days," and that he was sure i had it in me. this remark, though of course i pretended to be pleased by it, irritated me very much. it was destined, as you shall see, to irritate me very much more in recollection. yet i was glad he had asked me to luncheon--glad because i liked him and glad because i dislike mysteries. though you may think me very dense for not having thoroughly understood pethel in the course of my first meeting with him, the fact is that i was only aware, and that dimly, of something more in him than he had cared to reveal--some veil behind which perhaps lurked his right to the title so airily bestowed on him by grierson. i assured myself, as i walked home, that if veil there was, i should to-morrow find an eyelet. but one's intuition when it is off duty seems always a much more powerful engine than it does on active service; and next day, at sight of pethel awaiting me outside his hotel, i became less confident. his, thought i, was a face which, for all its animation, would tell nothing--nothing, at any rate, that mattered. it expressed well enough that he was pleased to see me; but for the rest i was reminded that it had a sort of frank inscrutability. besides, it was at all points so very usual a face--a face that couldn't (so i then thought), even if it had leave to, betray connection with a "great character." it was a strong face, certainly; but so are yours and mine. and very fresh it looked, though, as he confessed, pethel had sat up in "that beastly baccarat-room" till five a.m. i asked, had he lost? yes, he had lost steadily for four hours (proudly he laid stress on this), but in the end--well, he had won it all back "and a bit more." "by the way," he murmured as we were about to enter the hall, "don't ever happen to mention to my wife what i told you about that argentine deal. she's always rather nervous about--investments. i don't tell her about them. she's rather a nervous woman altogether, i'm sorry to say." this did not square with my preconception of her. slave that i am to traditional imagery, i had figured her as "flaunting," as golden-haired, as haughty to most men, but with a provocative smile across the shoulder for some. nor, indeed, did her husband's words save me the suspicion that my eyes deceived me when anon i was presented to a very pale, small lady whose hair was rather white than gray. and the "little daughter!" this prodigy's hair was as yet "down," but looked as if it might be up at any moment: she was nearly as tall as her father, whom she very much resembled in face and figure and heartiness of hand-shake. only after a rapid mental calculation could i account for her. "i must warn you, she's in a great rage this morning," said her father. "do try to soothe her." she blushed, laughed, and bade her father not be so silly. i asked her the cause of her great rage. she said: "he only means i was disappointed. and he was just as disappointed as i was. weren't you, now, father?" "i suppose they meant well, peggy," he laughed. "they were quite right," said mrs. pethel, evidently not for the first time. "they," as i presently learned, were the authorities of the bathing-establishment. pethel had promised his daughter he would take her for a swim; but on their arrival at the bathing-cabins they were ruthlessly told that bathing was defendu a cause du mauvais temps. this embargo was our theme as we sat down to luncheon. miss peggy was of opinion that the french were cowards. i pleaded for them that even in english watering-places bathing was forbidden when the sea was very rough. she did not admit that the sea was very rough to-day. besides, she appealed to me, where was the fun of swimming in absolutely calm water? i dared not say that this was the only sort of water i liked to swim in. "they were quite right," said mrs. pethel again. "yes, but, darling mother, you can't swim. father and i are both splendid swimmers." to gloss over the mother's disability, i looked brightly at pethel, as though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. with a movement of his head he indicated his daughter--indicated that there was no one like her in the whole world. i beamed agreement. indeed, i did think her rather nice. if one liked the father (and i liked pethel all the more in that capacity), one couldn't help liking the daughter, the two were so absurdly alike. whenever he was looking at her (and it was seldom that he looked away from her), the effect, if you cared to be fantastic, was that of a very vain man before a mirror. it might have occurred to me that, if there was any mystery in him, i could solve it through her. but, in point of fact, i had forgotten all about that possible mystery. the amateur detective was lost in the sympathetic observer of a father's love. that pethel did love his daughter i have never doubted. one passion is not less true because another predominates. no one who ever saw that father with that daughter could doubt that he loved her intensely. and this intensity gages for me the strength of what else was in him. mrs. pethel's love, though less explicit, was not less evidently profound. but the maternal instinct is less attractive to an onlooker, because he takes it more for granted than the paternal. what endeared poor mrs. pethel to me was--well, the inevitability of the epithet i give her. she seemed, poor thing, so essentially out of it; and by "it" is meant the glowing mutual affinity of husband and child. not that she didn't, in her little way, assert herself during the meal. but she did so, i thought, with the knowledge that she didn't count, and never would count. i wondered how it was that she had, in that cambridge bar-room long ago, counted for pethel to the extent of matrimony. but from any such room she seemed so utterly remote that she might well be in all respects now an utterly changed woman. she did preeminently look as if much had by some means been taken out of her, with no compensatory process of putting in. pethel looked so very young for his age, whereas she would have had to be really old to look young for hers. i pitied her as one might a governess with two charges who were hopelessly out of hand. but a governess, i reflected, can always give notice. love tied poor mrs. pethel fast to her present situation. as the three of them were to start next day on their tour through france, and as the four of us were to make a tour to rouen this afternoon, the talk was much about motoring, a theme which miss peggy's enthusiasm made almost tolerable. i said to mrs. pethel, with more good-will than truth, that i supposed she was "very keen on it." she replied that she was. "but, darling mother, you aren't. i believe you hate it. you're always asking father to go slower. and what is the fun of just crawling along?" "oh, come, peggy, we never crawl!" said her father. "no, indeed," said her mother in a tone of which pethel laughingly said it would put me off coming out with them this afternoon. i said, with an expert air to reassure mrs. pethel, that it wasn't fast driving, but only bad driving, that was a danger. "there, mother!" cried peggy. "isn't that what we're always telling you?" i felt that they were always either telling mrs. pethel something or, as in the matter of that intended bath, not telling her something. it seemed to me possible that peggy advised her father about his "investments." i wondered whether they had yet told mrs. pethel of their intention to go on to switzerland for some climbing. of his secretiveness for his wife's sake i had a touching little instance after luncheon. we had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. the car was already in attendance, and peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection of it. pethel had given me a cigar, and his wife presently noticed that he himself was not smoking. he explained to her that he thought he had smoked too much lately, and that he was going to "knock it off" for a while. i would not have smiled if he had met my eye, but his avoidance of it made me quite sure that he really had been "thinking over" what i had said last night about nicotine and its possibly deleterious action on the gambling thrill. mrs. pethel saw the smile that i could not repress. i explained that i was wishing _i_ could knock off tobacco, and envying her husband's strength of character. she smiled, too, but wanly, with her eyes on him. "nobody has so much strength of character as he has," she said. "nonsense!" he laughed. "i'm the weakest of men." "yes," she said quietly; "that's true, too, james." again he laughed, but he flushed. i saw that mrs. pethel also had faintly flushed, and i became horribly aware of following suit. in the sudden glow and silence created by mrs. pethel's paradox, i was grateful to the daughter for bouncing back among us, and asking how soon we should be ready to start. pethel looked at his wife, who looked at me and rather strangely asked if i was sure i wanted to go with them. i protested that of course i did. pethel asked her if she really wanted to come. "you see, dear, there was the run yesterday from calais. and to-morrow you'll be on the road again, and all the days after." "yes," said peggy; "i'm sure you'd much rather stay at home, darling mother, and have a good rest." "shall we go and put on our things, peggy?" replied mrs. pethel, rising from her chair. she asked her husband whether he was taking the chauffeur with him. he said he thought not. "oh, hurrah!" cried peggy. "then i can be on the front seat!" "no, dear," said her mother. "i am sure mr. beerbohms would like to be on the front seat." "you'd like to be with mother, wouldn't you?" the girl appealed. i replied with all possible emphasis that i should like to be with mrs. pethel. but presently, when the mother and daughter reappeared in the guise of motorists, it became clear that my aspiration had been set aside. "i am to be with mother," said peggy. i was inwardly glad that mrs. pethel could, after all, assert herself to some purpose. had i thought she disliked me, i should have been hurt; but i was sure her desire that i should not sit with her was due merely to a belief that, in case of accident, a person on the front seat was less safe than a person behind. and of course i did not expect her to prefer my life to her daughter's. poor lady! my heart was with her. as the car glided along the sea-front and then under the norman archway, through the town, and past the environs, i wished that her husband inspired in her as much confidence as he did in me. for me the sight of his clear, firm profile (he did not wear motor-goggles) was an assurance in itself. from time to time (for i, too, was ungoggled) i looked round to nod and smile cheerfully at his wife. she always returned the nod, but left the smile to be returned by the daughter. pethel, like the good driver he was, did not talk; just drove. but as we came out on to the rouen road he did say that in france he always rather missed the british police-traps. "not," he added, "that i've ever fallen into one. but the chance that a policeman may at any moment dart out, and land you in a bit of a scrape does rather add to the excitement, don't you think?" though i answered in the tone of one to whom the chance of a police-trap is the very salt of life, i did not inwardly like the spirit of his remark. however, i dismissed it from my mind. the sun was shining, and the wind had dropped: it was an ideal day for motoring, and the norman landscape had never looked lovelier to me in its width of sober and silvery grace. *the other names in this memoir are, for good reason, pseudonyms. i presently felt that this landscape was not, after all, doing itself full justice. was it not rushing rather too quickly past? "james!" said a shrill, faint voice from behind, and gradually--"oh, darling mother, really!" protested another voice--the landscape slackened pace. but after a while, little by little, the landscape lost patience, forgot its good manners, and flew faster and faster than before. the road rushed furiously beneath us, like a river in spate. avenues of poplars flashed past us, every tree of them on each side hissing and swishing angrily in the draft we made. motors going rouen-ward seemed to be past as quickly as motors that bore down on us. hardly had i espied in the landscape ahead a chateau or other object of interest before i was craning my neck round for a final glimpse of it as it faded on the backward horizon. an endless uphill road was breasted and crested in a twinkling and transformed into a decline near the end of which our car leaped straight across to the opposite ascent, and--"james!" again, and again by degrees the laws of nature were reestablished, but again by degrees revoked. i did not doubt that speed in itself was no danger; but, when the road was about to make a sharp curve, why shouldn't pethel, just as a matter of form, slow down slightly, and sound a note or two of the hooter? suppose another car were--well, that was all right: the road was clear; but at the next turning, when our car neither slackened nor hooted and was for an instant full on the wrong side of the road, i had within me a contraction which (at thought of what must have been if--) lasted though all was well. loath to betray fear, i hadn't turned my face to pethel. eyes front! and how about that wagon ahead, huge hay-wagon plodding with its back to us, seeming to occupy whole road? surely pethel would slacken, hoot. no. imagine a needle threaded with one swift gesture from afar. even so was it that we shot, between wagon and road's-edge, through; whereon, confronting us within a few yards--inches now, but we swerved--was a cart that incredibly we grazed not as we rushed on, on. now indeed i had turned my eyes on pethel's profile; and my eyes saw there that which stilled, with a greater emotion, all fear and wonder in me. i think that for the first instant, oddly, what i felt was merely satisfaction, not hatred; for i all but asked him whether, by not smoking to-day, he had got a keener edge to his thrills. i understood him, and for an instant this sufficed me. those pursed-out lips, so queerly different from the compressed lips of the normal motorist, and seeming, as elsewhere last night, to denote no more than pensive interest, had told me suddenly all that i needed to know about pethel. here, as there,--and, oh, ever so much better here than there!--he could gratify the passion that was in him. no need of any "make-believe" here. i remembered the queer look he had given when i asked if his gambling were always "a life-and-death affair." here was the real thing, the authentic game, for the highest stakes. and here was i, a little extra stake tossed on to the board. he had vowed i had it in me to do "something big." perhaps, though, there had been a touch of make-believe about that. i am afraid it was not before my thought about myself that my moral sense began to operate and my hatred of pethel set in. put it to my credit that i did see myself as a mere detail in his villainy. you deprecate the word "villainy"? understand all, forgive all? no doubt. but between the acts of understanding and forgiving an interval may sometimes be condoned. condone it in this instance. even at the time i gave pethel due credit for risking his own life, for having doubtless risked it--it and none other--again and again in the course of his adventurous (and abstemious) life by field and flood. i was even rather touched by memory of his insistence last night on another glass of that water which just might give him typhoid; rather touched by memory of his unsaying that he "never" touched alcohol--he who, in point of fact, had to be always gambling on something or other. i gave him due credit, too, for his devotion to his daughter. but his use of that devotion, his cold use of it to secure for himself the utmost thrill of hazard, did seem utterly abominable to me. and it was even more for the mother than for the daughter that i was incensed. that daughter did not know him, did but innocently share his damnable love of chances; but that wife had for years known him at least as well as i knew him now. here again i gave him credit for wishing, though he didn't love her, to spare her what he could. that he didn't love her i presumed from his indubitable willingness not to stake her in this afternoon's game. that he never had loved her--had taken her in his precocious youth simply as a gigantic chance against him, was likely enough. so much the more credit to him for such consideration as he showed her, though this was little enough. he could wish to save her from being a looker-on at his game, but he could--he couldn't not--go on playing. assuredly she was right in deeming him at once the strongest and the weakest of men. "rather a nervous woman!" i remembered an engraving that had hung in my room at oxford, and in scores of other rooms there: a presentment by sir marcus (then mr.) stone of a very pretty young person in a gainsborough hat, seated beneath an ancestral elm, looking as though she were about to cry, and entitled "a gambler's wife." mrs. pethel was not like that. of her there were no engravings for undergraduate hearts to melt at. but there was one man, certainly, whose compassion was very much at her service. how was he going to help her? i know not how many hair's-breadth escapes we may have had while these thoughts passed through my brain. i had closed my eyes. so preoccupied was i that but for the constant rush of air against my face i might, for aught i knew, have been sitting ensconced in an armchair at home. after a while i was aware that this rush had abated; i opened my eyes to the old familiar streets of rouen. we were to have tea at the hotel d'angleterre. what was to be my line of action? should i take pethel aside and say: "swear to me, on your word of honor as a gentleman, that you will never again touch the driving-gear, or whatever you call it, of a motor-car. otherwise, i shall expose you to the world. meanwhile, we shall return to dieppe by train"? he might flush (for i knew him capable of flushing) as he asked me to explain. and after? he would laugh in my face. he would advise me not to go motoring any more. he might even warn me not to go back to dieppe in one of those dangerous railway-trains. he might even urge me to wait until a nice bath chair had been sent out for me from england. i heard a voice (mine, alas!) saying brightly, "well, here we are!" i helped the ladies to descend. tea was ordered. pethel refused that stimulant and had a glass of water. i had a liqueur brandy. it was evident to me that tea meant much to mrs. pethel. she looked stronger after her second cup, and younger after her third. still, it was my duty to help her if i could. while i talked and laughed, i did not forget that. but what on earth was i to do? i am no hero. i hate to be ridiculous. i am inveterately averse to any sort of fuss. besides, how was i to be sure that my own personal dread of the return journey hadn't something to do with my intention of tackling pethel? i rather thought it had. what this woman would dare daily because she was a mother could not i dare once? i reminded myself of this man's reputation for invariable luck. i reminded myself that he was an extraordinarily skilful driver. to that skill and luck i would pin my faith. what i seem to myself, do you ask of me? but i answered your question a few lines back. enough that my faith was rewarded: we did arrive safely in dieppe. i still marvel that we did. that evening, in the vestibule of the casino, grierson came up to me. "seen jimmy pethel?" he asked. "he was asking for you. wants to see you particularly. he's in the baccarat-room, punting, winning hand over fist, of course. said he'd seldom met a man he liked more than you. great character, what?" one is always glad to be liked, and i pleaded guilty to a moment's gratification at the announcement that pethel liked me. but i did not go and seek him in the baccarat-room. a great character assuredly he was, but of a kind with which (i say it at the risk of seeming priggish) i prefer not to associate. why he had particularly wanted to see me was made clear in a note sent by him to my room early next morning. he wondered if i could be induced to join them in their little tour. he hoped i wouldn't think it great cheek, his asking me. he thought it might rather amuse me to come. it would be a very great pleasure to his wife. he hoped i wouldn't say no. would i send a line by bearer? they would be starting at three o'clock. he was mine sincerely. it was not too late to tackle him even now. should i go round to his hotel? i hesitated and--well, i told you at the outset that my last meeting with him was on the morrow of my first. i forget what i wrote to him, but am sure that the excuse i made for myself was a good and graceful one, and that i sent my kindest regards to mrs. pethel. she had not (i am sure of that, too) authorized her husband to say she would like me to come with them. else would not the thought of her, the pity of her, have haunted me, as it did for a very long time. i do not know whether she is still alive. no mention is made of her in the obituary notice which awoke these memories in me. this notice i will, however, transcribe, because it is, for all its crudeness of phraseology, rather interesting both as an echo and as an amplification. its title is "death of wealthy aviator," and its text is: wide-spread regret will be felt in leicestershire at the tragic death of mr. james pethel, who had long resided there and was very popular as an all-round sportsman. in recent years he had been much interested in aviation, and had had a private aerodrome erected on his property. yesterday afternoon he fell down dead quite suddenly as he was returning to his house, apparently in his usual health and spirits, after descending from a short flight which despite a strong wind he had made on a new type of aeroplane, and on which he was accompanied by his married daughter and her infant son. it is not expected that an inquest will be necessary, as his physician, dr. saunders, has certified death to be due to heart-disease, from which, it appears, the deceased gentleman had been suffering for many years. dr. saunders adds that he had repeatedly warned deceased that any strain on the nervous system might prove fatal. thus--for i presume that his ailment had its origin in his habits--james pethel did not, despite that merely pensive look of his, live his life with impunity. and by reason of that life he died. as for the manner of his death, enough that he did die. let not our hearts be vexed that his great luck was with him to the end. [transcriber's note: i have closed contractions in the text; e.g., "does n't" has become "doesn't" etc.] enoch soames a memory of the eighteen-nineties by max beerbohm when a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by mr. holbrook jackson to the world, i looked eagerly in the index for soames, enoch. it was as i feared: he was not there. but everybody else was. many writers whom i had quite forgotten, or remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in mr. holbrook jackson's pages. the book was as thorough as it was brilliantly written. and thus the omission found by me was an all the deadlier record of poor soames's failure to impress himself on his decade. i dare say i am the only person who noticed the omission. soames had failed so piteously as all that! nor is there a counterpoise in the thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed, like those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian's beck. it is true that had his gifts, such as they were, been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made the bargain i saw him make--that strange bargain whose results have kept him always in the foreground of my memory. but it is from those very results that the full piteousness of him glares out. not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. for his sake, poor fellow, i should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. it is ill to deride the dead. and how can i write about enoch soames without making him ridiculous? or, rather, how am i to hush up the horrid fact that he was ridiculous? i shall not be able to do that. yet, sooner or later, write about him i must. you will see in due course that i have no option. and i may as well get the thing done now. in the summer term of ' a bolt from the blue flashed down on oxford. it drove deep; it hurtlingly embedded itself in the soil. dons and undergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it. whence came it, this meteorite? from paris. its name? will rothenstein. its aim? to do a series of twenty-four portraits in lithograph. these were to be published from the bodley head, london. the matter was urgent. already the warden of a, and the master of b, and the regius professor of c had meekly "sat." dignified and doddering old men who had never consented to sit to any one could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. he did not sue; he invited: he did not invite; he commanded. he was twenty-one years old. he wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. he was a wit. he was brimful of ideas. he knew whistler. he knew daudet and the goncourts. he knew every one in paris. he knew them all by heart. he was paris in oxford. it was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons, he was going to include a few undergraduates. it was a proud day for me when i--i was included. i liked rothenstein not less than i feared him; and there arose between us a friendship that has grown ever warmer, and been more and more valued by me, with every passing year. at the end of term he settled in, or, rather, meteoritically into, london. it was to him i owed my first knowledge of that forever-enchanting little world-in-itself, chelsea, and my first acquaintance with walter sickert and other august elders who dwelt there. it was rothenstein that took me to see, in cambridge street, pimlico, a young man whose drawings were already famous among the few--aubrey beardsley by name. with rothenstein i paid my first visit to the bodley head. by him i was inducted into another haunt of intellect and daring, the domino-room of the cafe royal. there, on that october evening--there, in that exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors and upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the painted and pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes shuffled on marble tables, i drew a deep breath and, "this indeed," said i to myself, "is life!" (forgive me that theory. remember the waging of even the south african war was not yet.) it was the hour before dinner. we drank vermuth. those who knew rothenstein were pointing him out to those who knew him only by name. men were constantly coming in through the swing-doors and wandering slowly up and down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied by friends. one of these rovers interested me because i was sure he wanted to catch rothenstein's eye. he had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on puvis de chavannes, had not seen him. he was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. he had a thin, vague beard, or, rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. he was an odd-looking person; but in the nineties odd apparitions were more frequent, i think, than they are now. the young writers of that era--and i was sure this man was a writer--strove earnestly to be distinct in aspect. this man had striven unsuccessfully. he wore a soft black hat of clerical kind, but of bohemian intention, and a gray waterproof cape which, perhaps because it was waterproof, failed to be romantic. i decided that "dim" was the mot juste for him. i had already essayed to write, and was immensely keen on the mot juste, that holy grail of the period. the dim man was now again approaching our table, and this time he made up his mind to pause in front of it. "you don't remember me," he said in a toneless voice. rothenstein brightly focused him. "yes, i do," he replied after a moment, with pride rather than effusion--pride in a retentive memory. "edwin soames." "enoch soames," said enoch. "enoch soames," repeated rothenstein in a tone implying that it was enough to have hit on the surname. "we met in paris a few times when you were living there. we met at the cafe groche." "and i came to your studio once." "oh, yes; i was sorry i was out." "but you were in. you showed me some of your paintings, you know. i hear you're in chelsea now." "yes." i almost wondered that mr. soames did not, after this monosyllable, pass along. he stood patiently there, rather like a dumb animal, rather like a donkey looking over a gate. a sad figure, his. it occurred to me that "hungry" was perhaps the mot juste for him; but--hungry for what? he looked as if he had little appetite for anything. i was sorry for him; and rothenstein, though he had not invited him to chelsea, did ask him to sit down and have something to drink. seated, he was more self-assertive. he flung back the wings of his cape with a gesture which, had not those wings been waterproof, might have seemed to hurl defiance at things in general. and he ordered an absinthe. "je me tiens toujours fidele," he told rothenstein, "a la sorciere glauque." "it is bad for you," said rothenstein, dryly. "nothing is bad for one," answered soames. "dans ce monde il n'y a ni bien ni mal." "nothing good and nothing bad? how do you mean?" "i explained it all in the preface to 'negations.'" "'negations'?" "yes, i gave you a copy of it." "oh, yes, of course. but, did you explain, for instance, that there was no such thing as bad or good grammar?" "n-no," said soames. "of course in art there is the good and the evil. but in life--no." he was rolling a cigarette. he had weak, white hands, not well washed, and with finger-tips much stained with nicotine. "in life there are illusions of good and evil, but"--his voice trailed away to a murmur in which the words "vieux jeu" and "rococo" were faintly audible. i think he felt he was not doing himself justice, and feared that rothenstein was going to point out fallacies. anyhow, he cleared his throat and said, "parlons d'autre chose." it occurs to you that he was a fool? it didn't to me. i was young, and had not the clarity of judgment that rothenstein already had. soames was quite five or six years older than either of us. also--he had written a book. it was wonderful to have written a book. if rothenstein had not been there, i should have revered soames. even as it was, i respected him. and i was very near indeed to reverence when he said he had another book coming out soon. i asked if i might ask what kind of book it was to be. "my poems," he answered. rothenstein asked if this was to be the title of the book. the poet meditated on this suggestion, but said he rather thought of giving the book no title at all. "if a book is good in itself--" he murmured, and waved his cigarette. rothenstein objected that absence of title might be bad for the sale of a book. "if," he urged, "i went into a bookseller's and said simply, 'have you got?' or, 'have you a copy of?' how would they know what i wanted?" "oh, of course i should have my name on the cover," soames answered earnestly. "and i rather want," he added, looking hard at rothenstein, "to have a drawing of myself as frontispiece." rothenstein admitted that this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into the country and would be there for some time. he then looked at his watch, exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me to dinner. soames remained at his post of fidelity to the glaucous witch. "why were you so determined not to draw him?" i asked. "draw him? him? how can one draw a man who doesn't exist?" "he is dim," i admitted. but my mot juste fell flat. rothenstein repeated that soames was non-existent. still, soames had written a book. i asked if rothenstein had read "negations." he said he had looked into it, "but," he added crisply, "i don't profess to know anything about writing." a reservation very characteristic of the period! painters would not then allow that any one outside their own order had a right to any opinion about painting. this law (graven on the tablets brought down by whistler from the summit of fuji-yama) imposed certain limitations. if other arts than painting were not utterly unintelligible to all but the men who practiced them, the law tottered--the monroe doctrine, as it were, did not hold good. therefore no painter would offer an opinion of a book without warning you at any rate that his opinion was worthless. no one is a better judge of literature than rothenstein; but it wouldn't have done to tell him so in those days, and i knew that i must form an unaided judgment of "negations." not to buy a book of which i had met the author face to face would have been for me in those days an impossible act of self-denial. when i returned to oxford for the christmas term i had duly secured "negations." i used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in my room, and whenever a friend took it up and asked what it was about, i would say: "oh, it's rather a remarkable book. it's by a man whom i know." just "what it was about" i never was able to say. head or tail was just what i hadn't made of that slim, green volume. i found in the preface no clue to the labyrinth of contents, and in that labyrinth nothing to explain the preface. lean near to life. lean very near-- nearer. life is web and therein nor warp nor woof is, but web only. it is for this i am catholick in church and in thought, yet do let swift mood weave there what the shuttle of mood wills. these were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. then came "stark: a conte," about a midinette who, so far as i could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. it was rather like a story by catulle mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. next, a dialogue between pan and st. ursula, lacking, i rather thought, in "snap." next, some aphorisms (entitled "aphorismata" [spelled in greek]). throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form, and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. it was rather the substance that eluded me. was there, i wondered, any substance at all? it did now occur to me: suppose enoch soames was a fool! up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose _i_ was! i inclined to give soames the benefit of the doubt. i had read "l'apres-midi d'un faune" without extracting a glimmer of meaning; yet mallarme, of course, was a master. how was i to know that soames wasn't another? there was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed, arresting, but perhaps, i thought, haunting, and laden, perhaps, with meanings as deep as mallarme's own. i awaited his poems with an open mind. and i looked forward to them with positive impatience after i had had a second meeting with him. this was on an evening in january. going into the aforesaid domino-room, i had passed a table at which sat a pale man with an open book before him. he had looked from his book to me, and i looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that i ought to have recognized him. i returned to pay my respects. after exchanging a few words, i said with a glance to the open book, "i see i am interrupting you," and was about to pass on, but, "i prefer," soames replied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and i obeyed his gesture that i should sit down. i asked him if he often read here. "yes; things of this kind i read here," he answered, indicating the title of his book--"the poems of shelley." "anything that you really"--and i was going to say "admire?" but i cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that i had done so, for he said with unwonted emphasis, "anything second-rate." i had read little of shelley, but, "of course," i murmured, "he's very uneven." "i should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. a deadly evenness. that's why i read him here. the noise of this place breaks the rhythm. he's tolerable here." soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. he laughed. soames's laugh was a short, single, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "what a period!" he uttered, laying the book down. and, "what a country!" he added. i asked rather nervously if he didn't think keats had more or less held his own against the drawbacks of time and place. he admitted that there were "passages in keats," but did not specify them. of "the older men," as he called them, he seemed to like only milton. "milton," he said, "wasn't sentimental." also, "milton had a dark insight." and again, "i can always read milton in the reading-room." "the reading-room?" "of the british museum. i go there every day." "you do? i've only been there once. i'm afraid i found it rather a depressing place. it--it seemed to sap one's vitality." "it does. that's why i go there. the lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art. i live near the museum. i have rooms in dyott street." "and you go round to the reading-room to read milton?" "usually milton." he looked at me. "it was milton," he certificatively added, "who converted me to diabolism." "diabolism? oh, yes? really?" said i, with that vague discomfort and that intense desire to be polite which one feels when a man speaks of his own religion. "you--worship the devil?" soames shook his head. "it's not exactly worship," he qualified, sipping his absinthe. "it's more a matter of trusting and encouraging." "i see, yes. i had rather gathered from the preface to 'negations' that you were a--a catholic." "je l'etais a cette epoque. in fact, i still am. i am a catholic diabolist." but this profession he made in an almost cursory tone. i could see that what was upmost in his mind was the fact that i had read "negations." his pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. i felt as one who is about to be examined viva voce on the very subject in which he is shakiest. i hastily asked him how soon his poems were to be published. "next week," he told me. "and are they to be published without a title?" "no. i found a title at last. but i sha'n't tell you what it is," as though i had been so impertinent as to inquire. "i am not sure that it wholly satisfies me. but it is the best i can find. it suggests something of the quality of the poems--strange growths, natural and wild, yet exquisite," he added, "and many-hued, and full of poisons." i asked him what he thought of baudelaire. he uttered the snort that was his laugh, and, "baudelaire," he said, "was a bourgeois malgre lui." france had had only one poet--villon; "and two thirds of villon were sheer journalism." verlaine was "an epicier malgre lui." altogether, rather to my surprise, he rated french literature lower than english. there were "passages" in villiers de l'isle-adam. but, "i," he summed up, "owe nothing to france." he nodded at me. "you'll see," he predicted. i did not, when the time came, quite see that. i thought the author of "fungoids" did, unconsciously of course, owe something to the young parisian decadents or to the young english ones who owed something to them. i still think so. the little book, bought by me in oxford, lies before me as i write. its pale-gray buckram cover and silver lettering have not worn well. nor have its contents. through these, with a melancholy interest, i have again been looking. they are not much. but at the time of their publication i had a vague suspicion that they might be. i suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor soames's work, that is weaker than it once was. to a young woman thou art, who hast not been! pale tunes irresolute and traceries of old sounds blown from a rotted flute mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust, nor not strange forms and epicene lie bleeding in the dust, being wounded with wounds. for this it is that in thy counterpart of age-long mockeries thou hast not been nor art! there seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first and last lines of this. i tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. but i did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in soames's mind. might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? as for the craftsmanship, "rouged with rust" seemed to me a fine stroke, and "nor not" instead of "and" had a curious felicity. i wondered who the "young woman" was and what she had made of it all. i sadly suspect that soames could not have made more of it than she. yet even now, if one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for the sound, there is a certain grace of cadence. soames was an artist, in so far as he was anything, poor fellow! it seemed to me, when first i read "fungoids," that, oddly enough, the diabolistic side of him was the best. diabolism seemed to be a cheerful, even a wholesome influence in his life. nocturne round and round the shutter'd square i strolled with the devil's arm in mine. no sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there and the ring of his laughter and mine. we had drunk black wine. i scream'd, "i will race you, master!" "what matter," he shriek'd, "to-night which of us runs the faster? there is nothing to fear to-night in the foul moon's light!" then i look'd him in the eyes and i laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told and the gnawing fear he would fain disguise. it was true, what i'd time and again been told: he was old--old. there was, i felt, quite a swing about that first stanza--a joyous and rollicking note of comradeship. the second was slightly hysterical, perhaps. but i liked the third, it was so bracingly unorthodox, even according to the tenets of soames's peculiar sect in the faith. not much "trusting and encouraging" here! soames triumphantly exposing the devil as a liar, and laughing "full shrill," cut a quite heartening figure, i thought, then! now, in the light of what befell, none of his other poems depresses me so much as "nocturne." i looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to say. they seemed to fall into two classes: those who had little to say and those who had nothing. the second class was the larger, and the words of the first were cold; insomuch that strikes a note of modernity. . . . these tripping numbers.--"the preston telegraph." was the only lure offered in advertisements by soames's publisher. i had hoped that when next i met the poet i could congratulate him on having made a stir, for i fancied he was not so sure of his intrinsic greatness as he seemed. i was but able to say, rather coarsely, when next i did see him, that i hoped "fungoids" was "selling splendidly." he looked at me across his glass of absinthe and asked if i had bought a copy. his publisher had told him that three had been sold. i laughed, as at a jest. "you don't suppose i care, do you?" he said, with something like a snarl. i disclaimed the notion. he added that he was not a tradesman. i said mildly that i wasn't, either, and murmured that an artist who gave truly new and great things to the world had always to wait long for recognition. he said he cared not a sou for recognition. i agreed that the act of creation was its own reward. his moroseness might have alienated me if i had regarded myself as a nobody. but ah! hadn't both john lane and aubrey beardsley suggested that i should write an essay for the great new venture that was afoot--"the yellow book"? and hadn't henry harland, as editor, accepted my essay? and wasn't it to be in the very first number? at oxford i was still in statu pupillari. in london i regarded myself as very much indeed a graduate now--one whom no soames could ruffle. partly to show off, partly in sheer good-will, i told soames he ought to contribute to "the yellow book." he uttered from the throat a sound of scorn for that publication. nevertheless, i did, a day or two later, tentatively ask harland if he knew anything of the work of a man called enoch soames. harland paused in the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up his hands toward the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met "that absurd creature" in paris, and this very morning had received some poems in manuscript from him. "has he no talent?" i asked. "he has an income. he's all right." harland was the most joyous of men and most generous of critics, and he hated to talk of anything about which he couldn't be enthusiastic. so i dropped the subject of soames. the news that soames had an income did take the edge off solicitude. i learned afterward that he was the son of an unsuccessful and deceased bookseller in preston, but had inherited an annuity of three hundred pounds from a married aunt, and had no surviving relatives of any kind. materially, then, he was "all right." but there was still a spiritual pathos about him, sharpened for me now by the possibility that even the praises of "the preston telegraph" might not have been forthcoming had he not been the son of a preston man he had a sort of weak doggedness which i could not but admire. neither he nor his work received the slightest encouragement; but he persisted in behaving as a personage: always he kept his dingy little flag flying. wherever congregated the jeunes feroces of the arts, in whatever soho restaurant they had just discovered, in whatever music-hall they were most frequently, there was soames in the midst of them, or, rather, on the fringe of them, a dim, but inevitable, figure. he never sought to propitiate his fellow-writers, never bated a jot of his arrogance about his own work or of his contempt for theirs. to the painters he was respectful, even humble; but for the poets and prosaists of "the yellow book" and later of "the savoy" he had never a word but of scorn. he wasn't resented. it didn't occur to anybody that he or his catholic diabolism mattered. when, in the autumn of ' , he brought out (at his own expense, this time) a third book, his last book, nobody said a word for or against it. i meant, but forgot, to buy it. i never saw it, and am ashamed to say i don't even remember what it was called. but i did, at the time of its publication, say to rothenstein that i thought poor old soames was really a rather tragic figure, and that i believed he would literally die for want of recognition. rothenstein scoffed. he said i was trying to get credit for a kind heart which i didn't possess; and perhaps this was so. but at the private view of the new english art club, a few weeks later, i beheld a pastel portrait of "enoch soames, esq." it was very like him, and very like rothenstein to have done it. soames was standing near it, in his soft hat and his waterproof cape, all through the afternoon. anybody who knew him would have recognized the portrait at a glance, but nobody who didn't know him would have recognized the portrait from its bystander: it "existed" so much more than he; it was bound to. also, it had not that expression of faint happiness which on that day was discernible, yes, in soames's countenance. fame had breathed on him. twice again in the course of the month i went to the new english, and on both occasions soames himself was on view there. looking back, i regard the close of that exhibition as having been virtually the close of his career. he had felt the breath of fame against his cheek--so late, for such a little while; and at its withdrawal he gave in, gave up, gave out. he, who had never looked strong or well, looked ghastly now--a shadow of the shade he had once been. he still frequented the domino-room, but having lost all wish to excite curiosity, he no longer read books there. "you read only at the museum now?" i asked, with attempted cheerfulness. he said he never went there now. "no absinthe there," he muttered. it was the sort of thing that in old days he would have said for effect; but it carried conviction now. absinthe, erst but a point in the "personality" he had striven so hard to build up, was solace and necessity now. he no longer called it "la sorciere glauque." he had shed away all his french phrases. he had become a plain, unvarnished preston man. failure, if it be a plain, unvarnished, complete failure, and even though it be a squalid failure, has always a certain dignity. i avoided soames because he made me feel rather vulgar. john lane had published, by this time, two little books of mine, and they had had a pleasant little success of esteem. i was a--slight, but definite--"personality." frank harris had engaged me to kick up my heels in "the saturday review," alfred harmsworth was letting me do likewise in "the daily mail." i was just what soames wasn't. and he shamed my gloss. had i known that he really and firmly believed in the greatness of what he as an artist had achieved, i might not have shunned him. no man who hasn't lost his vanity can be held to have altogether failed. soames's dignity was an illusion of mine. one day, in the first week of june, , that illusion went. but on the evening of that day soames went, too. i had been out most of the morning and, as it was too late to reach home in time for luncheon, i sought the vingtieme. this little place--restaurant du vingtieme siecle, to give it its full title--had been discovered in ' by the poets and prosaists, but had now been more or less abandoned in favor of some later find. i don't think it lived long enough to justify its name; but at that time there it still was, in greek street, a few doors from soho square, and almost opposite to that house where, in the first years of the century, a little girl, and with her a boy named de quincey, made nightly encampment in darkness and hunger among dust and rats and old legal parchments. the vingtieme was but a small whitewashed room, leading out into the street at one end and into a kitchen at the other. the proprietor and cook was a frenchman, known to us as monsieur vingtieme; the waiters were his two daughters, rose and berthe; and the food, according to faith, was good. the tables were so narrow and were set so close together that there was space for twelve of them, six jutting from each wall. only the two nearest to the door, as i went in, were occupied. on one side sat a tall, flashy, rather mephistophelian man whom i had seen from time to time in the domino-room and elsewhere. on the other side sat soames. they made a queer contrast in that sunlit room, soames sitting haggard in that hat and cape, which nowhere at any season had i seen him doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom i more than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, or the head of a private detective agency. i was sure soames didn't want my company; but i asked, as it would have seemed brutal not to, whether i might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. he was smoking a cigarette, with an untasted salmi of something on his plate and a half-empty bottle of sauterne before him, and he was quite silent. i said that the preparations for the jubilee made london impossible. (i rather liked them, really.) i professed a wish to go right away till the whole thing was over. in vain did i attune myself to his gloom. he seemed not to hear me or even to see me. i felt that his behavior made me ridiculous in the eyes of the other man. the gangway between the two rows of tables at the vingtieme was hardly more than two feet wide (rose and berthe, in their ministrations, had always to edge past each other, quarreling in whispers as they did so), and any one at the table abreast of yours was virtually at yours. i thought our neighbor was amused at my failure to interest soames, and so, as i could not explain to him that my insistence was merely charitable, i became silent. without turning my head, i had him well within my range of vision. i hoped i looked less vulgar than he in contrast with soames. i was sure he was not an englishman, but what was his nationality? though his jet-black hair was en brosse, i did not think he was french. to berthe, who waited on him, he spoke french fluently, but with a hardly native idiom and accent. i gathered that this was his first visit to the vingtieme; but berthe was offhand in her manner to him: he had not made a good impression. his eyes were handsome, but, like the vingtieme's tables, too narrow and set too close together. his nose was predatory, and the points of his mustache, waxed up behind his nostrils, gave a fixity to his smile. decidedly, he was sinister. and my sense of discomfort in his presence was intensified by the scarlet waistcoat which tightly, and so unseasonably in june, sheathed his ample chest. this waistcoat wasn't wrong merely because of the heat, either. it was somehow all wrong in itself. it wouldn't have done on christmas morning. it would have struck a jarring note at the first night of "hernani." i was trying to account for its wrongness when soames suddenly and strangely broke silence. "a hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance. "we shall not be here," i briskly, but fatuously, added. "we shall not be here. no," he droned, "but the museum will still be just where it is. and the reading-room just where it is. and people will be able to go and read there." he inhaled sharply, and a spasm as of actual pain contorted his features. i wondered what train of thought poor soames had been following. he did not enlighten me when he said, after a long pause, "you think i haven't minded." "minded what, soames?" "neglect. failure." "failure?" i said heartily. "failure?" i repeated vaguely. "neglect--yes, perhaps; but that's quite another matter. of course you haven't been--appreciated. but what, then? any artist who--who gives--" what i wanted to say was, "any artist who gives truly new and great things to the world has always to wait long for recognition"; but the flattery would not out: in the face of his misery--a misery so genuine and so unmasked--my lips would not say the words. and then he said them for me. i flushed. "that's what you were going to say, isn't it?" he asked. "how did you know?" "it's what you said to me three years ago, when 'fungoids' was published." i flushed the more. i need not have flushed at all. "it's the only important thing i ever heard you say," he continued. "and i've never forgotten it. it's a true thing. it's a horrible truth. but--d'you remember what i answered? i said, 'i don't care a sou for recognition.' and you believed me. you've gone on believing i'm above that sort of thing. you're shallow. what should you know of the feelings of a man like me? you imagine that a great artist's faith in himself and in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy. you've never guessed at the bitterness and loneliness, the"--his voice broke; but presently he resumed, speaking with a force that i had never known in him. "posterity! what use is it to me? a dead man doesn't know that people are visiting his grave, visiting his birthplace, putting up tablets to him, unveiling statues of him. a dead man can't read the books that are written about him. a hundred years hence! think of it! if i could come back to life then--just for a few hours--and go to the reading-room and read! or, better still, if i could be projected now, at this moment, into that future, into that reading-room, just for this one afternoon! i'd sell myself body and soul to the devil for that! think of the pages and pages in the catalogue: 'soames, enoch' endlessly--endless editions, commentaries, prolegomena, biographies"-- but here he was interrupted by a sudden loud crack of the chair at the next table. our neighbor had half risen from his place. he was leaning toward us, apologetically intrusive. "excuse--permit me," he said softly. "i have been unable not to hear. might i take a liberty? in this little restaurant-sans-facon--might i, as the phrase is, cut in?" i could but signify our acquiescence. berthe had appeared at the kitchen door, thinking the stranger wanted his bill. he waved her away with his cigar, and in another moment had seated himself beside me, commanding a full view of soames. "though not an englishman," he explained, "i know my london well, mr. soames. your name and fame--mr. beerbohm's, too--very known to me. your point is, who am _i_?" he glanced quickly over his shoulder, and in a lowered voice said, "i am the devil." i couldn't help it; i laughed. i tried not to, i knew there was nothing to laugh at, my rudeness shamed me; but--i laughed with increasing volume. the devil's quiet dignity, the surprise and disgust of his raised eyebrows, did but the more dissolve me. i rocked to and fro; i lay back aching; i behaved deplorably. "i am a gentleman, and," he said with intense emphasis, "i thought i was in the company of gentlemen." "don't!" i gasped faintly. "oh, don't!" "curious, nicht wahr?" i heard him say to soames. "there is a type of person to whom the very mention of my name is--oh, so awfully--funny! in your theaters the dullest comedien needs only to say 'the devil!' and right away they give him 'the loud laugh what speaks the vacant mind.' is it not so?" i had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. he accepted them, but coldly, and re-addressed himself to soames. "i am a man of business," he said, "and always i would put things through 'right now,' as they say in the states. you are a poet. les affaires--you detest them. so be it. but with me you will deal, eh? what you have said just now gives me furiously to hope." soames had not moved except to light a fresh cigarette. he sat crouched forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his head just above the level of his hands, staring up at the devil. "go on," he nodded. i had no remnant of laughter in me now. "it will be the more pleasant, our little deal," the devil went on, "because you are--i mistake not?--a diabolist." "a catholic diabolist," said soames. the devil accepted the reservation genially. "you wish," he resumed, "to visit now--this afternoon as-ever-is--the reading-room of the british museum, yes? but of a hundred years hence, yes? parfaitement. time--an illusion. past and future--they are as ever present as the present, or at any rate only what you call 'just round the corner.' i switch you on to any date. i project you--pouf! you wish to be in the reading-room just as it will be on the afternoon of june , ? you wish to find yourself standing in that room, just past the swing-doors, this very minute, yes? and to stay there till closing-time? am i right?" soames nodded. the devil looked at his watch. "ten past two," he said. "closing-time in summer same then as now--seven o'clock. that will give you almost five hours. at seven o'clock--pouf!--you find yourself again here, sitting at this table. i am dining to-night dans le monde--dans le higlif. that concludes my present visit to your great city. i come and fetch you here, mr. soames, on my way home." "home?" i echoed. "be it never so humble!" said the devil, lightly. "all right," said soames. "soames!" i entreated. but my friend moved not a muscle. the devil had made as though to stretch forth his hand across the table, but he paused in his gesture. "a hundred years hence, as now," he smiled, "no smoking allowed in the reading-room. you would better therefore--" soames removed the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into his glass of sauterne. "soames!" again i cried. "can't you"--but the devil had now stretched forth his hand across the table. he brought it slowly down on the table-cloth. soames's chair was empty. his cigarette floated sodden in his wine-glass. there was no other trace of him. for a few moments the devil let his hand rest where it lay, gazing at me out of the corners of his eyes, vulgarly triumphant. a shudder shook me. with an effort i controlled myself and rose from my chair. "very clever," i said condescendingly. "but--'the time machine' is a delightful book, don't you think? so entirely original!" "you are pleased to sneer," said the devil, who had also risen, "but it is one thing to write about an impossible machine; it is a quite other thing to be a supernatural power." all the same, i had scored. berthe had come forth at the sound of our rising. i explained to her that mr. soames had been called away, and that both he and i would be dining here. it was not until i was out in the open air that i began to feel giddy. i have but the haziest recollection of what i did, where i wandered, in the glaring sunshine of that endless afternoon. i remember the sound of carpenters' hammers all along piccadilly and the bare chaotic look of the half-erected "stands." was it in the green park or in kensington gardens or where was it that i sat on a chair beneath a tree, trying to read an evening paper? there was a phrase in the leading article that went on repeating itself in my fagged mind: "little is hidden from this august lady full of the garnered wisdom of sixty years of sovereignty." i remember wildly conceiving a letter (to reach windsor by an express messenger told to await answer): "madam: well knowing that your majesty is full of the garnered wisdom of sixty years of sovereignty, i venture to ask your advice in the following delicate matter. mr. enoch soames, whose poems you may or may not know--" was there no way of helping him, saving him? a bargain was a bargain, and i was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a reasonable obligation. i wouldn't have lifted a little finger to save faust. but poor soames! doomed to pay without respite an eternal price for nothing but a fruitless search and a bitter disillusioning. odd and uncanny it seemed to me that he, soames, in the flesh, in the waterproof cape, was at this moment living in the last decade of the next century, poring over books not yet written, and seeing and seen by men not yet born. uncannier and odder still that to-night and evermore he would be in hell. assuredly, truth was stranger than fiction. endless that afternoon was. almost i wished i had gone with soames, not, indeed, to stay in the reading-room, but to sally forth for a brisk sight-seeing walk around a new london. i wandered restlessly out of the park i had sat in. vainly i tried to imagine myself an ardent tourist from the eighteenth century. intolerable was the strain of the slow-passing and empty minutes. long before seven o'clock i was back at the vingtieme. i sat there just where i had sat for luncheon. air came in listlessly through the open door behind me. now and again rose or berthe appeared for a moment. i had told them i would not order any dinner till mr. soames came. a hurdy-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise of a quarrel between some frenchmen farther up the street. whenever the tune was changed i heard the quarrel still raging. i had bought another evening paper on my way. i unfolded it. my eyes gazed ever away from it to the clock over the kitchen door. five minutes now to the hour! i remembered that clocks in restaurants are kept five minutes fast. i concentrated my eyes on the paper. i vowed i would not look away from it again. i held it upright, at its full width, close to my face, so that i had no view of anything but it. rather a tremulous sheet? only because of the draft, i told myself. my arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but i could not drop them--now. i had a suspicion, i had a certainty. well, what, then? what else had i come for? yet i held tight that barrier of newspaper. only the sound of berthe's brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me, forced me, to drop it, and to utter: "what shall we have to eat, soames?" "il est souffrant, ce pauvre monsieur soames?" asked berthe. "he's only--tired." i asked her to get some wine--burgundy--and whatever food might be ready. soames sat crouched forward against the table exactly as when last i had seen him. it was as though he had never moved--he who had moved so unimaginably far. once or twice in the afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps his journey was not to be fruitless, that perhaps we had all been wrong in our estimate of the works of enoch soames. that we had been horribly right was horribly clear from the look of him. but, "don't be discouraged," i falteringly said. "perhaps it's only that you--didn't leave enough time. two, three centuries hence, perhaps--" "yes," his voice came; "i've thought of that." "and now--now for the more immediate future! where are you going to hide? how would it be if you caught the paris express from charing cross? almost an hour to spare. don't go on to paris. stop at calais. live in calais. he'd never think of looking for you in calais." "it's like my luck," he said, "to spend my last hours on earth with an ass." but i was not offended. "and a treacherous ass," he strangely added, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had been holding in his hand. i glanced at the writing on it--some sort of gibberish, apparently. i laid it impatiently aside. "come, soames, pull yourself together! this isn't a mere matter of life or death. it's a question of eternal torment, mind you! you don't mean to say you're going to wait limply here till the devil comes to fetch you." "i can't do anything else. i've no choice." "come! this is 'trusting and encouraging' with a vengeance! this is diabolism run mad!" i filled his glass with wine. "surely, now that you've seen the brute--" "it's no good abusing him." "you must admit there's nothing miltonic about him, soames." "i don't say he's not rather different from what i expected." "he's a vulgarian, he's a swell mobs-man, he's the sort of man who hangs about the corridors of trains going to the riviera and steals ladies' jewel-cases. imagine eternal torment presided over by him!" "you don't suppose i look forward to it, do you?" "then why not slip quietly out of the way?" again and again i filled his glass, and always, mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. he did not eat, and i myself ate hardly at all. i did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. the chase would be swift, the capture certain. but better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting. i told soames that for the honor of the human race he ought to make some show of resistance. he asked what the human race had ever done for him. "besides," he said, "can't you understand that i'm in his power? you saw him touch me, didn't you? there's an end of it. i've no will. i'm sealed." i made a gesture of despair. he went on repeating the word "sealed." i began to realize that the wine had clouded his brain. no wonder! foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. i urged him to eat, at any rate, some bread. it was maddening to think that he, who had so much to tell, might tell nothing. "how was it all," i asked, "yonder? come, tell me your adventures!" "they'd make first-rate 'copy,' wouldn't they?" "i'm awfully sorry for you, soames, and i make all possible allowances; but what earthly right have you to insinuate that i should make 'copy,' as you call it, out of you?" the poor fellow pressed his hands to his forehead. "i don't know," he said. "i had some reason, i know. i'll try to remember. he sat plunged in thought. "that's right. try to remember everything. eat a little more bread. what did the reading-room look like?" "much as usual," he at length muttered. "many people there?" "usual sort of number." "what did they look like?" soames tried to visualize them. "they all," he presently remembered, "looked very like one another." my mind took a fearsome leap. "all dressed in sanitary woolen?" "yes, i think so. grayish-yellowish stuff." "a sort of uniform?" he nodded. "with a number on it perhaps--a number on a large disk of metal strapped round the left arm? d. k. f. , --that sort of thing?" it was even so. "and all of them, men and women alike, looking very well cared for? very utopian, and smelling rather strongly of carbolic, and all of them quite hairless?" i was right every time. soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless or shorn. "i hadn't time to look at them very closely," he explained. "no, of course not. but--" "they stared at me, i can tell you. i attracted a great deal of attention." at last he had done that! "i think i rather scared them. they moved away whenever i came near. they followed me about, at a distance, wherever i went. the men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever i went to make inquiries." "what did you do when you arrived?" well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course,--to the s volumes,--and had stood long before sn-sof, unable to take this volume out of the shelf because his heart was beating so. at first, he said, he wasn't disappointed; he only thought there was some new arrangement. he went to the middle desk and asked where the catalogue of twentieth-century books was kept. he gathered that there was still only one catalogue. again he looked up his name, stared at the three little pasted slips he had known so well. then he went and sat down for a long time. "and then," he droned, "i looked up the 'dictionary of national biography,' and some encyclopedias. i went back to the middle desk and asked what was the best modern book on late nineteenth-century literature. they told me mr. t. k. nupton's book was considered the best. i looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form for it. it was brought to me. my name wasn't in the index, but--yes!" he said with a sudden change of tone, "that's what i'd forgotten. where's that bit of paper? give it me back." i, too, had forgotten that cryptic screed. i found it fallen on the floor, and handed it to him. he smoothed it out, nodding and smiling at me disagreeably. "i found myself glancing through nupton's book," he resumed. "not very easy reading. some sort of phonetic spelling. all the modern books i saw were phonetic." "then i don't want to hear any more, soames, please." "the proper names seemed all to be spelt in the old way. but for that i mightn't have noticed my own name." "your own name? really? soames, i'm very glad." "and yours." "no!" "i thought i should find you waiting here to-night, so i took the trouble to copy out the passage. read it." i snatched the paper. soames's handwriting was characteristically dim. it and the noisome spelling and my excitement made me all the slower to grasp what t. k. nupton was driving at. the document lies before me at this moment. strange that the words i here copy out for you were copied out for me by poor soames just eighty-two years hence! from page of "inglish littracher - " bi t. k. nupton, publishd bi th stait, . fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimed max beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twentith senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld "enoch soames"--a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! it iz a sumwot labud sattire, but not without vallu az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteen-ninetiz took themselvz. nou that th littreri profeshn haz bin auganized az a departmnt of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an hav lernt ter doo their duti without thort ov th morro. "th laibrer iz werthi ov hiz hire" an that iz aul. thank hevvn we hav no enoch soameses amung us to-dai! i found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which i commend to my reader) i was able to master them little by little. the clearer they became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress and horror. the whole thing was a nightmare. afar, the great grisly background of what was in store for the poor dear art of letters; here, at the table, fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor fellow whom--whom evidently--but no: whatever down-grade my character might take in coming years, i should never be such a brute as to-- again i examined the screed. "immajnari." but here soames was, no more imaginary, alas! than i. and "labud"--what on earth was that? (to this day i have never made out that word.) "it's all very--baffling," i at length stammered. soames said nothing, but cruelly did not cease to look at me. "are you sure," i temporized, "quite sure you copied the thing out correctly?" "quite." "well, then, it's this wretched nupton who must have made--must be going to make--some idiotic mistake. look here soames, you know me better than to suppose that i-- after all, the name max beerbohm is not at all an uncommon one, and there must be several enoch soameses running around, or, rather, enoch soames is a name that might occur to any one writing a story. and i don't write stories; i'm an essayist, an observer, a recorder. i admit that it's an extraordinary coincidence. but you must see--" "i see the whole thing," said soames, quietly. and he added, with a touch of his old manner, but with more dignity than i had ever known in him, "parlons d'autre chose." i accepted that suggestion very promptly. i returned straight to the more immediate future. i spent most of the long evening in renewed appeals to soames to come away and seek refuge somewhere. i remember saying at last that if indeed i was destined to write about him, the supposed "stauri" had better have at least a happy ending. soames repeated those last three words in a tone of intense scorn. "in life and in art," he said, "all that matters is an inevitable ending." "but," i urged more hopefully than i felt, "an ending that can be avoided isn't inevitable." "you aren't an artist," he rasped. "and you're so hopelessly not an artist that, so far from being able to imagine a thing and make it seem true, you're going to make even a true thing seem as if you'd made it up. you're a miserable bungler. and it's like my luck." i protested that the miserable bungler was not i, was not going to be i, but t. k. nupton; and we had a rather heated argument, in the thick of which it suddenly seemed to me that soames saw he was in the wrong: he had quite physically cowered. but i wondered why--and now i guessed with a cold throb just why--he stared so past me. the bringer of that "inevitable ending" filled the doorway. i managed to turn in my chair and to say, not without a semblance of lightness, "aha, come in!" dread was indeed rather blunted in me by his looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. the sheen of his tilted hat and of his shirt-front, the repeated twists he was giving to his mustache, and most of all the magnificence of his sneer, gave token that he was there only to be foiled. he was at our table in a stride. "i am sorry," he sneered witheringly, "to break up your pleasant party, but--" "you don't; you complete it," i assured him. "mr. soames and i want to have a little talk with you. won't you sit? mr. soames got nothing, frankly nothing, by his journey this afternoon. we don't wish to say that the whole thing was a swindle, a common swindle. on the contrary, we believe you meant well. but of course the bargain, such as it was, is off." the devil gave no verbal answer. he merely looked at soames and pointed with rigid forefinger to the door. soames was wretchedly rising from his chair when, with a desperate, quick gesture, i swept together two dinner-knives that were on the table, and laid their blades across each other. the devil stepped sharp back against the table behind him, averting his face and shuddering. "you are not superstitious!" he hissed. "not at all," i smiled. "soames," he said as to an underling, but without turning his face, "put those knives straight!" with an inhibitive gesture to my friend, "mr. soames," i said emphatically to the devil, "is a catholic diabolist"; but my poor friend did the devil's bidding, not mine; and now, with his master's eyes again fixed on him, he arose, he shuffled past me. i tried to speak. it was he that spoke. "try," was the prayer he threw back at me as the devil pushed him roughly out through the door--"try to make them know that i did exist!" in another instant i, too, was through that door. i stood staring all ways, up the street, across it, down it. there was moonlight and lamplight, but there was not soames nor that other. dazed, i stood there. dazed, i turned back at length into the little room, and i suppose i paid berthe or rose for my dinner and luncheon and for soames's; i hope so, for i never went to the vingtieme again. ever since that night i have avoided greek street altogether. and for years i did not set foot even in soho square, because on that same night it was there that i paced and loitered, long and long, with some such dull sense of hope as a man has in not straying far from the place where he has lost something. "round and round the shutter'd square"--that line came back to me on my lonely beat, and with it the whole stanza, ringing in my brain and bearing in on me how tragically different from the happy scene imagined by him was the poet's actual experience of that prince in whom of all princes we should put not our trust! but strange how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, roves and ranges! i remember pausing before a wide door-step and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young de quincey lay ill and faint while poor ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to oxford street, the "stony-hearted stepmother" of them both, and came back bearing that "glass of port wine and spices" but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. was this the very door-step that the old de quincey used to revisit in homage? i pondered ann's fate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy friend; and presently i blamed myself for letting the past override the present. poor vanished soames! and for myself, too, i began to be troubled. what had i better do? would there be a hue and cry--"mysterious disappearance of an author," and all that? he had last been seen lunching and dining in my company. hadn't i better get a hansom and drive straight to scotland yard? they would think i was a lunatic. after all, i reassured myself, london was a very large place, and one very dim figure might easily drop out of it unobserved, now especially, in the blinding glare of the near jubilee. better say nothing at all, i thought. and i was right. soames's disappearance made no stir at all. he was utterly forgotten before any one, so far as i am aware, noticed that he was no longer hanging around. now and again some poet or prosaist may have said to another, "what has become of that man soames?" but i never heard any such question asked. as for his landlady in dyott street, no doubt he had paid her weekly, and what possessions he may have had in his rooms were enough to save her from fretting. the solicitor through whom he was paid his annuity may be presumed to have made inquiries, but no echo of these resounded. there was something rather ghastly to me in the general unconsciousness that soames had existed, and more than once i caught myself wondering whether nupton, that babe unborn, were going to be right in thinking him a figment of my brain. in that extract from nupton's repulsive book there is one point which perhaps puzzles you. how is it that the author, though i have here mentioned him by name and have quoted the exact words he is going to write, is not going to grasp the obvious corollary that i have invented nothing? the answer can be only this: nupton will not have read the later passages of this memoir. such lack of thoroughness is a serious fault in any one who undertakes to do scholar's work. and i hope these words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to nupton and be the undoing of nupton. i like to think that some time between and somebody will have looked up this memoir, and will have forced on the world his inevitable and startling conclusions. and i have reason for believing that this will be so. you realize that the reading-room into which soames was projected by the devil was in all respects precisely as it will be on the afternoon of june , . you realize, therefore, that on that afternoon, when it comes round, there the selfsame crowd will be, and there soames will be, punctually, he and they doing precisely what they did before. recall now soames's account of the sensation he made. you may say that the mere difference of his costume was enough to make him sensational in that uniformed crowd. you wouldn't say so if you had ever seen him, and i assure you that in no period would soames be anything but dim. the fact that people are going to stare at him and follow him around and seem afraid of him, can be explained only on the hypothesis that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostly visitation. they will have been awfully waiting to see whether he really would come. and when he does come the effect will of course be--awful. an authentic, guaranteed, proved ghost, but; only a ghost, alas! only that. in his first visit soames was a creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, i take it--solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion. next time that building and those creatures will be real. it is of soames that there will be but the semblance. i wish i could think him destined to revisit the world actually, physically, consciously. i wish he had this one brief escape, this one small treat, to look forward to. i never forget him for long. he is where he is and forever. the more rigid moralists among you may say he has only himself to blame. for my part, i think he has been very hardly used. it is well that vanity should be chastened; and enoch soames's vanity was, i admit, above the average, and called for special treatment. but there was no need for vindictiveness. you say he contracted to pay the price he is paying. yes; but i maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. well informed in all things, the devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. the whole thing was a very shabby trick. the more i think of it, the more detestable the devil seems to me. of him i have caught sight several times, here and there, since that day at the vingtieme. only once, however, have i seen him at close quarters. this was a couple of years ago, in paris. i was walking one afternoon along the rue d'antin, and i saw him advancing from the opposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane and altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. at thought of enoch soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and i drew myself up to my full height. but--well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. i was miserably aware, as i passed the devil, that i nodded and smiled to him. and my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmost haughtiness. to be cut, deliberately cut, by him! i was, i still am, furious at having had that happen to me. [transcriber's note: i have closed contractions in the text; e.g., "does n't" has become "doesn't" etc.] proofreading team. twelve types by g.k. chesterton london arthur l. humphreys note these papers, with certain alterations and additions, are reprinted with the kind permission of the editors of _the daily news_ and _the speaker_. g.k.c. kensington. contents charlotte brontË william morris and his school the optimism of byron pope and the art of satire francis rostand charles ii stevenson thomas carlyle tolstoy and the cult of simplicity savonarola the position of sir walter scott charlotte brontË objection is often raised against realistic biography because it reveals so much that is important and even sacred about a man's life. the real objection to it will rather be found in the fact that it reveals about a man the precise points which are unimportant. it reveals and asserts and insists on exactly those things in a man's life of which the man himself is wholly unconscious; his exact class in society, the circumstances of his ancestry, the place of his present location. these are things which do not, properly speaking, ever arise before the human vision. they do not occur to a man's mind; it may be said, with almost equal truth, that they do not occur in a man's life. a man no more thinks about himself as the inhabitant of the third house in a row of brixton villas than he thinks about himself as a strange animal with two legs. what a man's name was, what his income was, whom he married, where he lived, these are not sanctities; they are irrelevancies. a very strong case of this is the case of the brontës. the brontë is in the position of the mad lady in a country village; her eccentricities form an endless source of innocent conversation to that exceedingly mild and bucolic circle, the literary world. the truly glorious gossips of literature, like mr augustine birrell and mr andrew lang, never tire of collecting all the glimpses and anecdotes and sermons and side-lights and sticks and straws which will go to make a brontë museum. they are the most personally discussed of all victorian authors, and the limelight of biography has left few darkened corners in the dark old yorkshire house. and yet the whole of this biographical investigation, though natural and picturesque, is not wholly suitable to the brontës. for the brontë genius was above all things deputed to assert the supreme unimportance of externals. up to that point truth had always been conceived as existing more or less in the novel of manners. charlotte brontë electrified the world by showing that an infinitely older and more elemental truth could be conveyed by a novel in which no person, good or bad, had any manners at all. her work represents the first great assertion that the humdrum life of modern civilisation is a disguise as tawdry and deceptive as the costume of a 'bal masqué.' she showed that abysses may exist inside a governess and eternities inside a manufacturer; her heroine is the commonplace spinster, with the dress of merino and the soul of flame. it is significant to notice that charlotte brontë, following consciously or unconsciously the great trend of her genius, was the first to take away from the heroine not only the artificial gold and diamonds of wealth and fashion, but even the natural gold and diamonds of physical beauty and grace. instinctively she felt that the whole of the exterior must be made ugly that the whole of the interior might be made sublime. she chose the ugliest of women in the ugliest of centuries, and revealed within them all the hells and heavens of dante. it may, therefore, i think, be legitimately said that the externals of the brontës' life, though singularly picturesque in themselves, matter less than the externals of almost any other writers. it is interesting to know whether jane austen had any knowledge of the lives of the officers and women of fashion whom she introduced into her masterpieces. it is interesting to know whether dickens had ever seen a shipwreck or been inside a workhouse. for in these authors much of the conviction is conveyed, not always by adherence to facts, but always by grasp of them. but the whole aim and purport and meaning of the work of the brontës is that the most futile thing in the whole universe is fact. such a story as 'jane eyre' is in itself so monstrous a fable that it ought to be excluded from a book of fairy tales. the characters do not do what they ought to do, nor what they would do, nor, it might be said, such is the insanity of the atmosphere, not even what they intend to do. the conduct of rochester is so primevally and superhumanly caddish that bret harte in his admirable travesty scarcely exaggerated it. 'then, resuming his usual manner, he threw his boots at my head and withdrew,' does perhaps reach to something resembling caricature. the scene in which rochester dresses up as an old gipsy has something in it which is really not to be found in any other branch of art, except in the end of the pantomime, where the emperor turns into a pantaloon. yet, despite this vast nightmare of illusion and morbidity and ignorance of the world, 'jane eyre' is perhaps the truest book that was ever written. its essential truth to life sometimes makes one catch one's breath. for it is not true to manners, which are constantly false, or to facts, which are almost always false; it is true to the only existing thing which is true, emotion, the irreducible minimum, the indestructible germ. it would not matter a single straw if a brontë story were a hundred times more moonstruck and improbable than 'jane eyre,' or a hundred times more moonstruck and improbable than 'wuthering heights.' it would not matter if george read stood on his head, and mrs read rode on a dragon, if fairfax rochester had four eyes and st john rivers three legs, the story would still remain the truest story in the world. the typical brontë character is, indeed, a kind of monster. everything in him except the essential is dislocated. his hands are on his legs and his feet on his arms, his nose is above his eyes, but his heart is in the right place. the great and abiding truth for which the brontë cycle of fiction stands is a certain most important truth about the enduring spirit of youth, the truth of the near kinship between terror and joy. the brontë heroine, dingily dressed, badly educated, hampered by a humiliating inexperience, a kind of ugly innocence, is yet, by the very fact of her solitude and her gaucherie, full of the greatest delight that is possible to a human being, the delight of expectation, the delight of an ardent and flamboyant ignorance. she serves to show how futile it is of humanity to suppose that pleasure can be attained chiefly by putting on evening dress every evening, and having a box at the theatre every first night. it is not the man of pleasure who has pleasure; it is not the man of the world who appreciates the world. the man who has learnt to do all conventional things perfectly has at the same time learnt to do them prosaically. it is the awkward man, whose evening dress does not fit him, whose gloves will not go on, whose compliments will not come off, who is really full of the ancient ecstasies of youth. he is frightened enough of society actually to enjoy his triumphs. he has that element of fear which is one of the eternal ingredients of joy. this spirit is the central spirit of the brontë novel. it is the epic of the exhilaration of the shy man. as such it is of incalculable value in our time, of which the curse is that it does not take joy reverently because it does not take it fearfully. the shabby and inconspicuous governess of charlotte brontë, with the small outlook and the small creed, had more commerce with the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than a legion of lawless minor poets. she approached the universe with real simplicity, and, consequently, with real fear and delight. she was, so to speak, shy before the multitude of the stars, and in this she had possessed herself of the only force which can prevent enjoyment being as black and barren as routine. the faculty of being shy is the first and the most delicate of the powers of enjoyment. the fear of the lord is the beginning of pleasure. upon the whole, therefore, i think it may justifiably be said that the dark wild youth of the brontës in their dark wild yorkshire home has been somewhat exaggerated as a necessary factor in their work and their conception. the emotions with which they dealt were universal emotions, emotions of the morning of existence, the springtide joy and the springtide terror. every one of us as a boy or girl has had some midnight dream of nameless obstacle and unutterable menace, in which there was, under whatever imbecile forms, all the deadly stress and panic of 'wuthering heights.' every one of us has had a day-dream of our own potential destiny not one atom more reasonable than 'jane eyre.' and the truth which the brontës came to tell us is the truth that many waters cannot quench love, and that suburban respectability cannot touch or damp a secret enthusiasm. clapham, like every other earthly city, is built upon a volcano. thousands of people go to and fro in the wilderness of bricks and mortar, earning mean wages, professing a mean religion, wearing a mean attire, thousands of women who have never found any expression for their exaltation or their tragedy but to go on working harder and yet harder at dull and automatic employments, at scolding children or stitching shirts. but out of all these silent ones one suddenly became articulate, and spoke a resonant testimony, and her name was charlotte brontë. spreading around us upon every side to-day like a huge and radiating geometrical figure are the endless branches of the great city. there are times when we are almost stricken crazy, as well we may be, by the multiplicity of those appalling perspectives, the frantic arithmetic of that unthinkable population. but this thought of ours is in truth nothing but a fancy. there are no chains of houses; there are no crowds of men. the colossal diagram of streets and houses is an illusion, the opium dream of a speculative builder. each of these men is supremely solitary and supremely important to himself. each of these houses stands in the centre of the world. there is no single house of all those millions which has not seemed to some one at some time the heart of all things and the end of travel. william morris and his school it is proper enough that the unveiling of the bust of william morris should approximate to a public festival, for while there have been many men of genius in the victorian era more despotic than he, there have been none so representative. he represents not only that rapacious hunger for beauty which has now for the first time become a serious problem in the healthy life of humanity, but he represents also that honourable instinct for finding beauty in common necessities of workmanship which gives it a stronger and more bony structure. the time has passed when william morris was conceived to be irrelevant to be described as a designer of wall-papers. if morris had been a hatter instead of a decorator, we should have become gradually and painfully conscious of an improvement in our hats. if he had been a tailor, we should have suddenly found our frock-coats trailing on the ground with the grandeur of mediæval raiment. if he had been a shoemaker, we should have found, with no little consternation, our shoes gradually approximating to the antique sandal. as a hairdresser, he would have invented some massing of the hair worthy to be the crown of venus; as an ironmonger, his nails would have had some noble pattern, fit to be the nails of the cross. the limitations of william morris, whatever they were, were not the limitations of common decoration. it is true that all his work, even his literary work, was in some sense decorative, had in some degree the qualities of a splendid wall-paper. his characters, his stories, his religious and political views, had, in the most emphatic sense, length and breadth without thickness. he seemed really to believe that men could enjoy a perfectly flat felicity. he made no account of the unexplored and explosive possibilities of human nature, of the unnameable terrors, and the yet more unnameable hopes. so long as a man was graceful in every circumstance, so long as he had the inspiring consciousness that the chestnut colour of his hair was relieved against the blue forest a mile behind, he would be serenely happy. so he would be, no doubt, if he were really fitted for a decorative existence; if he were a piece of exquisitely coloured cardboard. but although morris took little account of the terrible solidity of human nature--took little account, so to speak, of human figures in the round, it is altogether unfair to represent him as a mere æsthete. he perceived a great public necessity and fulfilled it heroically. the difficulty with which he grappled was one so immense that we shall have to be separated from it by many centuries before we can really judge of it. it was the problem of the elaborate and deliberate ugliness of the most self-conscious of centuries. morris at least saw the absurdity of the thing. he felt that it was monstrous that the modern man, who was pre-eminently capable of realising the strangest and most contradictory beauties, who could feel at once the fiery aureole of the ascetic, and the colossal calm of the hellenic god, should himself, by a farcical bathos, be buried in a black coat, and hidden under a chimney-pot hat. he could not see why the harmless man who desired to be an artist in raiment should be condemned to be, at best, a black and white artist. it is indeed difficult to account for the clinging curse of ugliness which blights everything brought forth by the most prosperous of centuries. in all created nature there is not, perhaps, anything so completely ugly as a pillar-box. its shape is the most unmeaning of shapes, its height and thickness just neutralising each other; its colour is the most repulsive of colours--a fat and soulless red, a red without a touch of blood or fire, like the scarlet of dead men's sins. yet there is no reason whatever why such hideousness should possess an object full of civic dignity, the treasure-house of a thousand secrets, the fortress of a thousand souls. if the old greeks had had such an institution, we may be sure that it would have been surmounted by the severe, but graceful, figure of the god of letter-writing. if the mediæval christians had possessed it, it would have had a niche filled with the golden aureole of st rowland of the postage stamps. as it is, there it stands at all our street-corners, disguising one of the most beautiful of ideas under one of the most preposterous of forms. it is useless to deny that the miracles of science have not been such an incentive to art and imagination as were the miracles of religion. if men in the twelfth century had been told that the lightning had been driven for leagues underground, and had dragged at its destroying tail loads of laughing human beings, and if they had then been told that the people alluded to this pulverising portent chirpily as 'the twopenny tube,' they would have called down the fire of heaven on us as a race of half-witted atheists. probably they would have been quite right. this clear and fine perception of what may be called the anæsthetic element in the victorian era was, undoubtedly, the work of a great reformer: it requires a fine effort of the imagination to see an evil that surrounds us on every side. the manner in which morris carried out his crusade may, considering the circumstances, be called triumphant. our carpets began to bloom under our feet like the meadows in spring, and our hitherto prosaic stools and sofas seemed growing legs and arms at their own wild will. an element of freedom and rugged dignity came in with plain and strong ornaments of copper and iron. so delicate and universal has been the revolution in domestic art that almost every family in england has had its taste cunningly and treacherously improved, and if we look back at the early victorian drawing-rooms it is only to realise the strange but essential truth that art, or human decoration, has, nine times out of ten in history, made things uglier than they were before, from the 'coiffure' of a papuan savage to the wall-paper of a british merchant in . but great and beneficent as was the æsthetic revolution of morris, there was a very definite limit to it. it did not lie only in the fact that his revolution was in truth a reaction, though this was a partial explanation of his partial failure. when he was denouncing the dresses of modern ladies, 'upholstered like arm-chairs instead of being draped like women,' as he forcibly expressed it, he would hold up for practical imitation the costumes and handicrafts of the middle ages. further than this retrogressive and imitative movement he never seemed to go. now, the men of the time of chaucer had many evil qualities, but there was at least one exhibition of moral weakness they did not give. they would have laughed at the idea of dressing themselves in the manner of the bowmen at the battle of senlac, or painting themselves an æsthetic blue, after the custom of the ancient britons. they would not have called that a movement at all. whatever was beautiful in their dress or manners sprang honestly and naturally out of the life they led and preferred to lead. and it may surely be maintained that any real advance in the beauty of modern dress must spring honestly and naturally out of the life we lead and prefer to lead. we are not altogether without hints and hopes of such a change, in the growing orthodoxy of rough and athletic costumes. but if this cannot be, it will be no substitute or satisfaction to turn life into an interminable historical fancy-dress ball. but the limitation of morris's work lay deeper than this. we may best suggest it by a method after his own heart. of all the various works he performed, none, perhaps, was so splendidly and solidly valuable as his great protest for the fables and superstitions of mankind. he has the supreme credit of showing that the fairy-tales contain the deepest truth of the earth, the real record of men's feeling for things. trifling details may be inaccurate, jack may not have climbed up so tall a beanstalk, or killed so tall a giant; but it is not such things that make a story false; it is a far different class of things that makes every modern book of history as false as the father of lies; ingenuity, self-consciousness, hypocritical impartiality. it appears to us that of all the fairy-tales none contains so vital a moral truth as the old story, existing in many forms, of beauty and the beast. there is written, with all the authority of a human scripture, the eternal and essential truth that until we love a thing in all its ugliness we cannot make it beautiful. this was the weak point in william morris as a reformer: that he sought to reform modern life, and that he hated modern life instead of loving it. modern london is indeed a beast, big enough and black enough to be the beast in apocalypse, blazing with a million eyes, and roaring with a million voices. but unless the poet can love this fabulous monster as he is, can feel with some generous excitement his massive and mysterious 'joie-de-vivre,' the vast scale of his iron anatomy and the beating of his thunderous heart, he cannot and will not change the beast into the fairy prince. morris's disadvantage was that he was not honestly a child of the nineteenth century: he could not understand its fascination, and consequently he could not really develop it. an abiding testimony to his tremendous personal influence in the æsthetic world is the vitality and recurrence of the arts and crafts exhibitions, which are steeped in his personality like a chapel in that of a saint. if we look round at the exhibits in one of these æsthetic shows, we shall be struck by the large mass of modern objects that the decorative school leaves untouched. there is a noble instinct for giving the right touch of beauty to common and necessary things, but the things that are so touched are the ancient things, the things that always to some extent commended themselves to the lover of beauty. there are beautiful gates, beautiful fountains, beautiful cups, beautiful chairs, beautiful reading-desks. but there are no modern things made beautiful. there are no beautiful lamp-posts, beautiful letter-boxes, beautiful engines, beautiful bicycles. the spirit of william morris has not seized hold of the century and made its humblest necessities beautiful. and this was because, with all his healthiness and energy, he had not the supreme courage to face the ugliness of things; beauty shrank from the beast and the fairy-tale had a different ending. but herein, indeed, lay morris's deepest claim to the name of a great reformer: that he left his work incomplete. there is, perhaps, no better proof that a man is a mere meteor, merely barren and brilliant, than that his work is done perfectly. a man like morris draws attention to needs he cannot supply. in after-years we may have perhaps a newer and more daring arts and crafts exhibition. in it we shall not decorate the armour of the twelfth century but the machinery of the twentieth. a lamp-post shall be wrought nobly in twisted iron, fit to hold the sanctity of fire. a pillar-box shall be carved with figures emblematical of the secrets of comradeship and the silence and honour of the state. railway signals, of all earthly things the most poetical, the coloured stars of life and death, shall be lamps of green and crimson worthy of their terrible and faithful service. but if ever this gradual and genuine movement of our time towards beauty--not backwards, but forwards--does truly come about, morris will be the first prophet of it. poet of the childhood of nations, craftsman in the new honesties of art, prophet of a merrier and wiser life, his full-blooded enthusiasm will be remembered when human life has once more assumed flamboyant colours and proved that this painful greenish grey of the æsthetic twilight in which we now live is, in spite of all the pessimists, not of the greyness of death, but the greyness of dawn. the optimism of byron everything is against our appreciating the spirit and the age of byron. the age that has just passed from us is always like a dream when we wake in the morning, a thing incredible and centuries away. and the world of byron seems a sad and faded world, a weird and inhuman world, where men were romantic in whiskers, ladies lived, apparently, in bowers, and the very word has the sound of a piece of stage scenery. roses and nightingales recur in their poetry with the monotonous elegance of a wall-paper pattern. the whole is like a revel of dead men, a revel with splendid vesture and half-witted faces. but the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word "artificial." nothing in the world has ever been artificial. many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because they exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. it may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss. the remarkable fact is, however, and it bears strongly on the present position of byron, that when a thing is unfamiliar to us, when it is remote and the product of some other age or spirit, we think it not savage or terrible, but merely artificial. there are many instances of this: a fair one is the case of tropical plants and birds. when we see some of the monstrous and flamboyant blossoms that enrich the equatorial woods, we do not feel that they are conflagrations of nature; silent explosions of her frightful energy. we simply find it hard to believe that they are not wax flowers grown under a glass case. when we see some of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce humour of creation. we almost believe that they are toys out of a child's play-box, artificially carved and artificially coloured. so it is with the great convulsion of nature which was known as byronism. the volcano is not an extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. it is the remains not of a natural but of an artificial fire. but byron and byronism were something immeasurably greater than anything that is represented by such a view as this: their real value and meaning are indeed little understood. the first of the mistakes about byron lies in the fact that he is treated as a pessimist. true, he treated himself as such, but a critic can hardly have even a slight knowledge of byron without knowing that he had the smallest amount of knowledge of himself that ever fell to the lot of an intelligent man. the real character of what is known as byron's pessimism is better worth study than any real pessimism could ever be. it is the standing peculiarity of this curious world of ours that almost everything in it has been extolled enthusiastically and invariably extolled to the disadvantage of everything else. one after another almost every one of the phenomena of the universe has been declared to be alone capable of making life worth living. books, love, business, religion, alcohol, abstract truth, private emotion, money, simplicity, mysticism, hard work, a life close to nature, a life close to belgrave square are every one of them passionately maintained by somebody to be so good that they redeem the evil of an otherwise indefensible world. thus while the world is almost always condemned in summary, it is always justified, and indeed extolled, in detail after detail. existence has been praised and absolved by a chorus of pessimists. the work of giving thanks to heaven is, as it were, divided ingeniously among them. schopenhauer is told off as a kind of librarian in the house of god, to sing the praises of the austere pleasures of the mind. carlyle, as steward, undertakes the working department and eulogises a life of labour in the fields. omar khayyam is established in the cellar and swears that it is the only room in the house. even the blackest of pessimistic artists enjoys his art. at the precise moment that he has written some shameless and terrible indictment of creation, his one pang of joy in the achievement joins the universal chorus of gratitude, with the scent of the wild flower and the song of the bird. now byron had a sensational popularity, and that popularity was, as far as words and explanations go, founded upon his pessimism. he was adored by an overwhelming majority, almost every individual of which despised the majority of mankind. but when we come to regard the matter a little more deeply we tend in some degree to cease to believe in this popularity of the pessimist. the popularity of pure and unadulterated pessimism is an oddity; it is almost a contradiction in terms. men would no more receive the news of the failure of existence or of the harmonious hostility of the stars with ardour or popular rejoicing than they would light bonfires for the arrival of cholera or dance a breakdown when they were condemned to be hanged. when the pessimist is popular it must always be not because he shows all things to be bad, but because he shows some things to be good. men can only join in a chorus of praise even if it is the praise of denunciation. the man who is popular must be optimistic about something even if he is only optimistic about pessimism. and this was emphatically the case with byron and the byronists. their real popularity was founded not upon the fact that they blamed everything, but upon the fact that they praised something. they heaped curses upon man, but they used man merely as a foil. the things they wished to praise by comparison were the energies of nature. man was to them what talk and fashion were to carlyle, what philosophical and religious quarrels were to omar, what the whole race after practical happiness was to schopenhauer, the thing which must be censured in order that somebody else may be exalted. it was merely a recognition of the fact that one cannot write in white chalk except on a blackboard. surely it is ridiculous to maintain seriously that byron's love of the desolate and inhuman in nature was the mark of vital scepticism and depression. when a young man can elect deliberately to walk alone in winter by the side of the shattering sea, when he takes pleasure in storms and stricken peaks, and the lawless melancholy of the older earth, we may deduce with the certainty of logic that he is very young and very happy. there is a certain darkness which we see in wine when seen in shadow; we see it again in the night that has just buried a gorgeous sunset. the wine seems black, and yet at the same time powerfully and almost impossibly red; the sky seems black, and yet at the same time to be only too dense a blend of purple and green. such was the darkness which lay around the byronic school. darkness with them was only too dense a purple. they would prefer the sullen hostility of the earth because amid all the cold and darkness their own hearts were flaming like their own firesides. matters are very different with the more modern school of doubt and lamentation. the last movement of pessimism is perhaps expressed in mr aubrey beardsley's allegorical designs. here we have to deal with a pessimism which tends naturally not towards the oldest elements of the cosmos, but towards the last and most fantastic fripperies of artificial life. byronism tended towards the desert; the new pessimism towards the restaurant. byronism was a revolt against artificiality; the new pessimism is a revolt in its favour. the byronic young man had an affectation of sincerity; the decadent, going a step deeper into the avenues of the unreal, has positively an affectation of affectation. and it is by their fopperies and their frivolities that we know that their sinister philosophy is sincere; in their lights and garlands and ribbons we read their indwelling despair. it was so, indeed, with byron himself; his really bitter moments were his frivolous moments. he went on year after year calling down fire upon mankind, summoning the deluge and the destructive sea and all the ultimate energies of nature to sweep away the cities of the spawn of man. but through all this his sub-conscious mind was not that of a despairer; on the contrary, there is something of a kind of lawless faith in thus parleying with such immense and immemorial brutalities. it was not until the time in which he wrote 'don juan' that he really lost this inward warmth and geniality, and a sudden shout of hilarious laughter announced to the world that lord byron had really become a pessimist. one of the best tests in the world of what a poet really means is his metre. he may be a hypocrite in his metaphysics, but he cannot be a hypocrite in his prosody. and all the time that byron's language is of horror and emptiness, his metre is a bounding 'pas de quatre.' he may arraign existence on the most deadly charges, he may condemn it with the most desolating verdict, but he cannot alter the fact that on some walk in a spring morning when all the limbs are swinging and all the blood alive in the body, the lips may be caught repeating: 'oh, there's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, when the glow of early youth declines in beauty's dull decay; 'tis not upon the cheek of youth the blush that fades so fast, but the tender bloom of heart is gone ere youth itself be past.' that automatic recitation is the answer to the whole pessimism of byron. the truth is that byron was one of a class who may be called the unconscious optimists, who are very often, indeed, the most uncompromising conscious pessimists, because the exuberance of their nature demands for an adversary a dragon as big as the world. but the whole of his essential and unconscious being was spirited and confident, and that unconscious being, long disguised and buried under emotional artifices, suddenly sprang into prominence in the face of a cold, hard, political necessity. in greece he heard the cry of reality, and at the time that he was dying, he began to live. he heard suddenly the call of that buried and sub-conscious happiness which is in all of us, and which may emerge suddenly at the sight of the grass of a meadow or the spears of the enemy. pope and the art of satire the general critical theory common in this and the last century is that it was very easy for the imitators of pope to write english poetry. the classical couplet was a thing that anyone could do. so far as that goes, one may justifiably answer by asking any one to try. it may be easier really to have wit, than really, in the boldest and most enduring sense, to have imagination. but it is immeasurably easier to pretend to have imagination than to pretend to have wit. a man may indulge in a sham rhapsody, because it may be the triumph of a rhapsody to be unintelligible. but a man cannot indulge in a sham joke, because it is the ruin of a joke to be unintelligible. a man may pretend to be a poet: he can no more pretend to be a wit than he can pretend to bring rabbits out of a hat without having learnt to be a conjuror. therefore, it may be submitted, there was a certain discipline in the old antithetical couplet of pope and his followers. if it did not permit of the great liberty of wisdom used by the minority of great geniuses, neither did it permit of the great liberty of folly which is used by the majority of small writers. a prophet could not be a poet in those days, perhaps, but at least a fool could not be a poet. if we take, for the sake of example, such a line as pope's 'damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,' the test is comparatively simple. a great poet would not have written such a line, perhaps. but a minor poet could not. supposing that a lyric poet of the new school really had to deal with such an idea as that expressed in pope's line about man: 'a being darkly wise and rudely great.' is it really so certain that he would go deeper into the matter than that old antithetical jingle goes? i venture to doubt whether he would really be any wiser or weirder or more imaginative or more profound. the one thing that he would really be, would be longer. instead of writing 'a being darkly wise and rudely great,' the contemporary poet, in his elaborately ornamented book of verses, would produce something like the following:-- 'a creature of feature more dark, more dark, more dark than skies, yea, darkly wise, yea, darkly wise: darkly wise as a formless fate and if he be great if he be great, then rudely great, rudely great as a plough that plies, and darkly wise, and darkly wise.' have we really learnt to think more broadly? or have we only learnt to spread our thoughts thinner? i have a dark suspicion that a modern poet might manufacture an admirable lyric out of almost every line of pope. there is, of course, an idea in our time that the very antithesis of the typical line of pope is a mark of artificiality. i shall have occasion more than once to point out that nothing in the world has ever been artificial. but certainly antithesis is not artificial. an element of paradox runs through the whole of existence itself. it begins in the realm of ultimate physics and metaphysics, in the two facts that we cannot imagine a space that is infinite, and that we cannot imagine a space that is finite. it runs through the inmost complications of divinity, in that we cannot conceive that christ in the wilderness was truly pure, unless we also conceive that he desired to sin. it runs, in the same manner, through all the minor matters of morals, so that we cannot imagine courage existing except in conjunction with fear, or magnanimity existing except in conjunction with some temptation to meanness. if pope and his followers caught this echo of natural irrationality, they were not any the more artificial. their antitheses were fully in harmony with existence, which is itself a contradiction in terms. pope was really a great poet; he was the last great poet of civilisation. immediately after the fall of him and his school come burns and byron, and the reaction towards the savage and the elemental. but to pope civilisation was still an exciting experiment. its perruques and ruffles were to him what feathers and bangles are to a south sea islander--the real romance of civilisation. and in all the forms of art which peculiarly belong to civilisation, he was supreme. in one especially he was supreme--the great and civilised art of satire. and in this we have fallen away utterly. we have had a great revival in our time of the cult of violence and hostility. mr henley and his young men have an infinite number of furious epithets with which to overwhelm any one who differs from them. it is not a placid or untroubled position to be mr henley's enemy, though we know that it is certainly safer than to be his friend. and yet, despite all this, these people produce no satire. political and social satire is a lost art, like pottery and stained glass. it may be worth while to make some attempt to point out a reason for this. it may seem a singular observation to say that we are not generous enough to write great satire. this, however, is approximately a very accurate way of describing the case. to write great satire, to attack a man so that he feels the attack and half acknowledges its justice, it is necessary to have a certain intellectual magnanimity which realises the merits of the opponent as well as his defects. this is, indeed, only another way of putting the simple truth that in order to attack an army we must know not only its weak points, but also its strong points. england in the present season and spirit fails in satire for the same simple reason that it fails in war: it despises the enemy. in matters of battle and conquest we have got firmly rooted in our minds the idea (an idea fit for the philosophers of bedlam) that we can best trample on a people by ignoring all the particular merits which give them a chance of trampling upon us. it has become a breach of etiquette to praise the enemy; whereas when the enemy is strong every honest scout ought to praise the enemy. it is impossible to vanquish an army without having a full account of its strength. it is impossible to satirise a man without having a full account of his virtues. it is too much the custom in politics to describe a political opponent as utterly inhumane, as utterly careless of his country, as utterly cynical, which no man ever was since the beginning of the world. this kind of invective may often have a great superficial success: it may hit the mood of the moment; it may raise excitement and applause; it may impress millions. but there is one man among all those millions whom it does not impress, whom it hardly even touches; that is the man against whom it is directed. the one person for whom the whole satire has been written in vain is the man whom it is the whole object of the institution of satire to reach. he knows that such a description of him is not true. he knows that he is not utterly unpatriotic, or utterly self-seeking, or utterly barbarous and revengeful. he knows that he is an ordinary man, and that he can count as many kindly memories, as many humane instincts, as many hours of decent work and responsibility as any other ordinary man. but behind all this he has his real weaknesses, the real ironies of his soul: behind all these ordinary merits lie the mean compromises, the craven silences, the sullen vanities, the secret brutalities, the unmanly visions of revenge. it is to these that satire should reach if it is to touch the man at whom it is aimed. and to reach these it must pass and salute a whole army of virtues. if we turn to the great english satirists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, we find that they had this rough but firm grasp of the size and strength, the value and the best points of their adversary. dryden, before hewing ahitophel in pieces, gives a splendid and spirited account of the insane valour and inspired cunning of the 'daring pilot in extremity,' who was more untrustworthy in calm than in storm, and 'steered too near the rocks to boast his wit.' the whole is, so far as it goes, a sound and picturesque version of the great shaftesbury. it would, in many ways, serve as a very sound and picturesque account of lord randolph churchill. but here comes in very pointedly the difference between our modern attempts at satire and the ancient achievement of it. the opponents of lord randolph churchill, both liberal and conservative, did not satirise him nobly and honestly, as one of those great wits to madness near allied. they represented him as a mere puppy, a silly and irreverent upstart whose impudence supplied the lack of policy and character. churchill had grave and even gross faults, a certain coarseness, a certain hard boyish assertiveness, a certain lack of magnanimity, a certain peculiar patrician vulgarity. but he was a much larger man than satire depicted him, and therefore the satire could not and did not overwhelm him. and here we have the cause of the failure of contemporary satire, that it has no magnanimity, that is to say, no patience. it cannot endure to be told that its opponent has his strong points, just as mr chamberlain could not endure to be told that the boers had a regular army. it can be content with nothing except persuading itself that its opponent is utterly bad or utterly stupid--that is, that he is what he is not and what nobody else is. if we take any prominent politician of the day--such, for example, as sir william harcourt--we shall find that this is the point in which all party invective fails. the tory satire at the expense of sir william harcourt is always desperately endeavouring to represent that he is inept, that he makes a fool of himself, that he is disagreeable and disgraceful and untrustworthy. the defect of all this is that we all know that it is untrue. everyone knows that sir william harcourt is not inept, but is almost the ablest parliamentarian now alive. everyone knows that he is not disagreeable or disgraceful, but a gentleman of the old school who is on excellent social terms with his antagonists. everyone knows that he is not untrustworthy, but a man of unimpeachable honour who is much trusted. above all, he knows it himself, and is therefore affected by the satire exactly as any one of us would be if we were accused of being black or of keeping a shop for the receiving of stolen goods. we might be angry at the libel, but not at the satire; for a man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true. mr henley and his young men are very fond of invective and satire: if they wish to know the reason of their failure in these things, they need only turn to the opening of pope's superb attack upon addison. the henleyite's idea of satirising a man is to express a violent contempt for him, and by the heat of this to persuade others and himself that the man is contemptible. i remember reading a satiric attack on mr gladstone by one of the young anarchic tories, which began by asserting that mr gladstone was a bad public speaker. if these people would, as i have said, go quietly and read pope's 'atticus,' they would see how a great satirist approaches a great enemy: 'peace to all such! but were there one whose fires true genius kindles, and fair fame inspires, blest with each talent, and each art to please, and born to write, converse, and live with ease. should such a man--' and then follows the torrent of that terrible criticism. pope was not such a fool as to try to make out that addison was a fool. he knew that addison was not a fool, and he knew that addison knew it. but hatred, in pope's case, had become so great and, i was almost going to say, so pure, that it illuminated all things, as love illuminates all things. he said what was really wrong with addison; and in calm and clear and everlasting colours he painted the picture of the evil of the literary temperament: 'bear like the turk, no brother near the throne, view him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, and hate for arts that caused himself to rise. * * * * * like cato give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause. while wits and templars every sentence raise, and wonder with a foolish face of praise.' this is the kind of thing which really goes to the mark at which it aims. it is penetrated with sorrow and a kind of reverence, and it is addressed directly to a man. this is no mock-tournament to gain the applause of the crowd. it is a deadly duel by the lonely seashore. in current political materialism there is everywhere the assumption that, without understanding anything of his case or his merits, we can benefit a man practically. without understanding his case and his merits, we cannot even hurt him. francis asceticism is a thing which in its very nature, we tend in these days to misunderstand. asceticism, in the religious sense, is the repudiation of the great mass of human joys because of the supreme joyfulness of the one joy, the religious joy. but asceticism is not in the least confined to religious asceticism: there is scientific asceticism which asserts that truth is alone satisfying: there is æsthetic asceticism which asserts that art is alone satisfying: there is amatory asceticism which asserts that love is alone satisfying. there is even epicurean asceticism, which asserts that beer and skittles are alone satisfying. wherever the manner of praising anything involves the statement that the speaker could live with that thing alone, there lies the germ and essence of asceticism. when william morris, for example, says that 'love is enough,' it is obvious that he asserts in those words that art, science, politics, ambition, money, houses, carriages, concerts, gloves, walking-sticks, door-knockers, railway-stations, cathedrals and any other things one may choose to tabulate are unnecessary. when omar khayyam says: 'a book of verse beneath the bough a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou sitting beside me in the wilderness o wilderness were paradise enow.' it is clear that he speaks fully as much ascetically as he does æsthetically. he makes a list of things and says that he wants no more. the same thing was done by a mediæval monk. examples might, of course, be multiplied a hundred-fold. one of the most genuinely poetical of our younger poets says, as the one thing certain, that 'from quiet home and first beginning out to the undiscovered ends-- there's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends.' here we have a perfect example of the main important fact, that all true joy expresses itself in terms of asceticism. but if in any case it should happen that a class or a generation lose the sense of the peculiar kind of joy which is being celebrated, they immediately begin to call the enjoyers of that joy gloomy and self-destroying. the most formidable liberal philosophers have called the monks melancholy because they denied themselves the pleasures of liberty and marriage. they might as well call the trippers on a bank holiday melancholy because they deny themselves, as a rule, the pleasures of silence and meditation. a simpler and stronger example is, however, to hand. if ever it should happen that the system of english athletics should vanish from the public schools and the universities, if science should supply some new and non-competitive manner of perfecting the physique, if public ethics swung round to an attitude of absolute contempt and indifference towards the feeling called sport, then it is easy to see what would happen. future historians would simply state that in the dark days of queen victoria young men at oxford and cambridge were subjected to a horrible sort of religious torture. they were forbidden, by fantastic monastic rules, to indulge in wine or tobacco during certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time, before certain brutal fights and festivals. bigots insisted on their rising at unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. many men ruined their health in these dens of superstition, many died there. all this is perfectly true and irrefutable. athleticism in england is an asceticism, as much as the monastic rules. men have over-strained themselves and killed themselves through english athleticism. there is one difference and one only: we do feel the love of sport; we do not feel the love of religious offices. we see only the price in the one case and only the purchase in the other. the only question that remains is what was the joy of the old christian ascetics of which their ascetism was merely the purchasing price. the mere possibility of the query is an extraordinary example of the way in which we miss the main points of human history. we are looking at humanity too close, and see only the details and not the vast and dominant features. we look at the rise of christianity, and conceive it as a rise of self-abnegation and almost of pessimism. it does not occur to us that the mere assertion that this raging and confounding universe is governed by justice and mercy is a piece of staggering optimism fit to set all men capering. the detail over which these monks went mad with joy was the universe itself; the only thing really worthy of enjoyment. the white daylight shone over all the world, the endless forests stood up in their order. the lightning awoke and the tree fell and the sea gathered into mountains and the ship went down, and all these disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. that this scheme of nature was not accurate or well founded is perfectly tenable, but surely it is not tenable that it was not optimistic. we insist, however, upon treating this matter tail foremost. we insist that the ascetics were pessimists because they gave up threescore years and ten for an eternity of happiness. we forget that the bare proposition of an eternity of happiness is by its very nature ten thousand times more optimistic than ten thousand pagan saturnalias. mr adderley's life of francis of assisi does not, of course, bring this out; nor does it fully bring out the character of francis. it has rather the tone of a devotional book. a devotional book is an excellent thing, but we do not look in it for the portrait of a man, for the same reason that we do not look in a love-sonnet for the portrait of a woman, because men in such conditions of mind not only apply all virtues to their idol, but all virtues in equal quantities. there is no outline, because the artist cannot bear to put in a black line. this blaze of benediction, this conflict between lights, has its place in poetry, not in biography. the successful examples of it may be found, for instance, in the more idealistic odes of spenser. the design is sometimes almost indecipherable, for the poet draws in silver upon white. it is natural, of course, that mr adderley should see francis primarily as the founder of the franciscan order. we suspect this was only one, perhaps a minor one, of the things that he was; we suspect that one of the minor things that christ did was to found christianity. but the vast practical work of francis is assuredly not to be ignored, for this amazingly unworldly and almost maddeningly simple--minded infant was one of the most consistently successful men that ever fought with this bitter world. it is the custom to say that the secret of such men is their profound belief in themselves, and this is true, but not all the truth. workhouses and lunatic asylums are thronged with men who believe in themselves. of francis it is far truer to say that the secret of his success was his profound belief in other people, and it is the lack of this that has commonly been the curse of these obscure napoleons. francis always assumed that everyone must be just as anxious about their common relative, the water-rat, as he was. he planned a visit to the emperor to draw his attention to the needs of 'his little sisters the larks.' he used to talk to any thieves and robbers he met about their misfortune in being unable to give rein to their desire for holiness. it was an innocent habit, and doubtless the robbers often 'got round him,' as the phrase goes. quite as often, however, they discovered that he had 'got round' them, and discovered the other side, the side of secret nobility. conceiving of st francis as primarily the founder of the franciscan order, mr adderley opens his narrative with an admirable sketch of the history of monasticism in europe, which is certainly the best thing in the book. he distinguishes clearly and fairly between the manichæan ideal that underlies so much of eastern monasticism and the ideal of self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the christian form. but he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider the absorbing problem of this catholic asceticism, for the excellent reason that not being an outsider he does not find it a problem at all. to most people, however, there is a fascinating inconsistency in the position of st francis. he expressed in loftier and bolder language than any earthly thinker the conception that laughter is as divine as tears. he called his monks the mountebanks of god. he never forgot to take pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water as it fell from his finger: he was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of men. yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we think the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he loved most, property, love, and liberty. why was it that the most large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial atmosphere in these awful renunciations? why did he who loved where all men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? why was he a monk, and not a troubadour? these questions are far too large to be answered fully here, but in any life of francis they ought at least to have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also. so it was with the monks. the two great parties in human affairs are only the party which sees life black against white, and the party which sees it white against black, the party which macerates and blackens itself with sacrifice because the background is full of the blaze of an universal mercy, and the party which crowns itself with flowers and lights itself with bridal torches because it stands against a black curtain of incalculable night. the revellers are old, and the monks are young. it was the monks who were the spendthrifts of happiness, and we who are its misers. doubtless, as is apparent from mr adderley's book, the clear and tranquil life of the three vows had a fine and delicate effect on the genius of francis. he was primarily a poet. the perfection of his literary instinct is shown in his naming the fire 'brother,' and the water 'sister,' in the quaint demagogic dexterity of the appeal in the sermon to the fishes 'that they alone were saved in the flood.' in the amazingly minute and graphic dramatisation of the life, disappointments and excuses of any shrub or beast that he happened to be addressing, his genius has a curious resemblance to that of burns. but if he avoided the weakness of burns' verses to animals, the occasional morbidity, bombast and moralisation on himself, the credit is surely due to a cleaner and more transparent life. the general attitude of st francis, like that of his master, embodied a kind of terrible common-sense. the famous remark of the caterpillar in 'alice in wonderland'--'why not?' impresses us as his general motto. he could not see why he should not be on good terms with all things. the pomp of war and ambition, the great empire of the middle ages and all its fellows begin to look tawdry and top-heavy, under the rationality of that innocent stare. his questions were blasting and devastating, like the questions of a child. he would not have been afraid even of the nightmares of cosmogony, for he had no fear in him. to him the world was small, not because he had any views as to its size, but for the reason that gossiping ladies find it small, because so many relatives were to be found in it. if you had taken him to the loneliest star that the madness of an astronomer can conceive, he would have only beheld in it the features of a new friend. rostand when 'cyrano de bergerac' was published, it bore the subordinate title of a heroic comedy. we have no tradition in english literature which would justify us in calling a comedy heroic, though there was once a poet who called a comedy divine. by the current modern conception, the hero has his place in a tragedy, and the one kind of strength which is systematically denied to him is the strength to succeed. that the power of a man's spirit might possibly go to the length of turning a tragedy into a comedy is not admitted; nevertheless, almost all the primitive legends of the world are comedies, not only in the sense that they have a happy ending, but in the sense that they are based upon a certain optimistic assumption that the hero is destined to be the destroyer of the monster. singularly enough, this modern idea of the essential disastrous character of life, when seriously considered, connects itself with a hyper-æsthetic view of tragedy and comedy which is largely due to the influence of modern france, from which the great heroic comedies of monsieur rostand have come. the french genius has an instinct for remedying its own evil work, and france gives always the best cure for 'frenchiness.' the idea of comedy which is held in england by the school which pays most attention to the technical niceties of art is a view which renders such an idea as that of heroic comedy quite impossible. the fundamental conception in the minds of the majority of our younger writers is that comedy is, 'par excellence,' a fragile thing. it is conceived to be a conventional world of the most absolutely delicate and gimcrack description. such stories as mr max beerbohm's 'happy hypocrite' are conceptions which would vanish or fall into utter nonsense if viewed by one single degree too seriously. but great comedy, the comedy of shakespeare or sterne, not only can be, but must be, taken seriously. there is nothing to which a man must give himself up with more faith and self-abandonment than to genuine laughter. in such comedies one laughs with the heroes and not at them. the humour which steeps the stories of falstaff and uncle toby is a cosmic and philosophic humour, a geniality which goes down to the depths. it is not superficial reading, it is not even, strictly speaking, light reading. our sympathies are as much committed to the characters as if they were the predestined victims in a greek tragedy. the modern writer of comedies may be said to boast of the brittleness of his characters. he seems always on the eve of knocking his puppets to pieces. when john oliver hobbes wrote for the first time a comedy of serious emotions, she named it, with a thinly-disguised contempt for her own work, 'a sentimental comedy.' the ground of this conception of the artificiality of comedy is a profound pessimism. life in the eyes of these mournful buffoons is itself an utterly tragic thing; comedy must be as hollow as a grinning mask. it is a refuge from the world, and not even, properly speaking, a part of it. their wit is a thin sheet of shining ice over the eternal waters of bitterness. 'cyrano de bergerac' came to us as the new decoration of an old truth, that merriment was one of the world's natural flowers, and not one of its exotics. the gigantesque levity, the flamboyant eloquence, the rabelaisian puns and digressions were seen to be once more what they had been in rabelais, the mere outbursts of a human sympathy and bravado as old and solid as the stars. the human spirit demanded wit as headlong and haughty as its will. all was expressed in the words of cyrano at his highest moment of happiness. 'il me faut des géants.' an essential aspect of this question of heroic comedy is the question of drama in rhyme. there is nothing that affords so easy a point of attack for the dramatic realist as the conduct of a play in verse. according to his canons, it is indeed absurd to represent a number of characters facing some terrible crisis in their lives by capping rhymes like a party playing 'bouts rimés.' in his eyes it must appear somewhat ridiculous that two enemies taunting each other with insupportable insults should obligingly provide each other with metrical spacing and neat and convenient rhymes. but the whole of this view rests finally upon the fact that few persons, if any, to-day understand what is meant by a poetical play. it is a singular thing that those poetical plays which are now written in england by the most advanced students of the drama follow exclusively the lines of maeterlinck, and use verse and rhyme for the adornment of a profoundly tragic theme. but rhyme has a supreme appropriateness for the treatment of the higher comedy. the land of heroic comedy is, as it were, a paradise of lovers, in which it is not difficult to imagine that men could talk poetry all day long. it is far more conceivable that men's speech should flower naturally into these harmonious forms, when they are filled with the essential spirit of youth, than when they are sitting gloomily in the presence of immemorial destiny. the great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. we should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. it is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. when we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like cyrano de bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. rhymes answer each other as the sexes in flowers and in humanity answer each other. men do not speak so, it is true. even when they are inspired or in love they talk inanities. but the poetic comedy does not misrepresent the speech one half so much, as the speech misrepresents the soul. monsieur rostand showed even more than his usual insight when he called 'cyrano de bergerac' a comedy, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it ends with disappointment and death. the essence of tragedy is a spiritual breakdown or decline, and in the great french play the spiritual sentiment mounts unceasingly until the last line. it is not the facts themselves, but our feeling about them, that makes tragedy and comedy, and death is more joyful in rostand than life in maeterlinck. the same apparent contradiction holds good in the case of the drama of 'l'aiglon,' now being performed with so much success. although the hero is a weakling, the subject a fiasco, the end a premature death and a personal disillusionment, yet, in spite of this theme, which might have been chosen for its depressing qualities, the unconquerable pæan of the praise of things, the ungovernable gaiety of the poet's song swells so high that at the end it seems to drown all the weak voices of the characters in one crashing chorus of great things and great men. a multitude of mottoes might be taken from the play to indicate and illustrate, not only its own spirit, but much of the spirit of modern life. when in the vision of the field of wagram the horrible voices of the wounded cry out, 'les corbeaux, les corbeaux,' the duke, overwhelmed with a nightmare of hideous trivialities, cries out, 'où, où sont les aigles?' that antithesis might stand alone as an invocation at the beginning of the twentieth century to the spirit of heroic comedy. when an ex-general of napoleon is asked his reason for having betrayed the emperor, he replies, 'la fatigue,' and at that a veteran private of the great army rushes forward, and crying passionately, 'et nous?' pours out a terrible description of the life lived by the common soldier. to-day when pessimism is almost as much a symbol of wealth and fashion as jewels or cigars, when the pampered heirs of the ages can sum up life in few other words but 'la fatigue,' there might surely come a cry from the vast mass of common humanity from the beginning 'et nous?' it is this potentiality for enthusiasm among the mass of men that makes the function of comedy at once common and sublime. shakespeare's 'much ado about nothing' is a great comedy, because behind it is the whole pressure of that love of love which is the youth of the world, which is common to all the young, especially to those who swear they will die bachelors and old maids. 'love's labour lost' is filled with the same energy, and there it falls even more definitely into the scope of our subject since it is a comedy in rhyme in which all men speak lyrically as naturally as the birds sing in pairing time. what the love of love is to the shakespearian comedies, that other and more mysterious human passion, the love of death, is to 'l'aiglon.' whether we shall ever have in england a new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult at present to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things, that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb. monsieur rostand, in his description of the battle of wagram, does not shrink from bringing about the duke's ears the frightful voices of actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when the duke, terrified at these dreadful appeals, asks them for their final word, they all cry together 'vive l'empereur!' monsieur rostand, perhaps, did not know that he was writing an allegory. to me that field of wagram is the field of the modern war of literature. we hear nothing but the voices of pain; the whole is one phonograph of horror. it is right that we should hear these things, it is right that not one of them should be silenced; but these cries of distress are not in life as they are in modern art the only voices, they are the voices of men, but not the voice of man. when questioned finally and seriously as to their conception of their destiny, men have from the beginning of time answered in a thousand philosophies and religions with a single voice and in a sense most sacred and tremendous, 'vive l'empereur.' charles ii there are a great many bonds which still connect us with charles ii., one of the idlest men of one of the idlest epochs. among other things charles ii. represented one thing which is very rare and very satisfying; he was a real and consistent sceptic. scepticism both in its advantages and disadvantages is greatly misunderstood in our time. there is a curious idea abroad that scepticism has some connection with such theories as materialism and atheism and secularism. this is of course a mistake; the true sceptic has nothing to do with these theories simply because they are theories. the true sceptic is as much a spiritualist as he is a materialist. he thinks that the savage dancing round an african idol stands quite as good a chance of being right as darwin. he thinks that mysticism is every bit as rational as rationalism. he has indeed the most profound doubts as to whether st matthew wrote his own gospel. but he has quite equally profound doubts as to whether the tree he is looking at is a tree and not a rhinoceros. this is the real meaning of that mystery which appears so prominently in the lives of great sceptics, which appears with especial prominence in the life of charles ii. i mean their constant oscillation between atheism and roman catholicism. roman catholicism is indeed a great and fixed and formidable system, but so is atheism. atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas, more daring than the vision of a palpable day of judgment. for it is the assertion of a universal negative; for a man to say that there is no god in the universe is like saying that there are no insects in any of the stars. thus it was with that wholesome and systematic sceptic, charles ii. when he took the sacrament according to the forms of the roman church in his last hour he was acting consistently as a philosopher. the wafer might not be god; similarly it might not be a wafer. to the genuine and poetical sceptic the whole world is incredible, with its bulbous mountains and its fantastic trees. the whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it. transubstantiation might be a dream, but if it was, it was assuredly a dream within a dream. charles ii. sought to guard himself against hell fire because he could not think hell itself more fantastic than the world as it was revealed by science. the priest crept up the staircase, the doors were closed, the few of the faithful who were present hushed themselves respectfully, and so, with every circumstance of secrecy and sanctity, with the cross uplifted and the prayers poured out, was consummated the last great act of logical unbelief. the problem of charles ii. consists in this, that he has scarcely a moral virtue to his name, and yet he attracts us morally. we feel that some of the virtues have been dropped out in the lists made by all the saints and sages, and that charles ii. was pre-eminently successful in these wild and unmentionable virtues. the real truth of this matter and the real relation of charles ii. to the moral ideal is worth somewhat more exhaustive study. it is a commonplace that the restoration movement can only be understood when considered as a reaction against puritanism. but it is insufficiently realised that the tyranny which half frustrated all the good work of puritanism was of a very peculiar kind. it was not the fire of puritanism, the exultation in sobriety, the frenzy of a restraint, which passed away; that still burns in the heart of england, only to be quenched by the final overwhelming sea. but it is seldom remembered that the puritans were in their day emphatically intellectual bullies, that they relied swaggeringly on the logical necessity of calvinism, that they bound omnipotence itself in the chains of syllogism. the puritans fell, through the damning fact that they had a complete theory of life, through the eternal paradox that a satisfactory explanation can never satisfy. like brutus and the logical romans, like the logical french jacobins, like the logical english utilitarians, they taught the lesson that men's wants have always been right and their arguments always wrong. reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. we speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it. the tyranny of the puritans over the bodies of men was comparatively a trifle; pikes, bullets, and conflagrations are comparatively a trifle. their real tyranny was the tyranny of aggressive reason over the cowed and demoralised human spirit. their brooding and raving can be forgiven, can in truth be loved and reverenced, for it is humanity on fire; hatred can be genial, madness can be homely. the puritans fell, not because they were fanatics, but because they were rationalists. when we consider these things, when we remember that puritanism, which means in our day a moral and almost temperamental attitude, meant in that day a singularly arrogant logical attitude, we shall comprehend a little more the grain of good that lay in the vulgarity and triviality of the restoration. the restoration, of which charles ii. was a pre-eminent type, was in part a revolt of all the chaotic and unclassed parts of human nature, the parts that are left over, and will always be left over, by every rationalistic system of life. this does not merely account for the revolt of the vices and of that empty recklessness and horseplay which is sometimes more irritating than any vice. it accounts also for the return of the virtue of politeness, for that also is a nameless thing ignored by logical codes. politeness has indeed about it something mystical; like religion, it is everywhere understood and nowhere defined. charles is not entirely to be despised because, as the type of this movement, he let himself float upon this new tide of politeness. there was some moral and social value in his perfection in little things. he could not keep the ten commandments, but he kept the ten thousand commandments. his name is unconnected with any great acts of duty or sacrifice, but it is connected with a great many of those acts of magnanimous politeness, of a kind of dramatic delicacy, which lie on the dim borderland between morality and art. 'charles ii.,' said thackeray, with unerring brevity, 'was a rascal but not a snob.' unlike george iv. he was a gentleman, and a gentleman is a man who obeys strange statutes, not to be found in any moral text-book, and practises strange virtues nameless from the beginning of the world. so much may be said and should be said for the restoration, that it was the revolt of something human, if only the débris of human nature. but more cannot be said. it was emphatically a fall and not an ascent, a recoil and not an advance, a sudden weakness and not a sudden strength. that the bow of human nature was by puritanism bent immeasurably too far, that it overstrained the soul by stretching it to the height of an almost horrible idealism, makes the collapse of the restoration infinitely more excusable, but it does not make it any the less a collapse. nothing can efface the essential distinction that puritanism was one of the world's great efforts after the discovery of the true order, whereas it was the essence of the restoration that it involved no effort at all. it is true that the restoration was not, as has been widely assumed, the most immoral epoch of our history. its vices cannot compare for a moment in this respect with the monstrous tragedies and almost suffocating secrecies and villainies of the court of james i. but the dram-drinking and nose-slitting of the saturnalia of charles ii. seem at once more human and more detestable than the passions and poisons of the renaissance, much in the same way that a monkey appears inevitably more human and more detestable than a tiger. compared with the renaissance, there is something cockney about the restoration. not only was it too indolent for great morality, it was too indolent even for great art. it lacked that seriousness which is needed even for the pursuit of pleasure, that discipline which is essential even to a game of lawn tennis. it would have appeared to charles ii.'s poets quite as arduous to write 'paradise lost' as to regain paradise. all old and vigorous languages abound in images and metaphors, which, though lightly and casually used, are in truth poems in themselves, and poems of a high and striking order. perhaps no phrase is so terribly significant as the phrase 'killing time.' it is a tremendous and poetical image, the image of a kind of cosmic parricide. there is on the earth a race of revellers who do, under all their exuberance, fundamentally regard time as an enemy. of these were charles ii. and the men of the restoration. whatever may have been their merits, and as we have said we think that they had merits, they can never have a place among the great representatives of the joy of life, for they belonged to those lower epicureans who kill time, as opposed to those higher epicureans who make time live. of a people in this temper charles ii. was the natural and rightful head. he may have been a pantomime king, but he was a king, and with all his geniality he let nobody forget it. he was not, indeed, the aimless flaneur that he has been represented. he was a patient and cunning politician, who disguised his wisdom under so perfect a mask of folly that he not only deceived his allies and opponents, but has deceived almost all the historians that have come after him. but if charles was, as he emphatically was, the only stuart who really achieved despotism, it was greatly due to the temper of the nation and the age. despotism is the easiest of all governments, at any rate for the governed. it is indeed a form of slavery, and it is the despot who is the slave. men in a state of decadence employ professionals to fight for them, professionals to dance for them, and a professional to rule them. almost all the faces in the portraits of that time look, as it were, like masks put on artificially with the perruque. a strange unreality broods over the period. distracted as we are with civic mysteries and problems, we can afford to rejoice. our tears are less desolate than their laughter, our restraints are larger than their liberty. stevenson[a] a recent incident has finally convinced us that stevenson was, as we suspected, a great man. we knew from recent books that we have noticed, from the scorn of 'ephemera critica' and mr george moore, that stevenson had the first essential qualification of a great man: that of being misunderstood by his opponents. but from the book which messrs chatto & windus have issued, in the same binding as stevenson's works, 'robert louis stevenson,' by mr h. bellyse baildon, we learn that he has the other essential qualification, that of being misunderstood by his admirers. mr baildon has many interesting things to tell us about stevenson himself, whom he knew at college. nor are his criticisms by any means valueless. that upon the plays, especially 'beau austin,' is remarkably thoughtful and true. but it is a very singular fact, and goes far, as we say, to prove that stevenson had that unfathomable quality which belongs to the great, that this admiring student of stevenson can number and marshal all the master's work and distribute praise and blame with decision and even severity, without ever thinking for a moment of the principles of art and ethics which would have struck us as the very things that stevenson nearly killed himself to express. mr baildon, for example, is perpetually lecturing stevenson for his 'pessimism'; surely a strange charge against the man who has done more than any modern artist to make men ashamed of their shame of life. but he complains that, in 'the master of ballantrae' and 'dr jekyll and mr hyde,' stevenson gives evil a final victory over good. now if there was one point that stevenson more constantly and passionately emphasised than any other it was that we must worship good for its own value and beauty, without any reference whatever to victory or failure in space and time. 'whatever we are intended to do,' he said, 'we are not intended to succeed.' that the stars in their courses fight against virtue, that humanity is in its nature a forlorn hope, this was the very spirit that through the whole of stevenson's work sounded a trumpet to all the brave. the story of henry durie is dark enough, but could anyone stand beside the grave of that sodden monomaniac and not respect him? it is strange that men should see sublime inspiration in the ruins of an old church and see none in the ruins of a man. the author has most extraordinary ideas about stevenson's tales of blood and spoil; he appears to think that they prove stevenson to have had (we use mr baildon's own phrase) a kind of 'homicidal mania.' 'he (stevenson) arrives pretty much at the paradox that one can hardly be better employed than in taking life.' mr baildon might as well say that dr conan doyle delights in committing inexplicable crimes, that mr clark russell is a notorious pirate, and that mr wilkie collins thought that one could hardly be better employed than in stealing moonstones and falsifying marriage registers. but mr baildon is scarcely alone in this error: few people have understood properly the goriness of stevenson. stevenson was essentially the robust schoolboy who draws skeletons and gibbets in his latin grammar. it was not that he took pleasure in death, but that he took pleasure in life, in every muscular and emphatic action of life, even if it were an action that took the life of another. let us suppose that one gentleman throws a knife at another gentleman and pins him to the wall. it is scarcely necessary to remark that there are in this transaction two somewhat varying personal points of view. the point of view of the man pinned is the tragic and moral point of view, and this stevenson showed clearly that he understood in such stories as 'the master of ballantrae' and 'weir of hermiston.' but there is another view of the matter--that in which the whole act is an abrupt and brilliant explosion of bodily vitality, like breaking a rock with a blow of a hammer, or just clearing a five-barred gate. this is the standpoint of romance, and it is the soul of 'treasure island' and 'the wrecker.' it was not, indeed, that stevenson loved men less, but that he loved clubs and pistols more. he had, in truth, in the devouring universalism of his soul, a positive love for inanimate objects such as has not been known since st francis called the sun brother and the well sister. we feel that he was actually in love with the wooden crutch that silver sent hurtling in the sunlight, with the box that billy bones left at the 'admiral benbow,' with the knife that wicks drove through his own hand and the table. there is always in his work a certain clean-cut angularity which makes us remember that he was fond of cutting wood with an axe. stevenson's new biographer, however, cannot make any allowance for this deep-rooted poetry of mere sight and touch. he is always imputing something to stevenson as a crime which stevenson really professed as an object. he says of that glorious riot of horror, 'the destroying angel,' in 'the dynamiter,' that it is 'highly fantastic and putting a strain on our credulity.' this is rather like describing the travels of baron munchausen as 'unconvincing.' the whole story of 'the dynamiter' is a kind of humorous nightmare, and even in that story 'the destroying angel' is supposed to be an extravagant lie made up on the spur of the moment. it is a dream within a dream, and to accuse it of improbability is like accusing the sky of being blue. but mr baildon, whether from hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least comprehend the rich and romantic irony of stevenson's london stories. he actually says of that portentous monument of humour, prince florizel of bohemia, that, 'though evidently admired by his creator, he is to me on the whole rather an irritating presence.' from this we are almost driven to believe (though desperately and against our will) that mr baildon thinks that prince florizel is to be taken seriously, as if he were a man in real life. for ourselves, prince florizel is almost our favourite character in fiction; but we willingly add the proviso that if we met him in real life we should kill him. the fact is, that the whole mass of stevenson's spiritual and intellectual virtues have been partly frustrated by one additional virtue--that of artistic dexterity. if he had chalked up his great message on a wall, like walt whitman, in large and straggling letters, it would have startled men like a blasphemy. but he wrote his light-headed paradoxes in so flowing a copy-book hand that everyone supposed they must be copy-book sentiments. he suffered from his versatility, not, as is loosely said, by not doing every department well enough, but by doing every department too well. as child, cockney, pirate, or puritan, his disguises were so good that most people could not see the same man under all. it is an unjust fact that if a man can play the fiddle, give legal opinions, and black boots just tolerably, he is called an admirable crichton, but if he does all three thoroughly well, he is apt to be regarded, in the several departments, as a common fiddler, a common lawyer, and a common boot-black. this is what has happened in the case of stevenson. if 'dr jekyll,' 'the master of ballantrae,' 'the child's garden of verses,' and 'across the plains' had been each of them one shade less perfectly done than they were, everyone would have seen that they were all parts of the same message; but by succeeding in the proverbial miracle of being in five places at once, he has naturally convinced others that he was five different people. but the real message of stevenson was as simple as that of mahomet, as moral as that of dante, as confident as that of whitman, and as practical as that of james watt. the conception which unites the whole varied work of stevenson was that romance, or the vision of the possibilities of things, was far more important than mere occurrences: that one was the soul of our life, the other the body, and that the soul was the precious thing. the germ of all his stories lies in the idea that every landscape or scrap of scenery has a soul: and that soul is a story. standing before a stunted orchard with a broken stone wall, we may know as a mere fact that no one has been through it but an elderly female cook. but everything exists in the human soul: that orchard grows in our own brain, and there it is the shrine and theatre of some strange chance between a girl and a ragged poet and a mad farmer. stevenson stands for the conception that ideas are the real incidents: that our fancies are our adventures. to think of a cow with wings is essentially to have met one. and this is the reason for his wide diversities of narrative: he had to make one story as rich as a ruby sunset, another as grey as a hoary monolith: for the story was the soul, or rather the meaning, of the bodily vision. it is quite inappropriate to judge 'the teller of tales' (as the samoans called him) by the particular novels he wrote, as one would judge mr george moore by 'esther waters.' these novels were only the two or three of his soul's adventures that he happened to tell. but he died with a thousand stories in his heart. [footnote a: 'robert louis stevenson: a life study in criticism.' by h. bellyse baildon. chatto & windus.] thomas carlyle there are two main moral necessities for the work of a great man: the first is that he should believe in the truth of his message; the second is that he should believe in the acceptability of his message. it was the whole tragedy of carlyle that he had the first and not the second. the ordinary capital, however, which is made out of carlyle's alleged gloom is a very paltry matter. carlyle had his faults, both as a man and as a writer, but the attempt to explain his gospel in terms of his 'liver' is merely pitiful. if indigestion invariably resulted in a 'sartor resartus,' it would be a vastly more tolerable thing than it is. diseases do not turn into poems; even the decadent really writes with the healthy part of his organism. if carlyle's private faults and literary virtues ran somewhat in the same line, he is only in the situation of every man; for every one of us it is surely very difficult to say precisely where our honest opinions end and our personal predilections begin. but to attempt to denounce carlyle as a mere savage egotist cannot arise from anything but a pure inability to grasp carlyle's gospel. 'ruskin,' says a critic, 'did, all the same, verily believe in god; carlyle believed only in himself.' this is certainly a distinction between the author he has understood and the author he has not understood. carlyle believed in himself, but he could not have believed in himself more than ruskin did; they both believed in god, because they felt that if everything else fell into wrack and ruin, themselves were permanent witnesses to god. where they both failed was not in belief in god or in belief in themselves; they failed in belief in other people. it is not enough for a prophet to believe in his message; he must believe in its acceptability. christ, st francis, bunyan, wesley, mr gladstone, walt whitman, men of indescribable variety, were all alike in a certain faculty of treating the average man as their equal, of trusting to his reason and good feeling without fear and without condescension. it was this simplicity of confidence, not only in god, but in the image of god, that was lacking in carlyle. but the attempts to discredit carlyle's religious sentiment must absolutely fall to the ground. the profound security of carlyle's sense of the unity of the cosmos is like that of a hebrew prophet; and it has the same expression that it had in the hebrew prophets--humour. a man must be very full of faith to jest about his divinity. no neo-pagan delicately suggesting a revival of dionysius, no vague, half-converted theosophist groping towards a recognition of buddha, would ever think of cracking jokes on the matter. but to the hebrew prophets their religion was so solid a thing, like a mountain or a mammoth, that the irony of its contact with trivial and fleeting matters struck them like a blow. so it was with carlyle. his supreme contribution, both to philosophy and literature, was his sense of the sarcasm of eternity. other writers had seen the hope or the terror of the heavens, he alone saw the humour of them. other writers had seen that there could be something elemental and eternal in a song or statute, he alone saw that there could be something elemental and eternal in a joke. no one who ever read it will forget the passage, full of dark and agnostic gratification, in which he narrates that some court chronicler described louis xv. as 'falling asleep in the lord.' 'enough for us that he did fall asleep; that, curtained in thick night, under what keeping we ask not, he at least will never, through unending ages, insult the face of the sun any more ... and we go on, if not to better forms of beastliness, at least to fresher ones.' the supreme value of carlyle to english literature was that he was the founder of modern irrationalism; a movement fully as important as modern rationalism. a great deal is said in these days about the value or valuelessness of logic. in the main, indeed, logic is not a productive tool so much as a weapon of defence. a man building up an intellectual system has to build like nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. the imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword. a wide experience of actual intellectual affairs will lead most people to the conclusion that logic is mainly valuable as a weapon wherewith to exterminate logicians. but though this may be true enough in practice, it scarcely clears up the position of logic in human affairs. logic is a machine of the mind, and if it is used honestly it ought to bring out an honest conclusion. when people say that you can prove anything by logic, they are not using words in a fair sense. what they mean is that you can prove anything by bad logic. deep in the mystic ingratitude of the soul of man there is an extraordinary tendency to use the name for an organ, when what is meant is the abuse or decay of that organ. thus we speak of a man suffering from 'nerves,' which is about as sensible as talking about a man suffering from ten fingers. we speak of 'liver' and 'digestion' when we mean the failure of liver and the absence of digestion. and in the same manner we speak of the dangers of logic, when what we really mean is the danger of fallacy. but the real point about the limitation of logic and the partial overthrow of logic by writers like carlyle is deeper and somewhat different. the fault of the great mass of logicians is not that they bring out a false result, or, in other words, are not logicians at all. their fault is that by an inevitable psychological habit they tend to forget that there are two parts of a logical process--the first the choosing of an assumption, and the second the arguing upon it; and humanity, if it devotes itself too persistently to the study of sound reasoning, has a certain tendency to lose the faculty of sound assumption. it is astonishing how constantly one may hear from rational and even rationalistic persons such a phrase as 'he did not prove the very thing with which he started,' or 'the whole of his case rested upon a pure assumption,' two peculiarities which may be found by the curious in the works of euclid. it is astonishing, again, how constantly one hears rationalists arguing upon some deep topic, apparently without troubling about the deep assumptions involved, having lost their sense, as it were, of the real colour and character of a man's assumption. for instance, two men will argue about whether patriotism is a good thing and never discover until the end, if at all, that the cosmopolitan is basing his whole case upon the idea that man should, if he can, become as god, with equal sympathies and no prejudices, while the nationalist denies any such duty at the very start, and regards man as an animal who has preferences, as a bird has feathers. * * * * * thus it was with carlyle: he startled men by attacking not arguments but assumptions. he simply brushed aside all the matters which the men of the nineteenth century held to be incontrovertible, and appealed directly to the very different class of matters which they knew to be true. he induced men to study less the truth of their reasoning, and more the truth of the assumptions upon which they reasoned. even where his view was not the highest truth, it was always a refreshing and beneficent heresy. he denied every one of the postulates upon which the age of reason based itself. he denied the theory of progress which assumed that we must be better off than the people of the twelfth century. whether we were better than the people of the twelfth century according to him depended entirely upon whether we chose or deserved to be. he denied every type and species of prop or association or support which threw the responsibility upon civilisation or society, or anything but the individual conscience. he has often been called a prophet. the real ground of the truth of this phrase is often neglected. since the last era of purely religious literature, the era of english puritanism, there has been no writer in whose eyes the soul stood so much alone. carlyle was, as we have suggested, a mystic, and mysticism was with him, as with all its genuine professors, only a transcendent form of common-sense. mysticism and common-sense alike consist in a sense of the dominance of certain truths and tendencies which cannot be formally demonstrated or even formally named. mysticism and common-sense are alike appeals to realities that we all know to be real, but which have no place in argument except as postulates. carlyle's work did consist in breaking through formulas, old and new, to these old and silent and ironical sanities. philosophers might abolish kings a hundred times over, he maintained, they could not alter the fact that every man and woman does choose a king and repudiate all the pride of citizenship for the exultation of humility. if inequality of this kind was a weakness, it was a weakness bound up with the very strength of the universe. about hero worship, indeed, few critics have done the smallest justice to carlyle. misled by those hasty and choleric passages in which he sometimes expressed a preference for mere violence, passages which were a great deal more connected with his temperament than with his philosophy, they have finally imbibed the notion that carlyle's theory of hero worship was a theory of terrified submission to stern and arrogant men. as a matter of fact, carlyle is really inhumane about some questions, but he is never inhumane about hero worship. his view is not that human nature is so vulgar and silly a thing that it must be guided and driven; it is, on the contrary, that human nature is so chivalrous and fundamentally magnanimous a thing that even the meanest have it in them to love a leader more than themselves, and to prefer loyalty to rebellion. when he speaks of this trait in human nature carlyle's tone invariably softens. we feel that for the moment he is kindled with admiration of mankind, and almost reaches the verge of christianity. whatever else was acid and captious about carlyle's utterances, his hero worship was not only humane, it was almost optimistic. he admired great men primarily, and perhaps correctly, because he thought that they were more human than other men. the evil side of the influence of carlyle and his religion of hero worship did not consist in the emotional worship of valour and success; that was a part of him, as, indeed, it is a part of all healthy children. where carlyle really did harm was in the fact that he, more than any modern man, is responsible for the increase of that modern habit of what is vulgarly called 'going the whole hog.' often in matters of passion and conquest it is a singularly hoggish hog. this remarkable modern craze for making one's philosophy, religion, politics, and temper all of a piece, of seeking in all incidents for opportunities to assert and reassert some favourite mental attitude, is a thing which existed comparatively little in other centuries. solomon and horace, petrarch and shakespeare were pessimists when they were melancholy, and optimists when they were happy. but the optimist of to-day seems obliged to prove that gout and unrequited love make him dance with joy, and the pessimist of to-day to prove that sunshine and a good supper convulse him with inconsolable anguish. carlyle was strongly possessed with this mania for spiritual consistency. he wished to take the same view of the wars of the angels and of the paltriest riot at donnybrook fair. it was this species of insane logic which led him into his chief errors, never his natural enthusiasms. let us take an example. carlyle's defence of slavery is a thoroughly ridiculous thing, weak alike in argument and in moral instinct. the truth is, that he only took it up from the passion for applying everywhere his paradoxical defence of aristocracy. he blundered, of course, because he did not see that slavery has nothing in the world to do with aristocracy, that it is, indeed, almost its opposite. the defence which carlyle and all its thoughtful defenders have made for aristocracy was that a few persons could more rapidly and firmly decide public affairs in the interests of the people. but slavery is not even supposed to be a government for the good of the governed. it is a possession of the governed avowedly for the good of the governors. aristocracy uses the strong for the service of the weak; slavery uses the weak for the service of the strong. it is no derogation to man as a spiritual being, as carlyle firmly believed he was, that he should be ruled and guided for his own good like a child--for a child who is always ruled and guided we regard as the very type of spiritual existence. but it is a derogation and an absolute contradiction to that human spirituality in which carlyle believed that a man should be owned like a tool for someone else's good, as if he had no personal destiny in the cosmos. we draw attention to this particular error of carlyle's because we think that it is a curious example of the waste and unclean places into which that remarkable animal, 'the whole hog,' more than once led him. in this respect carlyle has had unquestionably long and an unquestionably bad influence. the whole of that recent political ethic which conceives that if we only go far enough we may finish a thing for once and all, that being strong consists chiefly in being deliberately deaf and blind, owes a great deal of its complete sway to his example. out of him flows most of the philosophy of nietzsche, who is in modern times the supreme maniac of this moonstruck consistency. though nietzsche and carlyle were in reality profoundly different, carlyle being a stiff-necked peasant and nietzsche a very fragile aristocrat, they were alike in this one quality of which we speak, the strange and pitiful audacity with which they applied their single ethical test to everything in heaven and earth. the disciple of nietzsche, indeed, embraces immorality like an austere and difficult faith. he urges himself to lust and cruelty with the same tremulous enthusiasm with which a christian urges himself to purity and patience; he struggles as a monk struggles with bestial visions and temptations with the ancient necessities of honour and justice and compassion. to this madhouse, it can hardly be denied, has carlyle's intellectual courage brought many at last. tolstoy and the cult of simplicity the whole world is certainly heading for a great simplicity, not deliberately, but rather inevitably. it is not a mere fashion of false innocence, like that of the french aristocrats before the revolution, who built an altar to pan, and who taxed the peasantry for the enormous expenditure which is needed in order to live the simple life of peasants. the simplicity towards which the world is driving is the necessary outcome of all our systems and speculations and of our deep and continuous contemplation of things. for the universe is like everything in it; we have to look at it repeatedly and habitually before we see it. it is only when we have seen it for the hundredth time that we see it for the first time. the more consistently things are contemplated, the more they tend to unify themselves and therefore to simplify themselves. the simplification of anything is always sensational. thus monotheism is the most sensational of things: it is as if we gazed long at a design full of disconnected objects, and, suddenly, with a stunning thrill, they came together into a huge and staring face. few people will dispute that all the typical movements of our time are upon this road towards simplification. each system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. in art, for example, the old conception of man, classic as the apollo belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with colourless hair and a freckled face. then comes the impressionist, going yet deeper, who asserts that to his physical eye, which alone is certain, man is a creature with purple hair and a grey face. then comes the symbolist, and says that to his soul, which alone is certain, man is a creature with green hair and a blue face. and all the great writers of our time represent in one form or another this attempt to re-establish communication with the elemental, or, as it is sometimes more roughly and fallaciously expressed, to return to nature. some think that the return to nature consists in drinking no wine; some think that it consists in drinking a great deal more than is good for them. some think that the return to nature is achieved by beating swords into ploughshares; some think it is achieved by turning ploughshares into very ineffectual british war office bayonets. it is natural, according to the jingo, for a man to kill other people with gunpowder and himself with gin. it is natural, according to the humanitarian revolutionist, to kill other people with dynamite and himself with vegetarianism. it would be too obviously philistine a sentiment, perhaps, to suggest that the claim of either of these persons to be obeying the voice of nature is interesting when we consider that they require huge volumes of paradoxical argument to persuade themselves or anyone else of the truth of their conclusions. but the giants of our time are undoubtedly alike in that they approach by very different roads this conception of the return to simplicity. ibsen returns to nature by the angular exterior of fact, maeterlinck by the eternal tendencies of fable. whitman returns to nature by seeing how much he can accept, tolstoy by seeing how much he can reject. now, this heroic desire to return to nature is, of course, in some respects, rather like the heroic desire of a kitten to return to its own tail. a tail is a simple and beautiful object, rhythmic in curve and soothing in texture; but it is certainly one of the minor but characteristic qualities of a tail that it should hang behind. it is impossible to deny that it would in some degree lose its character if attached to any other part of the anatomy. now, nature is like a tail in the sense that it is vitally important if it is to discharge its real duty that it should be always behind. to imagine that we can see nature, especially our own nature, face to face is a folly; it is even a blasphemy. it is like the conduct of a cat in some mad fairy-tale, who should set out on his travels with the firm conviction that he would find his tail growing like a tree in the meadows at the end of the world. and the actual effect of the travels of the philosopher in search of nature when seen from the outside looks very like the gyrations of the tail-pursuing kitten, exhibiting much enthusiasm but little dignity, much cry and very little tail. the grandeur of nature is that she is omnipotent and unseen, that she is perhaps ruling us most when we think that she is heeding us least. 'thou art a god that hidest thyself,' said the hebrew poet. it may be said with all reverence that it is behind a man's back that the spirit of nature hides. it is this consideration that lends a certain air of futility even to all the inspired simplicities and thunderous veracities of tolstoy. we feel that a man cannot make himself simple merely by warring on complexity; we feel, indeed, in our saner moments that a man cannot make himself simple at all. a self-conscious simplicity may well be far more intrinsically ornate than luxury itself. indeed, a great deal of the pomp and sumptuousness of the world's history was simple in the truest sense. it was born of an almost babyish receptiveness; it was the work of men who had eyes to wonder and men who had ears to hear. 'king solomon brought merchant men because of his desire with peacocks, apes and ivory, from tarshish unto tyre.' but this proceeding was not a part of the wisdom of solomon; it was a part of his folly--i had almost said of his innocence. tolstoy, we feel, would not be content with hurling satire and denunciation at 'solomon in all his glory.' with fierce and unimpeachable logic he would go a step further. he would spend days and nights in the meadows stripping the shameless crimson coronals off the lilies of the field. the new collection of 'tales from tolstoy,' translated and edited by mr r. nisbet bain, is calculated to draw particular attention to this ethical and ascetic side of tolstoy's work. in one sense, and that the deepest sense, the work of tolstoy is, of course, a genuine and noble appeal to simplicity. the narrow notion that an artist may not teach is pretty well exploded by now. but the truth of the matter is, that an artist teaches far more by his mere background and properties, his landscape, his costume, his idiom and technique--all the part of his work, in short, of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by the elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly imagines to be his opinions. the real distinction between the ethics of high art and the ethics of manufactured and didactic art lies in the simple fact that the bad fable has a moral, while the good fable is a moral. and the real moral of tolstoy comes out constantly in these stories, the great moral which lies at the heart of all his work, of which he is probably unconscious, and of which it is quite likely that he would vehemently disapprove. the curious cold white light of morning that shines over all the tales, the folklore simplicity with which 'a man or a woman' are spoken of without further identification, the love--one might almost say the lust--for the qualities of brute materials, the hardness of wood, and the softness of mud, the ingrained belief in a certain ancient kindliness sitting beside the very cradle of the race of man--these influences are truly moral. when we put beside them the trumpeting and tearing nonsense of the didactic tolstoy, screaming for an obscene purity, shouting for an inhuman peace, hacking up human life into small sins with a chopper, sneering at men, women, and children out of respect to humanity, combining in one chaos of contradictions an unmanly puritan and an uncivilised prig, then, indeed, we scarcely know whither tolstoy has vanished. we know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man. it is difficult in every case to reconcile tolstoy the great artist with tolstoy the almost venomous reformer. it is difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age. it is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures, from courtship to tobacco. it is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being, with the landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a virtue as that which attaches a man to his own ancestors and his own land. it is difficult to believe that the man who feels so poignantly the detestable insolence of oppression would not actually, if he had the chance, lay the oppressor flat with his fist. all, however, arises from the search after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if i may so express it, more natural than it is natural to be. it would not only be more human, it would be more humble of us to be content to be complex. the truest kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth. the work of tolstoy has another and more special significance. it represents the re-assertion of a certain awful common-sense which characterised the most extreme utterances of christ. it is true that we cannot turn the cheek to the smiter; it is true that we cannot give our cloak to the robber; civilisation is too complicated, too vainglorious, too emotional. the robber would brag, and we should blush; in other words, the robber and we are alike sentimentalists. the command of christ is impossible, but it is not insane; it is rather sanity preached to a planet of lunatics. if the whole world was suddenly stricken with a sense of humour it would find itself mechanically fulfilling the sermon on the mount. it is not the plain facts of the world which stand in the way of that consummation, but its passions of vanity and self-advertisement and morbid sensibility. it is true that we cannot turn the cheek to the smiter, and the sole and sufficient reason is that we have not the pluck. tolstoy and his followers have shown that they have the pluck, and even if we think they are mistaken, by this sign they conquer. their theory has the strength of an utterly consistent thing. it represents that doctrine of mildness and non-resistance which is the last and most audacious of all the forms of resistance to every existing authority. it is the great strike of the quakers which is more formidable than many sanguinary revolutions. if human beings could only succeed in achieving a real passive resistance they would be strong with the appalling strength of inanimate things, they would be calm with the maddening calm of oak or iron, which conquer without vengeance and are conquered without humiliation. the theory of christian duty enunciated by them is that we should never conquer by force, but always, if we can, conquer by persuasion. in their mythology st george did not conquer the dragon: he tied a pink ribbon round its neck and gave it a saucer of milk. according to them, a course of consistent kindness to nero would have turned him into something only faintly represented by alfred the great. in fact, the policy recommended by this school for dealing with the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this world is accurately summed up in the celebrated verse of mr edward lear: 'there was an old man who said, "how shall i flee from this terrible cow? i will sit on a stile and continue to smile, till i soften the heart of this cow."' their confidence in human nature is really honourable and magnificent; it takes the form of refusing to believe the overwhelming majority of mankind, even when they set out to explain their own motives. but although most of us would in all probability tend at first sight to consider this new sect of christians as little less outrageous than some brawling and absurd sect in the reformation, yet we should fall into a singular error in doing so. the christianity of tolstoy is, when we come to consider it, one of the most thrilling and dramatic incidents in our modern civilisation. it represents a tribute to the christian religion more sensational than the breaking of seals or the falling of stars. from the point of view of a rationalist, the whole world is rendered almost irrational by the single phenomenon of christian socialism. it turns the scientific universe topsy-turvy, and makes it essentially possible that the key of all social evolution may be found in the dusty casket of some discredited creed. it cannot be amiss to consider this phenomenon as it really is. the religion of christ has, like many true things, been disproved an extraordinary number of times. it was disproved by the neo-platonist philosophers at the very moment when it was first starting forth upon its startling and universal career. it was disproved again by many of the sceptics of the renaissance only a few years before its second and supremely striking embodiment, the religion of puritanism, was about to triumph over many kings, and civilise many continents. we all agree that these schools of negation were only interludes in its history; but we all believe naturally and inevitably that the negation of our own day is really a breaking up of the theological cosmos, an armageddon, a ragnorak, a twilight of the gods. the man of the nineteenth century, like a schoolboy of sixteen, believes that his doubt and depression are symbols of the end of the world. in our day the great irreligionists who did nothing but dethrone god and drive angels before them have been outstripped, distanced, and made to look orthodox and humdrum. a newer race of sceptics has found something infinitely more exciting to do than nailing down the lids upon a million coffins, and the body upon a single cross. they have disputed not only the elementary creeds, but the elementary laws of mankind, property, patriotism, civil obedience. they have arraigned civilisation as openly as the materialists have arraigned theology; they have damned all the philosophers even lower than they have damned the saints. thousands of modern men move quietly and conventionally among their fellows while holding views of national limitation or landed property that would have made voltaire shudder like a nun listening to blasphemies. and the last and wildest phase of this saturnalia of scepticism, the school that goes furthest among thousands who go so far, the school that denies the moral validity of those ideals of courage or obedience which are recognised even among pirates, this school bases itself upon the literal words of christ, like dr watts or messrs moody and sankey. never in the whole history of the world was such a tremendous tribute paid to the vitality of an ancient creed. compared with this, it would be a small thing if the red sea were cloven asunder, or the sun did stand still at mid-day. we are faced with the phenomenon that a set of revolutionists whose contempt for all the ideals of family and nation would evoke horror in a thieves' kitchen, who can rid themselves of those elementary instincts of the man and the gentleman which cling to the very bones of our civilisation, cannot rid themselves of the influence of two or three remote oriental anecdotes written in corrupt greek. the fact, when realised, has about it something stunning and hypnotic. the most convinced rationalist is in its presence suddenly stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees the immense sceptical cosmogonies of this age as dreams going the way of a thousand forgotten heresies, and believes for a moment that the dark sayings handed down through eighteen centuries may, indeed, contain in themselves the revolutions of which we have only begun to dream. this value which we have above suggested, unquestionably belongs to the tolstoians, who may roughly be described as the new quakers. with their strange optimism, and their almost appalling logical courage, they offer a tribute to christianity which no orthodoxies could offer. it cannot but be remarkable to watch a revolution in which both the rulers and the rebels march under the same symbol. but the actual theory of non-resistance itself, with all its kindred theories, is not, i think, characterised by that intellectual obviousness and necessity which its supporters claim for it. a pamphlet before us shows us an extraordinary number of statements about the new testament, of which the accuracy is by no means so striking as the confidence. to begin with, we must protest against a habit of quoting and paraphrasing at the same time. when a man is discussing what jesus meant, let him state first of all what he said, not what the man thinks he would have said if he had expressed himself more clearly. here is an instance of question and answer: q. 'how did our master himself sum up the law in a few words?' a. 'be ye merciful, be ye perfect even as your father; your father in the spirit world is merciful, is perfect.' there is nothing in this, perhaps, which christ might not have said except the abominable metaphysical modernism of 'the spirit world'; but to say that it is recorded that he did say it, is like saying it is recorded that he preferred palm trees to sycamores. it is a simple and unadulterated untruth. the author should know that these words have meant a thousand things to a thousand people, and that if more ancient sects had paraphrased them as cheerfully as he, he would never have had the text upon which he founds his theory. in a pamphlet in which plain printed words cannot be left alone, it is not surprising if there are mis-statements upon larger matters. here is a statement clearly and philosophically laid down which we can only content ourselves with flatly denying: 'the fifth rule of our lord is that we should take special pains to cultivate the same kind of regard for people of foreign countries, and for those generally who do not belong to us, or even have an antipathy to us, which we already entertain towards our own people, and those who are in sympathy with us.' i should very much like to know where in the whole of the new testament the author finds this violent, unnatural, and immoral proposition. christ did not have the same kind of regard for one person as for another. we are specifically told that there were certain persons whom he specially loved. it is most improbable that he thought of other nations as he thought of his own. the sight of his national city moved him to tears, and the highest compliment he paid was, 'behold an israelite indeed.' the author has simply confused two entirely distinct things. christ commanded us to have love for all men, but even if we had equal love for all men, to speak of having the same love for all men is merely bewildering nonsense. if we love a man at all, the impression he produces on us must be vitally different to the impression produced by another man whom we love. to speak of having the same kind of regard for both is about as sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. christ did not love humanity; he never said he loved humanity: he loved men. neither he nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a gigantic centipede. and the reason that the tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their own theories, a love which would be an insult to a tom-cat. but the greatest error of all lies in the mere act of cutting up the teaching of the new testament into five rules. it precisely and ingeniously misses the most dominant characteristic of the teaching--its absolute spontaneity. the abyss between christ and all his modern interpreters is that we have no record that he ever wrote a word, except with his finger in the sand. the whole is the history of one continuous and sublime conversation. thousands of rules have been deduced from it before these tolstoian rules were made, and thousands will be deduced afterwards. it was not for any pompous proclamation, it was not for any elaborate output of printed volumes; it was for a few splendid and idle words that the cross was set up on calvary, and the earth gaped, and the sun was darkened at noonday. savonarola savonarola is a man whom we shall probably never understand until we know what horror may lie at the heart of civilisation. this we shall not know until we are civilised. it may be hoped, in one sense, that we may never understand savonarola. the great deliverers of men have, for the most part, saved them from calamities which we all recognise as evil, from calamities which are the ancient enemies of humanity. the great law-givers saved us from anarchy: the great physicians saved us from pestilence: the great reformers saved us from starvation. but there is a huge and bottomless evil compared with which all these are flea-bites, the most desolating curse that can fall upon men or nations, and it has no name, except we call it satisfaction. savonarola did not save men from anarchy, but from order; not from pestilence, but from paralysis; not from starvation, but from luxury. men like savonarola are the witnesses to the tremendous psychological fact at the back of all our brains, but for which no name has ever been found, that ease is the worst enemy of happiness, and civilisation potentially the end of man. for i fancy that savonarola's thrilling challenge to the luxury of his day went far deeper than the mere question of sin. the modern rationalistic admirers of savonarola, from george eliot downwards, dwell, truly enough, upon the sound ethical justification of savonarola's anger, upon the hideous and extravagant character of the crimes which polluted the palaces of the renaissance. but they need not be so anxious to show that savonarola was no ascetic, that he merely picked out the black specks of wickedness with the priggish enlightenment of a member of an ethical society. probably he did hate the civilisation of his time, and not merely its sins; and that is precisely where he was infinitely more profound than a modern moralist. he saw that the actual crimes were not the only evils: that stolen jewels and poisoned wine and obscene pictures were merely the symptoms; that the disease was the complete dependence upon jewels and wine and pictures. this is a thing constantly forgotten in judging of ascetics and puritans in old times. a denunciation of harmless sports did not always mean an ignorant hatred of what no one but a narrow moralist would call harmful. sometimes it meant an exceedingly enlightened hatred of what no one but a narrow moralist would call harmless. ascetics are sometimes more advanced than the average man, as well as less. such, at least, was the hatred in the heart of savonarola. he was making war against no trivial human sins, but against godless and thankless quiescence, against getting used to happiness, the mystic sin by which all creation fell. he was preaching that severity which is the sign-manual of youth and hope. he was preaching that alertness, that clean agility and vigilance, which is as necessary to gain pleasure as to gain holiness, as indispensable in a lover as in a monk. a critic has truly pointed out that savonarola could not have been fundamentally anti-æsthetic, since he had such friends as michael angelo, botticelli, and luca della robbia. the fact is that this purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. to let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell patiently the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure, and an education in gratitude. the civilisation which surrounded savonarola on every side was a civilisation which had already taken the wrong turn, the turn that leads to endless inventions and no discoveries, in which new things grow old with confounding rapidity, but in which no old things ever grow new. the monstrosity of the crimes of the renaissance was not a mark of imagination; it was a mark, as all monstrosity is, of the loss of imagination. it is only when a man has really ceased to see a horse as it is, that he invents a centaur, only when he can no longer be surprised at an ox, that he worships the devil. diablerie is the stimulant of the jaded fancy; it is the dram-drinking of the artist. savonarola addressed himself to the hardest of all earthly tasks, that of making men turn back and wonder at the simplicities they had learnt to ignore. it is strange that the most unpopular of all doctrines is the doctrine which declares the common life divine. democracy, of which savonarola was so fiery an exponent, is the hardest of gospels; there is nothing that so terrifies men as the decree that they are all kings. christianity, in savonarola's mind, identical with democracy, is the hardest of gospels; there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as the saying that they are all the sons of god. savonarola and his republic fell. the drug of despotism was administered to the people, and they forgot what they had been. there are some at the present day who have so strange a respect for art and letters, and for mere men of genius, that they conceive the reign of the medici to be an improvement on that of the great florentine republican. it is such men as these and their civilisation that we have at the present day to fear. we are surrounded on many sides by the same symptoms as those which awoke the unquenchable wrath of savonarola--a hedonism that is more sick of happiness than an invalid is sick of pain, an art sense that seeks the assistance of crime since it has exhausted nature. in many modern works we find veiled and horrible hints of a truly renaissance sense of the beauty of blood, the poetry of murder. the bankrupt and depraved imagination does not see that a living man is far more dramatic than a dead one. along with this, as in the time of the medici, goes the falling back into the arms of despotism, the hunger for the strong man which is unknown among strong men. the masterful hero is worshipped as he is worshipped by the readers of the 'bow bells novelettes,' and for the same reason--a profound sense of personal weakness. that tendency to devolve our duties descends on us, which is the soul of slavery, alike whether for its menial tasks it employs serfs or emperors. against all this the great clerical republican stands in everlasting protest, preferring his failure to his rival's success. the issue is still between him and lorenzo, between the responsibilities of liberty and the licence of slavery, between the perils of truth and the security of silence, between the pleasure of toil and the toil of pleasure. the supporters of lorenzo the magnificent are assuredly among us, men for whom even nations and empires only exist to satisfy the moment, men to whom the last hot hour of summer is better than a sharp and wintry spring. they have an art, a literature, a political philosophy, which are all alike valued for their immediate effect upon the taste, not for what they promise of the destiny of the spirit. their statuettes and sonnets are rounded and perfect, while 'macbeth' is in comparison a fragment, and the moses of michael angelo a hint. their campaigns and battles are always called triumphant, while cæsar and cromwell wept for many humiliations. and the end of it all is the hell of no resistance, the hell of an unfathomable softness, until the whole nature recoils into madness and the chamber of civilisation is no longer merely a cushioned apartment, but a padded cell. this last and worst of human miseries savonarola saw afar off, and bent his whole gigantic energies to turning the chariot into another course. few men understood his object; some called him a madman, some a charlatan, some an enemy of human joy. they would not even have understood if he had told them, if he had said that he was saving them from a calamity of contentment which should be the end of joys and sorrows alike. but there are those to-day who feel the same silent danger, and who bend themselves to the same silent resistance. they also are supposed to be contending for some trivial political scruple. mr m'hardy says, in defending savonarola, that the number of fine works of art destroyed in the burning of the vanities has been much exaggerated. i confess that i hope the pile contained stacks of incomparable masterpieces if the sacrifice made that one real moment more real. of one thing i am sure, that savonarola's friend michael angelo would have piled all his own statues one on top of the other, and burnt them to ashes, if only he had been certain that the glow transfiguring the sky was the dawn of a younger and wiser world. the position of sir walter scott walter scott is a writer who should just now be re-emerging into his own high place in letters, for unquestionably the recent, though now dwindling, schools of severely technical and æsthetic criticism have been unfavourable to him. he was a chaotic and unequal writer, and if there is one thing in which artists have improved since his time, it is in consistency and equality. it would perhaps be unkind to inquire whether the level of the modern man of letters, as compared with scott, is due to the absence of valleys or the absence of mountains. but in any case, we have learnt in our day to arrange our literary effects carefully, and the only point in which we fall short of scott is in the incidental misfortune that we have nothing particular to arrange. it is said that scott is neglected by modern readers; if so, the matter could be more appropriately described by saying that modern readers are neglected by providence. the ground of this neglect, in so far as it exists, must be found, i suppose, in the general sentiment that, like the beard of polonius, he is too long. yet it is surely a peculiar thing that in literature alone a house should be despised because it is too large, or a host impugned because he is too generous. if romance be really a pleasure, it is difficult to understand the modern reader's consuming desire to get it over, and if it be not a pleasure, it is difficult to understand his desire to have it at all. mere size, it seems to me, cannot be a fault. the fault must lie in some disproportion. if some of scott's stories are dull and dilatory, it is not because they are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples. scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but i do not think that it can be shown that the large and elaborate plan on which his stories are built was by any means an imperfection. he arranged his endless prefaces and his colossal introductions just as an architect plans great gates and long approaches to a really large house. he did not share the latter-day desire to get quickly through a story. he enjoyed narrative as a sensation; he did not wish to swallow a story like a pill that it should do him good afterwards. he desired to taste it like a glass of port, that it might do him good at the time. the reader sits late at his banquets. his characters have that air of immortality which belongs to those of dumas and dickens. we should not be surprised to meet them in any number of sequels. scott, in his heart of hearts, probably would have liked to write an endless story without either beginning or close. walter scott is a great, and, therefore, mysterious man. he will never be understood until romance is understood, and that will be only when time, man, and eternity are understood. to say that scott had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of the romantic seems, in these days, a slight and superficial tribute. the whole modern theory arises from one fundamental mistake--the idea that romance is in some way a plaything with life, a figment, a conventionality, a thing upon the outside. no genuine criticism of romance will ever arise until we have grasped the fact that romance lies not upon the outside of life but absolutely in the centre of it. the centre of every man's existence is a dream. death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like toothache or a twisted ankle. that these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel. the boast of the realist (applying what the reviewers call his scalpel) is that he cuts into the heart of life; but he makes a very shallow incision if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and sentimental as a penny novelette. the literature of candour unearths innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called romance. it perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but it does not perceive the deepest of sins--the sin of vanity--vanity which is the mother of all day-dreams and adventures, the one sin that is not shared with any boon companion, or whispered to any priest. in estimating, therefore, the ground of scott's pre-eminence in romance we must absolutely rid ourselves of the notion that romance or adventure are merely materialistic things involved in the tangle of a plot or the multiplicity of drawn swords. we must remember that it is, like tragedy or farce, a state of the soul, and that, for some dark and elemental reason which we can never understand, this state of the soul is evoked in us by the sight of certain places or the contemplation of certain human crises, by a stream rushing under a heavy and covered wooden bridge, or by a man plunging a knife or sword into tough timber. in the selection of these situations which catch the spirit of romance as in a net, scott has never been equalled or even approached. his finest scenes affect us like fragments of a hilarious dream. they have the same quality which is often possessed by those nocturnal comedies--that of seeming more human than our waking life--even while they are less possible. sir arthur wardour, with his daughter and the old beggar crouching in a cranny of the cliff as night falls and the tide closes around them, are actually in the coldest and bitterest of practical situations. yet the whole incident has a quality that can only be called boyish. it is warmed with all the colours of an incredible sunset. rob roy trapped in the tolbooth, and confronted with bailie nicol jarvie, draws no sword, leaps from no window, affects none of the dazzling external acts upon which contemporary romance depends, yet that plain and humorous dialogue is full of the essential philosophy of romance which is an almost equal betting upon man and destiny. perhaps the most profoundly thrilling of all scott's situations is that in which the family of colonel mannering are waiting for the carriage which may or may not arrive by night to bring an unknown man into a princely possession. yet almost the whole of that thrilling scene consists of a ridiculous conversation about food, and flirtation between a frivolous old lawyer and a fashionable girl. we can say nothing about what makes these scenes, except that the wind bloweth where it listeth, and that here the wind blows strong. it is in this quality of what may be called spiritual adventurousness that scott stands at so different an elevation to the whole of the contemporary crop of romancers who have followed the leadership of dumas. there has, indeed, been a great and inspiriting revival of romance in our time, but it is partly frustrated in almost every case by this rooted conception that romance consists in the vast multiplication of incidents and the violent acceleration of narrative. the heroes of mr stanley weyman scarcely ever have their swords out of their hands; the deeper presence of romance is far better felt when the sword is at the hip ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. the stanley weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. in scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of honour as their disposition to linger over their meals. the conviviality of the clerk of copmanhurst or of mr pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are described as eating, is one of the most perfect of scott's poetic touches. in short, mr stanley weyman is filled with the conviction that the sole essence of romance is to move with insatiable rapidity from incident to incident. in the truer romance of scott there is more of the sentiment of 'oh! still delay, thou art so fair'; more of a certain patriarchal enjoyment of things as they are--of the sword by the side and the wine-cup in the hand. romance, indeed, does not consist by any means so much in experiencing adventures as in being ready for them. how little the actual boy cares for incidents in comparison to tools and weapons may be tested by the fact that the most popular story of adventure is concerned with a man who lived for years on a desert island with two guns and a sword, which he never had to use on an enemy. closely connected with this is one of the charges most commonly brought against scott, particularly in his own day--the charge of a fanciful and monotonous insistence upon the details of armour and costume. the critic in the 'edinburgh review' said indignantly that he could tolerate a somewhat detailed description of the apparel of marmion, but when it came to an equally detailed account of the apparel of his pages and yeomen the mind could bear it no longer. the only thing to be said about that critic is that he had never been a little boy. he foolishly imagined that scott valued the plume and dagger of marmion for marmion's sake. not being himself romantic, he could not understand that scott valued the plume because it was a plume, and the dagger because it was a dagger. like a child, he loved weapons with a manual materialistic love, as one loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. one of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. so it was with scott, who had so much of the child in him. human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only characters. a battle-axe was a person of importance, a castle had a character and ways of its own. a church bell had a word to say in the matter. like a true child, he almost ignored the distinction between the animate and inanimate. a two-handed sword might be carried only by a menial in a procession, but it was something important and immeasurably fascinating--it was a two-handed sword. there is one quality which is supreme and continuous in scott which is little appreciated at present. one of the values we have really lost in recent fiction is the value of eloquence. the modern literary artist is compounded of almost every man except the orator. yet shakespeare and scott are certainly alike in this, that they could both, if literature had failed, have earned a living as professional demagogues. the feudal heroes in the 'waverley novels' retort upon each other with a passionate dignity, haughty and yet singularly human, which can hardly be paralleled in political eloquence except in 'julius cæsar.' with a certain fiery impartiality which stirs the blood, scott distributes his noble orations equally among saints and villains. he may deny a villain every virtue or triumph, but he cannot endure to deny him a telling word; he will ruin a man, but he will not silence him. in truth, one of scott's most splendid traits is his difficulty, or rather incapacity, for despising any of his characters. he did not scorn the most revolting miscreant as the realist of to-day commonly scorns his own hero. though his soul may be in rags, every man of scott can speak like a king. this quality, as i have said, is sadly to seek in the fiction of the passing hour. the realist would, of course, repudiate the bare idea of putting a bold and brilliant tongue in every man's head, but even where the moment of the story naturally demands eloquence the eloquence seems frozen in the tap. take any contemporary work of fiction and turn to the scene where the young socialist denounces the millionaire, and then compare the stilted sociological lecture given by that self-sacrificing bore with the surging joy of words in rob roy's declaration of himself, or athelstane's defiance of de bracy. that ancient sea of human passion upon which high words and great phrases are the resplendent foam is just now at a low ebb. we have even gone the length of congratulating ourselves because we can see the mud and the monsters at the bottom. in politics there is not a single man whose position is due to eloquence in the first degree; its place is taken by repartees and rejoinders purely intellectual, like those of an omnibus conductor. in discussing questions like the farm-burning in south africa no critic of the war uses his material as burke or grattan (perhaps exaggeratively) would have used it--the speaker is content with facts and expositions of facts. in another age he might have risen and hurled that great song in prose, perfect as prose and yet rising into a chant, which meg merrilees hurled at ellangowan, at the rulers of britain: 'ride your ways, laird of ellangowan; ride your ways, godfrey bertram--this day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths. see if the fire in your ain parlour burns the blyther for that. ye have riven the thack of seven cottar houses. look if your ain roof-tree stands the faster for that. ye may stable your stirks in the sheilings of dern-cleugh. see that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane of ellangowan. ride your ways, godfrey bertram.' the reason is, of course, that these men are afraid of bombast and scott was not. a man will not reach eloquence if he is afraid of bombast, just as a man will not jump a hedge if he is afraid of a ditch. as the object of all eloquence is to find the least common denominator of men's souls, to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside it. it is quite right to invent subtle analyses and detached criticisms, but it is unreasonable to expect them to be punctuated with roars of popular applause. it is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to think of a mob shouting a distinction in terms. in the matter of eloquence, the whole question is one of the immediate effect of greatness, such as is produced even by fine bombast. it is absurd to call it merely superficial; here there is no question of superficiality; we might as well call a stone that strikes us between the eyes merely superficial. the very word 'superficial' is founded on a fundamental mistake about life, the idea that second thoughts are best. the superficial impression of the world is by far the deepest. what we really feel, naturally and casually, about the look of skies and trees and the face of friends, that and that alone will almost certainly remain our vital philosophy to our dying day. scott's bombast, therefore, will always be stirring to anyone who approaches it, as he should approach all literature, as a little child. we could easily excuse the contemporary critic for not admiring melodramas and adventure stories, and punch and judy, if he would admit that it was a slight deficiency in his artistic sensibilities. beyond all question, it marks a lack of literary instinct to be unable to simplify one's mind at the first signal of the advance of romance. 'you do me wrong,' said brian de bois-guilbert to rebecca. 'many a law, many a commandment have i broken, but my word, never.' 'die,' cries balfour of burley to the villain in 'old mortality.' 'die, hoping nothing, believing nothing--' 'and fearing nothing,' replies the other. this is the old and honourable fine art of bragging, as it was practised by the great worthies of antiquity. the man who cannot appreciate it goes along with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with children or a brass band. they are afraid of making fools of themselves, and are unaware that that transformation has already been triumphantly effected. scott is separated, then, from much of the later conception of fiction by this quality of eloquence. the whole of the best and finest work of the modern novelist (such as the work of mr henry james) is primarily concerned with that delicate and fascinating speech which burrows deeper and deeper like a mole; but we have wholly forgotten that speech which mounts higher and higher like a wave and falls in a crashing peroration. perhaps the most thoroughly brilliant and typical man of this decade is mr bernard shaw. in his admirable play of 'candida' it is clearly a part of the character of the socialist clergyman that he should be eloquent, but he is not eloquent, because the whole 'g.b.s.' condition of mind renders impossible that poetic simplicity which eloquence requires. scott takes his heroes and villains seriously, which is, after all, the way that heroes and villains take themselves--especially villains. it is the custom to call these old romantic poses artificial; but the word artificial is the last and silliest evasion of criticism. there was never anything in the world that was really artificial. it had some motive or ideal behind it, and generally a much better one than we think. of the faults of scott as an artist it is not very necessary to speak, for faults are generally and easily pointed out, while there is yet no adequate valuation of the varieties and contrasts of virtue. we have compiled a complete botanical classification of the weeds in the poetical garden, but the flowers still flourish neglected and nameless. it is true, for example, that scott had an incomparably stiff and pedantic way of dealing with his heroines: he made a lively girl of eighteen refuse an offer in the language of dr johnson. to him, as to most men of his time, woman was not an individual, but an institution--a toast that was drunk some time after that of church and king. but it is far better to consider the difference rather as a special merit, in that he stood for all those clean and bracing shocks of incident which are untouched by passion or weakness, for a certain breezy bachelorhood, which is almost essential to the literature of adventure. with all his faults, and all his triumphs, he stands for the great mass of natural manliness which must be absorbed into art unless art is to be a mere luxury and freak. an appreciation of scott might be made almost a test of decadence. if ever we lose touch with this one most reckless and defective writer, it will be a proof to us that we have erected round ourselves a false cosmos, a world of lying and horrible perfection, leaving outside of it walter scott and that strange old world which is as confused and as indefensible and as inspiring and as healthy as he. a. v. laider by max beerbohm i unpacked my things and went down to await luncheon. it was good to be here again in this little old sleepy hostel by the sea. hostel i say, though it spelt itself without an "s" and even placed a circumflex above the "o." it made no other pretension. it was very cozy indeed. i had been here just a year before, in mid-february, after an attack of influenza. and now i had returned, after an attack of influenza. nothing was changed. it had been raining when i left, and the waiter--there was but a single, a very old waiter--had told me it was only a shower. that waiter was still here, not a day older. and the shower had not ceased. steadfastly it fell on to the sands, steadfastly into the iron-gray sea. i stood looking out at it from the windows of the hall, admiring it very much. there seemed to be little else to do. what little there was i did. i mastered the contents of a blue hand-bill which, pinned to the wall just beneath the framed engraving of queen victoria's coronation, gave token of a concert that was to be held--or, rather, was to have been held some weeks ago--in the town hall for the benefit of the life-boat fund. i looked at the barometer, tapped it, was not the wiser. i wandered to the letter-board. these letter-boards always fascinate me. usually some two or three of the envelops stuck into the cross-garterings have a certain newness and freshness. they seem sure they will yet be claimed. why not? why shouldn't john doe, esq., or mrs. richard roe turn up at any moment? i do not know. i can only say that nothing in the world seems to me more unlikely. thus it is that these young bright envelops touch my heart even more than do their dusty and sallowed seniors. sour resignation is less touching than impatience for what will not be, than the eagerness that has to wane and wither. soured beyond measure these old envelops are. they are not nearly so nice as they should be to the young ones. they lose no chance of sneering and discouraging. such dialogues as this are only too frequent: a very young envelop: something in me whispers that he will come to-day! a very old envelop: he? well, that's good! ha, ha, ha! why didn't he come last week, when you came? what reason have you for supposing he'll ever come now? it isn't as if he were a frequenter of the place. he's never been here. his name is utterly unknown here. you don't suppose he's coming on the chance of finding you? a. v. y. e.: it may seem silly, but--something in me whispers-- a. v. o. e.: something in you? one has only to look at you to see there's nothing in you but a note scribbled to him by a cousin. look at me! there are three sheets, closely written, in me. the lady to whom i am addressed-- a. v. y. e.: yes, sir, yes; you told me all about her yesterday. a. v. o. e.: and i shall do so to-day and to-morrow and every day and all day long. that young lady was a widow. she stayed here many times. she was delicate, and the air suited her. she was poor, and the tariff was just within her means. she was lonely, and had need of love. i have in me for her a passionate avowal and strictly honorable proposal, written to her, after many rough copies, by a gentleman who had made her acquaintance under this very roof. he was rich, he was charming, he was in the prime of life. he had asked if he might write to her. she had flutteringly granted his request. he posted me to her the day after his return to london. i looked forward to being torn open by her. i was very sure she would wear me and my contents next to her bosom. she was gone. she had left no address. she never returned. this i tell you, and shall continue to tell you, not because i want any of your callow sympathy,--no, thank you!--but that you may judge how much less than slight are the probabilities that you yourself-- but my reader has overheard these dialogues as often as i. he wants to know what was odd about this particular letter-board before which i was standing. at first glance i saw nothing odd about it. but presently i distinguished a handwriting that was vaguely familiar. it was mine. i stared, i wondered. there is always a slight shock in seeing an envelop of one's own after it has gone through the post. it looks as if it had gone through so much. but this was the first time i had ever seen an envelop of mine eating its heart out in bondage on a letter-board. this was outrageous. this was hardly to be believed. sheer kindness had impelled me to write to "a. v. laider, esq.," and this was the result! i hadn't minded receiving no answer. only now, indeed, did i remember that i hadn't received one. in multitudinous london the memory of a. v. laider and his trouble had soon passed from my mind. but--well, what a lesson not to go out of one's way to write to casual acquaintances! my envelop seemed not to recognize me as its writer. its gaze was the more piteous for being blank. even so had i once been gazed at by a dog that i had lost and, after many days, found in the battersea home. "i don't know who you are, but, whoever you are, claim me, take me out of this!" that was my dog's appeal. this was the appeal of my envelop. i raised my hand to the letter-board, meaning to effect a swift and lawless rescue, but paused at sound of a footstep behind me. the old waiter had come to tell me that my luncheon was ready. i followed him out of the hall, not, however, without a bright glance across my shoulder to reassure the little captive that i should come back. i had the sharp appetite of the convalescent, and this the sea air had whetted already to a finer edge. in touch with a dozen oysters, and with stout, i soon shed away the unreasoning anger i had felt against a. v. laider. i became merely sorry for him that he had not received a letter which might perhaps have comforted him. in touch with cutlets, i felt how sorely he had needed comfort. and anon, by the big bright fireside of that small dark smoking-room where, a year ago, on the last evening of my stay here, he and i had at length spoken to each other, i reviewed in detail the tragic experience he had told me; and i simply reveled in reminiscent sympathy with him. a. v. laider--i had looked him up in the visitors'-book on the night of his arrival. i myself had arrived the day before, and had been rather sorry there was no one else staying here. a convalescent by the sea likes to have some one to observe, to wonder about, at meal-time. i was glad when, on my second evening, i found seated at the table opposite to mine another guest. i was the gladder because he was just the right kind of guest. he was enigmatic. by this i mean that he did not look soldierly or financial or artistic or anything definite at all. he offered a clean slate for speculation. and, thank heaven! he evidently wasn't going to spoil the fun by engaging me in conversation later on. a decently unsociable man, anxious to be left alone. the heartiness of his appetite, in contrast with his extreme fragility of aspect and limpness of demeanor, assured me that he, too, had just had influenza. i liked him for that. now and again our eyes met and were instantly parted. we managed, as a rule, to observe each other indirectly. i was sure it was not merely because he had been ill that he looked interesting. nor did it seem to me that a spiritual melancholy, though i imagined him sad at the best of times, was his sole asset. i conjectured that he was clever. i thought he might also be imaginative. at first glance i had mistrusted him. a shock of white hair, combined with a young face and dark eyebrows, does somehow make a man look like a charlatan. but it is foolish to be guided by an accident of color. i had soon rejected my first impression of my fellow-diner. i found him very sympathetic. anywhere but in england it would be impossible for two solitary men, howsoever much reduced by influenza, to spend five or six days in the same hostel and not exchange a single word. that is one of the charms of england. had laider and i been born and bred in any other land than eng we should have become acquainted before the end of our first evening in the small smoking-room, and have found ourselves irrevocably committed to go on talking to each other throughout the rest of our visit. we might, it is true, have happened to like each other more than any one we had ever met. this off chance may have occurred to us both. but it counted for nothing against the certain surrender of quietude and liberty. we slightly bowed to each other as we entered or left the dining-room or smoking-room, and as we met on the wide-spread sands or in the shop that had a small and faded circulating library. that was all. our mutual aloofness was a positive bond between us. had he been much older than i, the responsibility for our silence would of course have been his alone. but he was not, i judged, more than five or six years ahead of me, and thus i might without impropriety have taken it on myself to perform that hard and perilous feat which english people call, with a shiver, "breaking the ice." he had reason, therefore, to be as grateful to me as i to him. each of us, not the less frankly because silently, recognized his obligation to the other. and when, on the last evening of my stay, the ice actually was broken there was no ill-will between us: neither of us was to blame. it was a sunday evening. i had been out for a long last walk and had come in very late to dinner. laider had left his table almost directly after i sat down to mine. when i entered the smoking-room i found him reading a weekly review which i had bought the day before. it was a crisis. he could not silently offer nor could i have silently accepted, six-pence. it was a crisis. we faced it like men. he made, by word of mouth, a graceful apology. verbally, not by signs, i besought him to go on reading. but this, of course, was a vain counsel of perfection. the social code forced us to talk now. we obeyed it like men. to reassure him that our position was not so desperate as it might seem, i took the earliest opportunity to mention that i was going away early next morning. in the tone of his "oh, are you?" he tried bravely to imply that he was sorry, even now, to hear that. in a way, perhaps, he really was sorry. we had got on so well together, he and i. nothing could efface the memory of that. nay, we seemed to be hitting it off even now. influenza was not our sole theme. we passed from that to the aforesaid weekly review, and to a correspondence that was raging therein on faith and reason. this correspondence had now reached its fourth and penultimate stage--its australian stage. it is hard to see why these correspondences spring up; one only knows that they do spring up, suddenly, like street crowds. there comes, it would seem, a moment when the whole english-speaking race is unconsciously bursting to have its say about some one thing--the split infinitive, or the habits of migratory birds, or faith and reason, or what-not. whatever weekly review happens at such a moment to contain a reference, however remote, to the theme in question reaps the storm. gusts of letters come in from all corners of the british isles. these are presently reinforced by canada in full blast. a few weeks later the anglo-indians weigh in. in due course we have the help of our australian cousins. by that time, however, we of the mother country have got our second wind, and so determined are we to make the most of it that at last even the editor suddenly loses patience and says, "this correspondence must now cease.--ed." and wonders why on earth he ever allowed anything so tedious and idiotic to begin. i pointed out to laider one of the australian letters that had especially pleased me in the current issue. it was from "a melbourne man," and was of the abrupt kind which declares that "all your correspondents have been groping in the dark" and then settles the whole matter in one short sharp flash. the flash in this instance was "reason is faith, faith reason--that is all we know on earth and all we need to know." the writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., "a melbourne man." i said to laider how very restful it was, after influenza, to read anything that meant nothing whatsoever. laider was inclined to take the letter more seriously than i, and to be mildly metaphysical. i said that for me faith and reason were two separate things, and as i am no good at metaphysics, however mild, i offered a definite example, to coax the talk on to ground where i should be safer. "palmistry, for example," i said. "deep down in my heart i believe in palmistry." laider turned in his chair. "you believe in palmistry?" i hesitated. "yes, somehow i do. why? i haven't the slightest notion. i can give myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. my common sense utterly rejects it. of course the shape of the hand means something, is more or less an index of character. but the idea that my past and future are neatly mapped out on my palms--" i shrugged my shoulders. "you don't like that idea?" asked laider in his gentle, rather academic voice. "i only say it's a grotesque idea." "yet you do believe in it?" "i've a grotesque belief in it, yes." "are you sure your reason for calling this idea 'grotesque' isn't merely that you dislike it?" "well," i said, with the thrilling hope that he was a companion in absurdity, "doesn't it seem grotesque to you?" "it seems strange." "you believe in it?" "oh, absolutely." "hurrah!" he smiled at my pleasure, and i, at the risk of reentanglement in metaphysics, claimed him as standing shoulder to shoulder with me against "a melbourne man." this claim he gently disputed. "you may think me very prosaic," he said, "but i can't believe without evidence." "well, i'm equally prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: i can't take my own belief as evidence, and i've no other evidence to go on." he asked me if i had ever made a study of palmistry. i said i had read one of desbarolles's books years ago, and one of heron-allen's. but, he asked, had i tried to test them by the lines on my own hands or on the hands of my friends? i confessed that my actual practice in palmistry had been of a merely passive kind--the prompt extension of my palm to any one who would be so good as to "read" it and truckle for a few minutes to my egoism. (i hoped laider might do this.) "then i almost wonder," he said, with his sad smile, "that you haven't lost your belief, after all the nonsense you must have heard. there are so many young girls who go in for palmistry. i am sure all the five foolish virgins were 'awfully keen on it' and used to say, 'you can be led, but not driven,' and, 'you are likely to have a serious illness between the ages of forty and forty-five,' and, 'you are by nature rather lazy, but can be very energetic by fits and starts.' and most of the professionals, i'm told, are as silly as the young girls." for the honor of the profession, i named three practitioners whom i had found really good at reading character. he asked whether any of them had been right about past events. i confessed that, as a matter of fact, all three of them had been right in the main. this seemed to amuse him. he asked whether any of them had predicted anything which had since come true. i confessed that all three had predicted that i should do several things which i had since done rather unexpectedly. he asked if i didn't accept this as, at any rate, a scrap of evidence. i said i could only regard it as a fluke--a rather remarkable fluke. the superiority of his sad smile was beginning to get on my nerves. i wanted him to see that he was as absurd as i. "suppose," i said--"suppose, for the sake of argument, that you and i are nothing but helpless automata created to do just this and that, and to have just that and this done to us. suppose, in fact, we haven't any free will whatsoever. is it likely or conceivable that the power which fashioned us would take the trouble to jot down in cipher on our hands just what was in store for us?" laider did not answer this question; he did but annoyingly ask me another. "you believe in free will?" "yes, of course. i'll be hanged if i'm an automaton." "and you believe in free will just as in palmistry--without any reason?" "oh, no. everything points to our having free will." "everything? what, for instance?" this rather cornered me. i dodged out, as lightly as i could, by saying: "i suppose you would say it's written in my hand that i should be a believer in free will." "ah, i've no doubt it is." i held out my palms. but, to my great disappointment, he looked quickly away from them. he had ceased to smile. there was agitation in his voice as he explained that he never looked at people's hands now. "never now--never again." he shook his head as though to beat off some memory. i was much embarrassed by my indiscretion. i hastened to tide over the awkward moment by saying that if _i_ could read hands i wouldn't, for fear of the awful things i might see there. "awful things, yes," he whispered, nodding at the fire. "not," i said in self-defense, "that there's anything very awful, so far as i know, to be read in my hands." he turned his gaze from the fire to me. "you aren't a murderer, for example?" "oh, no," i replied, with a nervous laugh. "_i_ am." this was a more than awkward, it was a painful, moment for me; and i am afraid i must have started or winced, for he instantly begged my pardon. "i don't know," he exclaimed, "why i said it. i'm usually a very reticent man. but sometimes--" he pressed his brow. "what you must think of me!" i begged him to dismiss the matter from his mind. "it's very good of you to say that; but--i've placed myself as well as you in a false position. i ask you to believe that i'm not the sort of man who is 'wanted' or ever was 'wanted' by the police. i should be bowed out of any police-station at which i gave myself up. i'm not a murderer in any bald sense of the word. no." my face must have perceptibly brightened, for, "ah," he said, "don't imagine i'm not a murderer at all. morally, i am." he looked at the clock. i pointed out that the night was young. he assured me that his story was not a long one. i assured him that i hoped it was. he said i was very kind. i denied this. he warned me that what he had to tell might rather tend to stiffen my unwilling faith in palmistry, and to shake my opposite and cherished faith in free will. i said, "never mind." he stretched his hands pensively toward the fire. i settled myself back in my chair. "my hands," he said, staring at the backs of them, "are the hands of a very weak man. i dare say you know enough of palmistry to see that for yourself. you notice the slightness of the thumbs and of he two 'little' fingers. they are the hands of a weak and over-sensitive man--a man without confidence, a man who would certainly waver in an emergency. rather hamletish hands," he mused. "and i'm like hamlet in other respects, too: i'm no fool, and i've rather a noble disposition, and i'm unlucky. but hamlet was luckier than i in one thing: he was a murderer by accident, whereas the murders that i committed one day fourteen years ago--for i must tell you it wasn't one murder, but many murders that i committed--were all of them due to the wretched inherent weakness of my own wretched self. "i was twenty-six--no, twenty-seven years old, and rather a nondescript person, as i am now. i was supposed to have been called to the bar. in fact, i believe i had been called to the bar. i hadn't listened to the call. i never intended to practise, and i never did practise. i only wanted an excuse in the eyes of the world for existing. i suppose the nearest i have ever come to practicing is now at this moment: i am defending a murderer. my father had left me well enough provided with money. i was able to go my own desultory way, riding my hobbies where i would. i had a good stableful of hobbies. palmistry was one of them. i was rather ashamed of this one. it seemed to me absurd, as it seems to you. like you, though, i believed in it. unlike you, i had done more than merely read a book about it. i had read innumerable books about it. i had taken casts of all my friends' hands. i had tested and tested again the points at which desbarolles dissented from the gipsies, and--well, enough that i had gone into it all rather thoroughly, and was as sound a palmist, as a man may be without giving his whole life to palmistry. "one of the first things i had seen in my own hand, as soon as i had learned to read it, was that at about the age of twenty-six i should have a narrow escape from death--from a violent death. there was a clean break in the life-line, and a square joining it--the protective square, you know. the markings were precisely the same in both hands. it was to be the narrowest escape possible. and i wasn't going to escape without injury, either. that is what bothered me. there was a faint line connecting the break in the lifeline with a star on the line of health. against that star was another square. i was to recover from the injury, whatever it might be. still, i didn't exactly look forward to it. soon after i had reached the age of twenty-five, i began to feel uncomfortable. the thing might be going to happen at any moment. in palmistry, you know, it is impossible to pin an event down hard and fast to one year. this particular event was to be when i was about twenty-six; it mightn't be till i was twenty-seven; it might be while i was only twenty-five. "and i used to tell myself it mightn't be at all. my reason rebelled against the whole notion of palmistry, just as yours does. i despised my faith in the thing, just as you despise yours. i used to try not to be so ridiculously careful as i was whenever i crossed a street. i lived in london at that time. motor-cars had not yet come in, but--what hours, all told, i must have spent standing on curbs, very circumspect, very lamentable! it was a pity, i suppose, that i had no definite occupation--something to take me out of myself. i was one of the victims of private means. there came a time when i drove in four-wheelers rather than in hansoms, and was doubtful of four-wheelers. oh, i assure you, i was very lamentable indeed. "if a railway-journey could be avoided, i avoided it. my uncle had a place in hampshire. i was very fond of him and of his wife. theirs was the only house i ever went to stay in now. i was there for a week in november, not long after my twenty-seventh birthday. there were other people staying there, and at the end of the week we all traveled back to london together. there were six of us in the carriage: colonel elbourn and his wife and their daughter, a girl of seventeen; and another married couple, the bretts. i had been at winchester with brett, but had hardly seen him since that time. he was in the indian civil, and was home on leave. he was sailing for india next week. his wife was to remain in england for some months, and then join him out there. they had been married five years. she was now just twenty-four years old. he told me that this was her age. the elbourns i had never met before. they were charming people. we had all been very happy together. the only trouble had been that on the last night, at dinner, my uncle asked me if i still went in for 'the gipsy business,' as he always called it; and of course the three ladies were immensely excited, and implored me to 'do' their hands. i told them it was all nonsense, i said i had forgotten all i once knew, i made various excuses; and the matter dropped. it was quite true that i had given up reading hands. i avoided anything that might remind me of what was in my own hands. and so, next morning, it was a great bore to me when, soon after the train started, mrs. elbourn said it would be 'too cruel' of me if i refused to do their hands now. her daughter and mrs. brett also said it would be 'brutal'; and they were all taking off their gloves, and--well, of course i had to give in. "i went to work methodically on mrs. elbourn's hands, in the usual way, you know, first sketching the character from the backs of them; and there was the usual hush, broken by the usual little noises--grunts of assent from the husband, cooings of recognition from the daughter. presently i asked to see the palms, and from them i filled in the details of mrs. elbourn's character before going on to the events in her life. but while i talked i was calculating how old mrs. elbourn might be. in my first glance at her palms i had seen that she could not have been less than twenty-five when she married. the daughter was seventeen. suppose the daughter had been born a year later--how old would the mother be? forty-three, yes. not less than that, poor woman!" laider looked at me. "why 'poor woman!' you wonder? well, in that first glance i had seen other things than her marriage-line. i had seen a very complete break in the lines of life and of fate. i had seen violent death there. at what age? not later, not possibly later, than forty-three. while i talked to her about the things that had happened in her girlhood, the back of my brain was hard at work on those marks of catastrophe. i was horribly wondering that she was still alive. it was impossible that between her and that catastrophe there could be more than a few short months. and all the time i was talking; and i suppose i acquitted myself well, for i remember that when i ceased i had a sort of ovation from the elbourns. "it was a relief to turn to another pair of hands. mrs. brett was an amusing young creature, and her hands were very characteristic, and prettily odd in form. i allowed myself to be rather whimsical about her nature, and having begun in that vein, i went on in it, somehow, even after she had turned her palms. in those palms were reduplicated the signs i had seen in mrs. elbourn's. it was as though they had been copied neatly out. the only difference was in the placing of them; and it was this difference that was the most horrible point. the fatal age in mrs. brett's hands was--not past, no, for here she was. but she might have died when she was twenty-one. twenty-three seemed to be the utmost span. she was twenty-four, you know. "i have said that i am a weak man. and you will have good proof of that directly. yet i showed a certain amount of strength that day--yes, even on that day which has humiliated and saddened the rest of my life. neither my face nor my voice betrayed me when in the palms of dorothy elbourn i was again confronted with those same signs. she was all for knowing the future, poor child! i believe i told her all manner of things that were to be. and she had no future--none, none in this world--except-- "and then, while i talked, there came to me suddenly a suspicion. i wondered it hadn't come before. you guess what it was? it made me feel very cold and strange. i went on talking. but, also, i went on--quite separately--thinking. the suspicion wasn't a certainty. this mother and daughter were always together. what was to befall the one might anywhere--anywhere--befall the other. but a like fate, in an equally near future, was in store for that other lady. the coincidence was curious, very. here we all were together--here, they and i--i who was narrowly to escape, so soon now, what they, so soon now, were to suffer. oh, there was an inference to be drawn. not a sure inference, i told myself. and always i was talking, talking, and the train was swinging and swaying noisily along--to what? it was a fast train. our carriage was near the engine. i was talking loudly. full well i had known what i should see in the colonel's hands. i told myself i had not known. i told myself that even now the thing i dreaded was not sure to be. don't think i was dreading it for myself. i wasn't so 'lamentable' as all that--now. it was only of them that i thought--only for them. i hurried over the colonel's character and career; i was perfunctory. it was brett's hands that i wanted. they were the hands that mattered. if they had the marks-- remember, brett was to start for india in the coming week, his wife was to remain in england. they would be apart. therefore-- "and the marks were there. and i did nothing--nothing but hold forth on the subtleties of brett's character. there was a thing for me to do. i wanted to do it. i wanted to spring to the window and pull the communication-cord. quite a simple thing to do. nothing easier than to stop a train. you just give a sharp pull, and the train slows down, comes to a standstill. and the guard appears at your window. you explain to the guard. "nothing easier than to tell him there is going to be a collision. nothing easier than to insist that you and your friends and every other passenger in the train must get out at once. there are easier things than this? things that need less courage than this? some of them i could have done, i dare say. this thing i was going to do. oh, i was determined that i would do it--directly. "i had said all i had to say about brett's hands. i had brought my entertainment to an end. i had been thanked and complimented all round. i was quite at liberty. i was going to do what i had to do. i was determined, yes. "we were near the outskirts of london. the air was gray, thickening; and dorothy elbourn had said: 'oh, this horrible old london! i suppose there's the same old fog!' and presently i heard her father saying something about 'prevention' and 'a short act of parliament' and 'anthracite.' and i sat and listened and agreed and--" laider closed his eyes. he passed his hand slowly through the air. "i had a racking headache. and when i said so, i was told not to talk. i was in bed, and the nurses were always telling me not to talk. i was in a hospital. i knew that; but i didn't know why i was there. one day i thought i should like to know why, and so i asked. i was feeling much better now. they told me by degrees that i had had concussion of the brain. i had been brought there unconscious, and had remained unconscious for forty-eight hours. i had been in an accident--a railway-accident. this seemed to me odd. i had arrived quite safely at my uncle's place, and i had no memory of any journey since that. in cases of concussion, you know, it's not uncommon for the patient to forget all that happened just before the accident; there may be a blank for several hours. so it was in my case. one day my uncle was allowed to come and see me. and somehow, suddenly, at sight of him, the blank was filled in. i remembered, in a flash, everything. i was quite calm, though. or i made myself seem so, for i wanted to know how the collision had happened. my uncle told me that the engine-driver had failed to see a signal because of the fog, and our train had crashed into a goods-train. "i didn't ask him about the people who were with me. you see, there was no need to ask. "very gently my uncle began to tell me, but--i had begun to talk strangely, i suppose. i remember the frightened look of my uncle's face, and the nurse scolding him in whispers. "after that, all a blur. it seems that i became very ill indeed, wasn't expected to live. "however, i live." there was a long silence. laider did not look at me, nor i at him. the fire was burning low, and he watched it. at length he spoke: "you despise me. naturally. i despise myself." "no, i don't despise you; but--" "you blame me." i did not meet his gaze. "you blame me," he repeated. "yes." "and there, if i may say so, you are a little unjust. it isn't my fault that i was born weak." "but a man may conquer his weakness." "yes, if he is endowed with the strength for that." his fatalism drew from me a gesture of disgust. "do you really mean," i asked, "that because you didn't pull that cord, you couldn't have pulled it?" "yes." "and it's written in your hands that you couldn't?" he looked at the palms of his hands. "they are the hands of a very weak man," he said. "a man so weak that he cannot believe in the possibility of free will for himself or for any one?" "they are the hands of an intelligent man, who can weigh evidence and see things as they are." "but answer me: was it foreordained that you should not pull that cord?" "it was foreordained." "and was it actually marked in your hands that you were not going to pull it?" "ah, well, you see, it is rather the things one is going to do that are actually marked. the things one isn't going to do,--the innumerable negative things,--how could one expect them to be marked?" "but the consequences of what one leaves undone may be positive?" "horribly positive. my hand is the hand of a man who has suffered a great deal in later life." "and was it the hand of a man destined to suffer?" "oh, yes. i thought i told you that." there was a pause. "well," i said, with awkward sympathy, "i suppose all hands are the hands of people destined to suffer." "not of people destined to suffer so much as _i_ have suffered--as i still suffer." the insistence of his self-pity chilled me, and i harked back to a question he had not straightly answered. "tell me: was it marked in your hands that you were not going to pull that cord?" again he looked at his hands, and then, having pressed them for a moment to his face, "it was marked very clearly," he answered, "in their hands." two or three days after this colloquy there had occurred to me in london an idea--an ingenious and comfortable doubt. how was laider to be sure that his brain, recovering from concussion, had remembered what happened in the course of that railway-journey? how was he to know that his brain hadn't simply, in its abeyance, invented all this for him? it might be that he had never seen those signs in those hands. assuredly, here was a bright loophole. i had forthwith written to laider, pointing it out. this was the letter which now, at my second visit, i had found miserably pent on the letter-board. i remembered my promise to rescue it. i arose from the retaining fireside, stretched my arms, yawned, and went forth to fulfil my christian purpose. there was no one in the hall. the "shower" had at length ceased. the sun had positively come out, and the front door had been thrown open in its honor. everything along the sea-front was beautifully gleaming, drying, shimmering. but i was not to be diverted from my purpose. i went to the letter-board. and--my letter was not there! resourceful and plucky little thing--it had escaped! i did hope it would not be captured and brought back. perhaps the alarm had already been raised by the tolling of that great bell which warns the inhabitants for miles around that a letter has broken loose from the letter-board. i had a vision of my envelop skimming wildly along the coast-line, pursued by the old, but active, waiter and a breathless pack of local worthies. i saw it outdistancing them all, dodging past coast-guards, doubling on its tracks, leaping breakwaters, unluckily injuring itself, losing speed, and at last, in a splendor of desperation, taking to the open sea. but suddenly i had another idea. perhaps laider had returned? he had. i espied afar on the sands a form that was recognizably, by the listless droop of it, his. i was glad and sorry--rather glad, because he completed the scene of last year; and very sorry, because this time we should be at each other's mercy: no restful silence and liberty for either of us this time. perhaps he had been told i was here, and had gone out to avoid me while he yet could. oh weak, weak! why palter? i put on my hat and coat, and marched out to meet him. "influenza, of course?" we asked simultaneously. there is a limit to the time which one man may spend in talking to another about his own influenza; and presently, as we paced the sands, i felt that laider had passed this limit. i wondered that he didn't break off and thank me now for my letter. he must have read it. he ought to have thanked me for it at once. it was a very good letter, a remarkable letter. but surely he wasn't waiting to answer it by post? his silence about it gave me the absurd sense of having taken a liberty, confound him! he was evidently ill at ease while he talked. but it wasn't for me to help him out of his difficulty, whatever that might be. it was for him to remove the strain imposed on myself. abruptly, after a long pause, he did now manage to say: "it was--very good of you to--to write me that letter." he told me he had only just got it, and he drifted away into otiose explanations of this fact. i thought he might at least say it was a remarkable letter; and you can imagine my annoyance when he said, after another interval, "i was very much touched indeed." i had wished to be convincing, not touching. i can't bear to be called touching. "don't you," i asked, "think it is quite possible that your brain invented all those memories of what--what happened before that accident?" he drew a sharp sigh. "you make me feel very guilty." "that's exactly what i tried to make you not feel!" "i know, yes. that's why i feel so guilty." we had paused in our walk. he stood nervously prodding the hard wet sand with his walking-stick. "in a way," he said, "your theory was quite right. but--it didn't go far enough. it's not only possible, it's a fact, that i didn't see those signs in those hands. i never examined those hands. they weren't there. _i_ wasn't there. i haven't an uncle in hampshire, even. i never had." i, too, prodded the sand. "well," i said at length, "i do feel rather a fool." "i've no right even to beg your pardon, but--'' "oh, i'm not vexed. only--i rather wish you hadn't told me this." "i wish i hadn't had to. it was your kindness, you see, that forced me. by trying to take an imaginary load off my conscience, you laid a very real one on it." "i'm sorry. but you, of your own free will, you know, exposed your conscience to me last year. i don't yet quite understand why you did that." "no, of course not. i don't deserve that you should. but i think you will. may i explain? i'm afraid i've talked a great deal already about my influenza, and i sha'n't be able to keep it out of my explanation. well, my weakest point--i told you this last year, but it happens to be perfectly true that my weakest point--is my will. influenza, as you know, fastens unerringly on one's weakest point. it doesn't attempt to undermine my imagination. that would be a forlorn hope. i have, alas! a very strong imagination. at ordinary times my imagination allows itself to be governed by my will. my will keeps it in check by constant nagging. but when my will isn't strong enough even to nag, then my imagination stampedes. i become even as a little child. i tell myself the most preposterous fables, and--the trouble is--i can't help telling them to my friends. until i've thoroughly shaken off influenza, i'm not fit company for any one. i perfectly realize this, and i have the good sense to go right away till i'm quite well again. i come here usually. it seems absurd, but i must confess i was sorry last year when we fell into conversation. i knew i should very soon be letting myself go, or, rather, very soon be swept away. perhaps i ought to have warned you; but--i'm a rather shy man. and then you mentioned the subject of palmistry. you said you believed in it. i wondered at that. i had once read desbarolles's book about it, but i am bound to say i thought the whole thing very great nonsense indeed." "then," i gasped, "it isn't even true that you believe in palmistry?" "oh, no. but i wasn't able to tell you that. you had begun by saying that you believed in palmistry, and then you proceeded to scoff at it. while you scoffed i saw myself as a man with a terribly good reason for not scoffing; and in a flash i saw the terribly good reason; i had the whole story--at least i had the broad outlines of it--clear before me." "you hadn't ever thought of it before?" he shook his head. my eyes beamed. "the whole thing was a sheer improvisation?" "yes," said laider, humbly, "i am as bad as all that. i don't say that all the details of the story i told you that evening were filled in at the very instant of its conception. i was filling them in while we talked about palmistry in general, and while i was waiting for the moment when the story would come in most effectively. and i've no doubt i added some extra touches in the course of the actual telling. don't imagine that i took the slightest pleasure in deceiving you. it's only my will, not my conscience, that is weakened after influenza. i simply can't help telling what i've made up, and telling it to the best of my ability. but i'm thoroughly ashamed all the time." "not of your ability, surely?" "yes, of that, too," he said, with his sad smile. "i always feel that i'm not doing justice to my idea." "you are too stern a critic, believe me." "it is very kind of you to say that. you are very kind altogether. had i known that you were so essentially a man of the world, in the best sense of that term, i shouldn't have so much dreaded seeing you just now and having to confess to you. but i'm not going to take advantage of your urbanity and your easy-going ways. i hope that some day we may meet somewhere when i haven't had influenza and am a not wholly undesirable acquaintance. as it is, i refuse to let you associate with me. i am an older man than you, and so i may without impertinence warn you against having anything to do with me." i deprecated this advice, of course; but for a man of weakened will he showed great firmness. "you," he said, "in your heart of hearts, don't want to have to walk and talk continually with a person who might at any moment try to bamboozle you with some ridiculous tale. and i, for my part, don't want to degrade myself by trying to bamboozle any one, especially one whom i have taught to see through me. let the two talks we have had be as though they had not been. let us bow to each other, as last year, but let that be all. let us follow in all things the precedent of last year." with a smile that was almost gay he turned on his heel, and moved away with a step that was almost brisk. i was a little disconcerted. but i was also more than a little glad. the restfulness of silence, the charm of liberty--these things were not, after all, forfeit. my heart thanked laider for that; and throughout the week i loyally seconded him in the system he had laid down for us. all was as it had been last year. we did not smile to each other, we merely bowed, when we entered or left the dining-room or smoking-room, and when we met on the wide-spread sands or in that shop which had a small and faded but circulating library. once or twice in the course of the week it did occur to me that perhaps laider had told the simple truth at our first interview and an ingenious lie at our second. i frowned at this possibility. the idea of any one wishing to be quit of me was most distasteful. however, i was to find reassurance. on the last evening of my stay i suggested, in the small smoking-room, that he and i should, as sticklers for precedent, converse. we did so very pleasantly. and after a while i happened to say that i had seen this afternoon a great number of sea-gulls flying close to the shore. "sea-gulls?" said laider, turning in his chair. "yes. and i don't think i had ever realized how extraordinarily beautiful they are when their wings catch the light." laider threw a quick glance at me and away from me. "you think them beautiful?" "surely." "well, perhaps they are, yes; i suppose they are. but--i don't like seeing them. they always remind me of something--rather an awful thing--that once happened to me." it was a very awful thing indeed. [transcriber's note: i have closed contractions in the text, e.g., "does n't" has become "doesn't" etc.; in addition, on page , paragraph , line , i have changed "dyott" to "dyatt".] the augustan reprint society sir roger l'estrange _selections from_ the observator ( - ) _introduction by_ violet jordain publication number william andrews clark memorial library university of california, los angeles general editors william e. conway, _william andrews clark memorial library_ george robert guffey, _university of california, los angeles_ maximillian e. novak, _university of california, los angeles_ associate editor david s. rodes, _university of california, los angeles_ advisory editors richard c. boys, _university of michigan_ james l. clifford, _columbia university_ ralph cohen, _university of virginia_ vinton a. dearing, _university of california, los angeles_ arthur friedman, _university of chicago_ louis a. landa, _princeton university_ earl miner, _university of california, los angeles_ samuel h. monk, _university of minnesota_ everett t. moore, _university of california, los angeles_ lawrence clark powell, _william andrews clark memorial library_ james sutherland, _university college, london_ h. t. swedenberg, jr., _university of california, los angeles_ robert vosper, _william andrews clark memorial library_ corresponding secretary edna c. davis, _william andrews clark memorial library_ editorial assistant roberta medford, _william andrews clark memorial library_ [illustration: the observator. =numb. .= for text go to page .] introduction i fancy, _trimmer_, that if you and i could but get leave to peep out of our graves again a matter of a hundred and fifty year hence, we should find these papers in bodlies library, among the memorialls of state; and celebrated for the only warrantable remains concerning this juncture of affairs. (_observator_ no. , december ) when the first of single, folio sheets of the _observator_ appeared on april , the sixty-five-year-old roger l'estrange, their sole author, had been a controversial london royalist for over twenty years. as crown protégé, he had served intermittently as surveyor of the press, chief licenser, and justice of the king's peace commission; as a writer, he had produced two newspapers, the _intelligencer_ and the _newes_ ( - ), dozens of political pamphlets, and seven translations from spanish, latin, and french.[ ] rightly nicknamed "bloodhound of the press," l'estrange was notorious for his ruthless ferreting out of illegal presses and seditious publishers, as well as for his tireless warfare against the powerful stationers' company.[ ] no less well known were his intransigent reactionary views, for we can estimate that some , copies of pamphlets bearing his name were circulating in the city during the two years preceding the _observator_.[ ] thus the _observator_ papers represent not only the official propaganda of the restored monarchy, but also the intellectual temper of a powerful, influential man whose london fame was sufficiently demonstrated in the winter of , when he was publicly burned in effigy during that year's pope-burning festivities. in the muddy torrent of "intelligences," "mercuries," "courants," "pacquets," and sundry newssheets, the _observator_ marks the beginnings of a new sort of journalism, one which was to shape the development of the english periodical. although _heraclitus ridens_ and its opponent _democritus ridens_ initiated the dialogue form for the newspaper seventy-two days before the _observator_, their relatively short run relegates these pioneers to a shadowy background, as it does the even earlier trade paper in dialogue, the _city and country mercury_ ( ).[ ] the eighty-two issues of _heraclitus ridens_ and thirteen of _democritus ridens_ cannot be compared in quantity to the issues of the _observator_ published three or four times a week from april to march , nor can their stiff dialogues be compared in importance to l'estrange's much fuller exploitation of the form. consequently, even though he did not initiate the newspaper in dialogue form, l'estrange is unanimously given the honor of having popularized the form, or, in the words of richmond p. bond, of having "borrowed the dialogue and fastened it on english journalism for a generation as a factional procedure."[ ] imitators did not wait long. nine days after the first _observator_, l'estrange's arch-enemy, harry care, changed to dialogue the _popish courant_ section of his _weekly pacquet of advice from rome_, relinquishing the expository format which he had followed since . later, after the glorious revolution, the popularity of l'estrange's paper is evident in the spate of imitative "observators" that ensued: _the english spy: or, the critical observator_ ( ); _the poetical observator_ ( ); tutchin's _observator_ ( --a whig organ) and leslie's _observator_ ( --a tory organ); _the comicall observator_ ( ); _the observator reviv'd_ ( ), and more. as late as there was created a _weekly observator_. by the turn of the century, the very term "observator" had come to signify a controversy _in dialogue_.[ ] interestingly enough, even the typography of l'estrange's _observator_ may have left its mark on succeeding journals. a brief comparison of interregnum newspapers (such as _newes out of ireland_ in , _the scotch mercury_ in , _the commonwealth mercury_ in ) with john dunton's _the athenian mercury_ ( ) and charles leslie's _observator_ ( ) reveals a marked difference in typography. in the earlier papers the typography is generally uniform, with italics used for proper names and quotations, whereas l'estrange's and leslie's papers exhibit the whole range of typeface available to the seventeenth-century printer. dissenter dunton's _athenian mercury_, on the other hand, shows much less eccentricity in its typography, limiting itself to generous use of italics only, while defoe's _review_ goes back to the earlier restraint and presents a neat, uniform page. whether these typographical differences are attributable to particular political views or merely to "schools" of printing is difficult to say. in addition to this obvious sort of superficial imitation, there are many indications that l'estrange's _observator_ had a more permanent influence on posterity. it has been suggested that the periodical specializing in query and answer between reader and editor, which was initiated by john dunton's _athenian mercury_ and which we still have today, may have been inspired by the _observator's_ habitual retorts to opponents.[ ] james sutherland isolates in defoe certain qualities of prose style which he attributes to defoe's extensive reading of l'estrange; and he sees l'estrange's natural colloquial manner as setting a pattern for journalists who followed him.[ ] far-fetched as it may seem at first glance, even addison's _spectator_ shows a certain similarity to the _observator_. although the manner, tone, language, and political views of the two are antithetical, the _spectator's_ peculiar blend of moralizing and diversion is reminiscent of l'estrange's work. in both papers we notice a serious didactic purpose tempered by literary techniques and imaginative handling of material. decades before addison's famous credo--"to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful ... to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality"[ ]--l'estrange had formulated a similar theory: _obs._: where there has been any thing of that which you call raillery, or farce; it has amounted to no more then a speaking to the common people in their own way.... he that talks dry reason to them, does as good as treat 'em in an unknown tongue; and there's no other way of conveying the true sense, & notion of things, either to their affections, or to their understandings, then by the palate.... (ii, no. ) and as a link between l'estrange and addison we have defoe's analogous promise in "the introduction" to the _review_: "after our serious matters are over, we shall at the end of every paper, present you with a little diversion, as any thing occurs to make the world merry."[ ] these notions rest, of course, on the ancient _dulce et utile_, though modified in various ways in each of the three papers to suit the temperaments of their writers, the tastes of their mass-audiences, and different times. it is perhaps not irresponsible, then, to say that the synonymous titles of addison's and l'estrange's periodicals symbolize an affinity of purpose and technique. indeed, the _observator_ can, in many ways, be considered a rather crude and primitive ancestor of the _spectator_.[ ] the purpose of the _observator_ and its main targets are clearly formulated in _observator_ no. , as well as in the prefatory "to the reader," which was written in for the publication of volume of the collected papers. the "faction" which l'estrange proposes to reprove consists at first ( - ) of shaftesbury's republican-minded followers and of the perpetrators of the popish plot. in his evaluation of the plot, l'estrange agrees with some modern historians,[ ] for he never doubted that it was a whig fabrication, an invented cause around which the party members could rally and which neatly veiled the parliamentary power-struggle behind the scenes. titus oates is consequently the _observator's_ _bête noire_, and andrew marvell's pamphlet, _the growth of popery_, is for l'estrange the odious origin of the plot: _obs._: i do not know any man throughout the whole tract of the controversy that has held a candle to the devil with a better grace then the author of that pamphlet ... that furnishes so clear a light toward the opening of the roots, springs, and causes of our late miserable disorders, and confusions.... prethee let otes'es popish plot, stand, or fall, to it's own master; provided that marvels may be allow'd to be the elder brother.... (ii, no. ) toward the end of , when the whigs had ceased being an imminent threat to the government and all but one of the whig newspapers had been silenced, l'estrange turned his attack against the more moderate trimmers, as illustrated in _observator_ iii, no. . but whether the offensive is against whigs or trimmers, dissenters and advocates of toleration are always in the line of l'estrange's fire as chief subverters of absolute monarchy and of the church of england, as is evident in the satire of _observator_ nos. and . on the eve of the glorious revolution, this rigid stand lost him the support of both the anglican clergy and the universities, support of which he was so proud in his "to the reader." finally, _observator_ no. singles out the whig press as one of its chief targets. the "smith" referred to in that first number is anabaptist francis "elephant" smith, publisher of the outrageous _mirabilis annus_ books, the inflammatory pamphlet _vox populi_, and the offensive paper _smith's protestant intelligence_; "harris" is benjamin harris, publisher of the whig paper, _domestic intelligence_. these, together with harry care (_weekly pacquet of advice from rome_ and _popish courant_), richard janeway (_impartial protestant mercury_), langley curtis (_the protestant mercury_), and hordes of anti-royalist authors or publications are habitually quoted or referred to in l'estrange's counterpropaganda. his untiring countering of whig publications earned him nahum tate's hyperbolic praise in _the second part of absalom and achitophel_: than _sheva_, none more loyal zeal have shown, wakefull, as _judah's_ lion for the crown, who for that cause still combats in his age, for which his youth with danger did engage. in vain our factious priests the cant revive, in vain seditious scribes with libels strive t'enflame the crow'd, while he with watchfull eye observes, and shoots their treasons as they fly. their weekly frauds his keen replies detect, he undeceives more fast than they infect. so _moses_ when the pest on _legions_ prey'd, advanc'd his signal and the plague was stay'd.[ ] parochial as these concerns seem today, the _observator_ in its totality goes far beyond the harry cares and "elephant" smiths in its exhortation to greater rationality in areas ancillary to but transcending politics proper. its assiduous ridicule of enthusiasm, following in the steps of meric casaubon and henry more,[ ] its analyses of political manipulation of the naive populace, its explanations of psychological appeals, its orwellian warnings against the snares of loaded diction and the dangers of affective political rhetoric--all these efforts evident in the few _observators_ represented here are an important step in the direction of a less superstitious, less hysterical century. paradoxically, l'estrange mobilized progressive ideas in the service of an archaic political and religious administration, thereby familiarizing the man on the street with notions and attitudes commonly known as enlightened. the sugar coating in the _observator_ is, however, as significant as the pill, and distinguishes l'estrange's journalism from his predecessors'. apart from the traditional satiric blend of verbal banter and polemic, which has received ample commentary,[ ] his use of established literary modes further enhances the colloquies, making them especially diverting for his audience and interesting for us. as dialogues, the papers belong to a genre whose popularity has remained constant from plato onward. the appeal of the form lies in its pleasurable verisimilitude, immediacy, adaptability to differing points of view, and, especially after the restoration, in its potentiality for humorous repartee.[ ] as _satiric_ dialogues, l'estrange's sheets satisfy what seems to be a universal love of ridicule, an innate trait of the human mind, although there is no agreement among students of satire as to its exact psychological operations. in addition to adopting this form, which belongs to imaginative literature rather than to journalism, l'estrange spices his _observator_ with a number of other devices designed to provide variety, change in speed, and amusement for his reader, who is in turn bullied, joshed, castigated, reasoned, or laughed into accepting l'estrange's views. frequently, for example, the dialogue gives way to a pointed anecdote (old or current, invented or factual), such as the story of jack of leyden in _observator_ no. , or the following from a later dialogue, humorously satirizing the dour william prynne and the puritans' strange concepts of sin: _trimmer_: a gentleman that had cut-off his own hair on the saturday, came the next day to church in his first perriwig. the parson (that was already enter'd into his sermon) turn'd his discourse presently, from his text in the holy bible, to the subject of prynnes _unloveliness of lovelocks_; and thrash'd for a matter of a quarter of an hour, upon the mortal sin of wearing false hair. the gentleman, finding that he would never give him over, 'till he had preach'd him into a flat state of reprobation, fairly took off his perriwig, and clapt it upon one of the buttons at the corner of the pew. the poor man had not one word more to say to the perriwig; and was run so far from his text, that he could not for his heart find the way home again: so that to make short on't; he gave the people his blessing, and dismiss'd the congregation. (ii, no. ) frequently, also, l'estrange satirizes by means of parody or ludicrous examples of his enemies' rhetoric or behavior, as in the case of the "dissenting academies" in _observator_ no. . but most important of the techniques for entertaining are his creation of carefully delineated speaker-_personae_ and his "characters," again both borrowed from the literary tradition. after the first twenty-nine _observators_, which are experimental in that "q" and "a" have shifting personalities (as in nos. and ), l'estrange manipulates "whig" and "tory" for papers, changes to "whig" and "observator" for papers, briefly (six papers) shifts to "whig" and "courantier," and finally settles down to "trimmer" and "observator" for the remaining papers. in all these, the tory satirist (whether he be "tory" or "observator") is presented as the conventional "snarling dog" described by robert c. elliott,[ ] with appropriate outbursts of polemic, invective, bitter irony, and railing humor. even the traditional crudity is there, although compared to, say, the _popish courant_, l'estrange manifests a victorian restraint. "whig," on the other hand, is presented as a naive, credulous, not-too-bright individual whose main fault is not so much that he is a whig but that he is a whig because he has no mental capacity for discrimination. the "a" speaker of no. (apparently a humorous thrust at john eachard, author of _grounds and occasions of the contempt of the clergy_) with his preference for prynne, baxter, and smith over tacitus, livy, and caesar, is typical of the later "whig" _persona_. humorless, misguided, and chronically given to believing even the most outrageous gossip, "whig" cuts a foolish and therefore amusing figure when pitted against the sophisticated, trenchant-minded "tory." "trimmer" is quite different. l'estrange here creates a much more intelligent opponent, one who is given the liberty of satirizing "observator" himself and even patronizing him with the nickname "nobs." instead of naivete and obvious stupidity, "trimmer" has the guile and surface morality of the perfect hypocrite, a "pretending friend" as "observator" notes in _observator_ iii, nos. and . the humor in these later dialogues does not emerge from the "trimmer" personality but from the frequent self-satire and criticism on the part of l'estrange. "trimmer," for example, is allowed to mock the prose style, figures of speech, stubbornness and repetitiveness of "observator," as "trimmer's" chiding tone in _observator_ iii, no. suggests. to borrow a term from robert c. elliott, the entertainment of these later colloquies resides primarily in the technique of the "satirist satirized."[ ] l'estrange, in short, creates both _adversariuses_ as _dramatis personae_ rather than as simple straw men, a departure from the run-of-the-mill restoration dialogue evident in the following interruption of his artfully built illusion: _obs._: for varieties sake then, we'le to work another way. do you keep up your part of trimmer still: do just as you use to do; and be sure to maintain your character; leave the whig and the tory to me. _trimmer_: for the dialogue sake it shall be done. _obs._: but then you must consider that there are severall sort of trimmers: as your state-trimmer, your law-trimmer.... _trimmer_: and you shall suppose mee to be a statesman. _obs._: but of what magnitude? a lord? a knight?... _trimmer_: why truly nobs, if they be all of a price, i don't care if i be a lord. _obs._: we are over that point then; and so i am your lordships most humble servant. but this role playing within role playing is discarded at the end of the paper, the role of lord being apparently too cumbersome: _trimmer_: no more of your lordships, as you love me, nobs; for i am e'en as weary as a dog of my dignity. (no. ) the "character," however, is not only l'estrange's favorite satiric tool but perhaps the literary form most frequently used in the _observator_. l'estrange himself attests to his partiality in his parting comment at the close of the _observator_: _obs._: for my fancy lyes more to character, then to dialogue; and whoever will be so kind as to furnish me with spitefull materials, shall get his own again with interest, in an essay upon humane nature. (iii, no. ) the character was, of course, still highly popular in the latter half of the century, as chester noyes greenough's listings show,[ ] so that in indulging his own taste, l'estrange was also catering to the tastes of his public. of whatever other value the _observator_ may be to the modern student, it is invaluable as a fine example of the state-of-the-character toward the end of the century. practically every type of character analyzed by benjamin boyce in his two studies can be found repeatedly in l'estrange's dialogues:[ ] the earlier imitations of theophrastan characters, with their parallelisms and antitheses; the overburian character, with its extravagant metaphors; the externally dramatized; the subjective; the sprung. there are characters of ideologies, of political parties, of virtues, of vices, of whigs and dissenters (vices), of tories and anglicans (virtues). there are several "credo-characters" (confessions or manifestoes), and finally there is the habitually dramatized self-exposing character which becomes indistinguishable from the _dramatis persona_, as is the character of the modern whig in nos. and . among the _observators_ included here, the definition of "dissenter" in no. is based on character techniques, as is the conceit of the protestant as "adjective noun-substantive" in the same number. so is also the lengthy exposure of "leaders" in iii, no. , beginning with "they talk, to the ears, and to the passions of their hearers." a final comment about l'estrange's prose, which has been variously labeled "colloquial," "idiomatic," "vulgar," "coarse"--all vaguely descriptive terms suggesting value judgment, and none precise enough to give an intelligible account of what l'estrange actually does. in addition to the obvious device of choppy syntax and deliberately careless constructions simulating extemporaneous speech, l'estrange's figures and proverbial material demonstrate his meticulous shaping of an "applied prose"[ ] particularly suitable for the audience whose opinions he tried to sway. his metaphors and analogies tend to rely on commonly known objects or experiences, and because of rhetorical necessity they are almost always unpleasantly graphic. a random sampling yielded the following results: about twenty-five percent of the figures in the _observator_ deal with some specific part of the human body (nails, spleen, mouth, eyes, ears, knees, heels, flesh, guts, belly) or physiological processes (ulcerating, itching, chewing, digesting, spitting, reeking, seeing, crouching, sweating, gobbling). there is no euphemistic delicacy in these figures; l'estrange carefully selects the most earthy, common vehicles, thus achieving what james sutherland has termed "racy" and "vigorous" prose.[ ] another twenty-four percent of the figures are based on common occupations, daily activities, or objects familiar to the simpler citizen of london. these figures ordinarily pivot on barter or trade (horse traders, hagglers, fishwives, car men); on activities such as cooking, gambling, or glass-making; and on such objects as clothing, bagpipes, paper-pellets, bonnets, and chamber-pots. the rest derive from the animal kingdom, the scriptures, street-entertainment (jugglers, puppets, high-rope walkers) and folk medicine (glysters and plasters). it is obvious that these figures--their concreteness, sensuousness, and closeness to the daily experience of the ordinary reader--are a main ingredient in the richly colloquial texture of l'estrange's prose, as is the proverbial material which he incorporates unsparingly. in l'estrange's language the law of the land cannot be misunderstood, for it calls _a spade a spade_ (no. ; t-s ).[ ] the factions win their objectives _by hook or crook_ (no. ; t-h ) even though they are as _mad as march hares_ (no. ; t-h ) and _as blind as beetles_ (no. ; t-b ). certain things are _as clear as the day_ (no. ; t-d ) or _as plain as the nose o'my face_ (no. ; t-n ), whereas others are so confused that one can _make neither head nor tayl on't_ (no. ; t-h ). when _noses are put out of joint_ (no. ; t-n ) and tories are given a _bone to pick_ (no. ; t-b ), there will obviously be _no love lost betwixt_ whigs and tories (no. ; t-l ). thus l'estrange's characters, together with the fanciful anecdotes, self-satire, parodies, and _personae_, provide the satire and humor in the _observator_, the whole being couched in familiar, pungent language. as l'estrange counters the faction, propagandizes, and exhorts to rational behavior, he also amuses and delights, always hoping that the laughter provoked by his satiric treatment will cure what he saw as follies of his age, always appealing to the common reader whose sense of humor, he believed, was probably more developed than his sense. california state college, dominguez hills notes to the introduction : the translations before are _the visions of dom francisco de quevedo_ ( ); _a guide to eternity_ ( ); _five love-letters from a nun_ ( ); _the gentleman-apothecary_ ( ); _seneca's morals_ ( ); _twenty select colloquies of erasmus_ ( ); and _tully's offices_ ( ). : various perspectives on l'estrange's life and works can be found in the following: george kitchin, _sir roger l'estrange_ (london, ) for l'estrange's life and impact on the restoration press; j. g. muddiman, _the king's journalist_ (london, ) for l'estrange's rivalry with henry muddiman, editor of the _oxford [london] gazette_; david j. littlefield, "the polemic art of sir roger l'estrange: a study of his political writings, - " (unpublished doctoral dissertation, yale university, ) for an overview of l'estrange as a political pamphleteer. : in l'estrange wrote six new pamphlets and reprinted three old ones; in eleven new and seventeen old; at the start of , ten new and seventeen old. a probable norm of - copies per pamphlet edition has been estimated by joseph frank, _the beginnings of the english newspaper, - _ (cambridge, mass., ), p. ; two orders of pamphlets each were given to the restoration printer nathaniel thompson, as noted by leona rostenberg, "nathaniel thompson, catholic printer and publisher of the restoration," _the library_, rd ser., x ( ), . : _heraclitus ridens_ was considered by generations of historians as the first newspaper in dialogue; most recently, james sutherland (_english literature of the late seventeenth century_, oxford, , p. ) has given precedence to _the city and country mercury_. : _studies in the early english periodical_ (chapel hill, ), p. . : ibid., pp. - . : walter graham, _english literary periodicals_ (new york, ), pp. , , . : _on english prose_ (toronto, ), pp. - . : _the spectator_, no. , ed. donald f. bond (oxford, ), i, . : _the review_, ed. arthur wellesley secord (facsimile text society, new york, ), i, . : several of the literary techniques in the _spectator_ had been introduced into journalism by l'estrange. _spectator_ no. , for example, presents a _persona_ in the character of "mr. spectator"; no. contains a dream-allegory; nos. and present indirect discourse between _dramatis personae_; no. sketches a character of the envious man--all literary modes abundant in the _observator_. : see especially j. r. jones, _the first whigs; the politics of the exclusion crisis, - _ (london, ), pp. , , - , , , , - . : for attribution and identification of sheva, see g. r. noyes, ed., _the poetical works of john dryden_ (boston, ), pp. , . : the works that are echoed in the observator are meric casaubon, _a treatise concerning enthusiasme ..._ (london, ) and henry more, _enthusiasmus triumphatus ..._ (london, ). : the mixture of tones is discussed in alvin kernan, _the cankered muse_ (new haven, ), pp. , ; leonard feinberg, _introduction to satire_ (ames, iowa, ), pp. - ; gilbert highet, _the anatomy of satire_ (princeton, ), p. . : hugh macdonald, "banter in english controversial prose after the restoration," _essays and studies by members of the english association_, xxxii ( ), , , . : _the power of satire: magic, ritual, art_ (princeton, ), pp. - , - . : ibid., pp. - (_passim_). : _a bibliography of the theophrastan character in english, with several portrait characters_ (cambridge, mass., ). : _the theophrastan character in england to _ (cambridge, mass., ) and _the polemic character, - _ (lincoln, neb., ). : the term is suggested by ian gordon (_the movement of english prose_, london, , p. ) in his discussion of the simple, clear, journalistic style practiced by l'estrange, defoe, and swift in their political writings. : _on english prose_, p. . : the symbol "t" and accompanying numbers refer to the entries in morris palmer tilley, _a dictionary of the proverb in england in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries_ (ann arbor, ). bibliographical note the sources for the parts of the _observator_ in _dialogue_ reprinted here are volume i of the first collected edition published in , and volume iii, published and bound together with volume ii in , both in the collection of the william andrews clark memorial library. the pieces reprinted from volume i consist of the prefatory "to the reader," and _observator_ nos. , , and ; the papers reprinted from volume iii consist of _observator_ nos. and . in this edition the following editorial changes have been made: black letter type is indicated by underlining; inverted letters have been corrected; obvious compositor's errors have been corrected; and inconsistencies in font due to compositors' carelessness have been normalized. the frontispiece to this facsimile reprint is reproduced from the clark copy and measures approximately - / " x - / " in the original. the observator to the _reader_. most _prefaces_ are, (effectually) _apologies_; and neither the _book_, nor the _author_, one jot the _better_ for them. if the _book_ be _good_, it will not _need_ an _apology_; if _bad_, it will not _bear_ one: for where a man thinks, by _calling_ himself _noddy_, in the _epistle_, to _atone_, for _shewing_ himself to be one, in the _text_; he does (with respect to the dignity of an _author_) but _bind up two fools_ in _one cover_: but there's no more trusting some people with _pen, ink, and paper_, then the maddest extravagants in _bedlam_, with _fire_, _sword_, or _poyson_. he that _writes ill_, and _sees_ it, why does he _write on_? and, with a kind of _malice prepense, murder_ the _ingenious_ part of _mankind_? he that _really believes_ he writes _well_; why does he pretend to _think_ otherwise? now take it which way you please, a man runs a risque of his _reputation_, for want, either of _skill_, and _judgment_, the _one_ way; or of _good faith_, and _candor_ the _other_. beside a mighty oversight, in _imagining_ to bring himself off, from an _ill_ thing, _done_, or _said_, by telling the world that he did it for _this_ or _that reason_. when a book has once past the _press_ into the _publique_; there's no more _recalling_ of it, then of a _word spoken_, out of the _air_ again. and a man may as well hope to reverse the _decree_ of his _mortality_, as the _fate_ of his _writings_. in short: when the _dice_ are _cast_, the _author_ must stand his _chance_. now that i may not be thought to enterfere with my self, by _declaiming_ against _one preface_ in _another_: i do here previously renounce to all the little arts and forms of bespeaking the _good will_ of the _reader_; as a _practice_, not only _mean_, _light_, and _unprofitable_; but wholly _contrary_ to the _bent_ of _my inclination_; as well as _inconsistent_ with the very _drift_, and _quality_ of my _design_. for these _papers_ were _written_, indifferently, for the _enformation_ of the _multitude_; and for the _reproof_ of a _faction_: _two interests_ that i am not much _sollicitous_, or _ambitious_, to _oblige_: and upon _this consideration_ it is, that i have _address'd_ them to the _reader_ in _generall_; as a _calculation_ that will serve for _all meridians_: but if i could have resolved upon a _dedication_, with any _particular mark_, or _epithete_ of _distinction_; it should have been, _to the ignorant, the seditious_, or _the schismatical reader_; for _there_, properly, lies _my bus'ness_. the reader will find in the _first number_ of this collection, the _true intent_, and _design_ of the _undertaking_; and he will likewise find, in the very _date_ of it, (april . .) the _absolute necessity_ of some such _application_, to encounter the _notorious falshoods_; the _malicious scandals_, and the _poysonous doctrines_ of _that season_. whether i had sufficient _ground_, or _reason_, for the warmth i have exprest in these papers, upon several occasions, (out of an affectionate sense of my _duty_, and a _zeal_ for the _peace_, _welfare_, and _safety_ of my _country_;) i _dare_, and i _do appeal_ to the _king_, and his _ministers_; to the _consciences_ of as many of his majesties _subjects_, as are not _stark blind_ because they _will_ not _see_; and to the justice of the nation. i do _appeal_, i say, to his majesties _proclamations_; to his _royal declaration_; several _orders_ of _councel_; the _examinations_, and _confessions_ of _unquestionable witnesses_; the _solemnity_ of so many _tryals_, _sentences_, and _executions_; and the _criminals_, every man of 'em, either _acknowledging_ the _crime_, or _justifying_ the _treason_: but the _fact_, however made as _clear_ as the _day_. there's the _flight_ of the _conspirators_; their _arms seiz'd_; their _councels laid open_; _men listed_; the _methods_ of the _confederacy detected_, to the very _time_, and _place_ for the _perpetration_ of the _villany_; to the very _circumstance_ of the _providential fire_ at _newmarket_, that _disappointed_ it. i have all these _demonstrative proofs_, and _convincing evidences_, to _warrant_ me in the most _violent presumptions_ of a _rebellion_ in _agitation_: and the _phanatiques themselves_ made good the _worst_ things that ever i said of the _party_: in _vindication_ of the _importunity_ of all my _foreboding_, if not _prophetical suspicions_: nay, they were come to the very _point_, and _crisis_ of the _operation_, of that _unaccountable_, and _amazing vote_. [_if his majesty shall come by any violent death (which god forbid) it shall_ be _reveng'd to the utmost upon the papists_.] the _king_, and the _duke_ were to be _murder'd_ by _republican_, and _fanatical rebells_: _there's_ your _violent death_. and _then_, [reuenge it upon the papists:] for [_the thing_ (says _keeling_) _was to be laid upon the papists as a branch of the popish plot_. walcots tryal. fol. .] and the _next_ step was, for the _traytors_ to _unriddle_ the _mystery_, and to _expound_, who were the _papists_. [_the lord mayor, and the sheriffs_] _were three_ of 'em. _they_, were to be kill'd; and [_as many of the_ lieutenancy _as they could get; and the principal ministers of state; my lord_ halifax, _my lord_ rochester, _and my_ lord keeper: (_they_ were _three papists more_.) _my lord_ keeper _was to have been_ hang'd _upon the same post that_ college _had hung. sir_ john moor _to be_ hung-up _in_ guildhall, _as a betrayer of the rights and liberties of the city. and the judges lordships to be_ flay'd, _and_ stuff'd, _and_ hung-up _in_ westminster hall: _and a great many of the_ pensionary parliament hang'd-up, _as betrayers of the rights of the people_. walcots tryal, p. .] you have here, a _practical explanation_ of the _true-protestant way_, (in case of _the king's violent death_) _of revenging it to the utmost upon the papists_. and this intended _assassination_ (says _ferguson_ (in the same page)) [_is a glorious action, and such an action as_ i hope to see publiquely gratify'd by parliament; _and question not but you will be fam'd for it, and_ statues _erected for you, with the title of_ liberatores patriae. _ibid._] now when matters were come to _this pass_ once, i think it was high time to write _observators_. i might enlarge my self, upon the _inducements_ that mov'd me to enter upon this _province_; the _needfullness_ of some _popular medium_ for the _rectifying_ of _vulgar mistakes,_ and for _instilling_ of _dutyfull_, and _honest principles_ into the _common people_, upon that _turbulent_, and _seditious juncture_: but i am not willing to _clogg_ my _preface_, with the _repetition_ of what i have spoken so _expressly_ to, in the _book_. i am now to advertise the _reader_, in the next place; that as i have not strain'd, so much as _one syllable_, in the _whole course_ of _these papers_, beyond the _line_ of _truth_, nor let fall _one word, contrary_ to my _conscience_; nor _layd-on_ so much as _one false colour_, for a _blind_, or a _disguise_: as i have not done any thing of all this, i say; nor _gratify'd_ so much as _one passion_ to the prejudice, of any _man_, or _thing_; or of _common justice it self_: so neither, on the _other_ hand, was i less _cautious_, and _considerate_, in the _undertaking_ of this _duty_, then i have been _clear_, and _impartial_, in the _discharge_, and _manage_ of it. i was no sooner possess't, of the _reason_, and the _expedience_ of the _thing_; but i fell presently to _deliberate_ upon the _invidious difficulties_; the _scandals_, _reproches_, and a thousand other _mischiefs_, and _inconveniencies_, that would probably _attend_ it. i laid them all _before_ me; and upon a _full computation_ of the _matter, pro_ and _con_; i resolv'd, at last, to put _pen to paper_; not without some _vanity_ perhaps, in _affecting_ the _honour_ of being _revil'd_, by the _blasphemers_ of _god_, and the _king_. i shall say nothing of the _traytors_; the _papists_; the _fidlers_; the _all-manner-of-rogues_, and _debauchees_ that they have _made_ me: for their _cause_ is _founded_ upon a _sacrilegious hypocrisy; maintain'd_ by _fraud_, _scandal_, and _imposture_. and when they have a mind to _blacken_ a man, 'tis not a _straw_ matter, for any _foundation_ of _fact_, or _history_: but _paint_ him as like the _devil_ as they _can_; and to make short work on't, _one fanatique_ sits to _another_, for the _picture_. but _these scurrilities_ have more of _noise_ in 'em, then of _weight_: and those people that had the face to _calumniate charles the first_, for a _tyrant_, and a _papist_; and the _confidence_, at this very day, to do as much for _charles the second_; they that _preach rebellion_ out of the _gospel_; give it the _name_ of _god's truth, god's cause_; and offer up the _bloud_ of _kings_ as an _acceptable sacrifice_ to _jesus christ_: what _christian_ will not _value_ himself, upon the _reputation_ of lying under the _scourge_ of _those tongues_, and _pens_, that offer these _outrages_ to their _maker_, and their _saviour_? so that these _clamours_, and _maledictions_, i look upon, as matter, rather of _advantage_, then _discredit_; where _loyalty_ to the _king_, and to the _church_, is made the _crime_: but yet i must confess, i had _some other mortifications_ in my _thought_, that went a little _nearer_ me. as first, the _indecency_ of a _gentlemans_ entring into a _street-brawl_, (and _bare-fac'd_ too) with the _sink_ of _mankind_, both for _quality_, and _wickedness_. y. the _disproportion_, and the _indecorum_ of the thing, for an _old fellow_ that now writes _sixty eight_, to run about, a _masquerading_, and _dialoguing_ of it, in _twenty fantastical shapes_, only to furnish a _popular entertainment_, and _diversion_. y. the _scandalous appearance_ of it, for me to take up the _profession_, and _bus'ness_ of a _pamphleteer_; and (almost) to lose the _name_ of my _family_, by it, in _exchange_ for that of the _observator_. y. i had this prospect before me too. what _construction_ would be made upon't; (if i may speak it with _modesty_) even to the _lessening_ of my _character_; and consequently, to my detriment, every way, as well in respect of _fortune_, as _esteem_: for men are apt, in such cases as this, to _mistake_, the _intent_, as well as the _reason_ of the _office_; and to impute the most _sacred_, and _consciencious zeal_ of an _upright heart_, in the performance of the most _important_, and _necessary duty_, only to a _levity_ of _mind_, perchance; or in other terms; to an over _officious_, and _pragmatical itch of medling_: it makes a man to be lookt upon, as if a _pamphlet_ were his _masterpiece_; and when he's once _nail'd_ to _that post_, he may reckon upon't, that he's at the _top_ of his _preferment_. upon these _four difficulties_, i reason'd with my self, after this manner. to the _first_; what do i care, for having so much _dirt_ thrown at me, that will _wash off_ again? and at the worst, the engaging with such a _rabble_ of _contaminated varlets_, is no more then _leaping_ into the _mud_ to help my _father. secondly. 'tis not for a man in years_, to do so and so. well! and here's a _reputative circumstance_, on the _one_ hand, against an _indispensable duty_, on the _other_. the _common people_ are _poyson'd_, and will run _stark mad_, if they be not _cur'd_: offer them _reason_, without _fooling_, and it will never _down_ with them: and give them _fooling_, without _argument_, they're never the _better_ for't. let 'em _alone_, and all's _lost_. so that the _mixture_ is become as _necessary_, as the _office_; and it has been _my part_, only to _season_ the _one_ with the _other. thirdly_, i must set the _conscience_ of the action, against the _reproch_. and _lastly; 'tis nothing to me what other people_ think, _so long as i am conscious to my self that i do what i_ ought. all this i computed upon, _before-hand_; and thus far, i have not been _deceiv'd_ in my _account_. i have been _baited_ with _thousands_ upon _thousands_ of _libells_. i have created _enemies_ that do me the _honour_ to _hate_ me, perhaps, next to the _king himself_ (god bless him) and the _royal family_. their _scandals_ are _blown over_: their _malice, defeated_, and whenever _my hour comes_, i am ready to deliver up my _soul_, with the _conscience_ of an _honest man_, as to what i have done, in _this particular_: and i do here declare, in the _presence_ of an _all-seeing_, and an _all-knowing god_, that as i have never yet receiv'd any _answer_, more then _cavil_, and _shuffling_, to the _doctrine_, and _reasoning_ of _these papers_: so i never _made use_ of any _sophism_, or _double meaning_, in defence of the _cause_ that i have here taken upon me to _assert_: but have dealt _plainly_, and _above-bord_, without either _fallacy_, or _collusion_. after this _view_ of the _worst side_ of my _case_; (and (in truth) a kind of _abstract_ of it, in _minutes_) i should be extremely wanting, both to _god_ and _man_, in not taking _this occasion_, of making _known_ to the _world_, the _many generous instances_ of _affection_, and _respect_, which i have received, not only from the most _considerable_ part of his majesties _loyal subjects_ of _all qualities_, and _degrees_; but _particularly_ from the _two famous universities themselves_: and, in short, from the most _eminent persons_ of the _long robe_, in their _several professions_: in _testimony_ of their _favourable acceptance_ of my _honest endeavours_ toward the service, both of the _church_, & the _state_. and this i am obliged to leave behind me, upon _record_; out of a _double right_, & _regard_, as well to my _friends_, as to my _self_: for i reckon upon it, as an _accumulation_ of _honour_, to _me_, to be _rescu'd_ out of the hands of _publique enemies_, and _apostates_, by men of the clear _contrary character_; that is to say; by men of _unquestionable integrity_, and of _unspotted faith_. my _back friends_ are as _merry_, now, as _a laugh on one side of the mouth_ can make 'em; at the _conceit_ of calling the several _presents_ which have been made me (and they are very _considerable_) by the name of a _gathering_; and they do not stick to put it about, that i was my _own sollicitor_ for the _begging_ of it. i have been told of one, that _said_ as much; _for whose sake_, i would advise _all parents_ to take it for a _warning_, not to _stuff_ their _childrens heads_ so damnably, with _greek and latin_, as to leave no _room_ for _brains_, and _good manners_. but what if it _be a gathering_? are not all _publique benevolences; publique works; publique acknowledgments_; the _same thing_? neither do i find any more _scandal_, in receiving a _reward_ for a _service_ in a _common cause_, then in a _lawyers_ taking a _fee_, in a _private_ one: but be it what it _will_: i shall transmit the _acknowledgment_ of it, with this paper, as the _glory of my life_: and value my self incomparably more upon so _eminent_ a _mark_ of a _general esteem_; then upon the _advantage_ of _ten times a greater sum_, by _any other way_. but _gatherings_, with some people, are only _honourable_, when they are apply'd to the _maintaining_ of _conspirators_, and _affidavit-men_: and they account _money_ much better _bestow'd_ upon the _subversion_ of the _government_, then toward the _defending_ of it: but _that orange is squeez'd as far as 'twill drop, already_. now to the _calumny_ of _my setting this bus'ness afoot; first_, i thank god, that neither my _mind_, nor my _condition_ were ever sunk _so_ low, yet, as to _descend_ to _that way of application_. y, as i hope to be sav'd, the matter was proceeded upon, in _several places_, and a _long time_, before ever i had the least _inkling_, or _imagination_ of it; and when it was so far _advanc'd, without my privity_, i must certainly have been both a great _fool_, and a great _clown_, either to have _oppos'd_, or _refus'd_, a token of so _obliging_, and so _generous_ a _respect_. to conclude; if any man has been so _misled_, as to _intend_ that for a _personal charity_; which i cannot _honourably_ own the _receiving_ of, under _that notion_; i am ready to return him his proportion, with a thousand acknowledgments: but this shall not hinder me yet, from _cherishing_ in my _thoughts_, the _remembrance_ of what _honour_ soever has been done me for the sake of the _publique_. the reflexions that have been pass'd upon my _quality_, and _conversation_, need no further answer, then to appeal to my very _name_, and my _acquaintance_: but for the _charge_ of being a _papist_, it is as _false_, as it is _malicious_. i am to say one word more now, concerning my _l. shaftsbury_; whose _name_, and _title_, i have often occasion to make mention of, in this book. the _reader_ is to take notice, that it is intended of the _late earl of shaftsbury_, who dy'd at _amsterdam, jan. - / . the surviving heir of that honour, and family, having ever demean'd himself with a remarkable loyalty, and respect, toward the king, and his government_. =numb. .= the observator. in _question_ and _answer_. =wednesday=, april . . _q. well! they are so. but do you think now to bring'um to their wits again with a_ pamphlet? _a._ come, come; 'tis the _press_ that has made'um _mad_, and the _press_ must set'um _right_ again. the distemper is _epidemical_; and there's no way in the world, but by _printing_, to convey the _remedy_ to the _disease_. _q. but what is it that you call a_ remedy? _a._ the _removing_ of the _cause_. that is to say, the _undeceiving_ of the _people_: for they are well enough disposed, of themselves, to be orderly, and obedient; if they were not misled by _ill principles_, and hair'd and juggled out of their senses with so many frightful _stories_ and _impostures_. _q. well! to be plain and short; you call your self the_ observator: _what is it now that you intend for the subject of your_ observations? _a._ take it in few words then. my business is, to encounter the _faction_, and to vindicate the _government_; to detect their _forgeries_; to lay open the rankness of their _calumnies_, and _malice_; to refute their _seditious doctrines_; to expose their _hypocrisy_, and the _bloudy design_ that is carry'd on, under the name, and semblance, of _religion_; and, in short, to lift up the cloke of the _true protestant_ (as he christens himself) and to shew the people, the _jesuite_ that lies skulking under it. _q. shall the_ observator _be a_ weekly paper, _or how_? _a._ no, no; but oftner, or seldomer, as i see occasion. _q. pray favour me a word; when you speak of a_ true protestant, _don't you mean a_ dissenting protestant? _a._ yes, i do: for your _assenting_ and _consenting protestant_ (you must know) is a _christian_. _q. and is not a_ dissenting protestant _a_ christian too? _a._ peradventure, he _is_ one; peradventure, _not_: for a _dissenter_ has his name from his _disagreement_, not from his _perswasion_. _q. what is a dissenter then?_ _a._ tis impossible to say either what a _dissenter is_, or what he is _not_. for he's a _nothing_; that may yet come to be _any thing_. he may be a _christian_; or he may be a _turk_; but you'l find the best account of him in his _name_. _a dissenter, is one that thinks otherwise._ that is to say, let the _magistrate_ think what he pleases, the _dissenter_ will be sure to be of _another opinion_. a _dissenter_ is not of _this_, or of _that_, or of _any religion_; but _a member politique of an incorporate faction_: or otherwise; a _protestant-fault-finder_ in a _christian commonwealth_. _q. well! but tho' a_ dissenter _may be_ any thing; _a_ dissenting protestant _yet tells ye_ what _he is_. _a._ he does so, he tells ye that he _is_ a _negative_: an _anti-protester_; one that _protests against_, but not _for_ any thing. _q. ay; but so long as he opposes the_ corruptions _of the church of_ rome. _a._ well: and so he does the _rites_, and _constitutions_ of the church of _england_ too. as a _protestant_, he does the _former_; and the _other_ as a _dissenter_. _q. but is there no_ uniting _of these_ dissenters? _a._ you shall as soon make the winds blow the same way, from all the poynts of the compass. _q. there are_ good _and_ bad, _of_ all opinions, _there's no doubt on't: but do you think it fayr, to condemn a_ whole party _for some_ ill men _in't_? _a._ no, by no means: the _party_ is neither the _worse_, for having _ill_ men in it, nor the _better_, for _good_. for whatever the _members_ are, the _party_ is a _confederacy_; as being a _combination_, against the _law_. _q. but a man may_ mean honestly, _and yet perhaps ly under some_ mistake. _can any man help his opinion?_ _a._ a man may _mean well_, and _do ill_; he may shed _innocent bloud_, and _think he does god good service_. 'tis true: a man cannot help _thinking_; but he may help _doing_: he is _excusable_ for a _private_ mistake, for _that's_ an error only to _himself_; but when it comes once to an _overt act_, 'tis an _usurpation_ upon the _magistrate_, and there's no plea for't. _q. you have no kindnesse, i perceive, for a_ dissenting protestant; _but what do you think of a bare_ protestant _without any_ adjunct? _a._ i do look upon _such_ a _protestant_ to be a kind of an _adjective noun-substantive; it requires something to be joyn'd with it, to shew its signification_. by _protestancy_ in _general_ is commonly understood a _separation_ of christians from the communion of the church of _rome_: but to _oppose errors_, on the _one hand_, is not sufficient, without keeping our selves _clear_ of corruptions, on the _other_. now it was the _reformation_, not the _protestation_, that settled us upon a _true medium_ betwixt the two _extreams_. _q. so that you look upon the_ protestation, _and the_ reformation, _it seems, as two several things_. _a._ very right; but in such a manner only, that the _former_, by gods providence, made way for the _other_. _q. but are not all_ protestants _members of the_ reformed religion? _a._ take notice, _first_, that the _name_ came originally from the _protestation_ in . against the _decree of spires_; and that the _lutheran protestants_ and _ours_ of the church of _england_, are not of the _sam communion_. now _secondly_; if you take _protestants_ in the _latitude_ with our _dissenters_, they are not so much a _religion_, as a _party_; and whoever takes this body of _dissenters_ for _members_ of the _reformed religion_ sets up a _reformation_ of a _hundred and fifty colours_ and as may [sic] _heresies_. the _anabaptists, brownists, antinomians, familists, &c._ do all of them set up for _dissenting protestants_; but god forbid we should ever enter these _people_ upon the roll of the _reformation_. _q._ well! _but what do you think of_ protestant smith _and_ protestant harris? _a._ just as i do of _protestant muncer_, and _protestant phifer_; a brace of _protestants_ that cost the empire lives: and our own _pretended protestants_ too, of later date, have cost _this nation little lesse_. _q. ay: but these are men of quite another temper: do not you see how zealous they are for the preservation of the_ king's person, _the_ government, _and the_ protestant religion? _a._ i _see_ well enough what they _say_, and i _know_ what they _do_. consider, _first_, that they are profess'd _anabaptists: smith_ no less then a _pretended prophet_; and the _other_, a kind of a _wet enthusiast. secondly_; 'tis the very _doctrine_ of the _sect_ to root out _magistracy_, cancel _humane laws; kill_, and take _possession_; and _wash their feet with the bloud of the ungodly_; and where ever they have set footing, they have _practic'd_ what they _taught_. are not these likely men now, to help out a _king_, and a _religion_, at a dead lift? if you would be further satisfy'd in the truth of things, reade _sleidan, spanhemius, gastius, hortensius, bullinger, pontanus, the dipper dipp'd, bayly's disswasive, pagets heresiography_, &c. _hortensius_ tells ye, how _jack of leydens successor_ murthered his wife, to make way to his daughter, _p._ . and after that, cut a girls throat, for fear she should tell tales. _gastius_ tells us of a fellow that cut off his brothers head, as by impulse, and then cry'd, _the will of god is fulfilled, lib. i. pa. . jack of leyden_ started up from supper, _to do some business_ (he said) _which the father had commanded him_, and cut off a soldiers head; and afterwards cut off his wives head in the _market-place. sleydans comment. lib. ._ _q. you will not make the_ protestant-mercury _to be an_ anabaptist _too, will ye_? _a._ if you do make him _any thing_, i'le make him _that_. but in one word, they are _factious_ and _necessitous_; and consequently, the fittest instruments in the world, for the promoting of a _sedition_. first, as they are _principled_ for't; and then, in respect of their _condition_; for they are every man of them under the lash of the law, and retainers to prisons; so that in their _fortunes_ they can hardly be _worse_. insomuch, that it is a common thing for them to lend a name to the countenancing of a libel which no body else dares own. _q. well! but let them be as_ poor, _and_ malicious _as_ devils, _so long as they have neither_ brains, _nor_ interest, _what hurt can their papers do_? _a._ the intelligences, you must know, that bear their _names_, are not of _their composing_, but the dictates of a _faction_, and the venom of a club of _common-wealths-men_ instill'd into those papers. _q. these are_ words, _all this while, without_ proofs; _can you shew us particularly where the venom lies?_ _a._ it is the business of every sheet they publish, to affront the _government_, the _kings authority_, and _administration_; the _privy-council_; the _church, bench, juries, witnesses_; all _officers, ecclesiastical, military_, and _civil_: and no matter for _truth_ or _honesty_, when a _forg'd relation_ will serve their turn. 'tis a common thing with them, to get half a dozen _schismaticall_ hands to a _petition_, or _address_ in a corner, and then call it, the sense of the nation: and when all's done, they are not above twenty persons, that make all this clutter in the kingdom. _q. but to what end do they all this?_ _a._ to make the government _odious_, and _contemptible_; to magnifie their own party; and fright the people out of their _allegeance_, by _counterfeit letters, reports_, and _false musters_, as if the sober and considerable part of the nation were all on their side. _q. we are in common charity to_ allow, _for_ errors, _and_ mis-reports, _and not presently to make an act of_ malice, _and_ design, _out of every_ mistake. _can you shew me any of these_ counterfeits, _and_ impostures _that you speak of? these_ cheats _upon the_ people, _and_ affronts _upon the_ government? _a._ yes, yes; abundantly. and il'e give you instances immediately upon every poynt you'l ask me: only this note, by the way; that let them be _mistakes_, or _contrivances_, or what you will, they all run unanimously _against_ the government, without so much as one syllable in _favour_ of it: which makes the matter desperately suspitious. _q. let me see then, in the first place, where any_ affront _is put upon the_ government. _a. some persons_ (says smiths prot. int. n. .) _in_ norwich, _&c. who have a greater stock of_ confidence, _and_ malice, _then_ wisdom, _and_ honesty, _are so far transported with_ zeal _to serve the_ devil, _or his_ emissaryes _the_ papists, _that they are now prosecuting several_ dissenting protestants _upon_ stat. . eliz. _&c._ (and so the protestant-mercury, _n._ .) _some people at_ norwich, _are playing the_ devil _for_ godsake: _several honest, peaceable_, protestant dissenters, _having been troubled for not coming to_ church, _or having been present at_ religious meetings &c. now what greater _affront_ can there be to _government_, then this language, _first_, from an _anabaptist_ that is a _professed enemy_ to _all government_; and _secondly_, from a _private person_, bare-fac'd, to arraign a _solemn law_: a _law_ of this _antiquity_; a _law_ of _queen elizabeth's_, (a princesse so much celebrated by our _dissenters themselves_ for her _piety, good government_, and _moderation_;) a _law_ which, upon experience, has been found so _necessary_, that the bare _relaxing_ of it, cost the _life_ of a _prince_, the _bloud_ of _two or three hundred thousand_ of his _subjects_, and a _twenty-years-rebellion_? to say nothing of the dangerous consequence of making it _unsafe_ for _magistrates_ to discharge their dutyes, for fear of _outrages_, and _libells_. _q. well! but what have you to say now to the_ kings authority, _his_ administration, _and his_ privy council. _a. smith_ (in his _vox populi, p._ .) saith, that _the king is oblig'd to pass or confirm those laws his people shall chuse_, at which rate, if they shall tender him a bill for the _deposing_ of himself, he is bound to _agree_ to't. _secondly_, in the same page, _he denies the kings power of proroguing, or dissolving parliaments_; which is an _essential_ of _government_ it self, under what form soever, and he's no longer a _king, without it_. and then for his _administration, p._ . the _anabaptist_ charges upon his majesty [_those many surprizing and astonishing prorogations, and dissolutions_ (as he has worded his meaning) _to be procur'd by the papists_.] and then, _p._ . he wounds both the _king_, and his _council_, at a blow; in falling upon _those that make the king break his coronation-oath_; arraigning his _council_ in the _first_ place, and the _king himself_ in the _second_; and that for no less then the breach of _oath_, and _faith_.----wee'l talk out the rest at our next meeting. _london_, printed for _h. brome_, at the gun in s. _pauls_ church-yard. =numb.= . the observator. in _question_ and _answer_. =saturday=, may . . _q_. _but which way lies_ your _humour_ then? _a._ my way (you must know) lies more to _history_, and _books_, and _politicks_, and _religion_, and _such as that_, but take this along with you too; that i am for turning over of _men_, as well as _books_; for that's the profitable study when all's done. _q. pre' thee commend me to the_ common hangman _then, if he that_ turns over _the most_ men _be the_ greatest philosopher. _but how_ turning over _of_ men? _a._ that is to say, i _read_ them; i _study_ them; i speak of _turning over_ their _actions_, not their _bodys_. and pray observe my _simile. every_ action _of a mans_ life _resembles_ a page _in a_ book. d'ye mark me? _q._ i _were to blame else, but what are the authors that you would recommend to a bodys reading?_ _a._ why thereafter as the subject is, as for _history_; ye have _clarks lives_, and _examples_; _lloyd's memoirs_; the _popes warehouse_, &c. for _politicks_; there's mr. _baxters holy commonwealth_, the _assemblys catechism_, the letter about the _black box_, &c. for _law_, ye have mr. _prinn's soveraign power of parliaments_; _smiths vox populi_, &c. for _morals_, there's _youth's behaviour_; and then for _deep knowledge_, ye have _brightman's revelations reveal'd_; _lilly's hieroglyphicks_; the _northern star_, _jones_ of the _heart_: all excellent pieces in their kinds, and not inferior (perhaps) to any of the ancients. _q. i was never so happy as to meet with any of these authors. but what d'ye think of_ cornelius tacitus? _a._ a _talking, tedious, empty fellow_. _q. well but is not_ titus livius _a pretty good_ historian? _a._ ha ha ha. that same _titus_ is an errant _puppy_, a _damn'd, insipid, lying coxcomb. titus livius_ a good _historian_ sayst thou? why if i had a _schoolboy_ that writ such _latin_ i'de tickle his _toby_ for him. _q. but what's your opinion of_ caesars commentaries _then? i mean, for a_ narrative? _a._ a _narrative_ d'ye say? deliver me from such _narratives_! why 'tis no more to be compar'd to the _narratives_ that are written _now adays_, then an _apple_ is to an _oyster_. _q. but however he was a very_ brave fellow, _was he not_? _a._ he was an _arbitrary_, oppressing, tyrannical _fellow_. and then for his _bravery_, he did pretty well at the battel of _leipsick_, and after that, at _lepanto_; and when you have said that, you have said all. _q. you have read all these authors, have you not?_ _a._ why verily i _have_, and i have _not_. they are a company of _lying, ridiculing rascals_; they do not _affect_ me at all: they are below me, they are not worth my notice. _q. what would i give to be as well vers'd in_ history, _as you are_? _a._ and that's impossible, let me tell ye; utterly impossible: for i reade just six times as much as any other man. i have read more _folio's_ then ever _tostatus_ read _pages_. in one word; i reade as much in _one hour_, as any other man reads in _six_. _q. why how can that be?_ _a._ why you must know i have a notable faculty that way. i read ye _two pages_ at a _view_: the _right-hand_ page with _one eye_, and the _left_ with _t'other_, and then i carry _three lines_ before me at a time with _each eye_. _q. but can ye_ keep _what ye_ reade, _at this rate_? _a._ i _remember_ six times more then i _reade_; for i supply all that was left out, and yet 'tis a wonderfull thing, i cannot for my heart's blood remember _faces_. i dare swear i have taken one man for another twenty times; but i am altogether for _things_, and _notions_, d'ye see, and such like; _countenances_, let me tell ye, don't _affect_ me; and yet i have a strange aversion for the two faces i saw with you t'other day. _q. what d'ye mean_, kings-man _and_ church-man? _a. devil's-man_ and _damms-man_: a couple of _canary-birds_, i'le warrant 'em: but _kings-man_ is better yet then _duke's-man_. _q. why do ye talk thus of men of quality, and considerable families?_ _a._ well! but i may live to see their honours laid in the dust tho' for all that. prethee why is not _circingle-man, lawn-sleeve-man, mitre-man_, as good a name as _church-man_? pray what family is this same _church-man_ of, for i know a world of the _name_? he's of the _prelatical house_, i suppose, is he not? _q. well, and is he ever the worse for that?_ _a._ only _antichrist_ is the _head_ of the _family_. come let me talk a little roundly to ye. how many sound _protestant divines_ may there be of that house now, d'ye think, in _england_, and _wales_, and the town of _berwick upon tweed_? not above _six_, if i be a _christian_, and all the rest are _tantivy's_, and worshippers of the beast: but i may live yet to have the scowring of some of their frocks for 'em. _q. prethee when didst thou see mr._ sancroft? _a._ not a good while; but _harry_ and i had a crash t'other day yonder at _greenwich_. _q. what's become of_ l'estrange _i wonder?_ _a._ who! _towzer?_ that _impudent dog_; that _tory-rascal_; that _fidling curr_. he's in the plot with _celiers_, and young _tong_, as sure as thou'rt alive, and as rank a _papist_ (let him swear what he will) as ever piss't. _q. but has he not taken the_ sacrament _to the_ contrary? _a._ a _popish proselyte_ is no more to be believ'd, upon his _oath_, than the _devil himself_ if he were to expound upon the _gospel_. why they have dispensations to swear any thing. _q. what and continue papists still?_ _a._ yes: and go on still with the hellish popish plot, as heartily as ever they did before. why don't you see how the toad brazens it out still that he was not at _somerset-house_? tho' _prance_ and _mowbray_ swear they saw him there? _q. well, but who knows best? he_ himself, _or the_ witnesses? _a._ not a fart matter; for whether 'twas so or not; it were better forty such rogues were hang'd then one kings-evidence disparag'd. _q. but did they not swear a little short, think ye?_ _a._ nay, they might have sworn _homer_, i must confess. _q. but now you mind me of_ somerset-house; _do'nt you remember a young fellow of_ cambridge _that refus'd to receive the sacrament, because (as he told his master) he was reconcil'd to the church, of_ rome, _and converted, and baptiz'd at_ somerset-house? _this is an old story ye must know. why might not this be_ towzer? _a._ nay as like as not, for the _universitys_ are the very _seminarys_ of _popery_, and it will never be well with _england_ till _those calves_ be turn'd a _grazing_. _q. but is there no believing of a_ converted papist _upon his_ oath? _why does the law receive 'em then (upon such and such certain tests) for_ statutable protestants? _a._ the _law_ never was among 'em as _i_ have been. there's no such thing (i tell ye) as a _converted papist_, and he shall sooner change his _shape_, then his _nature: kiss a book, kiss mine arse_. _q. why d'ye talk thus at random?_ _a._ come, come, the _outlandish doctor_ for my mony: that told one of the _macks_ t'other day in the face of the _bench_, that _he would let down his breeches and shite upon him. plain-dealing's a jewell._ _q. thou'rt e'en as busy with a_ backside _as a_ glyster-pipe. _but (sluttery a part) pray have a care what ye say; for if a_ proselyted papist _be not to be trusted upon his_ oath, _what becomes of the_ kings evidence _that_ swear _under the_ same circumstances? _but here's enough of this; and pre'thee tell us now, how go squares in the_ state _all this while_? _a._ oh very bad, very bad, nothing but _tory-rorys_, from top to bottom. _tory-judges; tory-jurys; tory-justices; tory-officers; tory-crackfarts; tory-pamphlets_. all, _certiorari-men_, and _yorkists_. but i rattled up some of 'em there at the----_what d'ye call't-house_----oh they'r grown strangely insolent since these bawling addresses. _q. why what do they do?_ _a._ why they set every _rascally squire_ and _doctor above_ me: nay, they'l scarce put off their hats to me unless i begin; and then they stand grinning at me and my train. would you think now that a fellow should have the impudence to call me to an account, for nothing in the world, but saying, that _he had_ a bitch _to his_ wife, _and_ she _a_ rogue _to her_ husband. and then to be call'd _sirrah_ for my pains, only for telling a _court-kinsman_ of his that _i should lace the rogue, his cozens coat for him_. well if i had not sent a fool o'my errant i had had the rascal in _lob's_ pound before this time. _q. and how came ye to miss?_ _a._ why the agent that i employ'd was so set upon his guts, that he never minded the discourse at the table. we had had him else. or if he could but have got him to ha' met me, we'd ha' done his business. _q. but d'ye take this to be fair dealing now; to set any man at work to betray his host; or to give such language to people of condition?_ _a._ what not when the _protestant religion_ lies at _stake_? why pre'thee i tell the proudest of 'em all to their teeth, that they are _villains_ and _scoundrells_. what do i care for their _graces_ and _reverences_, they _pimp_ for _preferment_, and some of 'em shall hear on't too _next parliament_. but hark ye i have a great deal of work upon my hands, and i want an _ammanuensis_ out of all cry. _q. why ye had a pretty fellow to'ther day, what's become of him?_ _a._ i'l tell ye then. a _taylor_ had made him a _garment_: and afterwards coming to him for the _mony_, he deny'd the receit on't and being prest upon it, he offer'd to purge himself upon _oath_, that he never had any such garment. upon this, the matter rested for a while; but at length, it was prov'd where he had _sold_ it, and so the taylor had satisfaction. in short, i turn'd him away apon't, for he is no servant for me that's _taken_ in a false oath. _q. how is it possible for you to go thorough with all your writing-work?_ _a._ nay that's true; considering what a deal of other business i have; for really there would be no justice done, if i did not look after _witnesses_, _jurys_, choice of _city-officers_, election of _members_ to serve in _parliament_, both for _town_, and _country_; the disposing of _ecclesiastical dignitys_; the _jurisdiction_ of _courts_; the _government_ of _prisons_; the _regulation_ of _messengers fees_: in one word, the stress of the whole government lyes in a manner upon my shoulders; and i am so _harrass'd_ with it, that i profess i was e'en thinking, a little before the meeting of the last parliament, to lay out a matter of _twenty or thirty thousand pound_ upon some pretty seat in the country, and retire. _q. why truly for a man that has seen the world as you have done, what can he do better?_ _a._ yes, i have seen the world to my cost. 'twas a sad thing for me, you must think, that never went to bed in my mothers house without four or five servants to wait upon me, (and if i had a mind to a _tart_, a _custard_, or a _cheescake_ at any time, i had 'em all at command:) to be _hackny'd_, and _jolted_ up and down in a forreign country like a _common body_. _q. but what was it that put you upon_ travel? _a._ the desire i had to see _religions_, and _fashions_: and now it comes in my head. did you ever see my _grounds and occasions of the contempt of the clergy_? _q. was that yours then?_ _a. mum_; betwixt friends. but i shall have a touch ere long at the _creed-making rascal_ there. _q. who's that?_ athanasius? _a._ the very same. what a _declaration_ is there? _q. but how d'ye like the kings declaration?_ _a. not at all. not at all._ it runs so much upon the _arbitrary_, and the _prelatick_? yes, and upon something else too. _q. come, 'faith we should not part with dry lips, what d'ye think of one_ roomer _now to the health of? (hark, and i'le tell ye.)_ _a._ i'le drink no _traitors_ health. _q. why prethee what is_ civilly-drinking _his health, more then_ dutifully praying _for't_? _a._ no: i am of the mans mind that said, i _hope the devil will have him; and if there be any punishment in hell greater then another_, i _hope the devil will tear his soul to pieces_. so farewell. _q. what a blessed sort of_ subjects _and_ christians _are these, that value themselves in the_ one capacity, _for their_ contempt _of_ authority: _and in the_ other, _for the zeal of flying out into_ blasphemys, _and_ execrations, _instead of_ prayers? _but what shall_ i _call this at last? a_ romantique, _or an_ historical observator? _london_, printed for _johanna brome_, at the gun in s. _pauls_ church-yard. =numb.= the observator. in _dialogue_. =saturday=, march . . _whig._ come; i'le shew ye my _study, tory_. _tory._ why you have got a brave _library_ here. _wh._ for a _choice collection_, let me tell ye, as any is in _christendom_. _to._ you have all the _greek_ and _latin fathers_, i suppose; the _councells_, the _schoolmen_, and those people. _wh._ i had'em all; but there's a great deal of _trash_; and so i e'en rid my hands of'em; though some of'em did pretty well too; considering those _dark times_. now here can i sit as _snug_ as a _hare_ in her _form_, and chat away a winters evening with a _good fire_, a _pipe_, and a _friend_, and never feel how the time spends. _to._ well! and why should not you and i keep our _conferences_ here too? _wh._ best of all: there's no body within hearing; and then we have our _books_ and _papers_ about us, and all in such order, that i'le lay my finger, blindfold, upon any book you'le call for. _to._ but what subject are they mostly of? _wh._ matters of _state, history, travells_, the rights and power of the _people, reformation, religion, discipline, admonitions, remonstrances, petitions, appeals_; as ye see'em mark'd upon the shelves. but all this is nothing, you'l say, when y'ave seen my _gallery_. open that same door before ye. _to._ bless me! what a treasure's here? _wh._ look ye now. that side is all _news-books,_ and _political divinity_. _to._ you mean _polemical_ divinity i suppose. _wh._ ay ay; 'tis all one for that. now all to'ther side is _dissenting protestants_; as _cartwright, brown, barrow, robinson_, _hetherington, trask, naylor, best, biddle, muggleton_. and here are your _muncerians, apostoliques, separatists, catharists, enthusiasts, adamits, huttites, augustinians, libertines, georgites, familists, ranters seekers, sweet-singers, antinomians, arrians, socinians, millenaryes, quakers_: and in two words; all the _godly party_. they make fourteen folio's of catalogue. _to._ but ha'ye no _manuscripts_? _wh._ yes i have three cases there beyond the chimny, that i wou'd not change for _bodlies library_ three times over. _to._ what do they treat of? _wh._ two of 'em are altogether upon the _art of government_, and the _third_ is cramm'd with _lampoon_ and _satyr_. you sha'not name me any one copy that has scap'd me; nor any exigent of state; but i'le furnish ye out of these papers with an expedient for't. _to._ and wherein does this _art of government_ consist? _wh._ in _foresight, experience, presence of thought, prudence of direction_, and _vigour of execution_. to be short; every motion of the _head_, the _eye_, the _hand_, the _foot_, the _body_. contributes a part to this great work. _to._ is it a science that may be convey'd by _instruction_? _wh._ with as much ease as _fencing_, or _dancing_. there are three or four _dissenting academies_ here about the town, where people are taught to _nod, wink, gape, cough, spit_; nay the very _tuning_ of their _hum's_ and _haw's_, by _rule and method_; when to _smite the breast_, and when to _dust the cushion_; when to _leap_ in the _pulpit_, and when to _swim_; when to be _serene_, and when to _thunder_: nay the _faces_ they are to make at every _period_; and the very _measure_ of their _pauses_; that the _parenthesis_ may be large enough for the _groans_, & _ejaculations_ of the _secret ones_ to _play_ in; they are taught to pray for the _king_ with _one tone_ and _countenance_, and for the _parliament_ with _another_. _to._ i have observ'd them indeed to cry with a loud voice, _lord! strengthen the hands of the one_, & then to drop the note into a kinde of a piping whisper, with a _lord! turn the heart of the other_; which is as much as to say, _alas! the poor gentleman is out of his way, and we must set all hands at work to bring him to comply with his_ parliament, _though that_ handy work, _at last, bring his_ royall head _to the_ scaffold. _wh._ if you wou'd not be a _rogue_ now and tell tales, i could let ye in to the whole _popular mystery_; and shew ye the _folly_, and the _vanity_ of any other claim to _sovereign power_. and then _i_ have all the _prints_ brought me as soon as ever they come out. _to._ pre'thee let's fall to work then. _wh._ come, i'le give you a sight of one of my _boxes_ first; but i must be gone in a quarter of an hour upon absolute necessity. _to._ well! and whether in such hast? _wh._ there's one at _newington_ has promis'd me an _answer_ to the _dissenters sayings_; and then i am told of a _godly divine_ at _clapham_, that has a _reply_ ready to the _notes upon college_. _to._ let's make the best of our time then. stay a little; what have we here? _wh._ every thing is _titled_, ye see, ready to your hand; so that you may pick and chuse. _to._ let me see then. _pious frauds; mentall reservations; infallibility of the assembly; baxters saints; cases of conscience; dispensations, contributions, maxims, intelligence, orders, committees, juryes, caballs, religion, property, demands, proposals, grievances, pretences, salvo's, distinctions, explanations, projects, directions, advices, resolutions, invectives, fictions, forms of reproaches_, suited to _all persons, orders_, and _qualities; true-protestant privileges_; the _doctrine_ of _probabilityes_, and _implicit obedience_. _wh._ now upon all these heads, ye have _authoritys, precedents_; and all the _colours, arguments_, and _elucidations_ that the matter will bear. _to._ but your _pious frauds, mentall reservations, infallibility, dispensations, salvo's, distinctions, probabilityes, implicit faith_; these are all _popish points_. _wh._ they are so, when they are apply'd to the service of the church of _rome_: but the _true protestant-cause sanctifies_ the _principle_. as there's a great difference betwixt the _popes excommunicating_ of an _hereticall prince_; and the _generall assemblys excommunicating_ of an _antichristian, episcopall prince_; betwixt a _popish gunpowder-treason_, in the _cellers, under_ the _parliament-house_; and a _gunpowder commission_ to _kill_ and _slay_ within the _walls_ of the _same house, above ground_; though to carnal eyes they may both appear to _center_ in the same _point_: and so in like manner, betwixt a _conspiracy_ of _papists_ to _cut off the king_, and _subvert the government_; and a _true-protestant-association_, to the very _same effect_: nay with this advantage too; that the latter propounds the accomplishing of that, in a matter of a _month_ or _six weeks_, which the zeal of their fore-fathers was at least _ten_, or a _dozen years a doing_. _to._ 'tis a great ease for a man to have all these subjects _common-plac'd_ to his hand. _wh._ right. and where you may turn to any thing you have a mind to see, with a _wet finger_. _to._ but pray'e how do you approve (in many of our _seisures_) of the _application_ of _popish trinkets_ to _prophane uses_, which were by them dedicated to the service of a _superstitious religion_? _wh._ you cannot imagine, though an _embroder'd cope_ may be an _abomination_, what a _cordial the pearl_ of it is to a _true-protestant professor. lambs-wool_ drinks no way better then out of a _chalice_. or in other cases; 'tis but destroying the _popish form_ of an _idolatrous vessell_, and the _intrinsick value_ is never the less _current_ according to the _standard_ of the _reformation_. the _picture_ of the _blessed virgin_, with our _saviour_ in her arms, is never a jot the worse for _sale_ to a _painter_, for being an object of _idolatry_ about the _altar_. _to._ and yet i have seen it committed to the _flames_, but it has been an oversight, betwixt the _zeal_ and the _ignorance_ of the _magistrate_. how many _curious crucifixes_, and _reliques_, with _delicate inlayings_, and _carvings_ have i seen expos'd at _gill_ the _constables_ in _westminster_; truly, at very _reasonable rates_? _wh._ not unlikely; but then ye must know, they were _seiz'd_ in _one capacity_, and _sold_ in _another_; for they were _vended_ in the contemplation of the _workmanship_, though they were _taken_ as the _fooleries_ of a _false religion_. we have in our days seen the _representation_ of the _trinity_, demolish'd in a _church-window_, with extraordinary _zeal_ and _approbation_. _to._ why truly i am as much against the making of any _image_ or _figure_ of _god the father_ under the _form_ of a _man_, as any body; for _twenty mistakes_ and _inconveniencies_ that may arise upon the consideration of such an _object_; but i know no hurt in the world in the representing of our _saviour_ under a _human shape_; or of the _holy ghost_ under the shadow of a _dove_: beside that the thing is presum'd to have been done by _authority_; for otherwise, the same _zeal_ that destroys but the _window_ of the _church_, would not stick at the destroying perhaps of every thing else that belongs to't. but prethee tell me one thing, suppose the _blessed trinity_, so represented, should be the _seal_ of an _ancient_ community, or _society_ of men, what's the difference betwixt that _figure_, in _graving_, or in _nealing_; in _silver_, or in _glass_? would not you as much _scruple_ the putting of that _seal_ to a _lease_, as the _seeing_ of that _figure_ in a _church-window_? _wh._ no; by no means; for the _one_ is purely a _civil act_; and the _other_ has a regard to _religious worship_. _to._ and yet this _image_, or _pretended resemblance_, is the _same thing_ in the _one_, as it is in the _other_. well! i am extremly pleas'd with this private corner for liberty of discourse. _wh._ here you may have all the _papers_ as they come out, _fresh and fresh_: all the _arguments_, and _politiques_ of the _dissenting party_; chuse _your own theme_, take _your own time_, and treat upon _your own conditions_. _to._ that's as fair as any mortall can wish; so that when the day does not afford other matter to work upon, we may look a little more narrowly into the _merits_ of the _cause_. and so much for that. but here let me ask ye a question: do you know a _little cause-jobber_ yonder somewhere about _kings-street, in covent garden_? _wh._ does he not use the _christian coffee-house_? _to._ the very same. he was saying t'other day that _l'estrange_ was a _pensioner of cromwels_; a _papist_; and that he durst not bring his _action_ against any man for _calling_ him so: that he was a _rogue_; a _fidler_; liv'd in _covent-garden_ a good while, and got his _living_ by his _trade_; and that a _magistrate_, not far from that place, would _justify_ it. the two first points, i suppose, will be disputed in another place: and for the _fidler_: 'tis well known that _l'estrange_ liv'd eight or nine years in one of the _piazza-houses_ there; and kept _servants_ that would have scorn'd to have sorted themselves with any thing so mean as this _paltry varlet_. but to the business. how far will the _privilege_ of a _true-protestant-whig_ justify a _villain_ in so many _scandalous lyes_? _wh._ so far as the _common good_ of the _cause_ is more valuable then the _single credit_ of a _private person_. but what say ye now to _curtis's advertisement_ (in his last _mercury_) of _tong's narrative_, and _case_; concerning _l'estrange_, printed for c w? _to._ i say, 'tis _first_, a _cheat_; for 'tis none of _tong's writing_; _ ly_, 'tis _another cheat_; for 'twas printed for _langley curtis_, with his name to _tongs appointment_ for the printing of it: only he has fobb'd a _new_, and a _false title-page_ to't. but what says mr. _oates_, all this while, to _l'estranges enformation_ against _tonge_, in the _shammer shamm'd_? where that young fellow has the impudence to declare under his hand, the very _foundation_ of _oates's_ plot to be a _cheat_: and _i appeal to all good protestants for justice upon that scandalous wretch_. _wh._ nay, 'tis a horrible abuse, and really the man stands in's own light: what was't? or a pound that he recover'd of one that did not say the hundredth part of what this comes to? the lord deliver me! i knew the time when 'twas _half a hanging-matter_ to have made the least doubt of any branch of the hellish plot: but for this audacious fool to say in expresse terms, that [_the_ four jesuites letters, _wherein_ oates _pretended was the whole discovery, were_ counterfeits] is utterly intolerable. i'le e'en go my ways immediately, and talk with the doctor about it. _london_, printed for _joanna brome_, at the gun in s. _pauls_ church-yard. vol. . =numb. = the observator, _a_ schism _a greater judgment then a_ pestilence. _the_ natural rhetorique _of the_ non-cons. _the_ danger _of them. several_ sorts _and_ degrees _of danger. of coming_ about, _or coming_ over. _the_ cause _transferr'd from_ government _to_ religion. =munday=, september . . _observator._ if i were the _master_ of a _territory_, i would as soon _trust_ so many _spirits_ in my _pulpits, to blow a pestilence thorough my dominions_, as so many of our _non-conforming divines_; and reckon my _people_ much _safer_ too, under the danger of a _plague_, then under the _consequences_ of a _schism_: for the _one taints_ but the bodies of men; the _other destroys_ their very souls; the _one_ takes them _promiscuously_, the _good_, and the _bad, one_ with _another_: but the _'tother marks_, and _singles-out_ the _best men_ for _ruine_, with a _privilege_ of _exemption_, to those that neither fear _god_, nor _man_. the _one_ sweeps away a number of single _persons_; the _other_ tears to pieces the _sinews_ of a _community_. the _one_ does, in _some degree_, conduce to the _purging_ of a _wicked nation_, when the _wrath_ of _heaven_ is _appeas'd_ by the _discharge_ of some _dreadfull judgment_ upon't; (as the _air_ is clear'd by _thunder_) the _other_ does all that is _possible_ to the _filling-up_ of the _measure_ of a _publique iniquity_; and the making of a land ripe for _vengeance_. _trimmer._ prethee what _danger_? or what needs this _lashing_, when they are all tongue-ty'd; and driven into _holes_, and _hiding-places_, to keep out of the way of _messengers_, and _constables_, and out of the _clutches_ of the _corporation-act_, and _other penal laws_ against their _private meetings_? _obs._ what dost thou talk of tongue-ty'd? why i will undertake it; (and in _serious good earnest_ too) _gagg_ the whole set of'em; give every man his _pulpit_, or his _chair_, and only a bare standing in't; and if they do not _wink_, and _nod_, and _cuff_ any prince in _christendom_ out of his _dominions_, without a _word speaking_, i'le be thy _bond-slave_. why they do not do their bus'ness, man, by the force of _logique, grammar_, or by the _dint_ of _theology_: but by _groans, pangs, tragical ululations, silent interjections, whining apostrophes, melting epiphonemas_; and in a word; by the helps of _natural rhetorick_, without _need_, of either _sense_, or _syllables_. _trim._ they _preach_, and _pray_, without _speaking_ then. _obs._ no no. they do talk for _fashion_-sake: but observe it while you will; they move the _passions_ of their _auditory_, in the _belfry_, or the _church-porch, forty times more_ then directly under the _pulpit_: for the _emphasis_ of an _action_; a _motion, tone_, or _countenance_, makes a much deeper _impression_, than that of a _naked, empty, sound_: and for _my part_, i fancy, it might do as well for 'em to whistle their _preachments_ as to articulate them: for the _masterpiece_, or the all in all of it, lies mainly, in _hitting_ the _tune_. _trim._ d'ye call this reasoning, or ridiculing? _obs._ 'tis _both_ in _one_: for it is the _ridiculous truth_, and the _just reason, method_, and _state_ of the _matter_: and when people are once _juggled_ out _of their wits_, they must be _fool'd_ into _'em again_. now there needs no more to the doing of _that work_, then the bare _drawing_ of the _curtain_, and letting people into the _tyring-room_. for the _cause_, is all over, _theatrical_: the _actors_ are _hypocrites_, in their _manners_, as well as in the _etymon_; and the whole _manage_, fitter for a _stage_, then a _pulpit_. so that the most _certain way_ in _nature_, for the making of the _practice, odious_; and the _disabusing_ of the _undiscerning multitude_, is to _lay open_ their _false colours, shapes_, & _disguises_; and _expose_ every thing in its _naked simplicity_ to the _light_. _trim._ and what if a man should allow this sort of people now, to be the most _uncouth, hideous monsters_ of the _creation_? to have the _teeth_, the _nails_, the _fierceness_, the _strength_, & the _appetite_ of the most _ravenous_ of _wild beasts_? this discourse, of _caution_, and _description_, might do well enough in the _countrys_ of _lyons_, and _tygers_: but what's all this, to _his majesties dominions_, where there are either _none_ of these creatures, _at all_, or no _other_, at least, then such as have their _nails par'd_, and their _chops muzzled_: and no more _danger_ of them, at present, then of our _beeves_, and _muttons_. _obs._ dost not thou know that there are _several_ sorts, & degrees of _danger_? a man may be wheedled into a _precipice_, as well as thrown into't: a man may be hugg'd or suck'd to _death_, without any biting, or scratching in the case: a man may be poyson'd in his _porridge_, as well as strangl'd in his _bed_: a man may have false opinions _impos'd_ upon him by a _fallacy_, or _fraud_ in _argument_, as well as extorted from him, by the force of _menace_, and _torment_. and his bus'ness, at last, is _done_, as dead, _one way_ as _t'other_: and so for the degrees of _danger_; there's _danger at hand_; there's _danger_ at a _distance_; _danger_ in _design_, and _danger_ in _practice_; and _danger_, in fine, through all the _preparatory_, and _mediate tendencies_ to _mischief_, to the _last effect_ that _pushes_ it self forth to _execution_. _trim._ very good! and what are all these _sorts_, and _degrees_ of _danger_ to the _instances_ we have now _before_ us? _obs._ 'tis true; the _faction_ is not in condition to _attacque_ the _government_ by _force_: their _armies_ are _scatter'd_, and their _squadrons defeated_; the _whole party_ put to their _shifts_; and the very _best_ of 'em, has enough to do to _save his own bacon_. their _teeth_ are _drawn_, i'le allow ye, all but here and there a _stump_; and yet they'l _pinch, plaguily_, though they cannot _worry_, and _tear_: and with _time_, and _good discipline_, they'l come to _grow again_. they have the _same principles_ to friend, that _ever_ they had: only they must be _manag'd another way_: and there can never want _matter_, for _artificial flattery, wheedling, imposture_ and _hypocrisy_, to _work_ upon. they are not in condition to _advance_, at this time of the day, in the face of the _sun_, and of the _government_, with their _petticoats flying_, under the _auspicious direction_ of their _tutelary angel, ferguson_; and [fear nothing but god] for their _motto_. but they must supply want of _strength_, by _stratagem_; and _carry-on_ their _approches_, out of sight. 'tis only a little more _patience_, and the _work_ will be brought about, as sure at the _long-run_, by a _mine_, as by a _battery_: and the _certifying_ of _a hundred and fifty perrots_ into the _service_, and _protection_ of the _government_, will be of greater _effect_, then the _drawing-up_ of _ten thousand men in arms_, against it. now _these methods_ lye all _open_ still, only they are somewhat more _about_. now as to _dangers remote_, or _nearer hand; dangers_ of _design_, or _dangers_ of _practice_: all the _preparatories_, & _dispositions_ to _mischief_, in their _secret impulses_, and _causes_, are as _vigorous_ now, as ever they were, that is to say, within two or three motions of a _publique violence_: only this difference in the case, that we have _hitherto_, been in the _greatest danger_ of our _profess'd_, & _open enemies_: and _now_, god bless us from our _pretending friends_: for all on a sudden, the _trimmers_ are come-up to be _stark church-of-england-men_; and the _phanatiques_, gotten a _form higher_, into the _seat_ or _classes_ of the _trimmers_. _trim._ thou art _well, neither full nor fasting_. neither _fanatique_, nor _trimmer_, nor _church-of-england-man_ i perceive, will please ye; the _controversy_ of a new king; or a common-wealth, is _out of doors_; the question of liberty of conscience; the _privilege_ of _private meetings_ for religous worship; and a _challenge_ of _dispensation_ from the _rites, ceremonies, and_ discipline _of the church, are_ all layd aside. and all this will not serve the _turn_ yet. now if men go to _church_; take _tests_, make _declarations_; and _do_ and _perform_ all that the _law requires_ of'em; where's the _danger_ of these people i beseech ye? _obs._ not in their _coming over_ with their _bodies_, but in _staying behind_, in their _good wills_, and _affections_: nay, and in their _communicating_ with the _church_ in the _morning_, and in the _afternoon_, with the _schism_: and pray will you note in them, one thing _more_ too. 'tis worth the while, when they _ramble_ from their _own parish_, to _observe_ whither they go: for i have known the very _streets throng'd_, out of distance of _hearing one word_ that the _minister says_, with the _same superstition_, that the _quakers flock_ to the _door_, when they are _lock'd-out_ of the _meeting-house_: in which case, it has yet the _semblance_ of a _private meeting_; and in truth, looks liker a _political muster_, then a _religious exercise_: but heark ye for one word, before we go any further; suppose a man should have sayd about the _beginning_ of _july last_, in a _brisk reply_ to a _reflexion_ made upon the _western-rebells_; (at that time in their _pride_ and _glory_) [the king has as loyal subjects in that army as any are in t'other.] wouldst thou have me, in construction of _common sense_, and _honesty_, look upon _that person_, to be, effectually come over, and in the _state_ of _a true church-of-england-man_; only for _keeping_ the _law_, with his _heels_, when he _breaks_ it, with his _tongue_, and _doctrine_? now this is more then i owe ye, upon the matter in hand: for you have carry'd the _question_ quite _back_ again, from the _non-con-ministers_, to the _generality_, and the _multitude_ of the _dissenters_: which is a point wholly _excepted_, and out of the _limits_ of _our debate_: for all their _conventicles_ without a _mouth_, are _monsters_; meer _nullities_, & _bilks_, without a _teacher_: so that i have _restrain'd_ my _applications_, singly, to the _rabbi's_ of the _faction_, as _including_, and _implying_ the _sense_, and the _intent_ of their _disciples_: nay and _so far including_ it, that they are _barely_, the _passive instruments_ of their _leaders_. now these _heads_ of the _divided parties_, are a sort of people, that do not, by any means, fall within the _charitable prospect_ of _your qualifications_: for they _stand-off_, in _contempt_, and _defyance_ of the _orders_, & _censures_ of the _church_, and of the _law_, as much at _this instant_, as _ever_ they did. their _followers maintain_, and _support_ them in that _stubbornness_ of _disobedience_; and so the _opposition_ stands yet _firm_, in _effect_, though with _less noise_ of _menace_, and _tumult_. the _branches_, 'tis true, are _lopt_; but the _root_, not so much as _touch'd_; nay, and in such a condition of _vegetative virtue_, and _vigour_, that it wants nothing but _time_, and a _favourable season_ to make it _sprout_ again. and this you may assure your self of, that nothing less then an _utter_, an _open_, a _solemn_, and an _irrevocable divorce_, betwixt _these libertine-seducers_, and those that have been _trepann'd_, and _inveigled_, out of the _bosom_ of the _church_, into the _arms_ of the _schism_: nothing i say, less then some such _unalterable act_, or _decree_ of _separation_, can ever _secure_, either the _church_, or the _state_ from the _pernicious consequences_ of this _intelligence_: for betwixt _blind pity_, and _foolish zeal_, on the _one_ hand, and all the _arts_, of _moving_, and _provoking_ those _passions_, and _affections_, on the _other_, there is _kept-up_, and _cherish'd_, a _communication_ of _reciprocal kindness_, between them, that keeps the _fire alive_ still in the _embers_, 'till by _degrees_, it _blows-up_ all at last into a _common flame_. now take away _these bellows_, and _t'other sparks_, and a man may _sleep_ in his _bed_, without _dreaming_ of _conflagrations_, or the _dread_ of rising with his throat cut. _trim._ i will not excuse some _hot-headed blades_, that let their _tongues_ run before their _wits_; and make it a point of _honour_, to _brave_ all the _terrors_ of _death_, and _dungeons_, in defence of the _cause_ that they have _undertaken_. the _less said_, the _better_; though a body cannot, in _generosity_, but have some sort of _compassion_, for a man that suffers _death_, with _constancy of mind_, even in a mistaken cause, if it be according to his _conscience_. _obs._ if these _impressions_ were _inbred_, and the _errors_ purely their _own_, it would be a _point_, not only of _good nature_, but of _common justice_, and _humanity_, to have a _tenderness_ for _people_ under an _invincible mistake_: but you have started the _strongest argument_ in the world, against your _self_ here, by _enforcing_ the _necessity_ of clearing the _stage_ of the _seditious oracles_, that _inspire these desperate resolutions_. _trim._ why all matter of _violence, heat_ of _dispute_, and _clamour_ of _argument_, is at an _end_. you hear no more of your _scottish_, and _western declarations_; no more _competitors_ for the _crown_; or _confederates_ for a _republique_: and therefore prethee, _let_ us be at _peace_ while we _may_ be at _peace_; and do not stand _puzzling_ the _people_ with _danger_, where _no danger is_. _obs._ soft and fair, _trimmer_; those _declarations, practices_, and _attempts_, are not to be _repeated_ again in the _same age_: but there are _more ways to the wood then one_: and 'tis all a case, to a man that's _robb'd_, whether the _thieves_ came in at the _door_, or at the _window_. 'tis very right, that, since the breaking of the _rebellion_, the _non-cons_ lay their _fingers_ upon their _mouths_; and not _one word_ of _late_, upon the subject of _liberties_, and _properties_; or of the danger of _tyranny_, and of _arbitrary power_: but all other _grievances_ are now _swallow'd-up_ in _one_: they are all in _tears_ for fear of the _protestant religion_; and _that's the topique that's now carry'd-on, through all shapes, figures, and disguises_. _trim._ we shall have fine work, next bout! _london_, printed for _charles brome_, at the gun in st. _paul's_ church-yard. vol. . =numb. = the observator. _the way of promoting_ fears, _and_ jelousies. _the_ people _meerly_ passive _in the bus'ness. both parts seem to_ contend _for the_ same common principles. _the_ rise of jelousies. =saturday=, august . . _trimmer._ the _accommodating_ of words, phrases, and texts to the matter in hand, with the interjecting, here and there, of certain _emphatical winks_, and _innuendo's_, to the _common people_, will do the bus'ness of _fears and jelousies_, you need never _doubt_ it, without any more ceremony. _observator._ i do no more _doubt_ it, then i do, that a proper remedy; rightly prepar'd; and administer'd in the _due_ time and proportion, will _work_ such or such an _effect_. but the _skill_ lyes, in the judgment of the distemper; the constitution of the patient; the choice of the physick; the prescription of the composition, the preparation, and the dos. now _your_ way of _operating_, is only the mechanicall _part of the bus'ness_; and no more, then the giving of a _box_, a _gally-pot_, or a _glass_, with a note of _directions_, out of _one_ hand into _another_: which any _porter_ that plyes at the _next corner_, would do as _dext'rously_, as ever a _doctor_ of the _college_. the _difficulty_, and the _mystery_, is over, before _you_ have any thing to _do_ with it: the _poysonous_, and _intoxicating draught_, prepar'd; the _multitude_ set a-gaping for't, and your _office_, is only at last, to _pour it down their throats_. there's matter of _history_, and _fact_, enough, 'tis true, to _satisfy any man_, that people may be made as _mad_ with _cant_, and _gibberish_, as if they had taken _henbane_; and that _the_ sting _of_ jelousy, will put them out of their _wits_ as soon as _the_ biting _of a_ mad-dog: but we are in the _dark_ all this while, for the rise, the progress, and the methods of enflaming _jelousies_, to bring'em up to that _pitch_. prethee let me understand a little of their birth, growth, discipline, and education; how they are fed, nourish'd, and entertain'd? what's the end, and use of them? what language do they _speak_; or how comes it to pass, that the _same_ words, and phrases, without _any intelligence_ with _grammar, logique, common usage_, or _propriety_, should _transport_ some _men_ into _outrages, palpitations of the heart, horrors_, and _tremblings_, both of _mind_, and of _body_; and yet work no more upon others, then they _did_, before the very letters of'em were taken out of the _alphabet_? i do not call ye to a _strict shrift_ upon _every point_, but i expect you shall say something to the _whole matter_; for a _few words_, in order, will give a man more _light_ to the _reason_ of a thing, then as many _volumes_, in confusion. _trim._ you are in the _right_; that the _craft_ lies in the project, and the preparatory _manage_ of this affair, and that the _danger_ is gone too _far_, when the _mine_ is already _wrought_; the _powder dispos'd_, and nothing wanting to the _final execution_ of the _mischief_, but the _lighting_ of the _match_, and the applying of the _coal_ to the _train_. you have _well_ and _truly_ enough _observed_, the _wonderfull force_, that _some certain_ words, and phrases have; upon the _affections_ of the _multitude_; without the least _shadow_ of any logical, grammatical, or philosophical _reason_ for the _operation_ of them. now you must know, that _these_ words, and phrases, are made _use_ of, and _understood_, in the way of a cypher, or a jargon, and not according to the _ordinary acceptation_ of them, in a _regular_ way of _writing_, or of _speaking_; so that, effectually, the _efficacy_ of such _words_, and _phrases_, is given for _granted_; and how they come to _obtain that force_, remains the _single question_. now towards the _understanding_ of this matter, you must consider, that no _state_ can be _supplanted_, but by _turning_ the _peoples hearts_, against the _persons_, & the _actions_ of their _superiors_: so that in _all conspiracies_ to _destroy_ a _government_, fears & jelousies, are _the_ corner stone _of the babel_. their hearts are no sooner _lost_, but they withdraw their bodies too, and so, by _degrees, erect_ laws, and religions of their own; and look upon themselves, by this time, as in _another commonwealth_. _obs._ 'tis most _certainly true_; and that in this _separation_, they set-up an _interest_ of _direct_ spite, as well as opposition, to that of the _church_, and of the _state_. _trim._ this is the very course, and progress of a _popular jelousy_: but pray take notice as we go, that the _people_, are thus far, _meerly_ passive; and _contribute no otherwise_, to the _ruine_ of the _publique_, then _a_ snapping sea does, to the _sinking_ of a _vessell_, when the _billows_ are _hurry'd-on_ by the _violence_ of an irresistible tempest: if the _winds_ would but let the _waves alone_, they'd be _quiet_. when they come once to gather into [private meetings,] (or as you call them, conventicles) you may _then_ accompt upon it, that they are as good as put to _school_, to _learn_ the mystery of their _profession_. for there are canting-schools, as well as reading-schools: and under this _discipline_, they come by _insensible degrees_, to part with their _english_ tongue, as well as with their _english_ principles, and manners. nay, and effectually, to take up such _uncouth, novel_, and _strange_ thoughts, opinions, and practices, that it looks, as if the english-man, the christian, and the subject, were all lost in a disguise. they are now, you must know, under new lords, and consequently, under new laws; where they are _train'd-up_ to _new ways_ of understanding things, and to a _new idiome_ of expressing them. religion, law, government, conscience, good manners, are so _sacred_ in themselves, that the _worst_ of men cannot but _pretend_ a _veneration_ for them; but how to _baffle_, or to _elude_ the _force_, the _obligation_, and the _authority_ of them; and, at the same time, to set-up for the _asserters_, and _supporters_ of _these publique rights, privileges_, and _duties, there_ lies the _difficulty_ of the _undertaking_. _obs._ that is to say, how to _resolve_ religion, into an _empty_ notion: to talk christianity into a paradox; and, with christ in our _mouths_, at _london_, to _fall down_, and _worship_ mahomet, in _buda_: how to _confound_ gods, and the governments friends and enemies, so as to make the _common people_ take _one_ for _t'other_. now this can be no way done, but by setting-up the counterfeit of religion, law, and conscience, against the _genuine_, and _authentique_ original; and by making evil, to be good, and good, to be evil. _trim._ you must _note_, further, that in this _opposition_, the main cause appears to be the _very same_, on _both sides_; and _both parts_ seem to _contend_, for the same common principles, of _divine worship_, and of _civil obedience_. _obs._ only the _one_ flies to the _invisible lights_ and _dictates_ of the _spirit_, in matter of religion; (taking fancy for revelation) and, in the matter of government, has recourse to certain _unaccountable whimsies_, of [powers reserv'd,] where there _never was any power at all_; & _these fooleries_, they _trump_ upon the _little people_, under the _pompous name_ of [_fundametals_;] while the _rulers_, on the _other_ hand, stick to the law, to the text, and to the _approved sense_ of the best interpreters of both, for their _guide_. _trim._ very good! and after they have _departed_ from the common rule, and _divided_ themselves from the common interest; it is but reasonable to _expect_, that they will set-up another interest, and another rule to _themselves_. _obs._ well! but how do they _manage that province_ all this while, as to the _subject_, i mean, that we were _speaking_ of? _trim._ why their way is, only to put _religion_, and _government_ in _another dress_; but under the name, of [religion,] and [_government_,] _still_; and then to lay on a _superstructure_, answerable to the _foundation_; i speak of the leaders only; for their disciples are _blanck paper_; and ready for _any impression_. they _talk_, to the ears, and to the passions of their _hearers_, not to their understandings: and their _auditors_ gather more of their _meaning_, from their _gestures, actions, countenances_, and from _pathetical tones_, then from the _words themselves_. as for _sense_, or _no sense_, 'tis _all a case_; for 'tis the _jingle_, not the _matter_, that does _their bus'ness_. the _less_ the people understand, the _more_ they are edify'd; for they take the _congruities_ of carnal reason, for vain philosophy; and incomprehensible nonsense, passes for _the work of the_ light within. their _religion_ lies alltogether in groan, and rapture: _they sacrifice to the_ unknown god; and in one word; they _supply_ the _want_ of knowledge, with an _excess_ of zeal; and when they cannot _understand_ the plain english of a _discourse_, they wrap themselves up in the mystery. the making of a _party_, & the saving of their own _skins_, are the _two main points_ of the _leaders_; and therefore, they _cover_ themselves under ambiguity, & riddle; & compass those matters, by _theatrical gesticulations_, & _actions_, which they dare not _venture_ upon, in _words_ at _length_, or by the _dint_ of _argument_; for there is no _law_ against _making of_ faces, _and dusting of_ cushions, they are told _mightily_, and _plainly_, of _heaven_, and _hell_; but in such a _manner_, that they will _never allow_ god, and the government to be _both of a side. schism_ is dignified with the _name_ of conscience; the story of their _grievances_, is the _bitterest_ of satyrs; their very petitions have the force of _invectives_; and the _smoother_, the _softer_, you find the _surface_ of them, the _falser_, and the more _dangerous_ they are at the _bottom_: for betwixt the persecution that is _insinuated_, on the part of the _government_, & the innocence, the piety, and the modesty, on that of the sufferers, nothing can more provoke, a _horror_, and _indignation_ for the _one_, or a _tenderness_, & _compassion_, for the _other_. _obs._ that is to say, among those that are not _well enform'd_, in the _reason_, and _equity of the cause in question_. _trim._ come come. i tell ye _nakedly_ how things are, and not how they ought to be: and i speak of _those men_ too, that neither do, nor will, nor can make a _right judgment_ upon the matter in _issue_. they do not take down _reasons_ in connexion; neither do their _teachers_ so much as offer at'em; but _their work_ is, only to _feed_ itching ears, and humours, with _new-quoyn'd words, affectate phrases_: and briefly, to _instruct_ their _disciples_, by _signs_ and _tokens_, like so many _dancing horses_ to fall lame upon all four, for the _pope_; to come-over, for the _grand vizier_; and at the very _sound_ of babylon, anti-christ, or absolute power, to snort, and boggle, as if they _smelt fire_. if i may tell ye the _arrant truth_, and _simplicity_ of my _heart_; this is the very train of a popular institution. they are tutor'd, and inur'd, to the assuming of such and such _passions_, upon such and such _occasions_; and they do all their _ayres_, and _tricks_, by the direction of the _hand_, or _eye. they dance_ to _sounds, hints, nodds, forms_, and _syllables_; not to the force of _fair reasonings_, and _natural conclusions_; nay, they are taught, when to be _angry_; when to be _pleas'd_; and their very _inclinations_, and _aversions_, are none of their _own, neither_: the _whole bus'ness_, in short, is artifice, manage, and practice; for _all their_ mistakes, _and_ mis-understandings, _take the_ same biass. _obs._ i do _observe_, indeed, that they shelter themselves under the _dark prophets_, and the _revelation_. the _number of the beast_, they have all at their _fingers ends_; the _geneva-bibles_ are _thumm'd_ over and over, at the _same texts_: as upon the subject of the _groves_, & the _high places, christian liberty, will-worship, humane inventions, idolatry, superstition_, &c. there's not a _verse_ in the whole _bible_, against _persecution_, but makes them shake their heads at the _government_. popery by _interpretation_, is episcopacy: the _liberty_ of the subject, has an _aking tooth_ at the _prerogative_ of the prince: but finally; such and such terms, and forms of speaking, are, by common consent, to pass for _current_, under such or such a sense, and meaning, how _contrary_ soever, to their _proper_, and _genuine signification_, or _import_. but this speaks only to the propagating of _jelousies_, not to the rise of them. _trim._ if you ask me the [rise] of _jelousies_, i must _answer_ ye, that they are _begotten_ betwixt ambition, avarice, hypocrisy, craft, malice, and disloyalty, on the _one_ side; and ignorance, obstinacy, blind zeal, and an impetuous temerity, on the _other_. _london_, printed for _charles brome_, at the gun in st. _paul's_ church-yard. william andrews clark memorial library university of california, los angeles * * * * * the augustan reprint society publications in print the augustan reprint society publications in print * * * * * - . henry nevil payne, _the fatal jealousie_ ( ). . anonymous, "of genius," in _the occasional paper_, vol. iii, no. ( ), and aaron hill, preface to _the creation_ ( ). - . susanna centlivre, _the busie body_ ( ). . lewis theobald, _prepace to the works of shakespeare_ ( ). . samuel johnson, _the vanity of human wishes_ ( ), and two _rambler_ papers ( ). . john dryden, _his majesties declaration defended_ ( ). - . charles macklin, _the man of the world_ ( ). - . thomas gray, _an elegy wrote in a country church-yard_ ( ), and _the eton college manuscript_. - . bernard mandeville, _a letter to dion_ ( ). - . thomas d'urfey, _wonders in the sun; or, the kingdom of the birds_ ( ). - . john tutchin, _selected poems_ ( - ). . anonymous, _political justice_ ( ). . robert dodsley, _an essay on fable_ ( ). . t. r., _an essay concerning critical and curious learning_ ( ). . _two poems against pope_: leonard welsted, _one epistle to mr. a. pope_ ( ), and anonymous, _the blatant beast_ ( ). - . daniel defoe and others, _accounts of the apparition of mrs. veal_. . charles macklin, _the covent garden theatre_ ( ). . sir george l'estrange, _citt and bumpkin_ ( ). . henry more, _enthusiasmus triumphatus_ ( ). . thomas traherne, _meditations on the six days of the creation_ ( ). . bernard mandeville, _aesop dress'd or a collection of fables_ ( ). - . edmond malone, _cursory observations on the poems attributed to mr. thomas rowley_ ( ). . anonymous, _the female wits_ ( ). . anonymous, _the scribleriad_ ( ). lord hervey, _the difference between verbal and practical virtue_ ( ). - . lawrence echard, prefaces to _terence's comedies_ ( ) and _plautus's comedies_ ( ). . henry more, _democritus platonissans_ ( ). . walter harte, _an essay on satire, particularly on the dunciad_ ( ). - . john courtenay, _a poetical review of the literary and moral character of the late samuel johnson_ ( ). . john downes, _roscius anglicanus_ ( ). . sir john hill, _hypochondriasis, a practical treatise_ ( ). . thomas sheridan, _discourse ... being introductory to his course of lectures on elocution and the english language_ ( ). . arthur murphy, _the englishman from paris_ ( ). . 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maximillian e. novak, university of california, los angeles _corresponding secretary_: mrs. edna c. davis, william andrews clark memorial library * * * * * the society's purpose is to publish rare restoration and eighteenth-century works (usually as facsimile reproductions). all income of the society is devoted to defraying costs of publication and mailing. correspondence concerning memberships in the united states and canada should be addressed to the corresponding secretary at the william andrews clark memorial library, cimarron street, los angeles, california. correspondence concerning editorial matters may be addressed to the general editors at the same address. manuscripts of introductions should conform to the recommendations of the mla _style sheet_. the membership fee is $ . a year in the united states and canada and £ . . in great britain and europe. british and european prospective members should address b. h. blackwell, broad street, oxford, england. copies of back issues in print may be obtained from the corresponding secretary. publications of the first fifteen years of the society (numbers - ) are available in paperbound units of six issues at $ . per unit, from the kraus reprint company, east th street, new york, n.y. . * * * * * make check or money order payable to the regents of the university of california regular publications for - . john ogilvie, _an essay on the lyric poetry of the ancients_ ( ). introduction by wallace jackson. . _a learned dissertation on dumpling_ ( ) and _pudding burnt to pot or a compleat key to the dissertation on dumpling_ ( ). introduction by samuel l. macey. . selections from sir roger l'estrange's _observator_ ( - ). introduction by violet jordain. . anthony collins, _a discourse concerning ridicule and irony in writing_ ( ). introduction by edward a. bloom and lillian d. bloom. . _a letter from a clergyman to his friend, with an account of the travels of captain lemuel gulliver_ ( ). introduction by martin kallich. . _the art of architecture, a poem. in imitation of horace's art of poetry_ ( ). introduction by william a. gibson. special publication for - gerard langbaine, _an account of the english dramatick poets_ ( ), introduction by john loftis. volumes. approximately pages. price to members of the society, $ . for the first copy (both volumes), and $ . for additional copies. price to non-members, $ . . * * * * * already published in this series: . john ogilby, _the fables of aesop paraphras'd in verse_ ( ), with an introduction by earl miner. pages. . john gay, _fables_ ( , ), with an introduction by vinton a. dearing. pages. . _the empress of morocco and its critics_ (elkanah settle, _the empress of morocco_ [ ] with five plates; _notes and observations on the empress of morocco_ [ ] by john dryden, john crowne and thomas snadwell; _notes and observations on the empress of morocco revised_ [ ] by elkanah settle; and _the empress of morocco. a farce_ [ ] by thomas duffett), with an introduction by maximillian e. novak. pages. . _after the tempest_ (the dryden-davenant version of _the tempest_ [ ]; the "operatic" _tempest_ [ ]; thomas duffett's _mock-tempest_ [ ]; and the "garrick" _tempest_ [ ]), with an introduction by george robert guffey. pages. price to members of the society, $ . for the first copy of each title, and $ . for additional copies. price to non-members, $ . . standing orders for this continuing series of special publications will be accepted. british and european orders should be addressed to b. h. blackwell, broad street, oxford, england. transcriber's note the closing square brackets have been removed from the end of the following as no opening bracket was found in the text. . page - _some people at_ norwich, _are playing the_ devil _for_ godsake: _several honest, peaceable_, protestant dissenters, _having been troubled for not coming to_ church, _or having been present at_ religious meetings &c.] . page - _smith_ (in his _vox populi, p._ .) saith, that _the king is oblig'd to pass or confirm those laws his people shall chuse_.] on page the fullstop after chuse has been changed to a comma.