12253	----	[Transcriber's note: This was a catalog from a magazine subscription agency MANY YEARS AGO. It is presented in order to show a cross section of the periodicals for the general public, and some professional journals, published in the USA at that time, and the kinds of subscription prices they asked. Obviously, the offers are NO LONGER AVAILABLE and most of these periodicals are no longer published! The only other thing I know about Mr. Cottrell is that he was apparently an avid player of horseshoe pitching. The booklet had 40 octavo size pages and there were two forms inserted loose into its pages; the contents of those forms appear at the end of this document. The booklet itself had four kinds of content. 1) Instructions and self-promotion by D. D. Cottrell. 2) Advertisements inserted by various publishers. 3) An extensive alphabetical list of the American publications offered via the company. 4) An extensive variety of "club lists"--offers of an even more special price on particular combinations of two or more magazines, not necessarily from the same publisher. This was a common practice at the time. Comments in square brackets, other than the footnotes, were added during the process of transcribing the booklet to an etext. Enough blathering; here follows the actual contents of the booklet.] D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY Catalog No. 39 Season 1905. Established 1886 North Cohocton, N.Y. Twentieth Year Wholesale Price List of Newspapers & Periodicals Save Money, Time and Trouble by subscribing for all your periodicals through us. References: Dun's or Bradstreet's Commercial Agencies or Any Leading Publisher. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] Our Guarantee: We will BEAT OR MEET any price advertised this season by any responsible party for any periodical or combination of periodicals. Send all your orders to us. SOME LEADING OFFERS. Regular Our Price Price The Success Magazine: with Leslie's Monthly--or Cosmopolitan ........ $2.00 $1.50 with Harper's Bazar--or Good Housekeeping ..... 2.00 1.50 with Pearson's--or Twentieth Century Home ..... 2.00 1.50 with Sunset Magazine--or American Boy ......... 2.00 1.50 with American Inventor--or Technical World .... 3.00 1.50 with Bookkeeper--or Ladies' World ............. 2.00 1.25 with Holiday Magazine--or Young Americans ..... 1.50 1.25 with Woman's Home Companion ................... 2.00 1.60 with Review of Reviews--or Independent ........ 3.50 2.50 with World's Work and Leslie's Monthly ........ 5.00 3.00 with Booklover's Magazine and Harper's Bazar .. 5.00 3.00 with Outing and Pearson's ..................... 5.00 3.00 with Outlook (new sub. only) .................. 4.00 3.00 with Country Life in America .................. 4.00 3.25 with Harper's Magazine--or Harper's Weekly .... 5.00 4.25 with No. Am. Review (new sub.) and Cosmopolitan 7.00 5.00 See other leading offers on next page. D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. Popular Magazine Offers Regular Price SUCCESS MAGAZINE, (M) ....................... $1.00 The Great Home Magazine of America. CLASS A Leslie's Monthly Magazine .................. 1.00 Harper's Bazar ............................. 1.00 The Cosmopolitan Magazine .................. 1.00 Good Housekeeping .......................... 1.00 Pearson's Magazine ......................... 1.00 The Twentieth Century Home ................. 1.00 The American Boy ........................... 1.00 The American Inventor ...................... 1.50 The Sunset Magazine ........................ 1.00 The Technical World ........................ 2.00 The Bookkeeper and Business Man's Magazine, ($1.00) with "Business Short Cuts," ($1.00),[A] .............................. 2.00 The Ladies' World, (50c.) with "Entertainments for All Seasons," ($1.00) [B] ...................................... 1.50 The Holiday Magazine for Children, (50c.) with "Home Games and Parties," (50c.) [C] 1.00 SPECIAL BOOKS [Footnote A: "Business Short Cuts" is a valuable handbook for the busy office man, either employer or employee; 157 pages, bound in heavy boards. It is offered in combination with "The Bookkeeper and Business Man's Magazine" as a member of Class A.] [Footnote B: "Entertainments for All Seasons" is a 224-page 12mo. book, neatly bound in cloth and full of excellent hints and suggestions for home and church festivities. It is offered in combination with the "Ladies' World" as a member of Class A.] [Footnote C: "Home Games and Parties" is a beautiful little 188-page book, bound in cloth, especially adapted for the busy mother who has to provide amusement for her boys and girls. It is offered in combination with the "Holiday Magazine for Children" as a member of Class A.] See Opposite Page for Club Prices CLASS B The Review of Reviews ................... $2.50 The World's Work ........................ 3.00 Outing .................................. 3.00 The Booklover's Magazine ................ 3.00 The Independent ......................... 2.00 SPECIAL MAGAZINES The Outlook, (new sub. only) ............ 3.00 Country Life in America ................. 3.00 Harper's Magazine ....................... 4.00 Harper's Weekly ......................... 4.00 No. American Review (new sub. only) ..... 5.00 International Studio .................... 5.00 HOW TO FIND COMBINATION PRICES 1. First choose the magazines of "Class A," "Class B," and "Special" that you wish to order. 2. If you choose "A" and "B" magazines only, their price with SUCCESS will be readily found on top of first column, opposite page. 3. If you choose any of the "Special Magazines," look for them in black-face type on opposite page, and you will there find a set of offers which will probably include what you wish. 4. If you do not readily find prices on the magazines which you wish by the above rules, _write to us for special quotations_. Popular Magazine Offers * * * * * OUR CLUB PRICES For Annual Subscriptions to Magazines Listed on Opposite Page * * * * * Success Magazine: with 1 of A, ..................... $1.50 with 2 of A, ..................... 2.00 with 3 of A, ..................... 2.50 with Review of Reviews, .......... 2.50 with Independent, ................ 2.50 with Review of Reviews, and 1 of A, .................... 3.00 with World's Work and 1 of A, .................... 3.00 with Outing and 1 of A, .................... 3.00 with Booklover's and 1 of A, .................... 3.00 with 2 of B, ..................... 4.00 with 2 of B and 1 of A, .......... 4.50 with 2 of B and 2 of A, .......... 5.00 * * * * * Booklovers Magazine: with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ......... $3.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ......... 3.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ......... 4.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ......... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A and 1 of B, .................... 4.50 with SUCCESS and 2 of A and 2 of B, .................... 7.00 * * * * * Country Life in America: with SUCCESS, .................... $3.25 with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ......... 3.75 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ......... 4.25 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ......... 4.75 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ......... 6.25 with SUCCESS and Outlook (new) .............. 5.25 with SUCCESS and Harper's Magazine or Weekly, ............ 6.50 with SUCCESS and No. Am. Review (new) or Inter. Studio ............... 6.75 * * * * * Harper's Magazine or Weekly: with SUCCESS, .................... $4.25 with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ......... 4.75 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ......... 5.25 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ......... 5.75 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ......... 7.25 with SUCCESS and Outlook (new) .................. 6.25 with SUCCESS and No. Am. Review (new) or Inter. Studio ............... 7.75 with SUCCESS and Country Life, .................. 6.50 * * * * * Independent: with SUCCESS, .................... $2.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ......... 3.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ......... 3.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ......... 4.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ......... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A 4.50 and 1 of B, .................... 4.50 with SUCCESS and 2 of A and 2 of B, .................... 7.00 * * * * * International Studio: with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ...... $5.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ...... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ...... 6.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ...... 7.50 with SUCCESS and Outlook (new) 6.50 with SUCCESS and Harper's Magazine or Weekly .......... 7.75 with SUCCESS and Country Life 6.75 North American Review: (New sub. If a renewal add 75c to club price.) with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ...... 5.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ...... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ...... 6.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ...... 7.50 with SUCCESS and Outlook (new) 6.50 with SUCCESS and Harper's Magazine or Weekly, ......... 7.75 with SUCCESS and Country Life, 6.75 Outing: with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ...... 3.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ...... 3.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ...... 4.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ...... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A and 1 of B, ................. 4.50 with SUCCESS and 2 of A and 2 of B, ................. 7.00 Outlook: (New sub. If a renewal add $1.00 to club price.) with SUCCESS, ................. 3.00 with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ...... 3.50 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ...... 4.00 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ...... 4.50 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ...... 6.00 with SUCCESS and Harper's Magazine or Weekly .......... 6.25 with SUCCESS and Country Life, 5.25 with SUCCESS and No. Am. Review (new) or Inter. Studio 6.50 Review of Reviews: with SUCCESS, ................. 2.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ...... 3.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ...... 3.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ...... 4.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ...... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A and 1 of B, ................. 4.50 with Success and 2 of A and 2 of B, ................. 7.00 World's Work: with SUCCESS and 1 of A, ...... 3.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of A, ...... 3.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of B, ...... 4.00 with SUCCESS and 2 of B, ...... 5.50 with SUCCESS and 1 of A and 1 of B, ................. 4.50 with SUCCESS and 2 of A and 2 of B, ................. 7.00 ADDRESS ALL ORDERS TO D. D. Cottrell's Magazine Agency, North Cohocton, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] Class A. American Bird Magazine .......... 1 yr.$1.00 American Boy .................... 1 yr. 1.00 American Dressmaker ............. 1 yr. 1.00 American Education .............. 1 yr. 1.00 American Inventor ............... 1 yr. 1.00 American Primary Teacher ........ 1 yr. 1.00 Art Student ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 Atlanta Constitution (weekly) ... 1 yr. 1.00 Automobile Magazine ............. 1 yr. 2.00 Boston Cooking School Magazine. 1 yr. 1.00 Book-keeper & Business Short Cuts 1 yr. 2.00 Brown Book of Boston ............ 1 yr. 1.00 Camera Craft..................... 1 yr. 1.00 Chicago Inter-Ocean (weekly) .... 1 yr. 1.00 Cincinnati Enquirer, weekly ..... 1 yr. 1.00 Cosmopolitan Magazine ........... 1 yr. 1.00 Courier Journal, weekly ......... 1 yr. 1.00 Criterion ....................... 1 yr. 1.00 Cycle & Automobile Trade ........ 1 yr. 1.00 Dietetic & Hygienic Gazette ..... 1 yr. 1.00 Educator ........................ 1 yr. 1.00 Eleanor Kirk's Idea ............. 1 yr. 1.00 Era ............................. 1 yr. 1.00 Farm Journal .................... 5 yrs. 1.00 Foolish Book (Arkell Co.) ....... 1 yr. 1.00 Gleanings in Bee Culture ........ 1 yr. 1.00 Good Health ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 Good Housekeeping ............... 1 yr. 1.00 Harper's Bazaar ................. 1 yr. 1.00 Health .......................... 1 yr. 1.00 Health Culture .................. 1 yr. 1.00 Hints ........................... 1 yr. 1.00 House Beautiful ................. 1 yr. 2.00 Holiday Magazine and Book ....... 1 yr. 1.00 Humorist ........................ 1 yr. 2.00 *Hunter-Trader-Trapper .......... 1 yr. 1.00 Judge Library and Mag. of Fun ... 1 yr. 1.00 Judge Quarterly ................. 1 yr. 1.00 Junior Toilettes ................ 1 yr. 1.00 Just Fun (Arkell Co.) ........... 1 yr. 1.00 Kindergarten Review ............. 1 yr. 1.00 Ladies' World and Book .......... 1 yr. 1.50 Leslie's Monthly Magazine ....... 1 yr. 1.00 Little Folks (new subs) ......... 1 yr. 1.00 Little Chronicle ................ 1 yr. 1.50 Literary World .................. 1 yr. 1.00 Louisville Courier Journal (s-w) 1 yr. 1.00 Mail Order Journal .............. 1 yr. 1.00 Magazine of Mysteries ........... 1 yr. 1.00 Men and Women .................. 1 yr. 1.00 National Stockman & Farmer ...... 1 yr. 1.00 National Magazine ............... 1 yr. 1.00 New Idea Woman's Magazine ....... 1 yr. .50 New York Tribune Farmer ......... 1 yr. 1.00 Normal Instructor ............... 3 yrs. 1.00 Open Court ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 Outdoor Life .................... 1 yr. 1.00 Outdoor ......................... 1 yr. 1.50 Pathfinder ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 Pearson's Magazine .............. 1 yr. 1.00 Philistine ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 Photo Beacon .................... 1 yr. 1.00 Photographic Times Bulletin ..... 1 yr. 1.00 Physical Culture ................ 1 yr. 1.00 Pictorial Review ................ 1 yr. 1.00 Pilgrim ......................... 1 yr. 1.00 Popular Educator (new subs) ..... 1 yr. 1.00 Popular Mechanics ............... 1 yr. 1.00 Practical Farmer ................ 1 yr. 1.00 Primary Plans ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Primary Education (new subs) .... 1 yr. 1.00 Professional & Amateur Photog'r . 1 yr. 1.00 Progressive Teacher ............. 1 yr. 1.00 Recreation ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 Service ......................... 1 yr. 1.00 Stenographer .................... 1 yr. 1.00 Sis Hopkins own Book ............ 1 yr. 1.00 Spirit of '76 ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Success ......................... 1 yr. 1.00 Sunset Magazine ................. 1 yr. 1.00 Table Talk ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 Technical World ................. 1 yr. 2.00 Toledo Blade (weekly) ........... 1 yr. 1.00 Twentieth Century Home .......... 1 yr. 1.00 Type-writer & Phonographic World 1 yr. 1.00 Vick's Family Magazine .......... 3 yrs. 1.00 What to Eat ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 *Woman's Home Companion ......... 1 yr. 1.00 Word and Works, with almanac .... 1 yr. 1.00 *World Today .................... 1 yr. 1.00 Young People's Weekly ........... 1 yr. .75 Youth ........................... 1 yr. 1.00 *For each starred periodical included in any club add 10 cents to the club price. Any two $1.50 Any three $2.00 Any four $2.50 Any two with any two of Offer No. 3 $2.00 Any one with any one in Offer No. 5 $2.00 Any three with any one in Offer No. 3 $2.25 Any two with any one in Offer No. 4 $2.25 Any two with any one in Offer No. 5 $2.50 Any one with any one in Class C $2.50 Any three with any one in Offer No. 4 $2.75 Any three with any one in Offer No. 5 $3.00 Any two with any one in Class C $3.00 Any two with any one in Class B $3.25 Any one with any two in Class C $4.00 Any one with any two in Class B $4.25 Any one with any three in Class C $5.50 OUR PRICES LOWEST OBTAINABLE. This is what we guarantee, should lower prices be quoted by any responsible party, do not divide your order but send it all to me and I will fill it at the lowest price quoted. Class B. Ave Maria ........................ 1 yr. 2.00 Booklover's Magazine ............. 1 yr. 3.00 Burr McIntosh Monthly ............ 1 yr. 3.00 New York Observer (new) .......... 1 yr. 3.00 Outing ........................... 1 yr. 3.00 Review of Reviews ................ 1 yr. 2.50 World's Work ..................... 1 yr. 3.00 ANY FOUR OF CLASS B ONLY $6.75 ANY TWO $3.75 ANY THREE $5.25 Class C. Art Interchange .................. 1 yr. 4.00 American Grocer (new sb) ......... 1 yr. 3.00 Automobile ....................... 1 yr. 2.00 Automobile Topics ................ 1 yr. 2.00 Biblical World ................... 1 yr. 2.00 Chautauquan ...................... 1 yr. 2.00 Critic. .......................... 1 yr. 2.00 Current Literature ............... 1 yr. 3.00 Donahoe's Magazine ............... 1 yr. 2.00 Education (new sub) .............. 1 yr. 3.00 Forum ............................ 1 yr. 2.00 Illustrated Sporting News ........ 1 yr. 2.50 Independent ...................... 1 yr. 2.00 Journal of Education ............. 1 yr. 2.50 Living Church (new sub) .......... 1 yr. 1.00 Lippincott's Magazine ............ 1 yr. 2.50 Marine Engineering ............... 1 yr. 2.00 Photo Era ........................ 1 yr. 2.50 Reader Magazine .................. 1 yr. 3.00 Smart Set ........................ 1 yr. 2.50 Toilettes ........................ 1 yr. 2.00 Trained Nurse .................... 1 yr. 2.00 Any two $3.75 Any three $5.25 Any two with one of class A $2.50 Any one with one of class B $3.75 Any two with one of class A $4.00 Any two with two in class A $4.50 Offer No. 3. Am. Poultry Journal .............. 1 yr. .50 Arkansas Traveler ................ 1 yr. .50 Beauty and Health ................ 1 yr. .50 Book-keeper ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 Boys and Girls ................... 1 yr. .50 Boy's World ...................... 1 yr. .50 Caste ............................ 1 yr. .74 Cooking Club Magazine ............ 1 yr. .50 Dover's Journal (weekly) ......... 1 yr. .50 Farm and Home .................... 1 yr. .50 Farm Poultry ..................... 1 yr. .50 Four Track News (Till Jan. 1st, '92.) 1 yr. .50 Girl's Companion ................. 1 yr. .50 Green's Fruit Grower ............. 1 yr. .50 Holiday Magazine ................. 1 yr. .50 Home Needle Work ................. 1 yr. .50 Housekeeper ...................... 1 yr. .50 How to Live ...................... 1 yr. .50 Irrigation ....................... 1 yr. 1.00 Ladies' World .................... 1 yr. .50 Little Boys and Girls ............ 1 yr. .75 McCalls Magaz'e with Free Pat'rn . 1 yr. .50 Modern Priscilla ................. 1 yr. .50 Normal Instructor ................ 1 yr. .50 Ohio Poultry Journal ............. 1 yr. .50 Poultry Herald ................... 1 yr. .50 Poultry Keeper ................... 1 yr. .50 Poultry Success .................. 1 yr. .50 Practical Engineer ............... 1 yr. .50 Reliable Poultry Journal ......... 1 yr. .50 School Music Monthly ............. 1 yr. .50 Union Gospel News ................ 1 yr. .50 Vegetarian ....................... 1 yr. 1.00 Vick's Magazine .................. 1 yr. .50 World's Events ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Young Americans .................. 1 yr. .50 Any Three $1.25 ANY ONE with any one in Class A $1.25 ANY TWO with any one in Class A $1.50 ANY ONE with any two in Class A $1.75 ANY ONE with any three in Class A $2.25 Any two in Offer No. 3 may be substituted for any one in Class A, in any combination providing no more than five periodicals be ordered in any one club. PERIODICALS IN ANY CLUB OFFER WILL BE SENT TO THE SAME OR DIFFERENT ADDRESSES. SUBSCRIPTIONS MAY BE EITHER NEW OR RENEWAL EXCEPT WHERE OTHERWISE STATED. MY CLUBBING OFFERS This is the TWENTIETH YEAR that I have been in the subscription business, and in this Catalogue No. 39, I am giving the best bargains in periodical literature that have ever been placed before the public. In order to enable me to do this the publishers of these periodicals have sacrificed their prices until in a great many cases they do not obtain from the subscribers to these club offers the actual cost of the white paper on which they print the numbers that they will mail to fill the year's subscriptions. They have done this to introduce their periodicals to the largest number of readers possible, believing it better to give the subscriber the benefit of the price than to spend the thousands of dollars in advertising, which would be necessary to secure the same number of subscriptions and the same amount of publicity. This catalogue will be sent to a number of hundred thousand persons besides the tens of thousands of my regular customers, a large number of whom have sent me orders regularly for years. My close relations with publishers, my immense business, my unequalled facilities for handling orders, my long experience in this work, my thousands of satisfied customers located in all parts of the United States and Canada and in nearly every civilized country of the world all combined guarantee that all dealings with me will be satisfactory. My motto has always been that a satisfied customer was my best advertisement. On account of these things, publishers give me the lowest possible prices on periodicals, and I guarantee to my customers that my prices to them are the lowest obtainable. I hope to receive the orders, whether they be large or small, of all my old customers and also of all others who receive this Catalogue, and hereby promise to give the same my most careful and immediate attention. Hoping that I may serve you in this matter, I remain, Very truly yours, D. D. COTTRELL. Offer No. 4. Any one in Offer No. 4 may be substituted for any one in Class A by adding 25 cents to the club price for each one so substituted. American Electrician ............. 1 yr.$1.00 Automobile Review ................ 1 yr. 1.50 Draftsman ........................ 1 yr. 1.00 Engineer (Chicago) ............... 1 yr. 1.00 Four-Track News (after Jan. 1) ... 1 yr. 1.00 Jersey Bulletin .................. 1 yr. 1.00 Journal of Geography ............. 1 yr. 1.00 Manual Training Magazine ......... 1 yr. 1.00 Ohio Educational Monthly ......... 1 yr. 1.00 Perry Magazine ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Photo-American ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Phrenological Journal ............ 1 yr. 1.00 Primary School ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Primary School Era ............... 1 yr. 1.00 Red Book ......................... 1 yr. 1.00 School Arts Books ................ 1 yr. 1.00 Sunday School Times .............. 1 yr. 1.00 Teachers' Institute .............. 1 yr. 1.00 Wallace's Farmer & Dairyman ...... 1 yr. 1.00 Week's Current ................... 1 yr. 1.25 Any One with one in class A $1.75 Any Two with one of class A $2.50 Any One with one of class B $3.00 Any Two with one of class B $3.75 Offer No. 5. Any one in Offer No. 5 may be substituted for any two in Class A in any offer. Birds and Nature ................. 1 yr.$1.50 Country Gentleman ................ 1 yr. 1.50 Elementary School Teacher ........ 1 yr. 1.50 Etude (For all music lovers) ..... 1 yr. 1.50 Intelligence ..................... 1 yr. 1.50 Metropolitan Magazine ............ 1 yr. 1.80 Musician ......................... 1 yr. 1.50 New York Tribune (tri-wkly) ...... 1 yr. 1.50 Out West ......................... 1 yr. 2.00 Overland Monthly ................. 1 yr. 1.50 Ram's Horn ....................... 1 yr. 1.50 School & Home Education .......... 1 yr. 1.25 School Review .................... 1 yr. 1.50 Sports Afield .................... 1 yr. 1.50 System ........................... 1 yr. 2.00 Week's Progress .................. 1 yr. 2.00 Any two of these $2.50 Any two with any one in class A $3.00 Any one with any one in class C $3.00 Art Interchange or Smart Set or Current Literature or Lippincott's Magazine or Independent or any one in Class C Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Current Literature or any one in class C ......... $3.75 with World's Work or any one in class B ............... 3.75 with Outlook (new) or Churchman (new) ................. 4.25 with Scribner's ....................................... 5.10 with Century .......................................... 5.75 with Harper's Weekly or Monthly ....................... 5.50 with Etude or any one in offer No. 5 .................. 3.25 with Country Life or Craftsman or Theater ............. 4.50 with Atlantic Monthly or Leslies Weekly ............... 5.50 with any one in class A ............................... 2.50 with any two in class A ............................... 3.00 with Smart Set or any one in class C .................. 3.75 with North American Review (new) ...................... 5.75 Century Magazine Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Review of Reviews and Success .................... $6.00 with World's Work or any one in Class B ............... 5.75 with Outing and Recreation ............................ 6.25 with Lippincott's and Cosmopolitan or Leslie's ........ 6.25 with Success and Art Interchange ...................... 6.00 with Housekeeper and Cosmopolitan or Leslie's ......... 4.75 with Woman's Home Companion and Success ............... 5.10 with Harper's Bazar and Leslie's or Cosmopolitan ...... 5.00 with House Beautiful and Harper's Bazar ............... 5.00 with Booklovers Magazine or any one in Class B ........ 5.75 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 6.65 with St. Nicholas ..................................... 6.30 with World's Work and any one in Class B .............. 7.25 Etude, For all Music Lovers or any one in Offer No. 5 Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Burr McIntosh Monthly or any class B ............. $3.25 with Booklovers Magazine or any class B ............... 3.25 with Country Life or Craftsman or Theater ............. 4.00 with North American Review (new) ...................... 5.00 with Chautauquan or Critic or any class C ............. 3.25 with Outlook (new) or Churchman (new) ................. 3.75 with International Studio or North Am. Review (new) ... 5.00 with any one class A .................................. 2.00 with any two class A .................................. 2.50 with Musician or any one in Offer No. 5 ............... 2.50 BOTH $2.25 a full Year: The LADIES' HOME JOURNAL Monthly THE SATURDAY EVENING POST Weekly BOTH $2.25 a full Year: The LADIES' HOME JOURNAL Monthly THE SATURDAY EVENING POST Weekly Burr McIntosh Monthly or Booklovers Magazine or any one in Class B. Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Century or International Studio .................. $5.75 with St. Nicholas ..................................... 4.75 with Scribner's ....................................... 5.10 with Etude or any one in Offer No. 5 .................. 3.25 with Harper's Weekly or Monthly ....................... 5.50 with Country Life or Craftsman or Theater ............. 4.50 with World's Work or any one in class B ............... 3.75 Four Track News Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Pearson's or any one in class A .................. $1.25 with Cosmopolitan and Leslie's Monthly Magazine ....... 1.75 with any two in class A ............................... 1.75 with any three in class A ............................. 2.25 with Smart Set and any one in Offer No. 3 ............. 2.50 with any one in class A and class B ................... 3.00 with any two in class B or C .......................... 4.00 with Success, Leslies and World's Work ................ 3.25 Harper's Weekly or Monthly or Atlantic Monthly or Leslie's Weekly Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Burr McIntosh Monthly or any class B or C ........ $5.50 with Booklovers Magazine or any class B or C .......... 5.50 with World's Work or any one class B or C ............. 5.50 with House Beautiful or any one in class A ............ 4.25 with any two class A .................................. 4.75 with Journal of Education or any one in class C ....... 5.50 with Etude (For all music lovers) or one in Offer No. 5 4.75 with any two in class B or C .......................... 7.00 with Century or International Studio .................. 7.00 with Country Life in America .......................... 6.25 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 6.35 with Outlook (new) .................................... 6.00 North American Review (new) or International Studio or Century Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Country Life or Craftsman or Theater ............. $5.00 with Outlook (new) or Churchman (new) ................. 5.75 with Century .......................................... 7.25 with Scientific American .............................. 6.25 with Harper's Weekly or Monthly ....................... 7.00 with any one in Class B ............................... 5.75 with Success and one in class A ....................... 5.00 with Etude or anyone in Offer No. 5 ................... 5.00 with Scribner's Magazine............................... 6.50 World Today or Woman's Home Companion Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Success or any one in Class A ................... $1.60 with Pearson and any one in Class A ................... 2.10 with Art Interchange and Leslies ...................... 3.10 with Journal of Education and Cosmopolitan ............ 3.10 with Education (new) and Booklovers ................... 4.35 with Leslie's Monthly and any one in class B .......... 3.35 with North American Review (new) and Success .......... 5.10 with International Studio and Leslies ................. 5.10 with Country Life ..................................... 3.60 with Outlook (new) and Good Housekeeping .............. 3.85 with any one in class C ............................... 2.60 with any two in class C ............................... 4.10 with any two in class B ............................... 4.35 with any one in Offer No. 3 ........................... 1.35 with any two in Offer No. 3 ........................... 1.60 with any one in Offer No. 4 ........................... 1.85 with any two in Offer No. 4 ........................... 2.60 with any one in Offer No. 5 ........................... 2.10 with any two in Offer No. 5 ........................... 3.10 with Woman's Home Companion ........................... 1.70 with Etude (for all Music lovers) ..................... 2.10 with St. Nicholas ..................................... 3.60 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 3.85 with Century Magazine ................................. 4.60 Metropolitan Magazine or any one on Offer No. 5 Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Leslie's or any one in class A ................... $2.00 with Good Housekeeping and Pearsons ................... 2.50 with any two in class A ............................... 2.50 with World's Work or any one in class B ............... 3.25 with Booklovers and Outing ............................ 4.75 with any two in class B ............................... 4.75 with Lippincott or any one in class C ................. 3.00 with Smart Set and Current Literature ................. 4.75 with any two in class C ............................... 4.75 with Century .......................................... 5.00 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 4.35 with Harper's Monthly or Weekly ....................... 4.75 with St. Nicholas ..................................... 4.00 Scientific American Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Country Life or Theater or Craftsman ............. $5.50 with World's Work or any one in class B ............... 4.75 with Scribner's ....................................... 5.75 with Century .......................................... 6.40 with Art Interchange or any one in class C ............ 4.75 with Burr McIntosh Monthly or any class B ............. 4.75 with Atlantic Monthly or Harper's Monthly ............. 6.10 with Etude or any one in offer No. 5 .................. 4.15 with Harper's Weekly or Monthly ....................... 6.10 with American Boy or any one in class A ............... 3.75 with any two in class A ............................... 4.25 with Smart Set or any one in class C .................. 4.75 Both for $1.25: Pearson's Magazine one year $1.00 Any one of the following cloth bound copyright novels worth 1.50: Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall ...... _By Charles Major_ The Master Christian ............... _By Marie Corelli_ In the Palace of the King .......... _By F. Marion Crawford_ The Virginian ...................... _By Owen Wister_ The Crisis ......................... _By Winston Churchill_ The Cavalier ....................... _By George W. Cable_ The Mississippi Bubble ............. _By Emerson Hough_ The Right of Way ................... _By Gilbert Parker_ David Harum ........................ _By B. Edward Noyes Westcott_ The Hound of the Baskervilles ...... _A. Conan Doyle_ When Knighthood was in Flower ...... _By Charles Major_ Castle Craneycrow .................. _By George Barr McCutcheon_ NOTE--These books are not a trashy edition but handsome cloth-bound books most of them originally published at $1.50. All for $2.00: Pearson's Magazine one year $1.00 Success 1.00 Imperial Shakespeare (prepaid) 2.00 The IMPERIAL SHAKESPEARE presents in one serviceable volume the thirty eight great works of the immortal bard.--size of the volume nine by fourteen inches, strong buckram binding. $3.00 Buys: A TEN-VOLUME SET of the Works of EDGAR ALLAN POE (Prepaid) together with A Year's Subscription to Pearson's and A Year's Subscription to Success The Poe set is a beautiful Library Pocket Edition, printed on good paper, clear type, cloth bound covers modern flat back, with title, and the author's portrait and signature embellished on the cover; each set nicely boxed. [Transcriber's note: original had 'potrait' in above paragraph.] SEND ME ONLY $3.35 FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE the great leading magazine of the world (price $4.00) or add $3.35 to any combination in this catalogue. BOTH $2.25 a full Year: THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL Monthly THE SATURDAY EVENING POST Weekly House Beautiful or any Class A or two of Offer No. 3 Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Am. Boy or any class A ........................... $1.50 with Good Housekeeping and National Magazine .......... 2.00 with any two of class A ............................... 2.00 with any three of class A ............................. 2.50 with any one of class C ............................... 2.50 with Booklover's (or any class B) and one of class A .. 3.25 with any two of class B ............................... 4.25 with American Inventor and Cosmopolitan Magazine ...... 2.00 with any one of Offer No. 4 ........................... 1.75 with any two of Offer No. 4 ........................... 2.50 with any one of Offer No. 5 ........................... 2.00 with any two of Offer No. 5 ........................... 3.00 with Current Lit. or any class C ...................... 2.50 with any two of class C ............................... 4.00 with Century Magazine ................................. 4.50 with Country Life in America .......................... 3.50 with Harper's Mag. or Weekly .......................... 4.25 with Independent ...................................... 2.50 with International Studio ............................. 4.50 with Judge ............................................ 4.75 with Leslie's Weekly .................................. 4.25 with Literary Digest (new sub.) ....................... 3.00 Leslie's Monthly Magazine or any Class A or two of Offer No. 3 Will be sent in Clubs as follows: with American Boy or any class A ...................... $1.50 with any two of class A .............................. 2.00 with any three of class A ............................. 2.50 with any one of Offer No. 3 ........................... 1.25 with any two of Offer No. 3 ........................... 1.50 with any one of Offer No. 4 ........................... 1.75 with any two of Offer No. 4 ........................... 2.50 with any one of Offer No. 5 ........................... 2.00 with any two of Offer No. 5 ........................... 3.00 with Woman's Home Companion ........................... 1.60 with World Today ...................................... 1.60 with Lippincott's or any class C ...................... 2.50 with one of B and one of A ............................ 3.25 with one of B and Success ............................. 3.00 with two of class B ................................... 4.25 with Century Magazine ................................. 4.50 with Country Life in America .......................... 3.50 with Etude (for music lovers) ......................... 2.00 with Harper's Magazine or weekly ...................... 4.25 with Judge ............................................ 4.75 with Leslie's Weekly .................................. 4.25 with St. Nicholas ..................................... 3.50 with Scientific American .............................. 3.75 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 3.85 One Magazine Free: Send me three orders for any combination (except Ladies' Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post) and I will give you free, to be sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to any periodical in class A or Offer No. 3. Your own club and two other clubs make the three clubs. LADIES' HOME JOURNAL FREE: Send me two (2) orders for the combination Ladies' Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post, at $2.25 each and you may have free as your premium, and sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to the Ladies' Home Journal, or for three (3) orders a yearly subscription to the Saturday Evening Post. Send me $2.50: 5 Volume Encyclopedia, value ......... $10.00 Express charges to be paid on delivery Cosmopolitan, 1 yr. .................. 1.00 This Encyclopedia is cloth bound, contains 3060 pages, Gold lettering, Well printed on fine paper. Equally a Necessity for Every Home and Every Office. Such an Encyclopedia as has hitherto been sold for $10 or $12. It is new being just off the press. Sample pages on request. St. Nicholas Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Review of Reviews and Success .................... $5.00 with World's Work or any one in Class B ............... 4.75 with Outing and Recreation ............................ 5.25 with Lippincott's and Cosmopolitan or Leslie's ........ 5.25 [original had 'Leslle's' on above line] with Success and Art Interchange ...................... 5.00 with Housekeeper and Cosmopolitan or Leslie's ......... 3.75 with Woman's Home Companion and Success ............... 4.10 with Harper's Bazar and Leslie's or Cosmopolitan ...... 4.00 with House Beautiful and Harper's Bazar ............... 4.00 with Booklovers Magazine or any one in Class B ........ 4.75 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 5.65 with Century Magazine ................................. 6.30 with World's Work and Booklovers ...................... 6.25 Week's Progress or any one in Offer No. 5 Will be sent in clubs as follows: with Success or any one in class A .................... $2.00 with any two in class A ............................... 2.50 with Pearsons and Leslie's ............................ 2.50 [original had 'Leslies' on above line] with Review of Reviews or any one in class B .......... 3.25 with any two in class B ............................... 4.75 with Country Life or Craftsman ........................ 4.00 with Etude and any one in class A ..................... 3.00 with Smart Set or any one in class C .................. 3.00 with Century .......................................... 5.00 with Scribner's Magazine .............................. 4.35 with Harper's Monthly or Weekly ....................... 4.75 with St. Nicholas ..................................... 4.00 * * * * * If you want REAL enjoyment, send ten cents for a copy of the best publication, HUMORIST. Address: Publisher Humorist, St. Louis, Mo. In ordering your reading matter, don't fail to include the Humorist in the list. * * * * * [Illustration] Farm Live Stock Its care and management. Pictures of all the breeds. Reports of fairs, horse shows and meetings, by best writers, published weekly in The Breeder's Gazette, Chicago, Ill. $2 a year. Sample copy free if you mention this paper. Liberal terms to subscription agents. * * * * * Best Value of the Year One Dollar Per Year. Sunset Magazine Published by Passenger Department Southern Pacific Company, 4 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California. Agents Wanted. Special Terms. * * * * * Everybody's Magazine may be secured with any combination by adding ONE DOLLAR to the combination price. Mr. Lawson's story, "Frenzied Finance" will probably continue in Everybody's Magazine through 1905. * * * * * WHAT TO EAT THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE has been awarded the GRAND PRIZE, the highest possible award at the LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION. * * * * * WHAT TO EAT is the leading Advocate for Pure Food and the most unique Club and Household Magazine. ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR. SUBSCRIBE NOW. * * * * * THE PIERCE PUBLISHING CO., 171-173 Washington St., Chicago, Ill. MAGAZINES SENT TO SEPARATE ADDRESSES IF DESIRED. * * * * * MY PRICE $1.50: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 American Boy ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any Class A, or two of Class 3 * * * * * MY PRICE $2.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 American Inventor ................ 1 yr. 1.50 Or any Class A Cosmopolitan ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any Class A or two of Class 3 * * * * * MY PRICE $2.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Harper's Bazar ................... 1 yr. 1.00 House Beautiful .................. 1 yr. 2.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $2.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Little Folks ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 National Magazine ................ 1 yr. 1.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $2.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Pearson's Magazine ............... 1 yr. 1.00 Physical Culture ................. 1 yr. 1.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $2.50: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Success .......................... 1 yr. 1.00 Table Talk ....................... 1 yr. 1.00 Pictorial Review ................. 1 yr. 1.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $3.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Review of Reviews ................ 1 yr. 2.50 Or any Class B Magazine Holiday Magazine (for children) " .50 Or McCall's Magazine or any Class 3 * * * * * MY PRICE $1.60: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 World Today ...................... 1 yr. 1.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $3.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Booklover's Magazine ............. 1 yr. 3.00 Or any Class B or C Magazine Success .......................... 1 yr. 1.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $2.50: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Lippincott's Magazine ............ 1 yr. 2.50 Or any Class C magazine * * * * * MY PRICE. $3.25: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Outing ........................... 1 yr. 3.00 Or World's Work or any Class B magazine House Beautiful .................. 1 yr. 2.00 Or any Class A magazine. * * * * * MY PRICE 3.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Photo Era ........................ 1 yr. 2.50 Or any Class C magazine Cosmopolitan ..................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any Class A magazine * * * * * MY PRICE 5.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Country Life In America .......... 1 yr. 3.00 Review of Reviews ................ 1 yr. 3.00 Or World's Work * * * * * MY PRICE $2.00: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Etude (for music lovers) ......... 1 yr. 1.50 * * * * * MY PRICE $4.25: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Harper's Magazine or Weekly ...... 1 yr. 4.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $4.25: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Leslie's Weekly .................. 1 yr. 4.00 * * * * * MY PRICE 4.50: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Century Magazine ................. 1 yr. 4.00 Or North American Review (new sub.) * * * * * MY PRICE $4.75: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Judge ............................ 1 yr. 5.00 * * * * * MY PRICE $3.25 What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Outlook (new sub.) ............... 1 yr. 3.00 * * * * * MY PRICE 3.50: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 St. Nicholas ..................... 1 yr. 3.00 Or Country Life in America * * * * * MY PRICE 4.35: What To Eat ...................... 1 yr. $1.00 Scribner's Magazine .............. 1 yr. 3.00 Cosmopolitan Magazine ............ 1 yr. 1.00 FOR LIST OF CLASS A, B AND C PERIODICALS SEE PAGE TWO. ONE MAGAZINE FREE. Any customer sending me three subscriptions to these clubs (including his own if desired) may have free and sent to any address desired any magazine mentioned in Class A on page 2. YOU MAY ADD TO THESE CLUBS Harper's Magazine, $3.35; The Century, $3.65; St. Nicholas, $2.65; McClures, $1.00; Harper's Weekly, $3.35; Leslie's Weekly, $3.35; Saturday Evening Post, $1.25; Munsey's Magazine, $1.00; Everybody's Magazine, $1.00; Scribner's, $2.85. (Scribner's separately costs $3.00 per year.) ADDRESS ALL ORDERS TO D. D. COTTRELL, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] MEN AND WOMEN, THE SENSATION OF THE MAGAZINE WORLD, DESIGNED FOR MEN AND FOR WOMEN--THE ALL-AROUND HOUSEHOLD MAGAZINE. No success is attained without great merit, MEN AND WOMEN has great merit, hence its remarkable growth. "I admire the magazine you publish, MEN AND WOMEN, very much, and after having perused it at home, I place it on our school reading table."--C. S. WHEATON, Sup't Public Schools, Port Clinton, O. A FEW OF OUR CONTRIBUTORS. Governor LaFollette, Hester Price, Julian Hawthorne, Richard Harding Davis, Madame Schumann-Heink, John Uri Lloyd, Ethel Shackelford, William Allen White, Paul de Longpre, Murat Halstead, Bellamy Storer, Grace Keon, Prof. Wolf Von Schierbrand, Hamilton W. Mabie, Maurice Francis Egan, A. J. Boex, Seumas McManus. The size of MEN AND WOMEN is 11x16 inches. Every number contains 44 or more pages. It is printed on art plate paper. Typography and presswork are of the highest order. Every issue is profusely illustrated by the leading artists. The covers are fac-simile reproductions in many colors of the finest oil and water-color paintings procurable. HIAWATHA'S WOOING. BY H. F. FARNY. This beautiful cover, 11x16 inches, without printing, in three colors, sent on receipt of 10 cents. Mr. Farny is the world's greatest painter of Indians, his pictures having received the great Gold Medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. [Illustration: HIAWATHA'S WOOING. Miniature Reproduction Tri-Color Cover (November.)] _MEN AND WOMEN_ Will be Sent in Clubs as Follows: Including any Magazine in class A With Am. Boy or any one in Class A ........... $1.50 $2.00 With Leslie's Monthly and Technical World .... 2.00 2.50 With any two is class A ...................... 2.00 2.50 With any three in class A .................... 2.50 With Rev. of Revs. (or any in class B) and one of A ................................... 3.25 3.75 With one of Class B and Success .............. 3.00 3.50 With any two of class B or C ................. 4.25 4.75 With Current Literature or any one of class C 2.50 3.00 With World Today and World's Work ............ 3.35 3.85 With Womans Home Companion and Sunset ........ 2.10 2.60 With Pearson's and St. Nicholas .............. 4.00 4.50 With Smart Set and Pictorial Review .......... 3.00 3.50 With St. Nicholas and Physical Culture ....... 4.00 4.50 Including any Magazine in class A With Scientific American ..................... $3.75 $4.25 With World's Work and Pearsons ............... 3.25 3.75 With Independent and Bookkeeper and Book ..... 3.00 3.50 With McCall's Magazine and Housekeeper ....... 1.50 2.00 With Little Folks (new Sub) and Ladies World ...................................... 1.75 2.25 With House Beautiful and Good Housek'ping .... 2.00 2.50 With Harper's Magazine or Weekly ............. 4.25 4.75 With Outlook (new Sub) ....................... 3.25 3.75 With St. Nicholas ............................ 3.50 4.00 With Etude or any of offer No. 5 ............. 2.00 2.50 With Century ................................. 4.50 5.00 With Scribner's .............................. 3.85 4.35 With Art Interchange ......................... 2.50 3.00 JUST A GLANCE AT WHAT IT CONTAINS: FICTION--the best. LITERATURE--standard. ART--from masters. MUSIC AND MUSICIANS--a special feature. COOKING SCHOOL--highly practical. FANCY WORK--the latest. FASHIONS--up to date. PATTERNS--inexpensive and tasty. PLAYS AND PLAYERS--interesting and timely. HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY--some new features. BOOK REVIEWS--the latest books. ARCHITECTURE--a series of modern homes. THE CORRECT THING--correct social usage. HOME AND ITS TREASURES--a discussion of home problems. SPECIAL ARTICLES--live, wide-awake articles on the questions of the day by the leaders of public thought in America. A conspicuous feature. Address all Orders to D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] DOUBLEDAY PAGE AND COMPANY'S MAGAZINES The Worlds Work. Edited by WALTER H. PACE. The "The World's Work" the important things the world is doing are told while they are new. The magazine has freshness. The important men who are doing things are described in action. The magazine has human interest. The important scenes in the world's life are shown by striking photographs. The magazine is panoramic. PRICE 25c. A COPY: $3.00 A YEAR. Country Life in America. The most beautiful magazine published. Its articles deal in a practical and fascinating way with every subject that pertains to the outdoors or to life in the country. "Simply indispensable to those who love the country."--Banker's Magazine, Chicago. "Ought to make every city reader emigrate to the country."--New York Sun. THREE DOUBLE NUMBERS. March--the Gardening Manual; October--the House-building issue; December--the Christmas Annual. DOUBLE NUMBERS 50c, REGULAR ISSUES, 25c. $3.00 A YEAR. Send me only $4.50: World's Work ..................... 1 yr. $3.00 Country Life in America .......... 1 yr. $3.00 Send me only $3.00: WORLD'S WORK ..................... 1 yr. $3.00 Success .......................... 1 yr. $1.00 Leslie's Monthly Magazine ........ 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $3.25: WORLD'S WORK ..................... 1 yr. $3.00 Good Housekeeping ................ 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 American Boy ..................... 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $4.00: WORLD'S WORK .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Booklover's Magazine ............ 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 Success ......................... 1 yr. $1.00 Send me only $4.25: WORLD'S WORK .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Journal of Education ............ 1 yr. $2.50 or any one in class B or C page 2 Am. Inventor .................... 1 yr. $1.50 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $5.25: WORLD'S WORK .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Art Interchange ................. 1 yr. $4.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 Outing .......................... 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 Send me only $3.75: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Success ......................... 1 yr. $1.00 Cosmopolitan .................... 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $4.00: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Ladies' World with book offered . $1.50 or any one in class A page 2 Pearsons ........................ 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $4.75: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Outing .......................... 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 Success ......................... 1 yr. $1.00 Send me only $5.00: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Art Interchange ................. 1 yr. $4.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 Little Folks (new) .............. 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $6.00: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Journal of Education ............ 1 yr. $2.50 or any one in class B or C page 2 Booklover's Magazine ............ 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 LIST OF PERIODICALS IN CLASS A AND B ON PAGE 2 Send me only $5.50: WORLD'S WORK .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Independent ..................... 1 yr. $2.00 or any one in class B page 2 Smart Set ....................... 1 yr. $2.50 or any one in class B page 2 Success ......................... 1 yr. $1.00 Send me only $4.25: WORLD'S WORK .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Outlook (new) ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Send me only $6.50: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 Burr McIntosh Monthly ........... 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class A page 2 Current Literature .............. 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C page 2 Sunset Magazine ................. 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A Page 2 Send me only $6.00: COUNTRY LIFE .................... 1 yr. $3.00 North American Review (new) ..... 1 yr. $5.00 ONE MAGAZINE FREE Send me THREE orders for ANY combinations (except for Ladie's Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post) and I will give you FREE, to be sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to any periodical in class A or offer No. 3, YOUR own club and TWO OTHER CLUBS make the THREE clubs. Send me only $6.25: WORLD'S WORK ..................... 1 yr. $3.00 North American Review (new) ...... 1 yr. $5.00 Leslie's Monthly Magazine ........ 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Send me only $5.50: COUNTRY LIFE ...................... 1 yr. $3.00 Outlook (new) ..................... 1 yr. $3.00 Twentieth Century Home ............ 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A page 2 Address all orders to D. D. COTTRELL. North Cohocton. N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] The BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE We heartily recommend this brilliant young monthly, now closing its second year. It is the newest magazine success, and we believe you will like it. Every month it presents a series of the most remarkable color pictures ever produced in this country. These popular and artistic reproductions are made directly from originals which cost, in many instances, thousands of dollars. There is always at least one good long story of intense human interest, one or more profusely illustrated articles of international importance, and penetrating discussions of vital topics touching present-day interests. One popular section contains "The Best New Things from the World of Print"--in all at least 150 pages monthly, all profusely illustrated. THE BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE is built distinctly for people whose spirit, taste and culture qualify them to appreciate the best things in picture, story, and informing article. The publishers have determined that it will always be the newest magazine. If it finds itself getting old it will begin all over again. In this way THE BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE will continue to be, as is it is now, "The Magazine that is Different"--in the right way. SOME OF OUR BEST CLUB OFFERS Except as Noted, all Subscriptions may be either New or Renewal Our price $3.00 For all three: The Booklovers Magazine Cosmopolitan or Leslie's Monthly or Harper's Bazar or American Boy or Pearson's Magazine or Sunset Magazine or Good Housekeeping or Twentieth Century Home or Success 3.00 The Booklovers Magazine ........................ 3.00 1.00 Cosmopolitan ................................... 1.00 1.00 Leslie's Monthly ............................... 1.00 1.00 Harper's Bazar ................................. 1.00 1.00 American Boy ................................... 1.00 1.00 Pearson's Magazine ............................. 1.00 1.00 Sunset Magazine ................................ 1.00 1.00 Good Housekeeping .............................. 1.00 1.00 Twentieth Century Home ......................... 1.00 Both for $3.25: The Booklovers Magazine The Etude, For Music Lovers 3.00 The Booklovers Magazine ........................ 3.00 1.50 The Etude, For Music Lovers .................... 1.50 All three for $3.25: The Booklovers Magazine Harper's Bazar or Good Housekeeping Pearson's Magazine 3.00 The Booklovers Magazine ........................ 3.00 1.00 Harper's Bazar ................................. 1.00 1.00 Good Housekeeping .............................. 1.00 1.00 Pearson's Magazine ............................. 1.00 All three for $3.25: The Booklovers Magazine Woman's Home Companion or Twentieth Century Home Leslie's Monthly 3.00 The Booklovers Magazine ........................ 3.00 1.00 Woman's Home Companion ......................... 1.00 1.00 Twentieth Century Home ......................... 1.00 1.00 Leslie's Monthly ............................... 1.00 Both for $3.75: The Booklovers Magazine Review of Reviews or World's Work or Critic or Lippincott's Magazine or Art Interchange or Current Literature or Smart Set 3.00 The Booklovers Magazine ........................ 3.00 2.50 Review of Reviews .............................. 2.50 2.50 World's Work ................................... 2.50 2.50 Critic ......................................... 2.50 2.50 Lippincott's Magazine .......................... 2.50 2.50 Art Interchange ................................ 2.50 2.50 Current Literature ............................. 2.50 2.50 Smart Set ...................................... 2.50 Both for $4.00: The Booklovers Magazine The Bookman 3.00 The Booklovers Magazine ........................ 3.00 2.00 The Bookman .................................... 2.00 Our Price $4.00 For all three: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 Outing ........................... $3.00 or World's Work or Review of Reviews or The Independent Success .......................... $1.00 Our Price $4.50 For both: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 Country Life in America .......... $3.00 Our Price $4.50 For all three: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 The Outlook (new sub.) ........... $3.00 Success .......................... $1.00 Our Price $4.75 For the two: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 Scientific American .............. $3.00 or St. Nicholas Our Price $5.10 For both: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 Scribner's Magazine .............. $3.00 Our Price $5.25 For both: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 Leslie's Weekly .................. $4.00 Our Price $5.50 For the two: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 Harper's Magazine ................ $4.00 or Harper's Weekly or Atlantic Monthly Our Price $5.75 For the two: The Booklovers Magazine .......... $3.00 North American Review ............ $5.00 (new sub.) or Century Magazine PRICES ON ANY DESIRED COMBINATION CONTAINING "THE BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE" WILL BE GIVEN ON REQUEST. * * * * * Address all orders to D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency, North Cohocton, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] WORLD'S EVENTS An Illustrated Monthly News Review. A Magazine of Things Worth Knowing and Remembering. WORLD'S EVENTS is a magazine for intelligent people. It is adapted to the office, the home and the school; to the busy man, the intelligent woman, the progressive teacher, the wide-awake boy or ambitious girl. It contains all the important news of the month, carefully edited, intelligently presented, condensed for interest, instruction and reference. SOME OF ITS FEATURES. A complete Epitome of the "World's News," chronologically arranged and properly classified. Intelligently prepared and carefully edited articles, giving fuller information on all events whose importance or interest demands it. A News Review Map is printed every third month on which the location of places all over the world in which important events have taken place, are marked in color. An Annual Review in each January number in which the more important events of the year are set forth. Special Articles by good writers. These articles are in most cases finely illustrated. General Miscellany, prepared and selected with the nature of the magazine in view. The Illustrations in WORLD'S EVENTS are a specially attractive feature. Photographs of people, places, things and events are numerous in each issue. WORLD'S EVENTS can be profitably read by everyone who desires to be intelligently informed on current history. Interest and instruction are the aims sought on every page, Forty-eight (or more) large pages; profusely illustrated; $1.00 A YEAR. Send me only $1.00: McCall's Magazine & Pattern ...... $ .50 Or any one in Offer No. 3. 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Send me only $2.50: Art Interchange or Independent ... $4.00 Or any one in class C Ladies' World .................... $ .50 Or any one in Offer No. 3. World's Events ................... 1.00 Send me only $3.00: Booklovers Magazine .............. $3.00 Or any one in class B, page 2. Technical World .................. $1.00 Or any one in class A, page 2. World's Events ................... 1.00 Send all orders to D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency, North Cohocton, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] [Illustration:] FOR YOUR HEALTH FOR YOUR PLEASURE OUTING THE OUTDOOR MAGAZINE OF HUMAN INTEREST EDITED BY CASPAR WHITNEY Is not like any other magazine you ever saw. Healthy outdoor pictures, expressive photographs, brilliant drawings, thrilling tales of travel and adventure, distinguished and exclusive contributors and a broad human appeal to lovers of the outdoor world--these are but half the magazine. A year of OUTING will make you an outdoor man or woman, practical articles, by men like John Burroughs, Stewart Edward White, and Caspar Whitney will tell you how to sail a boat, swim, skate, hunt, walk, play golf and tennis; how to enjoy camps and dogs and horses; how to breathe God's air and be happy, healthy and strong. SPECIAL OUTING OFFERS * * * * * Our price $3.00 for the three: OUTING ........................... $3.00 Leslie's Monthly, or Cosmopolitan, or Sunset Magazine ............... 1.00 Success ......................... 1.00 * * * * * Our price $3.25 for the three: OUTING ........................... $3.00 Harper's Bazar, or Good Housekeeping ............. 1.00 Pearson's Magazine .............. 1.00 * * * * * Our price $3.35 for the three: OUTING ........................... $3.00 Cosmopolitan, or Leslie's Monthly, or American Boy .................. 1.00 Woman's Home Companion, or Twentieth Century Home ........ 1.00 * * * * * Our price $3.75 for the two: OUTING ........................... $3.00 Review of Reviews, or World's Work, or Current Literature, or Lippincott's Magazine, or Smart Set ..................... 3.00 * * * * * Our price 4.00 for the three: OUTING ............................$3.00 World's Work, or Review of Reviews, or Booklover's Magazine, or Independent, or Critic ........................ 3.00 Success ......................... 1.00 * * * * * Our price $4.50 for all three: OUTING ............................$3.00 The Outlook (new sub.) .......... 3.00 Success ......................... 2.00 * * * * * Our price $5.10 for both: OUTING ............................$3.00 Scribner's Magazine ............. 3.00 * * * * * Our price $5.50 for both: OUTING ............................$3.00 Harper's Magazine, or Harper's Weekly, or Atlantic Monthly .............. 4.00 Our price $5.75 for both: OUTING ............................$3.00 North Am'cn Review (new sub.), or Century Magazine ............... 4.00 AN EXTRAORDINARY OUTDOOR OFFER * * * * * OUR PRICE $4.50 FOR BOTH: OUTING ............................$3.00 COUNTRY LIFE IN AMERICA ........... 3.00 "Many Magazines in one" "With fingers as it were, on the world's pulse" CURRENT LITERATURE is an illustrated magazine of Fiction and Poetry, of Science and Art, of Wit, Humor and Comment--a magazine of American Life. It tells you about the newest and _BEST BOOKS_ and their authors; it reprints the best _POETRY;_ it reveals to you new discoveries in _MODERN SCIENCE,_ Medicine and Surgery; it gives interesting details of _TRAVEL_ and Exploration; it contains fascinating touches of the world's _WIT, HUMOR AND CARTOON_ work; it shows you what is strange and interesting in _NATURAL HISTORY;_ it discusses and gives the opinions (both sides) of authorities on all _QUESTIONS OF INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE;_ it presents a carefully prepared record of _CURRENT HISTORY,_ with incidental and independent comment; it supplies _JUST THOSE THINGS_ about which the members of every intelligent American household should be _WELL INFORMED._ Each Department is presented in the simplest and most popular manner, technicality being dispensed with. _TO KEEP WELL POSTED_--to get quickly at the gist of everything important that is going on the world over--you should read _CURRENT LITERATURE._ WHATEVER MAGAZINES YOU SUBSCRIBE FOR, CURRENT LITERATURE SHOULD BE ONE OF THEM. * * * * * Send me only $3.00: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Harper's Bazar ....................... 1 yr. $1.00 Or any one in Class A Leslie's Monthly Magazine ............ 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $3.00: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Popular Educator (new) ............... 1 yr. $1.00 Or any one in class A American Education ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $3.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Etude. for music lovers .............. 1 yr. $1.50 Or any one in Offer No. 5, Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $3.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Education (new) ...................... 1 yr. $3.00 * * * * * Send me only $3.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Scribner's Magazine .................. 1 yr. $3.00 * * * * * Send me only $5.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Century .............................. 1 yr. $4.00 * * * * * Lists of Periodicals in Class A and B on Page 2. * * * * * Send me only $4.00: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Smart Set ............................ 1 yr. $2.50 Or any one in class C Pearson's Magazine ................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $3.00: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 House Beautiful ...................... 1 yr. $2.00 Or any one in class A Cosmopolitan ......................... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $4.00: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Booklover's or World's Work .......... 1 yr. $3.00 Or any one in class B Success .............................. 1 yr. 1.00 * * * * * Send me only $5.00: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Pearson's ............................ 1 yr. $1.00 Or any one in class A Country Life ......................... 1 yr. 3.00 * * * * * Send me only $4.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 St. Nicholas ......................... 1 yr. $3.00 * * * * * Send me only $3.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Art Interchange ...................... 1 yr. $4.00 Or any one in class B or C * * * * * Send me only $5.25: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Outing ............................... 1 yr. $3.00 Or any one in class B or C Lippincott's ......................... 1 yr. 3.00 Or any one in class B or C * * * * * Send me only $5.75: Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 Burr McIntosh Monthly ................ 1 yr. $2.50 Or any one in class B or C Outlook (new) ........................ 1 yr. 3.00 * * * * * ONE MAGAZINE FREE Send me THREE orders for any combinations (except for Ladies' Home Journal or Saturday Evening Post) and I will give you FREE, to be sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to any periodical in class A or Offer No. 3. YOUR own club and TWO OTHER CLUBS make the THREE clubs. YOU MAY ADD CENTURY at $3.65; HARPER'S MAGAZINE or WEEKLY at $3.35; ST. NICHOLAS at $2.65; MCCLURE'S at $1.00; EVERYBODY'S at $1.00; LADIES' HOME JOURNAL at $1.00; SATURDAY EVENING POST at $1.25; MUNSEY'S at $1.00. SCRIBNER'S may be added at $2.85 but separately costs $3.00. SEND ALL ORDERS TO D. D. COTTRELL, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] Be sure to Include THE INDEPENDENT In your list of Periodicals for 1905. $2.00 A YEAR. 10 cts. a Copy. THE INDEPENDENT IS NOT A CLASS PUBLICATION. IT IS AN UP-TO-DATE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY WITH SIXTY PAGES OF READING MATTER. IT IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR MAIN DEPARTMENTS IN WHICH EVERYTHING OF IMPORTANCE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS TREATED. THE SURVEY OF THIS WORLD--A luminous and strictly unbiased account of the important events of the week told in brief paragraphs. It is a time-saver. EDITORIALS--THE INDEPENDENT'S interpretation of these events, discussed positively and fearlessly in every field of thought--Art, Ethics, Literature, Politics, Religion, Science, Sociology, etc. SIGNED ARTICLES--By the leading authorities in the world. "THE INDEPENDENT prints more articles from the ablest writers than any other paper in the United States." BOOK REVIEWS--All the important books published in the English language reviewed by critics of authority who cannot be deceived by what is faulty or trivial. A helpful guide to the book lover and book buyer. For $2.00 a year THE INDEPENDENT gives more in quantity and quality than any monthly or weekly magazine in the United States. * * * * * TRY ONE OF THESE COMBINATIONS Send me only $2.50: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Leslies Monthly Magazine ............. $1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $3.75: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Art Interchange ...................... $4.00 Or any one in class B or C * * * * * Send me only $4.25: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Cosmopolitan ......................... $1.00 Or any one in class A Burr McIntosh Monthly ................ 3.00 Or any one in class B or C * * * * * Send me only $4.00: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Journal of Education ................. $2.50 Or any one in class C American Education ................... 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $2.50: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Harper's Bazar ....................... 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $4.50: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Country Life ......................... $3.00 * * * * * Send me only $4.00: The Independent ...................... $2.00 Current Literature ................... $3.00 or any one in class C 20th Century Home .................... 1.00 Or any one in class A * * * * * Send me only $5.25: The Independent ...................... $2.00 World's Work ......................... $3.00 Or any one in class B Booklover's Magazine ................. 3.00 Or any one in class B THE PRICE OF ANY OTHER COMBINATION INCLUDING THE INDEPENDENT WILL BE GLADLY QUOTED UPON APPLICATION. SEND ALL ORDERS TO D. D. COTTRELL, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING A HANDSOMELY ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY MAGAZINE FOR ALL THE FAMILY. Good Housekeeping is bright, helpful, practical, and full of good cheer. Each month it brings the whole family together in the enjoyment of everything that is good. Good stories and good pictures to amuse the grown-ups and their children, good articles about the serious and the lighter problems of the home, the bringing up of children, education, higher thought, music, art, etc. It is unequaled in popularity, and now reaches over a million readers. The regular price of Good Housekeeping is $1.00 per year, but by special arrangement we are enabled to supply it in combination with other publications on the following remarkably liberal terms. Good Housekeeping must be included in each combination. * * * * * Send me only $1.50: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 Harper's Bazar ....................... 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $2.50: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 Art Interchange ...................... 1 yr. $4.00 or any one in class C Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $3.75: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 Outlook (new) ........................ 1 yr. $3.00 Holiday Magazine with Book ........... l yr. 1.00 or any one in class A Page 2 ....... $1.00 * * * * * Send me only $5.25: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 St. Nicholas ......................... 1 yr. $3.00 Booklovers Magazine .................. 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $2.00: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 Etude, For all music lovers .......... 1 yr. $1.50 or any one in offer No. 5, Page 3 * * * * * Send me only $3.25: Good Housekeeping ................... 1 yr. $1.00 World's Work ......................... 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class B or C, Page 2 Leslie's Monthly Magazine ............ l yr. $1.00 or any one in class A, Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $4.00: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 Country Life or Craftsman ............ 1 yr. $3.00 Cosmopolitan ......................... 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A, Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $6.25: Good Housekeeping .................... 1 yr. $1.00 Century .............................. 1 yr. $4.00 Review of Reviews .................... 1 yr. $2.50 or any one in class B or C, Page 2 SEE LIST OF PERIODICALS IN CLASS A, B AND C ON PAGE 2 ADDRESS ALL ORDERS TO D. D. COTTRELL, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] THE SMART SET A MAGAZINE OF CLEVERNESS Magazines should have a well-defined purpose. Genuine entertainment, amusement and mental recreation are the motives of _The Smart Set,_ the MOST SUCCESSFUL OF MAGAZINES. Its NOVELS (a complete one in each number) are by the most brilliant authors of both hemispheres. Its SHORT STORIES are matchless--clean and full of human interest. Its POETRY, covering the entire field of verse--pathos, love, humor, tenderness--is by the most popular poets, men and women, of the day. Its JOKES, WITTICISMS, SKETCHES, etc., are admittedly the most mirth-provoking. 160 PAGES DELIGHTFUL READING No pages are WASTED on cheap illustrations, editorial vaporings or wearying essays and idle discussions. EVERY page will INTEREST, CHARM and REFRESH you. It is not a class magazine, but appeals to all lovers of bright, wholesome fiction. Send for FREE sample copy. Send me only $4.00: Smart Set ............................ 1 yr. $2.50 Current Literature ................... 1 yr. $3.00 or any one in class C, Page 2 Leslie's Monthly Magazine ............ 1 yr 1.00 or any one in class A, Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $5.25: Smart Set ............................ 1 yr. $2.50 Lippincott's Magazine ............... 1 yr. $2.50 or any one in class B or C, Page 2 Outing ............................... 1 yr. 3.00 or any one in class B or C, Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $2.50: Smart Set ............................ 1 yr. $2.50 Twentieth Century Home ............... 1 yr. $1.00 or any one in class A. 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Page 2 * * * * * Send me only $4.75: Smart Set ............................ 1 yr. $2.50 Etude, For all music lovers .......... 1 yr. $1.50 or any one in Offer No. 5, Page 3 Art Interchange ...................... 1 yr. 4.00 or any one in class B or C * * * * * Send me only $6.25: Smart Set ............................ 1 yr. $2.50 Judge ................................ 1 yr. $5.00 Harper's Bazar ........................l yr. 1.00 or any one in class A, Page 2 SEND ALL ORDERS TO D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, NEW YORK. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] _THE READER MAGAZINE_ _Has Individuality._ It combines the best features of the popular, the serious and the literary periodical. It publishes the best fiction that can be purchased at any price. Its excellent literary department is a feature. A series of articles on American literature contributed by great authorities, is of much interest and importance to students of the subject. Its articles on matters of national importance, social, political and economical, are widely and favorably commented upon by the American press. It records the world's progress in all interesting lines of endeavor. The regular retail price is $3.00 per year. BOBBS-MERRIL CO., PUBLISHERS, INDIANAPOLIS * * * * * Send me only $5.25: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. $3.00 Century ............................ 1 yr. 3.00 Send me only $5.25: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. $3.00 Harper's Weekly or Monthly ......... 1 yr. 4.00 Send me only $4.60: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. 3.00 Scribner's Magazine ................ 1 yr. 4.00 Send me only $5.00: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. 3.00 North American Review (new) ........ 1 yr. 3.00 Send me only $6.25: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. 3.00 Country Life ....................... 1 yr. 5.00 Outlook (new) ...................... 1 yr. 3.00 Send me only $5.00: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. 3.00 World's Work ....................... 1 yr. 3.00 Or any one in Class B, page 2. Current Literature ................. 1 yr. 3.00 Or any one in Class B, page 2 Send me only $5.00: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. 3.00 Booklover's Magazine ............... 1 yr. 3.00 Or any one in Class B, page 2 Burr McIntosh Monthly .............. 1 yr. 3.00 Or any one in Class B, page 2 Send me only $3.25: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. $3.00 Success or American Boy ............ 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in Class A, page 2 Leslie's Monthly Magazine .......... 1 yr. 1.00 Or any one in Class A, page 2 Cosmopolitan or Pearson's .......... 1 yr. 1.00 or any one in Class A, page 2 Send me only $3.25: Reader Magazine ...................... 1 yr. $3.00 Etude (for all music lovers) ...... 1 yr. 1.50 Or any one in Offer No. 5 page 3 House Beautiful ................... 1 yr. 2.00 Or any in Class A. page 2 SEND ALL ORDERS TO D. D. COTTRELL, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] BOTH $2.25 A FULL YEAR: THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL _MONTHLY_ THE SATURDAY EVENING POST _WEEKLY_ ONE MAGAZINE FREE Send me THREE orders for any combinations (except for Ladies' Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post) and I will give you FREE, to be sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to any periodical in class A or Offer No. 3. YOUR own club and TWO OTHER CLUBS make the THREE clubs. * * * * * LITTLE FOLKS LITTLE FOLKS is a magazine for children from three to ten. It goes into six times as many homes as any similar publication ever issued in America. It has absorbed all its predecessors of any importance. It has been published seven years--long enough to prove whether it has reason for existing. It has been successful because it is just what the children like, and the mothers, too. It is full of delightful stories and beautiful pictures (all new) by the best authors and artists. There are no "scarey" stories, or stories of bad children. It is handsomely printed on the best paper. Every number contains one or more beautiful pictures in color. A booklet containing many letters from mothers who have had LITTLE FOLKS in their families (telling why they like it) and a sample copy, free. Price, $1.00 a year. Agents wanted. HALF PRICE TRIAL COUPON [Illustration: cover of "Little Folks" magazine.] _To introduce LITTLE FOLKS to new families and make them permanent readers, a six months' trial subscription will be given for 25 cents. This offer applies only to families where LITTLE FOLKS has never been taken. In consideration of the reduced price the subscriber agrees to notify the publisher if he wishes the magazine discontinued at the expiration of six months. This must be signed by the Father or Mother._ Name of Child ____________________________________ Father or Mother _________________________________ Postoffice _______________________________________ Cut above coupon out and mail to D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y., or if you do not wish to mutilate this catalogue write your order on a sheet of paper and mention this offer. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE FOR 1905. It is not necessary to give assurance to the Magazine-reading public of the superior quality of the contents of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE. It is the leading high-grade Magazine, and as such it has built steadily up to a circulation today of 200,000. In the high quality and varied interest of its text, and in the beauty of its illustrations it stands alone. Its fiction is written by the leading authors of the day, or by new authors of promise. Its special articles on live topics of the time are written by men of authority and distinction; it has always been celebrated for its short fiction and verse. SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE is a progressive periodical, and it presents not only the best work of celebrated writers, but the interesting new things in literature. Many of the notable authors of today have become known first through their work in SCRIBNER'S. On this account its pages command the universal respect and attention of the reading public. In the field of illustration it has many imitators, but no equal. It has always been the leader in fine color work, and both in the distinction of the artists represented and the quality of the reproduction and printing of illustrations it leads in the field of periodical literature. The year of 1905 will be a notable one in the history of SCRIBNER'S. There will be a new novel by Mrs. Wharton, an event of unusual importance in the field of Magazine literature. Selections from the diaries and letters of George Bancroft will be published. This is a notable contribution to the history of the century, and a publication that many have been awaiting with eagerness. There will be a series of important papers on European political questions of interest to American readers by F.A. Vanderlip, the author of a new series of letters from Mme. Waddington, the author (1903) of the most brilliant book of social letters published in recent years. Mr. John Fox, who has been the representative of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE on the Japanese side of the war in the Far East, will publish the result of his experience in several important articles. Mr. T. F. Millard will follow his articles on the Russian side by other interesting matters on the subject. In the field of illustration a feature of special interest will be a collection of remarkable photographs of the American Indian, made by Mr. E. S. Curtis, presenting a remarkable pictorial record of the pure Indian types. It would be impossible in a limited space to give any idea of the vast amount of attractive special articles and fiction to appear during the year, or the list of celebrated authors and artists who will contribute. The superiority of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE in its field gives assurance of the very best in art and literature. The Christmas number will be one of the most beautiful that any American Magazine has ever published, and all subscribers are urged to date their subscriptions so as to include this exquisite number. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE $3.00 A YEAR An illustrated prospectus describing fully the prominent features of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE for 1905 will be sent to any address on application. _CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK CITY_ ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AMERICAN AND FOREIGN PERIODICALS. SUPPLIED BY D.D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. THIS PRICE-LIST supersedes all previous ones; order from this after November 15th, 1904. PRICES QUOTED in this list pay for yearly subscriptions, postage free to the subscriber. WE SEND RECEIPT FOR EACH REMITTANCE. WE AUTHORIZE AND INVITE Agents, Newsdealers, Postmasters, Booksellers, Publishers, or any person receiving this list, to remit to us at our WHOLESALE PRICES. FOREIGN PERIODICALS. We can furnish English, French, German, or any other periodicals published anywhere in any language. IF YOU DO NOT SEE WHAT YOU WANT IN THIS CATALOGUE, ASK FOR QUOTATIONS. AGENT'S COMMISSION. The difference between price in second column and the price you charge customers will be your commission. WE RECEIVE SUBSCRIPTIONS at any time in the year, and publications can in most cases, commence at any date desired. WHOLESALE PRICES QUOTED to this list include the prepayment of postage to all parts of the United States, Mexico, Canada, Hawaiian Islands, Islands of Guam, Philippine Archipelago, Porto Rico, Tutulia, and Cuba and U. S. Postal district at Shanghaii, China. FOREIGN POSTAGE. The amount following the letters "F.P." in this list gives the extra yearly cost for foreign postage when such periodical is sent to any other country except those mentioned in the paragraph above. PRICES ARE THE SAME FOR RENEWALS AND NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS when not otherwise specified in the list. NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS, "n" or "new," indicates price on NEW subscriptions ONLY. ALL AMERICAN PERIODICALS are sent from the office of publication to subscribers. We do not handle the papers. FOR THREE OR SIX MONTHS' SUBSCRIPTIONS add five cents to one-fourth or one-half of our wholesale price. Some daily papers charge more than this for short time subscriptions. Weekly newspapers are designated by the letter "w" following the name; Dailies, "6 issues." Daily and Sunday by "7 issues": Tri-Weeklies, "t.w."; Semi-Weeklies, "s.w."; Monthlies, "m"; bi-monthlies, "bi-m."; Quarterlies, "q." PRICES SUBJECT TO PUBLISHERS' CHANGES As this Catalogue will be received by many people to whom this Agency is entirely unknown, we give by permission the following names as REFERENCES: GEO. W. HALLOCK--BANK BATH, N.Y. THE PUBLISHERS OF ANY LEADING PERIODICAL -OR- BRADSTREET'S OR DUN'S COMMERCIAL AGENCIES. [Note that D. D. Cottrell company NO LONGER EXISTS!] * * * * * TERMS AND INSTRUCTIONS. RULE 1: HOW TO SEND MONEY, 1. BY ANY EXPRESS COMPANY'S MONEY ORDER. 2. BANK DRAFTS ON ANY CITY OR YOUR PERSONAL CHECK. 3. POST OFFICE MONEY ORDERS MADE PAYABLE AT NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. It is both a Domestic and International MONEY ORDER POST OFFICE. 4. CHECKS ON COUNTRY BANKS WE ACCEPT WITHOUT ANY CHARGE FOR COLLECTION. Most publishers and subscription agencies refuse to accept personal checks at face value, but charge from 10 to 25 cents extra for collection fees. You save this extra charge by sending your check and all your orders to us. 5. BILLS, SILVER OR STAMPS in ordinary letters are seldom lost if properly sealed and addressed, but are ALWAYS AT SENDER'S RISK. RULE 2. DEPOSITS. Agents who wish can deposit $5.00 or more with us and then send in their orders by postal card as they are received. Any balance your due will be returned at any time on request. RULE 3. CASH WITH ORDER. The subscription business is strictly a CASH BUSINESS. Publishers will not enter names for periodicals without payment in advance. RULE 4. OUR PRICES LOWEST. We suppose our prices are lowest. Should any AGENCY OR PUBLISHER quote or advertise better or different offers, send your orders to us at their price. RULE 5. NEW OR RENEWAL. Always state whether each subscription is new or renewal, in sending orders or asking for quotations. Mark new subs. "N" and renewal subs. "R" RULE 6. WHEN TO BEGIN. Always give date or number with which you wish periodicals to begin. RULE 7. CHANGES IN PRICE. Publishers change their terms occasionally. We reserve the right to do the same in such cases or return the money sent us free of expense to the sender. A corresponding change in our rates will be made at once. RULE 8. COMPLAINTS. Should you have any reason to complain about any periodical, write us giving the following information. 1. Date of your order. 2. Date of our receipt for it. 3. Name of Periodical. 4. Name and address of subscriber. 5. Kind of remittance. RULE 9. OUR RESPONSIBILITY. We hold ourselves responsible for all money received until we have paid publishers for the full time for which periodicals were reordered. If publishers fall or suspend, the subscriber loses just as he would have done had he ordered direct from the publisher. RULE 10. SAMPLE COPIES. Most weekly papers costing $2 per year or less will send sample copies if requested by us to do so. Should you wish sample copies of such send us a 2 cent stamp for each one wanted, and we will ask the publishers to mail you a sample copy. For sample of weeklies costing over $2.00 a year send 1-50 of yearly subscription price. For all monthlies send 1-12 of yearly price. Quarterlies 1-4 yearly price. FOREIGN PERIODICALS CHARGE FULL PRICE FOR SAMPLE COPIES. RULE 11. PREMIUMS, &C. Most publishers who give premiums, extra numbers, etc., will allow us to do the same at our wholesale price. If the publisher charges extra for these, add the extra amount to our wholesale price. A few publishers do not allow any discount on periodicals with premium. RULE 12. PAPERS NOT IN OUR LIST. If you want any periodical not in our list, write us for terms, and we will quote you our wholesale price by return mail. Or if you have seen it quoted by some one else, send us that price, naming the one making it. RULE 13. MISSING NUMBERS. For all such we would advise the subscribers to write direct to the publishers, (to save time) and they will nearly always send a duplicate, if they do not send it let us know. * * * * * AGENTS' SUPPLIES. CIRCULARS. NO. 1. These we mail to you for 5 cents per hundred which partly pays the cost of mailing. They are very neatly printed on fine quality of book paper and contain names and publisher's price only of about 200 of the leading periodicals, with a statement on first page that you can furnish any periodical desired at reasonable rates. CIRCULARS NO. 2 contain combinations with a place for the agents' or newsdealers' name and address. This we mail prepaid for 5 cents per 100. MIDGET SELF-INKER. We cannot print your name and address on the title page of circulars on account of the delay it would cause, but we will supply you a MIDGET SELF-INKING STAMP WITH INK for ONLY 50 CENTS, postpaid. This stamp will contain a three-line business card and retails generally for 1.00. It can be used for a great many purposes. RUBBER STAMPS. We supply you a rubber stamp suitable for circulars, but not quite as convenient as the MIDGET SELF-INKER. Two lines, 25 cents; 3 lines, 35 cents; 4 lines, 45 cents: 5 lines, 55 cents, postpaid. We can furnish all kinds of rubber stamps, pads, etc., at very low prices. POSTERS Upon request we will mail 5 posters FREE. These posters state that you take subscriptions for all AMERICAN and FOREIGN periodicals at lowest prices. A space is left on these posters for you to insert your name and address. By putting these up in public places you will largely increase your business. SUBSCRIPTION REGISTER We have an agent's register with space for 300 names, ruled for entering all subscriptions. By using this register you always have a complete record of the names address, name of periodical, date sent, price received, etc., of all orders you send to us. No agent should be without one of these registers. We will mail one for only 10 cents, or one with space for 600 names for 15 cents. RENEWAL NOTICES, we furnish postpaid for 10 cents per 100. They will be a great help in getting renewals from subscribers whose orders you have taken before. Advise your customers two or three weeks in advance of the expiration of their subscriptions and you will be very sure of receiving their renewals. Pub. Price Our Price A .50 Acetylene Journal, Chi. (F.P. .25) ........... m .40 1.00 Ad Sense, Chicago ....................... m Adv. .80 1.00 Ad. Writer, St. Louis ........................ m .75 2.00 Advance, Chicago ....................... w Cong. 1.95 .50 Agricultural Epitomist, Spencer, I ..... m Agri. .45 1.80 Ainslee's Magazine, N.Y. (F.P. .96)...... m Lit. 1.80 1.00 Albany Argus (new .90) ................ s-w Dem 1.00 6.00 Albany Argus (new 5.00) ......... 6 issues Dem. 5.60 7.50 Albany Argus (new 6.25) .......... 7 issues Dem. 7.00 2.00 Albany Argus (new 1.80) ............ Sunday Dem. 1.90 3.00 Albany Journal ........................ 6 issues 2.60 3.00 Albany Law Journal Albany, N.Y. .......... w Law. 2.75 5.00 Alienist & Neurologist (new 4.25) ............ m 5.00 1.00 Amateur Work, Boston.......................... m .80 1.00 Amateur Sportsmen, N.Y. (new .85)...... m Sport. 1.00 1.00 Am. Agriculturist, N.Y. ...................... w 1.00 1.50 Am. Amateur Photographer, N.Y. ......... m Phot. 1.10 4.00 Am. Anthropologist, N.Y. ................ q Sci. 4.00 4.00 Am. Antiquarian, Chi. (n. 3.25) ..... bi-m Hist. 4.00 6.00 Am. Architect & Build. News (n. 5.65) .. w Mech. 6.00 16.00 Am Arch. & Build. News, (Internat. Ed.) (n. 15.00) ........................ w Mech. 16.00 2.00 Am. Artisan & H'd'w Rec., Chi. (n. 1.25) w Com. 2.00 5.00 American Banker, N.Y. (F.P. 1.04) ...... w Fina. 4.50 7.00 Am. Bank Reporter. N.Y. ...................... q 6.50 1.00 American Bee Journal, Chi. (n .85) ..... w Bees. 1.00 1.00 American Bird Magazine ....................... m .75 Am. Bird Magazine, in class A with Country Life and Success .................. 3.75 with Harper s Bazar & Leslie's ................. 2.00 with Harper's Bazar ............................ 1.50 with any one in class A, Page 2 ................ 1.50 with any two in class A ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Am. Blacksmith. Buffalo (n. .80) ............. m 1.00 1.00 American Botanist, Binghamton ........... m Bot. .90 1.00 American Boy, Detroit (F.P. .50) ............. m 1.00 American Boy in class A with Youth ..................................... 1.50 with Success and Youth ......................... 2.00 with Harper's Bazar and Leslies ................ 2.00 with any one in class A, Page 2 ................ 1.50 with any two in class A ........................ 2.00 with Success & World's Work .................... 3.00 with Leslie's and Rev. of Reviews .............. 3.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 4.00 Am Cath. Quart. Rev. (n. 3.75) ......... q R. C. 3.90 5.00 Am. Chemical Journal, Balto ...... 10 Nos. Chem. 4.25 2.00 Am. Cultivator, Boston, (new 1.75) ..... w Agri. 2.00 1.00 American Dressmaker, Chicago ................. m .75 American Dressmaker and Harper's Bazar ......... 1.50 1.50 Am. Druggist, N.Y. .................. s-m Drug. 1.35 4.00 Am. Economic Ass'n., Ithaca, N.Y. ............ q 3.50 2.00 Am. Economist, N.Y. (F.P. .50) .......... w Edu. 1.65 1.00 American Education, Albany .............. m Edu. .75 American Education in class A with Kindergarten Review or Leslies ............ 1.50 with Am. Primary Teacher or Pearson ............ 1.50 with Popular Educator (new) .................... 1.50 with Primary Education (new) ................... 1.50 with Success or Leslie ......................... 1.50 with any two of above or in class A ............ 2.00 with Normal Instructor ......................... 1.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 2.00 Am. Engineer and R R. Journal ................ m 1.65 1.00 Am. Electrician, N.Y. ........................ m .90 .10 Am. Farmer, Indinapolis [sic] ................ m .25 1.00 Am. Fancier, Johnstown ................ w Poult. .65 4.00 Am. Field, Chicago .................... w Sport. 3.75 1.50 Am. Gardening, N.Y. (F.P. .50) ......... w Hort. 1.15 3.00 Am. Gaslight Jour. N.Y. (n. 2.75) ....... w Gas. 3.00 8.50 Am. Geologist, Minn. (n. 3.25) .......... m Sci. 3.50 1.00 Am. Grange Bulletin, Cincinnati ........ w Agri. .90 3.00 American Grocer, N.Y. (n. 1.75) ......... w Com. 2.25 1.00 Am. Hairdresser, Brooklyn .................... m .85 3.00 American Hebrew, N.Y. ........................ w 2.50 2.50 Am. Historical Register, Boston .............. m 2.25 4.00 Am. Historical Review, N.Y. .................. q 3.60 1.00 Am. Homes, New York .................... m Arch. .85 2.00 Am. Horse Br'der, Boston ..................... w 1.90 1.00 Am. Horse Owner, Chi. (n .75) ................ m 1.00 1.00 Am. Illustrated Methodist Magazine ........... m .75 2.50 American Israelite, Cincinnati ............... w 2.50 1.50 American Inventor, N.Y. .......... s-m Sci. Inv. 1.35 American Inventor in class A: with Leslies or Good Housekeeping .............. 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Pearsons .................. 1.50 with Technical World ........................... 1.50 with Twentieth Century Home..................... 1.50 with Book-keeper & Business Short Cuts ......... 1.50 with any two above ............................. 2.00 with any three above ........................... 2.50 with Review of Reviews and Leslie .............. 3.25 with Worlds Work and Cosmopolitan .............. 3.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar 1.00 Am. Jeweler, Chicago ......................... m .85 5.00 Am. Jour. of Arch'logy, N.Y. (F.P. .50) ...... q 4.25 1.00 Am. Jour. of Education, Milwaukee ....... m Edu. .80 5.00 Am. Jour. of Mathematics, Balto ......... q Sci. 4.25 5.00 Am. Jour. of Med. Science (n. 4.25) .......... m 5.00 2.00 Am. Journal of Numismatics ................... q 1.90 2.00 Am. Jour. of Nu'sing, Phila. (F.P. .60) .. m Med. 1.75 3.00 Am. Jour. of Phar'acy, Phila. (F.P. .25) m Phar. 2.60 3.00 Am. Journal of Philology, Balti ........ q Phil. 2.85 5.00 Am. Journal of Physiology, Boston ............ m 4.75 5.00 Am. Jour. of Psychology, Worcester ........... q 4.25 6.00 Am. Jour. of Science, New Haven ......... m Sci. 5.00 2.00 Am. Jour. of So'logy, Chi. (F.P. .50) ..... bi-m 1.75 3.00 Am. Jour. of Theology, Chi. (F.P. 45) .. q Theo. 2.65 2.00 American Kennel Gazette, N.Y. ................ m 1.65 3.00 Am. Law Register, Phila. (n. 2.25) ...... m Law. 2.65 5.00 Am. Law Review. St. Louis (n. 4.25) .. bi-m Law. 5.00 2.00 Am. Lawyer, N.Y. (F.P. .48) ........... m Legal 1.85 4.00 Am. Lumberman, Chicago (n. 3.50) ............. w 4.00 4.00 Am. Machinist, N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) ....... w Mech. 3.80 1.00 Am. Machinist, N.Y. .......................... m 1.00 2.00 Am. Ma'matical Monthly (new 1.75) ............ m 2.00 4.00 Am. Medicine Phila., (n. 3.25) ............... w 3.75 .50 Am. Messenger, N.Y. .......................... m .40 2.00 American Miller, Chicago ................ m Com. 1.65 1.00 American Milliner, Boston .................... m .90 1.00 American Monthly Magazine, Wash. ............. m .90 1.00 American Motherhood, Boston .................. m .90 4.00 American Naturalist, (F.P. .60) ......... m Sci. 3.75 1.00 American Ornithology, Worcester .............. m .75 1.00 Am. Primary Teacher, Boston .................. m .85 Am. Primary Teacher in class A with Success or any one in class A .......... 1.50 with Leslies or any one in class A .......... 1.50 with Popular Educator (new) ................. 1.50 with Primary Education (new) ................ 1.50 with any two of above ....................... 2.00 with any three of above ..................... 2.50 with Booklovers Mag. and Success ............ 3.00 with Outlook (new) .......................... 3.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar .25 Am. Poultry Advocate, Syracuse ........ m Poult. .20 .50 Am. Poultry Journal, Chi.(F.P. 24) ..... m Poul. .40 2.00 Am. Printer, N.Y. ............................ m 1.65 1.00 Am. School Bd. Journal, Milwaukee ............ m .80 1.00 American Sheep Breeder, Chi. ........... m Sheep .85 2.00 American Sportsman, Cleveland ................ w 1.70 2.00 Am. Stationer, N.Y. (F.P. 1.60) .............. w 1.65 1.00 Am. Telephone Journal. N.Y. .................. w 1.00 .50 Am. Thresherman, Madison ............... m Mach. .40 1.00 Am. Tribune, Indianapolis, Ind. ........w G.A.R. .85 2.00 American Tyler, Detroit (F.P. .48) ... s-m Mason 1.40 6.00 Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, Phila. ...... bi-m 5.00 1.50 Annals of Gynaecology, Boston ........... m Med. 1.20 2.10 *Annals of Mathematics, Camb'ge. ...... b-m Edu. 2.05 6.00 Annals of Ophthalmology (n. 4.25) ............ q 4.75 4.00 Annals of Otology, etc. (n. 3.40) ............ q 3.80 5.00 Annals of Surgery, Phila. (F.P. 1.08) ... m Med. 5.00 1.00 Apparel Retailer, Boston ..................... m .85 2.00 Architect's & Builder's Mag., N.Y. ..... m Arch. 1.80 3.00 Architectural Record, N.Y. (n. 2.65) ... m Arch. 3.00 5.00 Architectural Review, Boston ................. m 5.00 5.00 Archives of Opthalmology, N.Y. ............ bi-m 4.75 4.00 Archives of Otology, N.Y. ................. bi-m 3.80 2.00 Archives of Pediatrics, N.Y.(F.P. .48) .. m Med. 1.75 2.50 Arena, Trenton, N.J. .................... m Lit. 2.50 4.00 Argonaut, San Fran'co (F.P. 1.00) ....... w Ind. 3.20 1.00 Argosy, New York (F.P. .84) ............. m Lit. 1.00 1.00 Arkansas School Journal....................... m .85 .50 Arkansas Traveler, Chi. (F.P. .50) ...... m Hum. .40 6.00 Army and Navy Jour, N.Y. (n. 5.30) ...... w Mil. 5.90 3.00 Army and Navy Magazine ....................... m 2.00 3.10 *Army and Navy Register, Wash. .......... w Mil. 2.05 4.00 Art Interchange (F.P. 1.15) ............. m Art. 2.00 Art Interchange in class C: with Success or Cosmopolitan ................. 2.50 with Leslies, or Pearsons .................... 2.50 with any one in class A ...................... 2.50 with Success & Review of Reviews ............. 4.00 with World's Work ............................ 3.75 with Country Life ............................ 4.50 with Harper's Bazar and Century .............. 6.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Art Student, N.Y. ............................ m .60 1.00 Association Boys, N.Y. .............. bi-m Youth .80 .50 Association Men, N.Y. ................... m YMCA .45 4.00 Astrophysical Journal, Chi. (F.P. .50) ....... m 3.45 1.00 Atlanta Constitution..................... w Dem. 1.00 5.00 Atlanta Constitution (n. 4.70) ..... 6 iss. Dem. 5.00 4.00 Atlantic Monthly, Boston (F.P. .40) ..... m Lit. 3.35 Atlantic Monthly with Scribner's Magazine ..................... 6.35 with Booklover s Magazine .................... 5.50 with World's Work and Leslies ................ 6.00 with any one in class A ...................... 4.25 with World's Work or Independent ............. 5.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Illustrated prospectus of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY FOR 1905 sent free upon application.--_"Adv."_ 3.00 Auk, Cambridge ......................... q Birds 2.75 2.00 Automobile, N.Y. ............................. w 2.00 BOTH $2.25 a full Year: THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL Monthly THE SATURDAY EVENING POST Weekly Pub. Price Our Price 2.00 Automobile Magazine, N.Y. .................... m 1.50 Automobile Magazine with Success or any one in class A ........... 1.50 with Outing and Success ...................... 3.00 with Smart Set and any one in class A ........ 3.00 with Leslies and any one in class A .......... 2.00 with Outing and any one in class B ........... 4.25 with Booklovers and any one in class C ....... 4.25 with any two in class C ...................... 4.00 2.00 Auto. & Motor Rev., N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) ......... w 1.75 1.50 Automobile Review, Chi. ...................... m 1.00 2.00 Automobile Topics, N.Y. (F.P. 2.00) .......... w 1.75 2.00 Ave Maria, Notre Dame, Ind. ............ w R.C. 1.75 B 1.00 Babyhood, New York (F.P. .36) ........... m Hyg. .90 1.00 Baltimore American (sun. 1.50-1.45) ... s-w Rep. .95 3.00 Baltimore American ............... 6 issues Rep. 2.85 3.00 Baltimore Herald (w. .50-.50) .... 6 issues Ind. 2.90 3.00 Baltimore Sun (Sun. 1.00-.95) .... 6 issues Ind. 2.90 5.00 Banker's Magazine N.Y. (n. 4.25) ....... m Bank 5.00 2.00 Banker's Monthly, Chicago .................... m 1.65 5.00 Banker and Tradesman, Boston ............ w Com. 5.00 4.00 Banking Law Journal, N.Y. (n. 3.75) .......... m 4.00 2.00 Banner of Light, Boston (n. 1.65) ..... w Spirit 1.90 1.50 Baptist Commonwealth ........................... 1.50 .50 Baptist Home Mission M'thly .................. m .45 1.00 Baptist Missionary Mag., Boston ......... m Bap. .85 2.00 Baptist and Reflector. Nashville ........ w Bap. 1.65 .50 Baptist Teacher, Phila. .................. m Bap. .45 Baptist Union, Chicago, see "Service" in this list. 1.00 Bay View Mag. Flint (F.P. 16) ........... 8 Nos. 1.00 .50 Beauty and Health, N.Y. ........................ .50 Beauty and Health in offer 3 with Physical Culture ........................ 1.25 with Cosmopolitan or Leslies ................. 1.25 with any two in class A Page 2 ............... 1.75 with any three in class A Page 2 ............. 2.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Beekeeper's Review, Flint, (n. .85) ..... m Bees 1.00 2.00 Benziger's Magazine .......................... m 2.00 .75 Bibelot, Portland, Me. (F.P. .25) ............ m .70 1.00 Biblia, Meriden (.24 F.P.) ................... m .95 2.00 Biblical World, Chicago (F.P. .50) ..... m Bible 1.75 2.00 Bicycling World ...............................w 1.65 1.50 Birds and Nature ....................... m Birds 1.25 1.00 Bird Lore, N.Y. (F.P. .25) .......... bi-m Birds .90 3.00 Black Diamond ................................ w 2.50 .50 Black Cat, Boston ....................... m Lit. .50 1.00 Blacksmith and Wheelwright (n .85) ..... m Mech. 1.00 3.00 Blackwood's Mag., N.Y. ................. m Lit. 2.85 My agents must charge 3.00 for Blackwoods 1.00 Bloomington (III.) Pantagraph ........... w Rep. .95 1.00 Bohemia, n, Deposit, N.Y. ..................... m .80 2.00 Book-keeper & Business Short Cuts ............ m 1.00 1.00 Book-keeper, Detroit (F.P. .60)............... m .75 Book-Keeper including book "Business Short Cuts" with Cosmopolitan or one in class A .......... 1.50 with Harper's Bazar or one in class A ........ 1.50 with Success or any one in class A ........... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 with any three of above ...................... 2.50 with Success and World's Work ................ 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Booklovers Magazine, (F.P. 1.00) .......... Lit. 3.00 Booklovers Magazine in class B with Am. Boy and Success ..................... 3.00 with Harper's Bazar and Leslies Mo. .......... 3.25 with any two in class A, Page 2 .............. 3.25 with Success and Cosmopolitan ................ 3.00 with Country Life or Craftsman ............... 4.50 with Review of Reviews or any one in class B or C ............................... 3.75 with Outlook (new) ........................... 4.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 2.00 Bookman, N.Y. (F.P. 72) ...................... m 1.90 .50 Book News, Phila. (Wanamaker) ........... m Lit. .45 1.00 Book Seller, Chicago ................... m Trade .75 1.00 Book World, N.Y. ............................. m .85 2.50 Boot and Shoe Recorder, Boston .... w Com. 2.25 6.00 Boston Advertiser ..................... 6 issues 5.60 1.00 Boston Cooking School Magazine ............... m .75 6.00 Boston Herald (Sun. 2.00) .......... 6 iss. Ind. ask 3.00 Boston Home Journal ..................... w Lit. 2.40 3.00 Boston Journal (w. 1 .00-.95)..... 6 issues Rep. 2.85 2.50 Boston Pilot (new, 2.00) ............... w R. C. 2.25 3.00 Boston Post (Sun. 2.50-2.40) ..... 6 issues Ind. 2.90 3.00 Boston Evening Record ............ 6 issues Rep. 2.60 1.50 Boston Eve. Transcript (6 mos. .80) ..... w Rep. 1.50 9.00 Boston Eve. Transcript .............. daily Rep. 9.00 3.00 Boston Traveler (w. 1.00-.65) .... 6 issues Rep. 2.85 5.00 Botanical Gazette, Chi. (F.P. .50) ...... m Sci. 4.25 1.50 Bowlers Journal, N.Y. ........................ w 1.50 .50 Boys and Girls, Ithaca ....................... m .50 Boys and Girls in Offer No. 3 with Youth and American Boy .................. 1.75 with Harper's Bazar .......................... 1.75 with any two in class A ...................... 1.75 with Cosmopolitan or Pearson ................. 1.25 1.20 Boys Own Paper, Toronto ................. m Juv. 1.15 .50 Boys World, Chicago .............. w Juv. .50 Boys World in Offer No. 3: with Success or Leslies Monthly ............. 1.25 with Cosmopolitan or Pearson ................ 1.25 with Little Folks (new) ..................... 1.25 with any two of above ....................... 1.75 5.00 Bradstreet's Jour., N.Y. (new 4.25) ..... w Com. 4.25 8.50 Brain, New York, (McMillan's) ........... q Med. 3.15 1.00 Brann's Iconoclast, Chicago .................. m .80 1.00 Brick, Chicago ............................... m .80 5.00 Brickbuilder, Boston ................... m Arch. 5.00 2.00 Breeder's Gazette, Chicago .............. w L.S. 1.15 3.00 Breeder & Sportsman, S.F. ............. w Sport. 2.25 1.00 British American, Philadelphia .......... w Ind. .90 5.00 British Whig, Kingston, Ont. ..... 6 issues Ind. 4.00 1.00 Broadway Magazine, N.Y. ................. m Lit. .90 4.00 Broadway Weekly, N.Y. ........................ w 3.45 6.50 Brooklyn Eagle (Sun. 1.50-1.40) .. 6 issues Dem. 5.80 1.50 Brooklyn Eagle ............................ Sat. 1.40 1.00 Brown Book, Boston ...................... m Lit. .85 2.50 Brush and Pencil, Chicago ............... m Art. 2.25 .50 Bubiers Popular Electrician ........... m Elect. .45 6.00 Buffalo Commercial (w. 1.00 .95) ... 6 iss. Rep. 5.60 1.00 Buffalo Christian Advocate (new .90).... w Meth. 1.00 3.00 Buffalo Courier (Sun 2.50-2.15) .... 6 iss. Dem. 2.50 3.00 Buffalo Enquirer ........................ 6 iss. 2.50 3.00 Buffalo Express (Morning) .......... 6 iss. Rep. 2.60 2.00 Buffalo Express (Illustrated) ...... Sunday Rep. 1.75 5.00 Bulletin of Am. Math. Society .... 10 nos. Math. 4.25 1.00 Bulletin of Pharmacy ......................... m .85 3.00 Bulletin of Torrey Botanical Club .............. 3.00 8.00 Burlington Magazine ............................ 7.50 1.00 Burlington (Vt.) Free Press ............... Rep. 1.00 1.00 Burlington (Ia.) Hawkeye ................ w Rep. .80 4.00 Burlington (Ia.) Hawkeye ......... 6 issues Rep. 3.45 3.00 Burr McIntosh Monthly, N.Y. ............ m Pict. 2.65 Burr McIntosh Monthly in class B: with Cosmopolitan and Leslies ................ 3.25 with Success and Pearson ..................... 3.00 with any two in class A ...................... 3.25 with G'd Housekeeping & McCalls .............. 3.00 with Worlds Work ............................. 3.75 with any one in Class B or C ................. 3.75 with Country Life ............................ 4.50 with Outlook (new) ........................... 4.25 with North American Review (n.) .............. 4.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Business Educator (Teach. Ed.) ................. .75 .65 Business Educator (Students Ed.) ............. m .50 1.00 Business World, N.Y. (F.P. .50) ....... m Office .75 C 1.00 Cadenza, N.Y. (R.P. .25) .............. m Music .85 1.00 Caledonian, N.Y. ............................. m .80 1.00 California Cultivator, Los Angeles ............. .75 2.00 California Fruit Grower, San Fran. ..... w Hort. 1.75 1.00 Camera, Philadelphia .................. m .80 1.00 Camera and Dark Room, N.Y. (F.P. .25) . m Photo. .90 1.00 Camera Craft, San Fran. (F.P. .33) ........... m .75 1.00 Canadian Entomologist, London ............. Sci. .90 2.00 Canadian H'rd & Metal Mer. (n. 165) ............ 2.00 1.00 Canadian Horticult'ist Toronto, Can. ........... .90 1.25 Canadian Teacher, (In U.S. 1.10) ...... s-m Edu. 1.25 2.50 Canadian Mag., Toronto (R.P. .75) ....... m Lit. 2.00 2.00 Canadian Sportsman, Toronto ........... w Sport. 1.25 1.00 Carpentry and Building, New York ....... m Mech. .80 2.00 Carriage Monthly, Phila. ............... m Mech. 1.65 1.00 Casket. Rochester (F.P. .25) ............ m Com. .90 1.50 Cassell's Little Folks, N.Y. ............ m Juv. 1.25 1.50 Cassell's Magazine, N.Y. ................ m Lit. 1.25 3.00 Cassier's Magazine, N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) ... m Mech. 2.75 2.00 Caterer ........................................ 1.75 2.10 *Catholic Citizen, Mil. (new .25) ....... w R.C. 2.05 2.00 Catholic Columbian, Columbus, O. ........ w R.C. 1.65 1.00 Catholic News, N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) .......... R.C. .85 2.00 Catholic Standard & Times, Phila. ....... w R.C. 1.65 1.50 Catholic Transcript, Hartford .......... w Cath. 1.25 2.00 Catholic Union and Times (n. 1.50) ...... w R.C. 1.80 2.00 Catholic Universe, Cleveland ................. w 1.75 3.00 Catholic World Mag., N.Y. (F.P. 60) ..... m R.C. 2.25 1.00 Cedar Rapids (Ia.) Rep'ican (n. 85) ..... w Rep. .95 4.00 Cedar Rapids (Ia.) Repub. ........ 6 issues Rep. 3.70 2.00 Cement & Engineering News, Chi. .............. m 1.65 2.00 Central Baptist, St. Louis .............. w Bap. 1.90 5.00 Central Law Journal, St. Louis ........... w Law 5.00 2.00 Central Presbyterian, Richmond, Va. ............ 1.75 4.00 Century, N.Y. (sample, .05) (F.P. 1.08) . m Lit. 3.65 8.00 Century with 1 yr. back nos. 2 yrs in all ...... 4.25 Century: with Worlds Work or any Class B .............. 5.75 with any two in class B ...................... 7.25 with Leslie's Monthly and Harpers Bazar ...... 5.00 with St. Nicholas ............................ 6.30 with Harper's Bazar and Scribners ............ 7.35 with Etude and Booklover ..................... 6.75 with Review of Reviews and Success ........... 6.00 2 00 Charities, (F.P. .60) (n. 1.80) .............. m 1.95 1 00 Charleston News and Courier ........... s-w Dem. 90 10 00 Charleston News and Courier ...... 6 issues Dem. 8.25 2 00 Charleston Sunday News ............. Sunday Dem. 1.75 2 00 Chautauquan. Springfield, O. ............ m Lit. 2 00 Chautauquan in class C: with Harper's Bazar or Leslies ............... 2 50 with Success or Good Housekeeping ............ 2 50 with any two in Offer No. 1 Page 2 ........... 3 00 with any one in Class B or C ................. 3 75 with any two in Class B or C Page 2 .......... 5 25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar 3 00 Chattanooga Times (w. .50-.45) .......... 6 iss. 2 60 3 00 Chicago Am. (Sun. 2 50-2 10).6 issues ......... 2 50 4 00 Chicago Chronicle (Sun 2. 00-1 75) . 6 iss. Dem. 3 40 2 00 Chicago Citizen ......................... w Ind. 1 65 3 00 Chicago Examiner ...................... 6 issues 2 45 4 00 Chicago Inter-Ocean (w. 1 0)-70 .... 6 iss. Rep. 3 25 6 50 Chi. Inter-Ocean (Sun. 2 50-2 15) .. 7 iss. Rep. 5 25 2 50 Chicago Interior (w) ........................... 2 40 2 00 Chicago Journal .................. 6 issues Rep. 1 75 1 00 Chicago Ledger (w) ............................. 85 1 00 Chicago Ledger (F.P. 2 00) .............. w Lit. 85 75 Chicago Markets, Chicago ..................... w 65 4 00 Chicago News ..................... 6 issues Ind. 3 40 4 00 Chicago Re'rd-H'ld (Sun. 2 50-2 50) 6 iss. Dem. 4 00 6 50 Chicago Record-Herald ............ 7 issues Dem. 6 50 2 50 Chicago Tribune (Sun) ..................... Rep. 2 50 4 00 Chicago Tribune .................. 6 issues Rep. 4 00 50 Children's Friend. Dayton, O ............ w Juv. 50 1 00 Chimea. Baltimore ............................ w 90 90 Choir Herald, Dayton. O ...................... m 80 90 Choir Leader Dayton ...................... O. M. 80 1 00 Christian ...................................... 75 2 60 Christian Advocate. N.Y. ............... w Meth. 2 55 2 00 Ch'stian Advo., N'h'ille, Tenn. (n. 1 65)w Meth. 1 85 2 00 Christian Advocate, New Orleans ........ w Meth. 1 50 1 50 Christian and Miss. Alliance, N.Y. ........... w 1 25 1 00 Christian Cynosure, Chicago ........... w A.S.S. 1 00 1 00 Christian Endeav'r W'rld, (new .90) .......... w 1 00 1 50 Christian Evangelist St. Louis ........ w Chris. 1 45 1 50 Christian Herald, Detroit ............... w Bap. 1 40 1 50 Christian Herald, New York ............. w Evan. 1 50 We allow News dealers, Postmasters and bona fide agents a commission of 35 cents on Christian Herald. 1 50 Christian Instructor, Phila, (n. 1 20) . w Pres. 1 50 2 65 Christian Intelligen'r. N.Y., (n. 2 30) . w Ref. 2 65 1 50 Christian Leader. Cincin. (n. 1.15) ..... w Dic. 1 35 2 50 Christian Observer. (n. 2 00) .......... w Pres. 2 50 3 00 Christian Register, Boston, (n 2.25) ... w Unit. 2 85 2 00 Christian Science Journal, Boston ............ m 1 95 1 00 Christian Science Sentinel ..................... 1 00 50 Christian Science Quarterly .................... 50 1 50 Christian Standard Cincinnati .......... w Disc. 1 40 1 50 Christian Standard, Phila. (n. 1 15) ... w Evan. 1 40 1 50 Christian Witness, Boston .............. w Evan. 1 25 3 00 Christian W'rk, N.Y. (To Clergy 2 20) .. w Evan. 2 85 1 50 Christian W'rld, Dayton. O. (n. 100) .... w Ref. 1 50 2 00 Church Eclectic, New York ...................... 1 50 1 00 Church Economist, N.Y. (n. 80) ........ w Relig. 1 00 2 50 Church Standard (Clergy $1.75) ................. 2 25 2 50 Church Standard, Phila. ..................w Epis. 2 15 3 50 Churchman, N.Y. (new. 3 20) ............ w Epis. 3 40 3 00 To Clergy (new 2 75) ................... w Epis. 2 90 1 50 Church Progr'ss, St. Louis (1 00 new) .. w Cath. 1 40 50 Cincinnati Weekly Gazette ............... w Rep. 45 8 00 Cincinnati Co'mercial Trib'ne. ... 6 issues Rep. 6 70 2 50 Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. Sun. ............ 2 15 1 50 Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. Sat. ............ 1 45 1 00 Cincinnati Enquirer (Sun. 2 00-1 80) .... w Dem. 60 12 00 Cincinnati Enquirer .............. 6 issues Dem. 10 40 14 00 Cincinnati Enquirer .............. 7 issues Dem. 12 10 5 00 Cincinnati Price Current (new 4 70) ..... w Com. 5 00 3 00 Cincinnati Times-Star (w 50-45) .... 6 iss. Rep. 2 00 3 00 Classical Review, Boston. ......... 10 Nos. Lit. 2 65 2 00 Clay Worker, Indianapolis. Ind. ......... m Com. 1 65 2 00 Cleveland Leader ...................... t w Rep. 1 90 3 00 Cleveland Leader ................. 6 issues Rep. 2 85 1 00 Cleveland Plaindealer ................... w Dem. 85 5 00 Cleveland Plaind'ler (Sun 200-180) .. 6 iss. Dem. 4 20 1 50 Cleveland Pl'in d'ler, sp'al mail ed. .... 6 is. 1 40 3 00 Cleveland Press (6 issues) ..................... 2 65 1 50 Cleveland World (Sun 2.00-1 .65) ... 6 iss. Rep. 1 25 2 50 Clinical Review, Chicago (n. 2.20) ...... m Med. 2 50 2 00 Clinique ....................................... 1 65 1 00 Clothier and Furnisher, New York ........ m Com. 90 1 00 Club Woman, Boston ........................... m 75 5 00 Coal Trade Journal. N.Y.(n. 4 25) ....... w Com. 4 70 1 00 Collector ...................................... 85 5 20 Collier's Weekly N.Y. (F.P. .80) ............. w 5 20 1.00 Colman's Rural World, St. Louis ........ w Agri. .85 2.00 Colored American, Washington ................. w 1.50 1.00 Colorado School Jon'l, Denver ..... 10 nos. Edu. .75 4.00 Commercial Bulletin, Boston (n 3.25) .... w Com. 4.00 10.00 Commercial and Financial Chronicle, New York Fin. 10.00 1.00 Commoner, Lincoln ............................ w .80 .75 Companion ............................... m O.F. .50 1.00 Confederate Veteran, Nashville................ m .75 2.00 Confectioner's Jour., Phila. (n. 1.65) .. m Com. 2.00 3.00 Congregationalist, Boston (n. 2.65) .... m Cong. 2.90 1.00 Conn. Courant (n. .90) ....................... w 1.00 2.00 Connecticut Magazine, Hartford ............... m 2.00 1.00 Connecticut Farmer, Hartford ............ w Agr. .85 .50 Cooking Club, Goshen, Ind. ................... m .45 4.50 Contemporary Review, reprint ............ m Lit. 4.00 Agents must charge 4.50 for above. 1.00 Correct English, Chi. ................... m Edu. .85 1.00 Cosmopolitan, N Y. (F.P. .84) ........... m Lit. 1.00 Cosmopolitan in class A with Success and Art Interchange ............. 3.00 with Success and Leslies Monthly ............. 2.00 with Leslie's Mo. and Harper's Bazar ......... 2.00 with any two in class A. Page 2 .............. 2.00 with World s Work and Leslies ................ 3.25 with Rev. of Reviews & Success ............... 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.10 Council Bluffs Nonpareil ...................... w .95 4.00 Council Bluffs Nonpareil ............... 6 issues 3.80 1.50 Country Gentleman, Albany (F.P. $1) ..... w Agri. 1.15 3.00 Country Life in America, N.Y. .......... m Rural. 3.00 Country Life in America with Success and Leslie's Monthly ............ 3.75 with Booklover's Magazine .................... 4.80 with Art Interchange & Etude ................. 5.50 with Worlds Work and Success ................. 4.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Craftsman, Syracuse (F.P. .50) ................ m 2.50 1.00 Criterion (Illustrated) N.Y. .................. m .85 2.00 Critic, New York. (F.P. .60) ............. m Lit. 2.00 2.00 Crockery & Glass Journal ........................ 1.65 1.50 Cumberland Presbyterian, Nashville ...... w Pres. 1.60 4.00 Cumulative Book Index, Minn. ............ m Books 4.00 1.50 Current Anecdote, Cleveland ............. m Homo. 1.35 3.00 Current Literature, N.Y. (F.P. .60) ..... m Lit. 2.65 Current Literature in class C with Leslie's Monthly and Success ............ 3.00 with Etude or Week's Progress ................ 3.00 with Century ................................. 5.75 with St. Nicholas ............................ 4.75 with Leslies and Harper's Bazar .............. 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 2.00 Cycle Age, Chicago ...................... w Bicy. .65 1.00 Cycle & Auto. Trade Journal, Phil. ............ m .75 1.00 Cy Scudder ...................................... .75 D 1.00 Dairy World, Chicago ..................... M Dai. .60 .60 Dakota Farmer, Aberdeen (n. .45) ............ s-m .60 1.00 Dallas (Tex.) News (7 iss. 7.50 6.80) .. s-w Dem. .85 2.50 Davenport Democrat (w. 1.00-.90) .... 7 iss. Dem. 2.20 7.50 Dayton (O) Journal (w. 1.00 1.00) ... 6 iss. Rep. 7.50 1.00 Debater, Syracuse ........................ m Lit. .90 1.00 Defender, Elmira .............................. w .75 1.00 Delineator, New York (F.P. 1.00) ........ m Fash. 1.00 1.00 Dental Brief, Phila. (F.P. 1.00) .............. m .90 1.00 Dental Cosmos, Phila. ..................... m Mod. 1.00 1.00 Dental Digest, Chi. (n. 85) ..................... 1.00 5.20 Denver Times ........................... 6 issues 4.40 1.00 Denver Republican ........................ w Rep. .90 7.00 Denver Republican (6 issues) .................... 5.85 2.50 Denver Republican (Sunday) ...................... 2.25 2.00 Des Moines Register Leader .................. Sun 1.25 4.00 Des Moines Register Leader ............. 6 issues 3.40 .80 Designer, N.Y. (F.P. 75) ................ m Fash. .80 5.00 Detroit Evening Journal ........... 6 issues Rep. 4.25 1.00 Detroit Journal (s.w.) .......................... .85 5.00 Detroit Eve. News (Sun. 2.50-2 25) .. 6 iss. Ind. 4.20 5.00 Detroit Free Press (Sun 2.50-2.50) .. 6 iss. Dem. 5.00 2.00 Dial, Chi. (n. 1.60) (F.P. 50) ......... s-m Lit. 1.85 1.00 Dietetic & Hygenic Gazette, N.Y. .............. m .75 1.00 Dogdom, Battle Creek .......................... m .85 .50 Dog Fancier, Battle Creek ..................... m .45 4.00 Dolphin, Phila. ........................... m Lit. 3.25 2.00 Donahoe's Mag., Boston (F.P. .50) ........ m R.C. 1.65 1.00 Dominant, N.Y. (F.P. 50) ................. m Mus. 1.00 1.00 Draftsman ..................................... m .90 4.00 Dramatic Mirror ............................... w 3.40 4.00 Dramatic News, New York ....................... w 3.40 4.00 Drover's Journal, Chi. (w. .50-.35) .. 6 iss L.S. 3.25 1.00 Drover's Telegram, Kansas City ........... w L.S. .80 2.00 Drover's Telegram, (6 iss. 4.00-3.20) tri-w L.S. 1.65 1.50 Druggists' Circular, N.Y. (n. 1.30) .... m Drugs. 1.50 5.00 Dry Goods Economist ...................... w Com. 5.00 FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE SEND ME ONLY $3.35 The great leading magazine of the world (price $4.00) or add $3.35 to any combination in this catalogue. Pub. Price Our Price 8.00 Dry Goods Reporter, Chicago ............. w Com. 3.00 2.00 Dun's Review, N.Y. .................... w Finan. 1.75 8.00 Dubuque Telegraph Herald(s-w. 100-90) 6 iss Dem. 2.60 1.00 Dubuque (Iowa) Times (n .85) ............ w Rep. .90 8.00 Dubuque (Iowa) Times (n. 2.55) ...... 6 iss Rep. 2.85 5.00 Duluth Evening Herald ............ 6 issues Ind. 4.25 5.00 Duluth News Tribune .............. 7 issues Rep. 4.25 E 1.00 Eastern Star, Indianapolis ................... m .75 8.00 Eclectic Magazine, Boston ............... m Lit. 2.75 5.00 Economic Journal, McMillan's ................. q 4.25 2.50 Economic Studies, N.Y. .................... bi-m 2.25 5.00 Economist (n. 4.25) .......................... w 5.00 4.00 Edinburg Review (reprint) N.Y. .......... q Lit. 3.05 My agents must charge 4.00 for the above. 1.00 Educational Gazette, Syracuse ........... 10 nos .75 8.00 Education, Boston (n. 2.50) ........ 10 nos Edu. 2.90 Education (new) in class C with Leslies' and Harper's Bazar ............. 3.00 with Journal of Education .................... 3.75 with World's Work and Harper's Bazar ......... 4.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar 1.00 Educational Exchange, Birmingham. Ala. .. m Edu. .85 1.50 Educational Foundations, N.Y. ..... 10 nos. Edu. 1.45 3.00 Educational Review N.Y. ........... 10 nos. Edu. 2.65 1.00 Educator, Method Edition ................ m Edu. .75 1.00 Educator-Journal, Indianapolis ............... m .85 1.00 Eleanor Kirk's Idea. Brooklyn ................ m .75 2.50 Electrical Age, New York. .................... m 2.25 3.00 Electrical Review, N.Y. (F.P. 2.00) ..... w Sci. 2.25 3.00 Electrical World & Engineer, N.Y. ....... w Sci. 2.60 1.00 Electricity, New York (F.P. 2.00) ....... w Sci. .90 1.50 Elementary School Teacher, Chi ............... m 1.35 1.50 Elite Styles, New York (F.P. .50) ...... m Fash. 1.50 We allow Agents and Newsdealers 25 cts. Commission. 6.00 Elmira Advertiser (n. 4.70) ......... 6 iss Rep. 6.00 1.50 Elmira Sunday Telegram .................. w Ind. 1.35 1.00 Engineer, Chi. ....................... s-m Steam 1.00 5.00 Engineering and Mining Jou., N.Y. ....... w Sci. 5.00 3.00 Engineering Mag., N.Y. (n. 2.85) ........ m Sci. 3.00 3.00 Engineering Record, N.Y. ................ w Sci. 2.00 5.00 Engineering News, N.Y. (n. 4.25) ........ w Sci. 4.90 1.00 Engineering Review, New York ................. m .85 1.75 English Magazine ............................. m 1.05 2.00 Episcopal Recorder, Phila. ............. w Evan. 1.05 1.00 Epworth Herald, Chi. (Y.M.C.A. .60) .... w E. L. 1.00 1.00 Era, The Philadelphia ................... m Lit. 1.00 1.50 Etude, For all music lovers, Phila.............. (F.P. .72) ............................ m Music. 1.50 To Bonafide agents and newsdealers we will make a net rate on Etude of $1.15 on condition that no reduction is offered to subscribers. Etude contains each month ten pieces of new music valuable and interesting reading for pianists, vocalists, children, clubs, and organists Etude For all Music Lovers in offer No. 5: with Leslies & Woman's Home C .............. m 2.60 with Review of Reviews & Success ............. 3.50 with Century and Leslies ..................... 5.50 with Succes [sic] & McCalls Magazine ......... 2.25 with Pearsons and Leslies .................... 2.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Everybody's Magazine, (F.P. .84) ........ m Lit. 1.00 To NEWSDEALERS, POSTMASTERS AND OUR REGULAR AGENTS only, a commission of 15 cents will be allowed on each subscription to Everybody's Magazine. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar .50 Everywhere, Will Carleton's Mag .............. m .45 2.00 Examiner, N.Y. (n. 1.50) ................ w Bap. 2.00 .50 Expression, Boston ............................. .49 2.00 Expository Times, N.Y. ....................... m 1.50 F 1.00 Family Herald & Star (with Pic.) ........ w Lit. .85 3.00 Family Story Paper, N.Y. ..................... w 2.40 .50 Fancier's Gazette, Indianapolis ....... m Poult. .35 .75 Fancier's Mo., San Jose (F.P. .25) ........... m .60 .25 Farm and Fireside, Springfield, O. ... s-m Agri. .25 .50 Farm and Home, Springfield, Mass ....... m Agri. .50 1.00 Farm and Ranch, Dallas ....................... w .65 1.00 Farmer's Advocate, Topeka .................... w .75 1.00 Farmers' Advocate & Home Mag. (n. .85) s-m Agri. .95 .50 Farmers' Call, Quincy, Ill. ........... w Agri. .35 1.00 Farmers' Home Journal, Louisville ...... w Agri. .85 1.00 Farmers' Review, Chicago ............... w Agri. .90 1.00 Farmers' Tribune, Des Moines ................. w .85 .60 Farmers' Voice, Chicago ................ w Agri. .30 1.00 Farm, Field and Fireside, Chicago ...... w Agri. .75 2.00 Farm Implement News, Chi. .............. w Agri. 2.00 .75 Farm Journal, Philadelphia (5 yrs)...... m Agri. .60 2.00 Farm Machinery, St. Louis ............... w Imp. 1.65 .50 Farm News, Springfield, 0. ............. m Agri. .30 .50 Farm Poultry, Boston (F.P. .48) ..... s-m Poult. .40 1.00 Farmer & Stockman, Kansas City .......... w L.S. .85 .50 Farm, Stock & Home, Minneapolis ...... s-m Agri. .45 1.00 Farm Stock Journal ........................... w .65 1.00 Farmer and Fruit Grower (F.P. 1.04) .. s-w Agri. .90 .50 Feather, Washington (F.P. .25) ........ m Poult. .40 .75 Fern Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y. ..... ... q Fern .70 2.00 Field and Fancy ................................ 1.70 2.00 Field and Farm, Denver, Col. ........... w Agri. 1.90 1.50 Field & Stream, N.Y. ......................... m 1.20 5.00 Finance ........................................ 3.50 3.00 Financial Record, New York ................... w 2.50 2.00 Fine Arts Journal, Chicago ............... m Art 1.25 2.00 Firemen's Herald, New York ............. w Fire. 1.75 1.00 Fireman's Standard, Boston (F.P. .50) s-m Fire. .75 1.00 Fishing Gazette, N.Y. ........................ w 1.00 1.00 Floral Life, Phila. .......................... m 1.00 2.00 Florida Agriculturist, Jacksonville .... w Agri. 1.50 1.00 Florida School Exponent ........................ .90 6.00 Florida Times Union (Sun. 1.50 1.35) 6 iss. Dem. 5.00 1.00 Florists' Exchange ............................. 1.00 1.00 Foolish Book, N.Y. ........................... m .75 4.00 Forest and Stream, N.Y. (n. 3.25) .... w Sport. 4.00 1.00 Forestry and Irrigation, Wash. ............... m .90 4.50 Fortnightly Review N.Y. ................. m Lit. 4.00 My agents must charge $4.50 for above. 2.00 Forum, New York (F.P. .28) .............. q Lit. 1.75 .75 Forward, Phila.(new .65) ..................... w .75 .50 Four-Track News, N.Y. (F.P. 50) .............. m .50 1.00 Four-Track News after Jan. 1, 1905 ............. .80 Four-Track News in Offer No. 3 with Leslies or Cosmopolitan ................. 1.25 with Harper's Bazar or Pearsons .............. 1.25 with Youth and Ladies' World ................. 1.50 with Review of Reviews & Success ............. 2.75 with Current Literature & Leslies ............ 2.75 with any one in class B ...................... 1.25 with any one in Offer No. 4 .................. 1.50 After Jan. 1st add 40 cents to all clubs in this catalogue containing Four Track News. SEE OTHER CLUB OFFERS IN FOREPART OF THIS CATALOGUE. 1.00 Leslie's Monthly (F.P. .85) ............. m Lit. 1.00 MY SPECIAL OFFER November and December, 1904 numbers of Leslie's Monthly free to new subscribers for the year 1905 providing they ask for same when sending the order to me. LESLIE'S MONTHLY MAG. in class A: with Success or National ..................... 1.50 with Pearsons and Sucess ..................... 2.00 with Harper's B'ar & World's Work ............ 3.25 with House Beautiful & Harper's Bazar ........ 2.00 with Woman's Home Companion and Cosmopolitan . 2.10 with Success & Review of Review .............. 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Free Baptist, Minneapolis .................... w .90 2.50 Freeman's Jour., N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) ....... w R.C. 2.30 1.50 Free Methodist, Chicago (n. 1.15) ...... w Meth. 1.45 .50 Free Press Farm & Live Stock Jour. ............ w .40 .50 Fruit Grower's Journal, Cobden, Ill. ... m Hort. .30 3.00 Fruit Trade Journal, (n 2.25) ........... w Com. 3.00 1.00 Furniture Trade Review, New York ........ m Com. .90 2.00 Fur Trade Review, N.Y. ................... m Fur 1.65 G 7.50 Galveston News (outside Texas) ..... 7 iss. Ind. 6.60 .50 Game Fanciers' Jour., Battle Creek ..... m Poul. .35 1.00 Game Fowl Monthly, Sayre, Pa. .......... m Poul. .80 2.00 Gardening, Chicago (new 1.40) .............. s-m 1.85 1.00 Gas Engine Magazine, Cincinnati .............. m .75 2.00 Gever's Stationer, New York ............. w Com. 1.65 .50 Girl's Companion, Chicago ...................... .35 1.20 Girls' Own Paper, Toronto .................... m 1.15 1.00 Gleanings in Bee Cul're, Medina, O. ... s-m Bees .70 3.00 Golden Days, Phila. ..................... w Juv. 2.50 .25 Golden Hours, New York ................. m Fict. .20 .25 Golden Moments, with chromos ............ m Lit. .25 2.00 Golf, N.Y. (Harper) (F.P. .48) ............... m 1.75 BOTH $2.25 _A FULL YEAR:_ THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL _MONTHLY_ _THE SATURDAY EVENING POST WEEKLY_ Pub. Price Our Price 1.00 Good Health, Battle Creek ............... m Hyg. .75 Good Health in class A: with Harper's Bazar .......................... 1.50 with Physical Culture and Pearsons ........... 2.00 with Ladies' World ........................... 1.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Good Housekeeping, Springfield .......... m Dom. 1.00 Good Housekeeping in class A: with Success or any one in class A ........... 1.50 with Pearsons and Success .................... 2.00 with Success and Rev. of Reviews ............. 3.00 with Woman's Home Companion .................. 1.60 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. .35 Good Literature, N.Y. (F.P. .24) ............. m .30 1.00 Good Roads, N.Y. ............................... .90 .15 Good Stories, Augusta ........................ m .15 1.50 Gospel Advocate, Nashville ............ w Chris. 1.35 1.50 Gospel Messenger, Mt. Morris, Ill. ...... w Bap. 1.35 1.00 Grand Army Advocate, Des Moines ............ b-w .65 1.50 Granite Monthly, Concord, N.H. .......... m Lit. 1.25 .50 Gray Goose, Deposit, N.Y. ...................... .40 4.00 Green Bag, Boston. ............................. 8.75 .50 Green's Fruit Grower, Rochester ........ m Hort. .35 2.00 Grocery World .................................. 2.00 1.00 Guide to Holiness, N.Y. ...................... m .80 2.00 Gunton's Magazine, N.Y. ............... m Econ. 1.85 H 3.00 Haberdasher, N.Y. (n. 2.50) ............. m Com. 3.00 2.50 Happy Days, N.Y. (F.P. .52) ............. w Juv. 2.10 .15 Happy Hours, Augusta .................... m Lit. .15 1.00 Hardware, N.Y. (n. .75) ............... s-m Com. 1.00 1.00 Hardware Dealers Magazine, N.Y. .............. m .95 1.00 Harper's Bazar, N.Y. (F.P. .72) ........ m Fash. .90 Harper's Bazar in Class A: with Leslies and House Beautiful ............. 2.00 with Harper's Magazine or Weekly ............. 4.25 with Cosmopolitan and Pearsons ............... 2.00 with any one in Class A ...................... 1.50 with Scribners and Leslies ................... 4.35 with Century ................................. 4.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. To agents only who can send us two or more subscriptions for the Bazar we allow a special commission. Write us about it. 4.00 Harper's Magazine, (F.P. .96) ........... m Lit. 3.35 4.00 Harper's Weekly, (F.P. 1.56) ............ w Lit. 3.85 Harper's Monthly or Weekly: with Leslies or one in class A ............... 4.25 with Success and any one in class A .......... 4.75 with Century ................................. 7.00 with Outlook (new) ........................... 6.00 with Country Life ............................ 6.25 with North American Review (n.) .............. 7.00 with any one in class B or C ................. 5.50 with any two in class B or C ................. 7.00 with Scribners ............................... 6.35 8.00 Hartford Courant (new 6.20) ...... 6 issues Rep. 7.40 2.50 Harvard Law Rev'w, Cambridge ....... 8 nos. Law. 2.25 1.00 Health, N.Y. ............................ m Hyg. .75 1.00 Health Culture, N.Y. ......................... m .75 .15 Hearth and Home, Augusta, Me. ........... m Lit. .15 2.50 Herald & Presbyter, Cincin'ti (n. .22)...w Pres. 2.40 1.00 Herald of Truth, Elkhart, Ind. ...... s-m Relig. .85 1.00 Hints, New York .............................. m .70 $10. WORTH OF PLAYS, DRILLS, ENTERTAINMENTS, SOCIALS, GAMES, FAIRS, IDEAS FOR DECORATIONS, TEAS, ETC. PUBLISHED EACH YEAR IN "HINTS." YEARLY $1.00, OUR SPECIAL PRICE .... 70c. Hints class A: with Popular Educator or Leslies ............. 1.50 with Kindergarten Review or Success .......... 1.50 with Normal Instructor or Housekeeper ........ 1.25 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Hoard's Dairyman, Fort Atkinson, Wis.....w Dairy .90 .50 Holiday Magazine, N.Y.(For child'n) ..... m Juv. .40 Holiday Magazine including book Home Games and Parties (50c.) in class A: with Success or Leslies ...................... 1.50 with Pearsons or Harper's Bazar .............. 1.50 with Little Folks (new) or Cosmopolitan ...... 1.80 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 with any three of above ...................... 2.50 with Success and Review of Reviews ........... 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Home Art, Chicago ....................... m Emb. .85 .50 Home Bazar, Chicago .......................... m .40 .50 Home Mission Monthly, N.Y. .............. m Bap. .45 .50 Home and Farm, Louisville ........... s-m Agri. .45 1.00 Home and Flowers, Springfield, O. ............ m .65 .50 Home Needlework Magazine ..................... m .45 .50 Home Queen Waterville, Maine ............ m Lit. .35 1.00 Home Science Magazine, Boston ................ m .75 4.00 Homeopathic Jour. of Obst. (n. 3.40)...bi-m Med. 4.00 8.00 Homiletic Review, N.Y. (n. 2.95) ........ m Ser. 2.65 1.00 Horse Gazette, East Buffalo .................. w .85 2.00 Horseless Age, N.Y. (F.P. .75) .......... Mech. 1.75 3.00 Horseman, Chicago. (F.P. 2.00) ........ w Sport. 2.50 2.00 Horse Review, Chicago ................. w Sport. 1.75 1.00 Horseshoer's Journal, Detroit. a practical, scientific and organization monthly for the trade .......................... m Trade .85 2.00 Horse World, Buffalo, N.Y. ............ w Sport. 1.75 200 Hotel Gazette, N.Y. .......................... w 1.65 5.00 House and Garden, Phila. ...................... w 4.00 2.00 House Beautiful, Chicago (F.P. .50) ... m 1.00 House Beautiful in class A: with Art Interchange & Harper's Bazar ........ 3.00 with World's Work and Leslie's Mo. ........... 3.25 with Leslie's Monthly Magazine ............... 1.50 with Harper's Bazar & Leslie's Mo. ........... 2.00 with Success and Leslie's Monthly ............ 2.00 with Century and Scribner's .................. 7.35 with any one in Class A, page 2 .............. 1.50 with any two in Class B, page 2 .............. 4.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Household Companion, Boston ............. m Dom. .60 .50 Household Realm, Chicago ..................... m .30 .60 Housekeeper, Minneapolis (F.P. .32) ..... m Lit. .60 Housekeeper in offer No. 3: with Harper's Bazar and Success .............. 1.75 with McCall's, Vick's & Ladies World ......... 1.25 with Leslie's Mo., and Vick's Mag. ........... 1.50 with Pearson's and Vick's Mag . .............. 1.50 with Vick's, Leslie's & Cosmopolitan ......... 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar .25 Housewife, N.Y. ......................... m Lit. .25 .50 How to Live .................................. m .40 1.00 How to Write, Detroit ................... m Lit. .75 1.00 How to Help Boys, Boston (F.P. .25) ..... q Lit. .95 2.00 Hub, N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) ................... m Com. 1.70 1.00 Human Culture, Chicago ....................... m .75 2.00 Humorist, St. Louis, Mo. ................ w Hum. 1.25 Humorist in class A: with Leslie's Monthly or Success ............. 1.50 with Pearson's Success & Cosmopolitan ........ 2.50 with Am. Inventor or Sunset .................. 1.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Hunter, Trader and Trapper ................... m .75 I 1.00 Ill. Free Mason, Bloomington ....... m F.& A.M. .85 1.00 Illinois State Resister .............. s-w Dem. .90 .25 Illustrated Companion. N.Y. ............ m Lit. .25 1.00 Illus. Home Journal, St. Louis ............... m .90 2.00 Illustrated Leader, N.Y. ............... w Sport 1.75 2.00 Illustrated Record, N.Y. ............... w Sport 1.75 2.50 Illustrated Sporting News .................... w 2.15 Illustrated Sporting News in class B: with Burr McIntosh Monthly ................... 3.75 with Outdoors or Recreation .................. 2.50 with Leslie's or Cosmopolitan ................ 2.50 with Outing or Worlds Work ................... 3.75 with Smart Set or Rev. of Reviews ............ 3.75 with any two in Class A ...................... 3.00 with any two in Class B ...................... 5.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 6.00 Illus. London News, N.Y. ................ w Lit. 5.60 7.00 Same with all extra numbers ............. w Lit. 6.50 3.00 Illus. Milliner, N.Y. (n. 2.25) .............. m 3.00 .60 Illus. of Int. S.S. Lesson, Chicago .......... m .55 2.00 Independent, N.Y. (F.P. 1.55) .......... w Evan. 2.00 Independent in class B: with Success or Cosmopolitan ................. 2.50 with Leslie's and Pearson's .................. 3.00 with World's Work ............................ 3.75 with Success and Rev. of Reviews ............. 4.00 with Country Life ............................ 4.50 with Burr McIntosh Monthly ................... 3.75 with any two in Class A ...................... 3.00 with any two in Class B ...................... 5.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Independent Statesman, Concord .......... w Rep. .90 .60 Indiana Farmer, Indianapolis ........... w Agri. .60 1.00 Indiana State Journal ................... w Rep. 1.00 2.50 Indianapolis Journal (6 iss. 5.00-4.75) . S Rep. 2.40 5.00 Indianapolis News ................ 6 issues Ind. 4.25 .50 Indiana State Sentinel .................. w Dem. .45 3.00 Indianapolis Sentinel ............ 6 issues Dem. 2.65 2.50 Indianapolis Sentinel. .................... Sun. 2.20 5.00 Inland Architect, Chicago (n. 4.50) .... m Arch. 5.00 10.00 Same Photogravure Edition (n. 9.00) .... m Arch. 10.00 2.00 Inland Grocer ................................ w 1.50 3.00 Inland Printer, Chicago (F.P. 1.20) .......... m 3.00 3.00 Insurance Times, N.Y. ................... m Ins. 2.00 1.50 Intelligence, Oak Park, Ill. (n. 1.35) s-m Edu. 1.50 2.50 International Dental Journal, Phila. ......... m 1.75 2.50 Internat. Jour. of Ethics, Phil. (n 2.25) .... q 2.46 1.00 International Jour. of Surgery, N.Y. ... m Surg. .75 4.00 International Quarterly, Burlington .... m Hist. 4.00 1.00 International Med. Mag., N.Y. ................ m .90 5.00 International Studio, N.Y. ............. m Art. 4.25 .50 International Sun. Sch'l., Evangel, St. Louis m .45 1.00 Inventive Age, Washington .................... m .70 3.00 Investigator, Boston (n. 2.50) .......... w A.R. 2.85 3.00 Investigator, Chicago ................... w Ins. 2.50 1.00 Iowa Homestead, Des Moines ................... w .90 .60 Iowa State Register, Des Moines ......... w Rep. .45 2.50 Irish World, New York .................. w Cath. 2.30 5.00 Iron Age, New York ...................... w Com. 4.50 2.00 Iron Age, New York (m. 1.00 .90) ...... s-m Com. 1.90 3.00 Iron & Machinery World .................. w Chi. 1.50 3.00 Iron Trade Review, Cleveland (n. 2.85) ....... w 3.00 1.00 Irrigation Age ............................... m .90 1.00 Items of Interest ...................... m Dent. 1.00 J 1.50 Jamestown (N.Y.) Jour. (n. .35) ...... s-w Rep. 1.45 1.00 Jersey Bulletin, Indianapolis .......... m Agri. 1.00 1.00 Jeweler's Journal, Chicago ................... m .80 2.50 Jewish Gazette, New York ................ w Heb. 2.00 2.00 Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin ......... m Mod. 1.90 5.00 Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports .......... m Mod. 4.25 3.00 Johns Hopkins Stud's in Hist & Politics . m Scl. 2.65 1.00 Johns Hopkins University Circular ....... m Edu. .90 4.00 Journalist, N.Y. ............................. w 3.25 2.50 Journal and Messenger, Cincinnatti ........... w 2.20 6.00 Jour. of Am. Chemical S, Balti're, Pa. .. m Sci. 5.35 5.00 Jour. of Am. Med. Assc., Chi. (n 4.25) .. w Med. 5.00 3.00 Journal of Commerce, Boston (n. 2.50) ....w Com. 3.00 6.75 Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, New York (n. 6.50) .................. tri-w Com. 6.75 5.00 Same (n. 4.75) ........................ s-w Com. 5.00 12.00 Same (new 11.25) ................. 6 issues Com. 12.00 3.00 Journal of Amer. Folk Lore ................... q 2.65 3.00 Journal of Comparative Med., etc. ........m Med. 2.75 2.50 Journal of Education, Boston ............ w Edu. 2.25 Journal of Education in class C: with Leslie's Monthly or Pearsons ............ 2.50 with any one in Class A ...................... 2.50 with Am. Teacher or Success .................. 2.50 with Popular Educator (new) or Leslies ....... 2.50 with Primary Education (new) ................. 2.50 with Primary Plans or Kindergarten Rev. ...... 2.50 with Normal Instructor and World's Events .... 2.50 with any two of above ........................ 3.00 with Journal of Geography .................... 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Jour. of English & Germanic Philol'y (new 2.75) 3.00 2.00 Journal of Electricity Power & Gas ........... m .50 5.00 Journal of Franklin Institute, Phila. ... m Sci. 4.00 1.50 Journal of Geography, Chi. ............. m Geog. 1.50 Journal of Geography in offer No. 4: with Am. Primary Teacher or Primary Plans .... 1.75 with Popular Educator (new) or Success ....... l.75 with Am. Education or Leslies ................ 1.75 with Correct English or Pearson .............. 1.75 with Normal Instructor or Cosmopolitan ....... 1.75 with World's Work or Review of Reviews ....... 3.00 with Country Life ............................ 3.75 with Journal of Education .................... 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Jour. of Geology, Chi. (F.P. .50) ....... 8 Nos. 2.60 6.30 Journal of Hygiene ........................... q 6.00 3.00 Jour. of Military Service Institute ....... bi-m 2.65 5.00 Jour. of Nervous & Mental Diseases ............. 4.75 2.50 Journal of Philology ............... semi annual 2.45 4.00 Jour. of Physical Chemistry .................... 3.80 1.50 Journal of Pedagogy, Syracuse ........... q Edu. 1.20 3.00 Jour. of Political Economy, Chi. ..............q 2.65 3.00 Jour. of Theological Studies ................. q 2.75 1.00 Judicious Advertising ........................ m .85 5.00 Judge, New York (F.P. 1.04).............. w Hum. 4.25 Judge with Cosmopolitan and Pearson's .............. 5.25 with Smart Set or Burr McIntosh .............. 5.75 with Booklover or Review of Reviews .......... 5.75 with Outing or Ill. Sporting News ............ 5.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Judge's Library (F.P. .50) .............. m Hum. .85 1.00 Judge's Quarterly (F.P. .20) ................. q .90 1.00 Junior Toilettes ....................... m Fash. .90 Junior Toilettes in class A with Leslie's or any one in class A .......... 1.50 with Pearson's and any one in class A ........ 2.00 with Harper's Bazar .......................... 1.50 with Ladies' World and Four-Track News ....... 1.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Just Fun, N.Y. ............................... m .75 K 3.00 Kansas City Journal (w. .25-.25) ... 6 iss. Rep. 2.60 1.00 Kansas City Journal .................. Sun. Rep. .90 .25 Kansas City Star ............................. w .25 4.00 Kansas City Star (Sun. 1.50 1.30) .. 6 iss. Ins. 3.25 5.20 Kansas City Star and Times ......... 7 iss. Ind. 4.25 3.00 Kansas City World ................ 7 issues Dem. 2.60 1.00 Kansas Farmer, Topeka .................. w Agri. .65 1.00 Keith's Mag (after Jan. 1, '05 1 35) ... m Arch. .90 2.00 Kentucky Stock Farm. Lexington ............... w 1.25 3.50 Keramic Studio, Syracuse (F.P. 50) ........... m 3.20 2.00 Keystone, Philadelphia (n. 1 65) ..... m F.&A.M. 1.90 2.00 Kindergarten Mag. Chi. (n. 1 65) ........ m Edu. 1.90 1.00 Kindergarten Review (F.P. .40) .......... m Edu. 1.00 Kindergarten Review in class A with any one in class A ...................... 1.50 with Primary Education (new) ................. 1.50 with Am. Primary Teacher ..................... 1.50 with Primary Plans or Pearsons ............... 1.50 with Normal Instructor and World's Events .... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Kunkel's Musical Review, St. Louis. ..... m Mus. 1.75 L Ladies' Home Journal (F. P. .60) ........ m Lit. 1.00 TO SUBSCRIPTION AGENTS A COMMISSION OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ALLOWED with the stipulation that the first order for this magazine forwarded by an agent must contain at least TWO subscriptions for it for which the subscribers have paid the full subscription price. A single subscription will be accepted only at $1.00 unless previous orders for it have been received this season. Must not be taken in club with other publications, at cut rates, nor given as a premium. Subscriptions so taken will be rejected, or subsequently 'killed.' COMMISSIONS ALSO ALLOWED TO NEWSDEALERS AND POSTMASTERS. Christmas and Gift Cards When requested and NAME OF DONORS SENT WITH SUBSCRIPTION to us we will have the beautiful cards which the JOURNAL publishers advertise to furnish sent free to the subscriber. Christmas Cards will be received by the subscriber Christmas morning if order is received in time. FORWARD YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS AT EARLIEST DATE POSSIBLE. My Club Price $2.25: Ladies' Home Journal 1.00 Saturday Evening Post 2.00 Ladies' Home Journal Free Send me TWO (2) orders for the combination, LADIES' HOME JOURNAL and SATURDAY EVENING POST at $2.25 each and you may have free as your premium, and sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to the Ladies' Home Journal, or for THREE (3) orders a yearly subscription to the SATURDAY EVENING POST. 1.00 Ladies Journal, Toronto ................ w Fash. .85 .50 Ladies' World, N. Y ..................... m Dom. .50 This popular domestic and literary Magazine for Women and the Home, recently enlarged and greatly improved, is now _the largest, handsomest and best 50 cent magazine in America_. It is bright, practical, and up-to-date. Profusely illustrated. Handsome colored covers. GIVES MORE FOR THE MONEY THAN ANY OTHER PUBLICATION IN ITS CLASS. A good thing for agents. "_Adv._" Ladies' World in offer No, 3: with Harper's Bazar and Leslie's ............. 1.75 with Harper's Bazar or Success ............... 1.25 with Four-Track News and Vick's Magazine ..... 1.25 with "Entertainments for all Seasons" (1.00) and Success ................................ 1.50 with "Entertainments for all Seasons" and any one in Class A ......................... 1.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.50 Lamp. N.Y. (F. P. .60) ....................... m 1.35 3.50 L'Art de la Mode, N.Y. ................. m Fash. 3.00 1.00 Lawgiver, Battle Creek, Mich. ................ m .60 Lawgiver in offer No. 3: with Success or Leslie's ..................... 1.25 with Cosmopolitan or Pearson ................. 1.25 with Good Housekeeping or Sunset ............. 1.25 with any two above ........................... 1.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may by added to any club for One Dollar 3.00 Law Reporter, Washington, D, C. ......... w Law. 2.50 1.00 Law Students Helper, Detroit ................. m .75 3.00 Leather Manufacture, N, Y. .............. m Com. 2.65 BOTH $2.25 _A FULL YEAR_ THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL _MONTHLY_ _THE SATURDAY EVENING POST WEEKLY_ Pub. Price Our Price 3.50 Le Bon Ton, N.Y. ....................... m Fash. 3.20 2.50 Le Costume Royal, N.Y. ....................... m 2.25 1.00 Legal Adviser, Chicago .................. m Law. .85 2.20 Legal News, Chicago ..................... w Law. 1.65 1.00 Lend a Hand Record, Boston .............. m Phi. .85 4.00 Leslie's Weekly, N.Y. ................... w Lit. 3.35 Leslie's Weekly with Success ................................. 4.25 with Harper's Bazar and World's Work ......... 5.75 with Outing and Success ...................... 5.75 with Judge ................................... 7.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 5.00 Library Journal, N.Y. (new 4.50) ........ m Lit. 5.00 Literary News free with Library Journal 5.00 Life, N.Y. (F.P. 1.04) ................. w Comic 4.50 2.50 Lippincott's Mag., Phila. (F.P. .96) ...... Lit. 2.50 Lippincott's Magazine in class C: with Success or Cosmopolitan ................. 2.50 with Good Housekeeping and Leslies ........... 3.00 with Harper's Bazar or Pearson ............... 2.50 with any two of the above .................... 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Lit'ry Digest, N.Y. (n 2.60) (F.P. 1.00) w Lit. 3.00 1.10 *Literary News, N.Y. (new .80) ............... m 1.05 1.00 Literary World, Boston (n. .90) ...... bi-w Lit. 1.00 .75 Little Boys and Girls, Plainfield ............ m .45 Little Boys and Girls in Offer No. 3: with Cosmopolitan or Success ................. 1.25 with American Boy or Youth ................... 1.25 with Little Folks (new) or Leslie's .......... 1.25 with Good Housekeeping or Pearson ............ 1.25 with any two of above ........................ 1.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. .25 Little Christian, Boston .............. s-m Juv. .20 1.50 Little Chronicle, Chicago (F.P. 1.00) ........ w 1.00 Little Chronicle in class A: with Am. Prim. Teacher ....................... 1.50 with Popular Educator (new) .................. 1.50 with Primary Education (new) ................. 1.50 with Primary Plans ........................... 1.50 with Normal Instructor ....................... 1.25 with any two above ........................... 2.00 with House Beautiful and Leslies ............. 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Little Folks, Salem, Mass (F.P. .25) .... m Juv. 1.00 For children from three to ten. Full of beautiful pictures (some in colors) and stories by best authors. _Adv._ Little Folks (new) in class A: with American Boy or Harper's Bazar .......... 1.50 with Youth or American Boy ................... 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Success ................. 1.50 with Pearson or Good Housekeeping ............ 1.50 with Leslie's or 20th Century Home ........... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.50 Little Folks, N.Y. (Cassell's) .......... m Juv. 1.25 .50 Little Folks' Paper, Albany ............. w Juv. .45 2.00 Little Journeys, and Philistine .............. m 2.00 1.00 Live Stock Journal ...................... w Chi. .60 1.00 Live Stock Review, Cincinnatti .......... w L.S. .90 6.00 Living Age, Boston (F.P. 1.56) .......... w Lit. 5.75 2.50 Living Church, Milwaukee (n. 1.75) .... w Episc. 2.25 2.00 Locomotive Engineering, N.Y. ........... m Mech. 1.85 1.50 Locomotive Firemans Magazine ................... 1.40 2.25 Longman's Magazine, [reprint] N.Y. ...... m Lit. 2.00 4.00 Louisville (Ky.) Herald .......... 6 issues Rep. 8.20 1.00 Louisville (Ky.) Herald ...................... w .90 2.00 Louisville (Ky.) Herald .............. Sun. Rep. 1.65 1.00 Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal ........ w Dem. .65 6.00 Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal ... 6 Iss. Dem. 5.60 2.00 Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal ..... Sun. Dem. 1.90 3.00 Louisville (Ky.) Post ............ 6 issues Dem. 2.75 2.00 Lumber Trade Jou., New Orleans ............. s-m 1.70 2.00 Lutheran, Philadelphia (n. 1.70) ....... w Lath. 1.90 1.00 Lutheran Evangelist, Dayton, 0. ........ w Evan. .90 2.00 Lutheran Observer, Phila. .............. w Luth. 2.00 2.50 Lutheran Quarterly, Gettysburg, Pa. .... q Theo. 2.35 Add McClure's or Everybody's to any club at $1.00. M 1 00 Machinery (Shop Ed.) N.Y. .................... m .95 2.00 Machinery (Engineering Ed.) N.Y. ............. m 1.90 1.00 Madame, Indianapolis ......................... m .90 1.00 Madison (Wis.) Democrat .................... s-w 1.00 5.00 Madison (Wis.) Democrat ............... 6 issues 5.00 1.00 Magazine of Mysteries, N.Y. .................. m .75 1.00 Mail Order Journal, Chicago .................. m .70 3.00 MacMillan's Magazine .................... m Lit. 2.65 1.00 Maine Farmer, Augusta, Me. ............. w Agri. .90 1.00 Maine Sportsman, Bangor, Me. (n. .75) . m Sport. .85 1.00 Manual Training Mag., (F.P. 20) .............. q .90 1.50 Manufacturer and Builder, N.Y. ......... m Mech. 1.15 4.00 Manufacturers' Record, Bal'ore, Md. .......... w 3.25 2.00 Marine Engineering, N.Y. ..................... m 1.70 3.00 Marine Rev & Ma. Rec., (n. 2.50) ............. w 3.00 .75 Masonic Chronicle, Columbus, O. ......... m Mas. .50 1.50 Masonic Voice Review, Chicago ........... m Mas. 1.20 1.50 Masters in Art, Boston .................. m .... 1.50 2.50 Masters in Music, Boston ................ m .... 2.50 10 per cent discount to agents and dealers on last two. 1.00 Master Singer, New York ................ 10 Nos. .85 2.00 Mass. Ploughman (new 1.75) ................... w 2.00 .50 Mayflower, Floral Park, for 3 yrs. ......... s-m .50 1.00 McClure's Magazine, N. Y, (F. P. .96) (6 mo. .55) ............................. m Lit. 1.00 [right pointing hand] TO SUBSCRIPTION AGENTS A COMMISSION OF 20 CENTS WILL BE ALLOWED on all orders forwarded, with the stipulation that the first order for this magazine forwarded by an agent must contain at least TWO subscriptions for it. A single subscription will be accepted only at $1.00 unless previous orders for it have been received this season. Must not be taken in club with other publications, at cut rates, nor given as a premium. Subscriptions so taken will be rejected or subsequently "killed." COMMISSIONS ALSO ALLOWED TO NEWSDEALERS AND POSTMASTERS. McClure's may be added to any club for One Dollar .50 McCall's Mag. with Free pattern ........ m Fash. .50 McCall's Magazine in Offer No. 3 with Leslie's or Cosmopolitan ................ 1.25 with Harper's Bazar or Success ............... 1.25 with Good Housekeeping or Pearsons ........... 1.25 with any two of above ........................ 1.75 with Housekeeper and Vicks ................... 1.00 with Housekeeper, Vicks & Ladies' W'rld ...... 1.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Medical Age, Detroit........................ s-m 1.00 1.00 Medical Brief, St. Louis ................ m Med. 1.90 1.00 Medical Bulletin, Philadelphia .......... m Med. .75 2.00 Medical Century (new 1.75) ................... m 2.00 1.00 Medical Journal, Columbus, O. (n. 70) ... m Med. 1.00 4.00 Medical News, N.Y. (new 3.25) ........... m Med. 4.00 2.00 Medical Review of Reviews, N.Y. ........ m Med. 2.00 1.50 Medical Standard, Chi. (F. P. .50) ...... m Med. 1.25 .50 Medical Talk, Columbus ....................... m .35 2.00 Medical Times, Chicago (n. 1.65) ........ m Med. 1.75 1.00 Medical Times & Register, Phila. ........ m Med. .90 1.00 Medical World, Philadelphia (n. 90) ..... m Med. 1.00 5.00 Medical and Surg. Journal, Boston (n. 4.25) ............................... w Med. 4.90 2.00 Medicine ..................................... m 1.75 .50 Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial .............. w Dem. .45 6.00 Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial ......... 6 iss. Dem. 5.00 .50 Memphis Commercial Appeal .................... w .45 7.50 Memphis Com. Appeal ................... 7 issues 6.25 1.00 Men and Women, Cin. (F.P. .50) ......... m Cath. .75 Men and Women in class A with Good Housekeeping or Success ............ 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Leslie's ................ 1.50 with Pearson's or 20th Century Home .......... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 with Smart Set or any class C ................ 2.50 with Lippincott and any class A .............. 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar 1.00 Merck's Archives, N. Y .................. m Med. .95 2.00 Merchants' Guide, Philadelphia .......... w Com. 1.25 2.00 Merchants Record & Show Window ............... m 1.75 2.00 Merks Report, N Y .............................. 1.85 2.00 Messenger, N.Y. (n. 140) ..................... m 1.65 1.25 Messenger of Peace, Marceline, Mo. .... s-m Bap. 1.15 .50 Messenger of Sacred Heart, N.Y. ........ m R. C. .45 2.00 Metal Worker, N.Y. ..................... w Mech. 1.85 1.25 Metaphysical Magazine. (n. 115) .............. m 1.25 2.00 Methodist Magazine & Review .................... 1.80 2.60 Methodist Review, N.Y. .............. bi-m Meth. 2.55 1.50 Methodist Recorder, Pittsburg .......... w Meth. 1.40 1.00 Metropolitan Fashions N.Y. ............. q Fash. 1.00 1.80 Metropolitan Mag., N.Y. (F. P. .84) .......... m 1.80 We allow agents and dealers a commission of 35 cents. Metropolitan Magazine in offer No. 5 with Lippincotts or any class C .............. 3.00 with Pearsons or any class A ................. 2.00 with Etude or any one in Offer 5 ............. 2.50 with Booklovers or any class B ............... 3.25 with any two in class A ...................... 2.50 with any three in class A .................... 3.00 with any two in class B or C ................. 4.75 with any three in class B or C ............... 6.25 .25 Metropolitan an Rural Home, N.Y. ....... m Agri. .20 .60 Michigan Farmer, Detroit ............... w Agri. .50 .25 Michigan Poultry Breeder .............. m Poult. .25 1.50 Midland, Chicago (n. 1.30) ............ w Relig. 1.45 1.00 Midland Schools, Des Moines (n. .80) ......... m .90 1.00 Miliner and Milliner's Guide ........... q Fash. .90 4.00 Millinery Trade Re View, N.Y. .......... m Fash. 4.00 1.00 Milwaukee Journal ....................... w Dem. .90 FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE SEND ME ONLY $3.35 the great leading magazine of the world (price $4.00) or add $3.35 to any combination in this catalogue. Pub. Price Our Price 3.00 Milwaukee Journal ................ 5 issues Dem. 2.00 4.00 Milwaukee Wisconsin (w. .50-.40) ... 6 iss. Rep. 3.40 2.50 Mind, N.Y. (F.P. .50) ................... m Met. 2.15 1.00 Mind & Body, Milwaukee .................. m Edu. .90 2.00 Mines and Minerals, Scranton, Pa ............. m 2.00 6.00 Mining Journal ........................ 6 issues 5.30 2.00 Mining Journal, Marquette, Mich. ........ w Rep. 1.70 3.00 Mining and Sci. Press, San Francisco .... w Min. 2.65 3.00 Mining Reporter, Denver ...................... w 2.50 4.00 Minneapolis Journal .............. 6 issues Ind. 3.60 3.00 Minneapolis Tribune .............. 6 issues Ind. 2.65 4.80 Minneapolis Tribune ................... 7 issues 4.05 1.80 Minneapolis Tribune ..................... Sunday 1.60 .60 Minnesota School Journal ................... s-m .50 .50 Mirror & Farmer, Manchester, N.H. ...... w Agri. .40 .75 Missionary Herald, Boston .............. m Cong. .75 2.50 Missionary Review (n. 2.15) (F.P. .50) .. m Mis. 2.50 1.25 Mo. School Journal, Jefferson City ...... m Edu. .85 1.00 Moderator Topics, Lansing .................... m .80 .50 Modes, N.Y. .................................. m .40 1.50 Modern Language Notes, Balt. ....... 8 Nos. Lit. 1.45 1.00 Modern Machinery, Chicago .................... m .85 1.00 Modern Medicine, Battle Creek ................ m .75 .50 Modern Priscilla, Boston ..................... m .45 2.00 Monist, Chicago ......................... q Sci. 1.65 .60 Montreal Gazette ............................. w .45 6.00 Montreal Gazette ...................... 6 issues 5.00 3.00 Montreal Star .................... 6 issu. News. 2.55 3.00 Montreal Witness (w. 1.00-.70) .... 6 iss. Evan. 2.25 2.00 Morning Star, Boston .................... w Bap. 1.50 2.00 Motor Age, Chicago ........................... w 1.70 2.00 Motor Review ................................. w 1.65 2.00 Municipal Engineering, Indianap. ............. m 2.00 1.00 Munsey's Magazine, N.Y. (F.P. .84) ...... m Lit. 1.00 1.50 Musician, Thos. Tapper, Editor, ....... m Music. 1.25 THE MUSICIAN EMBODIES THE BEST IDEAS, GAINED BY EXPERIENCE, OF THE LEADERS IN THE MUSICAL WORLD. ITS OBJECT IS TO MAKE MORE WIDELY KNOWN THE BEAUTY AND CHARM OF MUSIC, AND TO BRING EVERYBODY WITHIN ITS REFINING INFLUENCE. IT TREATS ON EVERY PHASE OF MUSIC AND MUSIC LIFE. THIS MAGAZINE CONTAINS IN A YEAR AT LEAST $25.00 WORTH OF MUSIC AT RETAIL PRICE. INVALUABLE FOR MUSIC TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND MUSIC LOVERS. 5.00 Musical Courier, N.Y. ................ w Music. 4.25 1.00 Musical Harp. Berea, O. .............. m Music. .75 2.50 Musical Leader & Concert Goer ................ w 1.70 .25 Musical Million, Dayton, Va. .......... m Music. .20 1.25 Musical Times ................................ m 1.25 Add McClure's or Everybody's to any club at $1.00. N .50 Nashville (Tenn.) American ................... w .45 5.20 Nashville American .................... 6 issues 4.50 2.00 Nashville American ...................... Sunday 1.75 5.00 Nashville Banner (w. 1.00-.85) ..... 6 iss. Dem. 4.45 3.00 Nation, New York (F.P. 1.00) ............ w Ins. 2.85 2.00 National Builder, Chicago ...............m Arch. 1.40 1.00 National Druggists, St. Louis ......... m Drugs. .95 .50 National Educator, Allentown ................. m .35 2.50 National Geographic Magazine ............ m Sci. 2.25 1.00 National Laundry Journal, Chi. ........ s-m Com. .80 1.00 National Magazine, Boston ............... m Lit. .80 National Magazine with Good Housekeeping or Pearsons ........... 1.50 with Leslies Monthly Mag., or Success ........ 4.50 with Cosmopolitan or 20th Century Home ....... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 National Nurseryman, Rochester ................. .90 2.00 National Printer Journalist .................. m 2.00 1.00 National Rural, Chicago ................ w Agri. .85 1.00 National Sportsman ........................... m .80 1.00 Nat. Stockman & Farmer Pittsburg ......... Agri. .80 1.00 National Tribune, Wash. ...................... w 1.00 6.00 Nature, New York, Reprint ............... w Sci. 5.40 1.00 Nautilus ..................................... m .90 1.00 Nebraska Farmer, Lincoln ................ w Agr. .80 .25 Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln .......... Rep. .25 1.00 Nebraska Teacher, Lincoln ............... m Edu. .90 2.00 New Church Rev., Boston ...................... q 1.75 3.00 New England Magazine (F.P. .75) ......... m Lit. 2.65 1.00 New England Farmer, Boston ............. w Agri. .85 2.00 New England Grocer, Boston (n. 1.85)..... w Com. 2.00 1.50 New England Medical Monthly ............. m Med. 1.20 1.00 New England Homest'd, Springfield ............ w 1.00 2.00 New Haven Register ...................... Sunday 1.90 6.00 New Haven Register .................... 6 issues 5.60 .50 New Idea Woman's Magazine, N.Y. ........ m Fash. .50 1.75 New illustrated Magazine, N.Y. .......... m Lit. 1.65 2.00 New Orleans Picayune (s-w. 1.00-.90) .. Sun Dem. 2.00 10.00 New Orleans Picayune ............. 6 issues Dem. 10.00 1.00 New Orleans Times-Democrat .............. w Dem. 1.00 12.00 New Orleans Times-Democrat .......... 7 iss Dem. 12.00 2.00 Newspaperdom, N.Y. ........................... w 1.75 1.00 New Voice, Chicago (new .90) ........... w Temp. 1.00 1.00 N.Y. Accts. & Bookkeeper's Jour. ............. m .60 2.50 New York American and Journal ........ Sun. Dem. 2.20 8.50 New York American and Jour. ........ 7 iss. Dem. 7.00 6.00 New York American & Journal. ....... 6 iss. Dem. 5.00 4.00 New York Clipper (F.P. 1.50) .......... w Sport. 3.25 6.00 N.Y. Commercial, & Price Current ....... d Trade 5.40 7.50 New York Commercial Adv. Eve. with Saturday sup .............................. 6 Issues Rep. 5.25 2.50 N.Y. Com. Adv. Sat. Edition & Sup. ........... w 1.95 4.00 N.Y. Dramatic Mirror ......................... w 8.40 3.50 New York Evening Journal ........... 6 iss. Dem. 3.00 2.00 N.Y. Eve. Post (w. 1.00-85) ........... s-w Ind. 1.90 9.00 N.Y. Eve. Post (Sat. 1.50 1.45) .... 6 iss. Ind. 8.35 1.00 N.Y. Farmer, Port Jervis (n.85) .............. w .90 3.00 N.Y. Family Story Paper (F.P. 12) ............ w 2.40 8.10 N.Y. Herald (Sun. 2.10-2.05) ....... 6 iss. Ind. 8.05 10.10 New York Herald .................. 7 issues Ind. 10 05 2.50 N.Y. Mail and Express ............ Saturday Rep. 2.35 2.25 New York Mail and Express. ....... 5 issues Rep. 2.10 4.50 New York Mail and Express. ....... 6 issues Rep. 4.10 5.00 New York & Phila., Medical Jour .............. w 4.25 5.50 New York News (Sun. 2.50-2.20) ..... 7 iss. Dem. 4.00 3.00 New York News ...................... 6 iss. Dem. 2.60 3.00 New York Observe (n. 2.25) ............. w Evan. 3.00 4.50 New York Press ................... 6 issues Rep. 4.00 6.50 New York Press (Sun. 250-2.30) ..... 7 iss. Rep. 5.75 6.00 New York Sun ..................... 6 issues Dem. 5.60 8.00 New York Sun (Sun. 2.00-1. 90) ..... 7 iss. Dem. 7.40 2.00 New York Telegraph ...................... Sunday 1.75 1.00 N.Y. Teacher's Monographs, N.Y. ......... 6 iss. .90 12.00 N.Y. Morning Telegraph, N.Y. ............ 6 iss. 9.85 6.00 New York Times (Sat. 1.00-.95) ..... 6 iss. Dem. 5.30 8.50 New York Times (Sun. 2.50-230) ..... 7 iss. Dem. 7.45 1.00 New York Tribune Farmer ................. w Rep. .75 8.00 New York Tribune ................. 6 issues Rep. 7.40 10.00 New York Tribune (Sun. 2.00-1.90) ... 7 is. Rep. 9.20 .25 New York Tribune Almanac. ...................... .25 1.50 New York Tribune ........... 3 times a week Rep. 1.20 1.00 N.Y. Tribune Review .......................... w .85 3.00 New York Weekly ......................... w Lit. 2.50 1.00 New York Witness ....................... w Evan. .90 1.00 New York World ............. 3 times a week Dem. .90 6.00 New York World ................... 6 issues Dem. 5.45 3.50 New York World. eve. edition ........ Daily Dem. 3.25 8.50 New York World (Sun. 2.50-2.30) .... 7 iss. Dem. 7.65 .35 New York World Almanac ......................... .35 .50 Nickell Magazine, N.Y. .................. m Lit. .35 4.50 Nineteenth Century (reprint) N.Y. ....... m Lit. 4.00 My agents must charge $4.50 for above. .50 Normal Instructor--Teachers' World ..... m Edu. .45 1.00 Normal Instructor--Teachers' World 3 yrs m Edu. .90 Normal Instructor in offer No. 3: with Success or Good Housekeeping ............ 1.25 with Primary Plans or Am. Education .......... 1.25 with Am. Primary Teacher or Leslie's ......... 1.25 with Pearson or 20th Century Home ............ 1.25 with Popular Educator (new) .................. 1.25 with any two of above ........................ 1.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 North American. Phila. .................... daily 3.00 2.50 North American .......................... Sunday 2.50 5.00 North American Rev., N.Y. (F.P. .96) .... m Lit. 4.25 To Teachers and the Clergy 2.75. North American Review (new): with Success & Good Housekeeping ............. 5.00 with Rev. of Rev. or World's Work ............ 5.75 with Booklover or Independent ................ .75 with any two of above ........................ 7.25 with Outlook (new) ........................... 5.75 with Country Life ............................ 6.00 SEE OTHER CLUB OFFERS IN FOREPART OF THIS CATALOGUE. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar .30 Northern Messenger, Montreal ........... w Temp. .27 .50 North West Agriculturist (n..35) ........... s-m .50 3.00 Northwestern Miller (new 2.50) ............... w 3.00 1.00 Northwest Jour. of Education Olympia ........... .85 1.00 Northwest Pac. Farmer. Port., Oreg. .... w Agri. .85 1.00 Notes and Queries, Manchester, N. H. .... m Edu. .95 O 1.50 Odd Fellows' Talisman ................... m O.F. 1.50 1.00 Ohio Edu. Monthly. Columbus. O .......... m Edu. 1.00 .60 Ohio Farmer, Clevel'd (2 yrs. 1.00-.90) w Agri. .50 .50 Ohio Poultry Journal, Dayton, O ...... m Poult. .35 1.00 Ohio State Journal, Columbus .......... s-w Rep. .85 5.50 Ohio State Journal ................. 6 iss. Rep. 5.20 3.00 Ohio State Jour. (State Ed.) ............ 6 iss. 2.25 .75 Ohio Teacher, Athens .................... m Edu. .60 7.00 Oil City (Pa.) Der'ick (s.w. 1.00-.95) 6 iss Ind. 5.25 4.00 Oil, Paint & Drug Reporter (new 3.25) .......... 4.00 1.00 Olympian, Nashville ..................... m Lit. .75 Add McClure's or Everybody's to any club at $1.00. 4.00 Omaha Bee (Sun. 2.00-1.85) ....... 6 issues Rep. 3.60 4.00 Omaha World Her'ld (s-w 1.00-.85).... 7 iss Ind. 3.40 1.25 Omaha World-Herald ................. Sunday Ind. 1.15 1.00 Open Court, Chicago ..................... m Sci. 1.00 1.50 Oregonian, Portland ..................... w Rep. 1.35 1.00 Orange Judd Farmer ..................... w Agri. 1.00 2.00 Ores and Metals, Denver ...................... m 1.50 1.00 Organ, N.Y. ............................... bi-m .90 1.50 Organist, with binder, Dayton. ........ b-m Mus. 1.40 3.00 Organist's Journal, Arlington, N.J. ..... m Mus. 2.50 2.00 Our Day, Chicago (F. P. .50) ................. m 1.80 .50 Our Dumb Animals, Boston. ............... m Edu. .35 .35 Our Little People, Farmington ........... m Juv. .30 1.00 Our Monthly, Clinton, S.C. ................... m .80 .50 Our Times, N.Y. ......................... m Edu. .50 2.00 Out West, Los Angeles ................... m Lit. 1.90 Out West in offer No. 5: Leslies and Good Housekeeping ................ 2.50 World Today and Harper's Magazine ............ 5.35 Booklovers and Success ....................... 3.50 1.00 Outdoor Life, Denver .................... m Lit. .90 Recognized as authority on big game hunting in America and the most beautifully illustrated sportsmans magazine. Outdoor Life in class A: with Success or Good Housekeeping ............ 1.50 with Leslies or 20th Century Home ............ 1.50 with Pearsons or Recreation .................. 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Am. Inventor ............ 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.50 Outdoors (F.P. 1.00) .................. in Sport 1.00 Outdoors in class A: with Outdoor Life ............................ 1.50 with any one in above Clubs .................. 1.50 with any two in above Clubs .................. 2.00 with any three in above Clubs ................ 2.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 3.00 Outing, N.Y. (F.P. 72) ................ m Sport. 3.00 Outing in class B: with Success and Leslies ..................... 3.00 with Review of Reviews and Recreation ........ 4.25 with Outdoors and World's Work ............... 4.25 with Booklovers and Outdoor Life ............. 4.25 with Smart Set and Pearsons .................. 4.25 with Burr McIntosh and Cosmopolitan .......... 4.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 8.00 Outlook, N.Y. (F.P. 1.56) ............. w Family 3.00 Outlook (new): with Success.................................. 3.00 with Country Life ............................ 5.00 with Harper's Bazar or any class A ........... 3.25 with World's Work and Success ................ 4.50 with Century and House Beautiful ............. 6.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.50 Overland Monthly, San Francisco ......... m Lit. 1.20 P 2.00 Pacific Rural Press, San Francisco ..... w Agri. 1.75 1.00 Pacific Monthly, Portland .................... m .75 2.00 Paint, Oil and Drug Review, Chi. ........ w Com. 1.65 1.50 Painter's Magazine (new 1.40)................. m 1.50 4.00 Paper Trade Journal, N.Y. ............... w Com. 3.25 .25 Parks Floral Magazine, LaParks, Pa. ..... m Flo. .20 1.00 Pathfinder (F. P. 52) ........................ w .90 Pathfinder in class A: with Success or Cosmopolitan ................. 1.50 with Pearsons or Good Housekeeping ........... 1.50 with Leslie's or Am. Education ............... 1.50 with N'rm'l Instructor or Primary Plans ...... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 5.00 Pedagogical Seminary, Worcester. ..... Vol. Edu. 4.50 1.00 Pearson's Magazine, N.Y. ................ m Lit. 1.00 We allow Newsdealers, Postmasters and agents a commission of 25 cents on each Pearson subscription taken at $1.00. Pearson's Magazine in class A: with Success or Cosmopolitan ................. 1.50 with American Boy or Leslies ................. 1.50 with Am. Inventor or Recreation .............. 1.50 with Sunset or Harper's Bazar ................ 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 with Outing and Recreation ................... 3.25 with World's Work and Success ................ 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Penmans Art Jour. N.Y. ....................... m .85 2.00 Pennsylvania Grit, Williamsport .............. w 1.70 1.60 Pennsylvania School Journal ............. m Edu. 1.25 1.00 People and Patriot, Concord ............. w Dem. .90 .35 People's Home Journal, N.Y. ............. m Lit. .30 1.50 Perry's Musical Mag., Sedalia, Mo. ...... m Mus. 1.15 1.00 Perry Magazine, Malden (new .85) ........ m Art. .95 Perry Magazine in Offer No. 4: with Pearson or any in class A ............... 1.75 with Success and any in class B .............. 3.25 with Leslie's and any in class C ............. 3.25 with World today and any class A ............. 1.85 with Harper's Bazar and any class A .......... 2.25 3.00 Pharmaceutical Era, New York ........... w Phar. 2.90 3.00 Phila. Inquirer (Sun. 2.60-2.35) ... 6 iss. Rep. 2.75 3.00 Philadelphia Medical Journal ................. w 3.00 3.00 Philadelphia Press, (w. 1.00-.90) .. 6 iss. Rep. 2.70 5.50 Phila. Press (Sun. 2.50-2.30) .....7 issues Rep. 4.80 3.00 Phila. North American ................. 6 issues 3.00 2.50 Phila. North American ..................... Sun. 2.50 3.00 Phila. Public Ledger and Times ...... 6 iss Ind. 2.65 1.00 Phila. Public Ledger ...................... Sun. .90 1.00 Philadelphia Record (Sat. .50-.50) ... Sun. Ind. 1.00 3.00 Philadelphia Record .............. 6 issues Ind. 3.00 1.00 Philistine, E. Aurora, N.Y. .................. m .90 Philistine in class A with Little Journeys for 1905 ................ 2.00 with Little Journeys (1905) and any one in class A .................................... 2.50 with any one in class A ...................... 1.50 3.00 Philosophical Review, New York ...... bi-m Phil. 2.85 1.00 Photo-American, N.Y. (F.P. 36) ......... m Phot. .85 $500 given in prizes each year. (adv.) 1.00 Phonographic Magazine .......................... .85 1.00 Photo-Beacon, Chicago (F.P. .36) ........ m Art. .85 2.50 Photo Era, Boston ....................... m Art. 2.25 2.50 Photo Miniature, N.Y. ........................ m 2.50 1.00 Photographic Times, Bulletin, N.Y. ...... m Sci. .85 1.00 Phrenological Jour. N.Y. ................ m Hyg. .90 1.00 Physical Culture, N.Y. ....................... m 1.00 Physical Culture in class A with Beauty and Health ....................... 1.25 with Harper's Bazar or Leslie's .............. 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Good Housekeeping ....... 1.50 with Pearson or Success ...................... 1.50 with American Boy or Sunset .................. 1.50 with any two above or in class A ............. 2.00 5.00 Physical Review, N.Y. ........................ m 4.25 1.00 Pictorial Review, N.Y. (F.P. .50) ............ m .75 1.00 Picture and Art Trade, Chicago .......... m Com. .65 1.00 Pickings from Puck ........................... q .90 1.00 Pilgrim, Battle Creek (F. P. .60) ............ m .75 3.00 Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph ..... 6 iss. Ind. 3.00 1.00 Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette.............w Rep. .90 3.00 Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette .......6 iss. Rep. 3.00 6.00 Pittsburgh Dispatch (w 1.00-90)..... 6 iss. Ind. 5.00 2.50 Pittsburgh Dispatch ................ Sunday Ind. 2.15 6.00 Pittsburg Leader ................. 6 issues Ind. 5.20 2.50 Pittsburg Leader ..................... Sun. Ind. 2.15 1.00 Pittsburgh Post (Sun. 2.50-2.20) ........ w Dem. .90 3.00 Pittsburgh Post .................. 6 issues Dem. 3.00 3.00 Pittsburg Time ........................ 6 issues 2.25 1.50 Plant World, Washington, D.C. ........... m Set. 1.25 .50 Pluck, Chicago .......................... m Juv. .40 1.00 Plumbers Trade Journal, N.Y. .......... s-m Com. .90 3.00 Poet Lore, Boston (F.P. .24) ............ q Lit. 2.75 4.00 Police Gazette, N.Y. ......................... w 3.50 2.00 Police News, Boston .................... w Sport 1.75 3.00 Political Science Quarterly, Boston ..... q Sci. 2.60 2.50 Popular Astronomy, Northfield, Minn. ........ m 2.40 1.00 Popular Educator, Boston ................ m Edu. .95 Popular Educator (new) in class A with Primary Education (new) ................. 1.50 with Am. Education or Leslie's ............... 1.50 with Am. Prim. Teacher or Pearson ............ 1.50 with Primary Plans or Pearson ................ 1.50 with any two above or in class A ............. 2.00 with Journal of Geography .................... 1.75 1.20 Popular Magazine, N.Y. ....................... m 1.20 1.00 Popular Mechanics, Chi. ................ m Wash. .90 3.00 Popular Science Monthly, N.Y. (F.P. .50) ..... m 2.90 1.50 Portland (Me.) Transcript ............... w Lit. 1.35 1.00 Posse Gymnasium Journal, Boston .............. m .85 1.00 Post Graduate, New York ...................... m .90 .50 Poultry Herald, St. Paul ..................... m .35 .50 Poultry Keeper, Quincy, Ill. ........... m Poul. .35 .50 Poultry Success. Springfield ................. m .40 2.00 Power, New York (F.P. 1.00) ............ m Mech. 1.95 1.00 Practical Farmer, Philadelphia ......... w Agri. .85 .50 Practical Engineers, Phila. ................... m .25 2.50 Practical Photographer ....................... m 2.25 1.00 Prairie Farmer, Chicago ................ w Agri. .85 .75 Preachers Helper, Cleona, Pa. ................ m .70 1.50 Preachers' Assistant ......................... m 1.35 2.50 Presbyterian, Philadelphia ............. w Pres. 2.25 2.00 Presb. Banner, Pittsburg ............... w Pres. 1.95 1.50 Presb. Journal, Philadelphia (n. 1.25) . w Pres. 1.40 2.00 Presto, Chicago (F. P. 2.00) ............. Mus. 1.25 1.00 Primary Education, Boston ............... m Edu. .95 Primary Education (new) in class A with Popular Educator (new) .................. 1.50 with Primary Plans or Leslie's ............... 1.50 with Am. Prim. Teacher or Pearson ............ 1.50 with Normal instructor or Cosmopolitan ....... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 with Journal of Geography .................... 1.75 FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE SEND ME ONLY $3.35 the great leading magazine of the world (price $4.00) or add $3.35 to any combination in this catalogue. Pub. Price Our Price 1.00 Primary Plans, Dansville ..................... m .90 Primary Plans in class A with Normal Instructor ....................... 1.25 with Popular Educator (new) or Success ....... 1.50 with Primary Education (new) or Leslies ...... 1.50 with Am. Primary Teacher or Pearsons ......... 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Sunset .................. 1.50 with any two of above or in class A .......... 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Primary School Era, Oak Park ................. m .90 1.00 Primary School, N.Y. .................... m Edu. .95 3.00 Princeton Theological Rev. (n. 2.75) ......... q 2.90 5.00 Printing Art, Cambridge ...................... m 4.25 5.00 Printer's Ink, New York ................. w Adv. 3.50 Subscriptions for Printers Ink received before Dec. 31, 1904. $2.00. 1.00 Professional & Amateur Photog'er ............. m .75 Professional & Amateur Photographer in class A with Success or Leslies ...................... 1.50 with Sunset or Good Housekeeping ............. 1.50 with Pearsons or Cosmopolitan ................ 1.50 with Am. Boy or 20th Century Home ............ 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 2.00 Profitable Advertising, Boston ............... m 1.65 1.00 Progressive Teacher, Nashville ............... m .60 Progressive Teacher in class A with Normal Instructor ....................... 1.23 with Popular Educator (new) .................. 1.50 with Primary Education (new) ................. 1.50 with Am. Prim. Teacher or Pearsons ........... 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Sunset .................. 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar 6.00 Providence (R.I.) Journal .......... 5 iss. Ind. 5.00 2.00 Providence (R.I.) Journal .......... Sunday Ind. 1.75 4.00 Psychological Review, N.Y. ................ bi-m 3.90 2.00 Public, Chicago .............................. w 1.60 4.00 Public Opinion, N.Y. (F.P. 1.04) ........ w Ind. 4.00 1.00 Public Libraries, Chi. (new .90) ....... 10 Nos. 1.00 3.00 Publisher's Weekly, N.Y. (n. 2.75) ...... w Com. 3.00 5.00 Puck, New York (F.P. 1.04) .............. w Hum. 4.25 1.00 Puck's Library, N.Y. (F.P. 25) .......... m Hum. .90 1.00 Puck's Quarterly, N.Y. (F.P. 25) ........ q Hum. .85 1.00 Pulpit, Cleona, Pa. ..................... m Ser. .90 1.00 Pythian Age, Milwaukee ....................... m .90 Q 3.00 Quarterly Jour. of Economics, Boston .... q Sci. 2.50 4.00 Quarterly Review ........................ q Lit. 3.65 My agents must charge $4.00 for above. 1.50 Quiver, N.Y. ............................ m Lit. 1.25 R 4.20 Railroad Gazette New York .................... w 4.20 4.00 Railway Age, Chi. (n. 3.25) .................. w 4.00 4.00 Railway and Eng. Review, Chicago ........ w R.R. 3.25 2.00 Railway and Locomotive Eng. .................. m 1.90 1.50 Ram's Horn, Chicago ..................... w Ind. 1.35 2.00 Rand & McNally's R'y Guide, Chi. ............. m 1.75 1.00 Raven, San Francisco ......................... m .75 6.00 Reader's Guide to Periodical Liter'e ......... m 6.00 3.00 Reader's Magazine, Indianapolis ......... m lit. 3.00 Reader's Magazine with Booklover's or any class B or C ......... 3.50 with Scribners ............................... 4.60 with Outlook (new) ........................... 3.75 with North American Review (new) ............. 5.00 with Burr McIntosh ........................... 3.50 1.00 Record of Christian Work, E. Northfield m Ch W'k .90 2.00 Records of the Past, Washing'n (n. 1.85) ......m 1.95 1.00 Recreation, New York (new .65) ............... m .85 1.00 Red Book, Chicago ....................... m Lit. 1.00 1.25 Reformed Church, Mess., Phila. .......... w R.Ch. 1.25 .50 Reliable Poultry Jour.. Quincy, Ill. .. m Poult. .40 2.00 Religious Herald, Richmond (n. 1.65) .... w Bap. 1.85 2.00 Religious Telescope, Dayton, O. ......... s U.B. 1.85 1.00 Resources, Montreal .......................... m .75 5.00 Retailer & Advertiser, N.Y. (n. 4.25) ........ w 5.00 3.00 Review (new 2.85) ............................ w 3.00 2.50 Review of Reviews, N.Y. ...................... m 2.50 Review of Reviews in class B with Success ................................. 2.50 with Art Interchange and Success ............. 4.00 with Pop. Educator (new) and Success ......... 3.00 with Primary Education (new) & Pearson ....... 3.25 with Normal Instructor and Leslie's .......... 3.00 with Art Interchange and Pearson ............. 4.25 with Outlook (new) ........................... 4.25 with Country Life ............................ 4.50 1.00 Rhodora, Boston .............................. m .95 1.00 Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch ......... s-w Dem. .90 3.00 Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch ...... 5 iss. Dem. 2.50 5.00 Richmond Times-Dispatch ............... 6 issues 4.00 5.00 Rider and Driver, New York ................... w 4.25 1.00 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle .......... w Rep. .60 6.00 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle ......6 iss. Rep. 5.25 1.50 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle ....... Sun. Rep. 1.50 3.00 Rochester Evening Times ................. 6 iss. 3.00 6.00 Rochester Morning Herald ........... 6 iss. Dem. 6.00 6.00 Rochester Post-Express ............. 6 iss. Ind. 6.00 6.00 Rochester Union and Advertiser ..... 6 iss. Dem. 5.00 1.00 Rocky Mountain Educator, Denver ................ .75 1.00 Rocky Mountain Herald, Denver ........... w Ind. .90 1.00 Rocky Mountain News .......................... w .95 7.00 Rocky Mountain News .................. iss. Pop. 5.85 2.50 Rocky Mountain News ..................... Sunday 2.20 9.00 Rocky Mountain News .............. 7 issues Dem. 7.40 2.00 Rudder, New York ............................. m 1.90 1.00 Rural California, Los Angeles .......... m Agri. .75 1.00 Rural New Yorker, New York ............. w Agri. .95 6.00 Rutland, (Vt.) Herald (n. 1.00.-.95) 6 iss. Rep. 5.60 S .50 Sabbath Reading, N.Y. .................. w Evan. .45 1.00 Sacramento Record-Union ................. w Rep. .90 2.00 Sacred Heart Rev, Boston (n. 1.50) ........... w 1.75 1.00 St. Andrews Cross, N.Y. ............... m Epis. .75 3.00 St. Nicholas (sample 5c.) ............... m Juv. 2.65 Saint Nicholas with Review of Reviews and Success ........... 5.00 with World's Work or Review of Reviews ....... .75 with Little Folks (new) or Youth ............. 3.50 with Leslie's Monthly & Harper's Bazar ....... 4.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 10.00 Salt Lake C'y Herald (s-w. 1.50-1.55) 7 iss Dem. 8.25 2.00 Salt Lake City Tribune ................ s-w Ind. 1.75 2.00 Salt Lake City Tribune (Sunday) ................ 1.75 12.00 Salt Lake City (7 issues) ...................... 10.45 9.00 San Diego Union (w. 1.50-1.30) (n. 8.25) .......................... 7 iss. Rep. 9.00 6.80 San Fran. Bulletin (Sun. 2.00-1.45) 7 iss. Ind. 5.25 8.00 San Francisco Call (w 1.00-.80) .... 7 iss. Ind. 6.75 No discount on Call west of Rocky Mountains. 8.00 San Fran. Chronicle (w. 1.50-.1.25) 7 iss. Ind. 6.75 No discount on above in Cal., Ore or Wash. 8.00 San Fran. Examiner (w. 1.50-1.25) .. 7 iss. Ind. 6.75 4.00 San Francisco News Letter ............... w Ind. 8.25 5.00 San Francisco Post (w. 1.00-.85) . 6 issues Ind. 4.25 1.00 Saturday Blade, Chicago ................. w Lit. .85 2.00 Saturday Evening Post ................... w Lit. 2.00 SATURDAY EVENING POST, SPECIAL OFFER $1.25 The regular price of this magazine is $2.00 a year. We are permitted to quote you a price of $1.25 a year. [Graphic of pointing hand] TO SUBSCRIPTION AGENTS ONLY A COMMISSION OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ALLOWED FROM MY SPECIAL PRICE OF $1.25 PER YEAR with the stipulation that the first order for this magazine forwarded by an agent must contain at least TWO subscriptions for it for which the subscribers have paid my special subscription price. A single subscription will be accepted only at $1.25 unless previous orders for it have been received this season. Must not be taken in club with other publications, at cut rates, nor given as a premium. Subscriptions so taken will be rejected, or subsequently "killed." COMMISSION ALSO ALLOWED TO NEWSDEALERS AND POSTMASTERS. CHRISTMAS AND GIFT CARDS When requested and name of donors sent with subscription to us we will have the beautiful cards which the POST publishers advertise to furnish, sent free to the subscriber. Christmas cards will be received by the subscriber Christmas morning if order is received in time. Forward your subscriptions at the earliest date possible. SEND ME $2.25: SATURDAY EVENING POST 2.00 LADIES' HOME JOURNAL 1.00 SATURDAY EVENING POST FREE Send me THREE (3) orders for the combination SATURDAY EVENING POST and LADIES' HOME JOURNAL at $2.25 each and you may have FREE as your premium and sent to any address desired a yearly subscription to the SATURDAY EVENING POST or for TWO (2) orders a yearly subscription to the LADIES' HOME JOURNAL. 2.00 Saturday Night, Toronto, Can. ........... w Lit. 1.50 6.00 Savannah (Ga.) News (w. 1.00-.90) .. 6 iss. Lit. 5.60 2.00 School, N.Y. ............................ w Edu. 1.75 1.00 School Arts Book, Worcester ............ 10 nos. .85 School Arts Book in Offer No. 4 with Success or Good Housekeeping ............ 1.75 with Popular Educator (new) or Leslies ....... 1.75 with Primary Plans or Pearsons ............... 1.75 with Am. Prim. Teacher or Cosmopolitan ....... 1.75 with Primary Education (new) or Sunset ....... 1.75 with any two of above ........................ 2.25 with Journal of Education .................... 2.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 School Bulletin, Syracuse (F.P. .12) .... m Edu. .85 1.25 School and Home Education ......... 10 Nos. Edu. 1.10 1.00 School Education. (.70 new) ....... 10 Nos. Edu. .96 .50 School Music Monthly ......................... m .40 School Music Monthly in Offer No. 3 with Am. Education or Leslies ................ 1.25 with Primary Plans or Success ................ 1.25 with Am. Prim. Teacher or Pearsons ........... 1.25 with Pop. Educator or Cosmopolitan ........... 1.25 with any two of above ........................ 1.75 1.50 School Review, Chi. (F.P. .50) .... 10 Nos. Edu. 1.30 1.25 School News, Taylorville, Ill. .......... m Edu. 1.00 .60 School Physiology Journal .............. 10 Nos. .50 .35 School World, Farmington, Me. ........... m Edu. .30 1.00 School Work, N.Y. .............................. .90 2.00 School World, N.Y. ........................... m 1.80 2.00 School Journal, N.Y. .................... w Edu. 1.90 2.00 School of Mines Quar., N.Y. (n. 1.55) ... q Min. 1.65 5.00 Science, New York ....................... w Set. 4.90 3.00 Scientific American N.Y. (F.P. 1.00) .... w Sci. 2.75 Scientific American with Outlook (new) ........................... 5.25 with Success and Leslies Monthly Mag ......... 4.25 with Art Interchange or Outing ............... 4.75 with Journal of Education .................... 4.75 with Am. Education or Cosmopolitan ........... 3.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 5.00 Scientific American Supplement .......... w Sci. 4.25 7.00 Scientific American & Supplement ........ w Set. 6.00 2.50 Scientific American Building Mo ........ m Sci. 2.15 3.00 Scottish American, N.Y. ...................... w 2.65 3.00 Scribner's Magazine, (sample 10c.) ...... m Lit. 3.00 To Agents, Postmasters and Newsdealers we allow a commission of 15 cents on Scribner's providing they collect $3.00 of the subscriber. SCRIBNER'S MAY BE ADDED TO ANY COMBINATION FOR $2.85 BUT SEPARATELY COSTS $3.00. Scribner's Magazine: with Success or Good Housekeeping ............ 3.85 with Cosmopolitan or 20th Century Home ....... 3.85 with Popular Educator or Pearsons ............ 3.85 with Am. Education or Am. Boy ................ 3.85 with any two of above or in class A .......... 4.35 with World's Work or Rev. of Reviews ......... 5.10 with Rev. of Reviews and Success ............. 5.35 with Century and House Beautiful ............. 7.35 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 5.00 Seattle (Wash.) Times ............ 6 issues Ind. 4.20 1.00 Seattle (Wash.) Times ........................ m .90 1.00 Service, Chicago ............................. m 1.00 Service with any one in class A ...................... 1.50 with Success and any one in Class B .......... 3.00 4.00 Shoe and Leather Reporter, (n. 3.25) ...... Com. 4.00 3.00 Shoe Retailer and Boots and Shoes ...... m Shoes 3.00 1.00 Shoe Trade Journal ........................... w .65 3.50 Shooting and Fishing, N.Y. ............. w Sport 2.75 4.00 Shoppell's Modern Houses, N.Y. ........ q Archi. 3.00 2.50 Short Stories (fiction) N.Y. (F.P. .48) ... Fie. 2.20 2.00 Sibley Journal of Engineering ........... 9 Nos. 1.80 1.50 Signs of the Times, Oakland .................. w 1.15 1.00 Silver Cross, Kings Daughters, N.Y. .......... m .90 4.00 Sioux City Journal (s-w. 1.00-.65) . 6 iss. Rep. 3.40 1.00 Sioux City Tribune ......................... s-w .70 1.00 Sis Hopkins Magazine, N.Y. ................... m .90 Sis Hopkins with Pearson or Cosmopolitan ................. 1.50 with Leslies or Good Housekeeping ............ 1.50 with Success and Outing ...................... 3.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 6.00 Sketch (Am. Ed.) ............................. w 5.60 1.00 Small Farmer, N.Y. ........................... m .70 2.50 Smart Set, N.Y. (new 2.40) .............. m Lit. 2.50 Smart Set in class C with Success or Am. Boy ...................... 2.50 with Good Housekeeping or Leslies ............ 2.50 with 20th Century Home or Cosmopolitan ....... 2.50 with Harper's Bazar or Pearsons .............. 2.50 with any two above ........................... 3.00 with Art Interchange ......................... 3.75 with any one in class B or C ................. 3.75 Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar 1.00 Social Service, N.Y. ......................... m .90 3.00 Something to Read, (Am. ed.) N.Y. ............ m 2.65 1.00 South Dakota Educator, Mitchell .........10 Nos. .80 .50 Southern Planter ............................. w .50 2.00 Southern Churchmen, Richmond ..................w 1.80 1.00 Southern Cultivator, Atlanta ......... s-m Agri. .75 1.00 Southern Educational Journal ................. m .95 2.00 Southern Lumberman, Nashville ......... s-m Lum. 1.65 1.00 Southern School Journal ...................... m .60 4.00 Spectator, N.Y. (n. 3.35) ............... w Lit. 4.00 1.00 Spirit of Missions, N.Y. ............... m Miss. .85 1.00 Spirit of '76, N.Y. .................... m Hist. .75 Spirit of '76 in class A with Success or Good Housekeeping ............ 1.50 with Harper's Bazar or Leslie ................ 1.50 with House Beautiful or Cosmopolitan ......... l.50 4.00 Spirit of the Times and Sport N.Y. .... w Sport. 3.40 3.00 Spokane (Wash.) Chronicle ............. 6 issues 2.75 1.00 Spokesman Review ........................... s-w .90 8.50 Spokesman Review ....................... 6 issue 7.50 1.50 Sports Afield, Chicago ....................... m 1.25 4.00 Sports of the Times ...........................w 3.40 2.00 Sporting Life, Philadelphia ........... w Sport. 1.75 2.00 Sporting News, St. Louis .............. w Sport. 1.75 2.00 Sportsmen's Review, Cincinnati ........ w Sport. 1.75 1.00 Springfield (Mass.) Republican .......... w Ind. .95 8.00 Springfield (Mass.) Republican ..... 6 iss. Ind. 7.40 2.00 Springfield (Mass.) Republican ....... Sun. Ind. 1.80 6.00 Springfield (Mass.) Union ....... 6 issues. Rep. 5.20 2.50 Springfield (Mass.) Union................ Sunday 2.25 1.00 Square and Compass, Denver ................... m .75 2.00 Standard, Chicago........................ w Bap. 1.90 4.00 Standard and Vanity Fair, N.Y. ............... w 3.25 .50 Star Monthly, Oak Park........................ m .46 1.00 Stenographer, Phila. (F.P. 25) ............... m .75 5.00 Stockholder, N.Y......................... d Fin. 4.00 3.00 St. Louis Chronicle........................... d 2.00 2.00 St. Louis and Canadian Photo'her ...... m Photo. 1.75 2.00 St. Louis Christian Advocate (n. 1.75) . w Meth. 1.90 1.50 St. Louis Globe Democrat ............. Sat. Rep. 1.45 2.00 St. Louis Globe Democrat ........... Sunday Rep. 1.90 1.00 St. Louis Globe Democrat ................... s-w .85 4.00 St. Louis Globe Democrat ......... 6 issues Rep. 3.80 6.00 St. Louis Globe Democrat ......... 7 issues Rep. 5.60 1.00 St. Louis Med. & Surg. Jour .................. m .65 2.00 St. Louis Post Dispatch ............ Sunday Dem. 1.65 4.00 St. Louis Post Dispatch .......... 6 issues Dem. 3.20 1.00 St. Louis Republic..................... s-w Dem. .85 1.00 St. Louis Republic (Sun. 2.00-1.90) 6 iss Dem. 3.85 1.50 St. Louis Republic ............... Saturday Dem. 1.45 1.50 St. Paul Daily News .............. 6 issues Ind. 1.35 1.20 Strand (Am. Ed.) ........................ m Lit. 1.20 8.00 Street Railway Journal (n. 2.50) ............. m 2.65 3.00 Street Railway Review, Chicago.......... w Mech. 2.20 1.00 Students' Journal, New York ............ m Phon. .90 3.00 Studies in Hist. & Pol. Science, Balt ... m Sci. 2.65 1.00 Success, New York (F.P. .75) .......... m Family 1.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. ONE MAGAZINE FREE Send me THREE orders for ANY combination (except Ladies' Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post) and I will give you FREE, to be sent to any address desired, a yearly subscription to any periodical in class A or Offer No. 3. YOUR own club and TWO OTHER CLUBS make the THREE clubs. Success in class A: with Pearsons or Popular Educator (new) ...... 1.50 with Leslies or Prim. Education (new) ........ 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Primary Plans ........... 1.50 with Good Housekeeping or Am. Boy ............ 1.50 with any two of above or in class A .......... 2.00 with Review of Reviews or Independent ........ 2.50 with World's Work and Leslies ................ 3.00 with International Studio .................... 4.50 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. .25 Success With Flowers, West Grove ............. m .20 1.00 Suggestion, Chicago (n. .60) ................. m .75 .60 Sunday School Illustrator, Chi ......... m S.S. .55 1.00 Sunday School Times, Phila. ............. w Evan. 1.60 Add McClure's or Everybody's to any club at $1.00. 1.00 Sunset Magazine, San Francisco ......... m Trav. .75 Sunset Magazine in class A: with Successor Good Housekeeping ............ 1.50 with Cosmopolitan or Pop. Educator (n) ...... 1.50 with Primary Plans or Pearsons .............. 1.50 with Leslies or Primary Plan ................ 1.50 with any two of above or in class A ......... 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. .50 Sunny South, Atlanta. ................... w Lit. .50 .50 Swine Breeders' Jour ................. s-m Agri. .45 5.00 Syracuse Journal (w. 1.00-.95) ..... 6 iss. Rep. 4.20 2.00 System, Chicago .............................. m 2.00 System in class A: with Cosmopolitan or Leslies ................. 2.00 with World's Work or Review of Reviews........ 3.25 with Country Life ............................ 4.00 with North American Review.................... 5.00 with Book-keeper and Pearson ................. 2.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. Add McClure's or Everybody's to any club at $1.00. T 1.00 Table Talk, Philadelphia ................ m Cul. .85 1.00 Talent, Phila. ............................... m .75 1.50 Tales from Town Topics (new 1.25) ............ q 1.40 1.00 Teacher's College Record, ................. bi-m .90 .25 Teacher's Gazette, Milford ................... m .20 1.00 Teacher's Journal, Marion ...................... .70 1.00 Teachers' Institute. N.Y. ......... 10 nos. Edu. .95 FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE SEND ME ONLY $3.35 the great leading magazine of the world (price $4.00) or add $3.35 to any combination in this catalogue. Pub. Price Our Price 2.00 Technical World .............................. m 2.00 Technical World in class A: with Success or Pearson ...................... 1.50 with Leslie's or 20th Century Home ........... 1.50 with American Inventor or Am. Boy ............ 1.50 with Book-keeper or Ladies' World ............ 1.25 with Sunset or Good Housekeeping ............. 1.50 with any two of the above .................... 2.00 with any three of the above .................. 2.50 with Review of Reviews and Success ........... 3.00 with Booklover and Leslies ................... 3.25 1.00 Telephone Magazine, Chi. (F.P. .50) .......... m .80 1.00 Telephony, Chicago (new .85) ................. m 1.00 1.00 Ten Story Book, Chi. .................... m Lit. .75 1.00 Texas Farm and Ranch, Dallas ........... w Agri. .85 1.00 Texas Farmer, Dallas ......................... w .50 1.00 Texas School Journal, San Antonia ....... m Edu. .85 1.00 Texas Stock and Farm Jour., Dallas ...... w L.S. .75 2.00 Textile World Record, Boston ................. m 1.70 5.00 Textile Colorist, Phil. (F.P. .60) ..... m. Sci. 4.50 3.00 Theatre, N.Y. ................................ m 2.45 2.00 Therapeutic Gazette, Detroit ............ m Med. 1.75 1.00 Thrift Magazine .............................. m .60 2.00 Tobacco, New York............................. w 1.65 2.00 Tobacco Leaf, New York (n. 3.25) ........ w Com. 1.65 2.00 Toilettes, New York (Junior Ed. .90).....m Fash. 1.65 5.00 Toledo Bee (w. .50-.45) .......... 6 issues Dem. 4.20 5.00 Toledo Blade (w. 1.00-.70) ....... 6 issues Rep. 4.25 4.00 Topeka Capital (n. 3.25) ......... 5 issues Rep. 4.00 1.00 Topeka Capital (new .85) .............. s-w Rep. 1.00 .50 Topeka State Journal ......................... w .45 3.60 Topeka State Journal .................. 6 issues 3.10 3.00 Toronto Eve Mail and Empire ............. 6 iss. 2.50 1.75 Toronto Globe (W 1.00-85) ............. Sat Ind. 1.50 4.00 Toronto Globe, morning edition ..... 6 iss. Ind. 3.50 3.00 Toronto Globe, evening edition .......... 6 iss. 2.50 1.00 Toronto Mail and Empire ................. w Ind. .85 2.00 Toronto Mail and Empire (In Prov. of Ontario and city of Montreal 3.50) .............. 6 iss Ind. 1.95 1.00 Toronto News ..................... 6 issues Ind. .90 3.00 Toronto World (Sun. 2.00-1.40) ..... 6 iss. Ind. 2.20 3.00 Topical Architecture ......................... m 2.50 4.00 Town and Country, N.Y. ................. w Ill's 3.25 4.00 Town Topics, N.Y. (new 3.60) ........... w Soc. 3.75 2.00 Trained Nurse & Hospital Rev. N.Y. ........... m 1.50 2.00 Treasury of Religious Thought ................ m 1.75 2.00 Trotter and Pacer, N.Y. ...................... w 1.65 6.00 Troy Times (S.W. 1.10-.90) ....... 6 issues Rep. 5.60 3.00 Truth Seeker, New York (n. 2.25) ........ w A.R. 2.65 4.00 Turf, Field & Farm, N.Y. (n. 2.50) .... w Sport. 3.50 1.00 Twentieth Century Home Irvington ........ m Lit. 1.00 Twentieth Century Home in class A: with Success or Pop. Educator (n) ............ 1.50 with Good Housekeeping or Am. Boy ............ 1.50 with Leslie's or Primary Plans ............... 1.50 with Pearson or Am. Prim. Teacher ............ 1.50 with any two above or in class A. ............ 2.00 with Review of Rev. and Success .............. 3.00 1.00 Typewriter & Phonograph World ................ m .75 U .50 Union Gospel News, Cleveland ................. w .50 1.00 Union Signal, Chicago ................... w Tem. 1.00 1.50 United Presbyterian, Pitts. (n. 1.40) .. w Pres. 1.50 5.00 U.S. Investor, Boston (n. 4.25) .............. w 5.00 2.00 United States Official Postal Guide (paper binding) with supplements .............. m Post. 1.75 2.50 Same (cloth binding) ................... m Post. 2.15 2.00 Unity, Chicago ............................... w 1.65 2.00 University Med. Mag., Phila. (n. 1.65) ... m Med 2.00 1.00 University of Chi. Record (F.P. .50) ......... w .95 2.00 Universal Brotherhood, N.Y. .................. m 1.65 2.00 Universalist Leader, Boston (n 1.90) ... w Univ. 2.00 2.00 Utica Globe ............................... Sat. 2.00 6.00 Utica Herald (s-w. 1.00-.90) ..... 6 issues Rep. 5.60 6.00 Utica Observer (s-w. 1.00-.90) ... 6 issues Dem. 5.60 6.00 Utica Press (new 5.60) ........... 6 issues Ind. 6.00 1.00 Utica Press ........................... s-w Ind. 1.00 V 1.00 Vegetarian, Chicago .......................... m .70 .15 Vickery's Fireside Visitor, Augusta ..... m Lit. .15 .50 Vick's Family Magazine, Roch. .......... m Hort. .35 Vick's Magazine in Offer No. 3: with Housekeeper & McCalls ................... 1.00 with Cosmopolitan and Leslies ................ 1.65 with Leslies' Monthly ........................ 1.25 with any one in class A ...................... 1.25 with Pearsons and Woman's Home Companion ..... 1.73 with Success and World Today ................. 1.75 VICK'S FAMILY MAGAZINE has been the leading authority on Flowers, Fruits, the Garden, etc., for over a quarter of a century. It has recently been enlarged and improved, new departments added for the Household, Children, Nature Study and Poultry, also continued and short stories. _"Adv."_ .50 Violin World. N.Y. ........................... m .45 3.00 Vogue, New York ........................ w Fash. 3.00 1.50 Voice of Fashion, Chicago .................... q 1.20 W 1.00 Wall Paper News, etc. ........................ m .90 1.00 Wallace's Farmer and Dairyman ................ w .90 12.00 Wall Street Jour., N.Y. (n. 9.25) daily ........ 12.00 5.00 Wall Street News, New York. 6 issues. ..... Com. 4.50 2.00 Washington Chronicle ............. Saturday Rep. 1.25 6.00 Washington Post (Sun. 1.50-1.35) ... 6 iss. Ind. 5.00 6.00 Washington Evening Star .......... 6 issues Ind. 5.20 5.00 Wasp, San Francisco ..................... m Ind. 4.00 2.50 Watchman, Boston ........................ w Bap. 2.35 1.00 Watchword and Truth, Boston ........... m Evan. .75 1.00 Waverly Magazine, Boston ................ w Lit. .80 1.00 Wayside Tales, Chicago ................. m Lit. .75 1.25 Week's Current, (40 w .90) .............. w Ind. 1.10 2.00 Week's Progress .............................. w 2.00 Week's Progress in Offer No. 5 with Leslie's or in class A .................. 2.00 with Pearson and any in class A .............. 2.50 with Outing and any in class B ............... 3.25 with Smart Set and any in class C ............ 3.00 with Cosmopolitan and any class B or C ....... 3.75 with Harper's Bazar and Country Life ......... 4.50 2.00 Western Arch. and Builder, Cin. ........ m Arch. 1.35 1.25 Western Druggist, Chicago .............. m Phar. 1.20 3.00 Western Electrician, Chicago ........... w Elec. 2.50 1.00 Western Painter, Chicago ..................... m .75 2.00 Western Horseman, Indianapolis ......... w Sport 1.75 1.50 Western Jour. of Ed.. San Fran. ......... m Edu. 1.15 .60 Western Penman. Cedar Rapids, Ia. ....... m Edu. .50 1.00 Western Penman (Prof'nal Ed.) ................ m .85 1.00 Western Teacher, Milwaukee .............. m Edu. .85 1.00 Western School Journal. Topeka .......... m Edu. .85 1.00 Western Sportsman .............................. .65 1.00 Western Undertaker, Chicago .................... .70 2.00 Western Watchman, St. Louis ............ w R. C. 1.65 4.50 Westminster Review. N.Y. ................ m Lit. 4.00 My agents must charge full price for above review. .60 Westminster Teacher, Phila. ............ m Pres. .60 1.00 West Virginia School Journal ............ m Edu. .85 1.00 What to Eat, Chicago (F. P. .50) ............. m .65 What to Eat in class A: with Harper's Bazar or Leslies ............... 1.50 with Good Housekeeping or Pearsons ........... 1.50 with Am. Boy or Am. Education ................ 1.50 with Popular Educator (new) or Leslies ....... 1.50 with Am. Prim. Teacher or 20th Cen'ry Home ... 1.50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers In forepart of this catalogue. Everybody's may be added to any club for One Dollar .50 What Women Should Know ....................... m .45 1.00 Wheeling (W. Va.) Intelligencer. ........ w Rep. .85 5.20 Wheeling (W. Va.) Intelligencer. .... 6 iss Rep. 4.45 1.00 Wheeling (W. Va.) Register .............. w Dem. .80 5.20 Wheeling (W. Va.) Register ......... 6 iss. Dem. 3.75 1.20 Wide World Magazine, N.Y................ m Lit. 1.20 3.00 Wilson's Photo. Maga. N.Y. ............ m Photo. 3.00 .75 Wisconsin Farmer, Madison .............. w Agri. .60 1.00 Wisconsin Jour. of Edu., Madison ........ m Edu. 1.00 1.00 Wisconsin State Journal, Madison. ....... w Rep. .85 4.00 Wisconsin State Jour., Madison. .... 6 iss. Rep. 3.25 .50 Wisdom, Boston................................ w .45 1.00 Wiltshire Magazine, N.Y. ..................... m .60 1.00 Woman's Home Companion .................. m Lit. 1.00 Woman's Home Companion with Cosmopolitan or Success ................. 1.60 with What to Eat or Pearsons ................. 1.60 with Prim. Education (n) or Leslies. ......... 1.60 with Am. World today. ........................ 1.70 with Am. Pri. Teacher or Sunset .............. 1.60 with any two of above ........................ 2.10 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. .50 Woman's Journal, Alliance (n. 35) ............ m .50 .25 Woman's Home Journal, Boston ................. m .20 2.50 Woman's Journal, Boston (n. 1.50) ....... w Soc. 2.50 .60 Woman's Missionary Mag., Xenia, O. ............. .60 1.00 Woman's Tribune, Washington .................. w .75 1.00 Woman's Work, Athens, Ga. .................... m .65 .50 Woman's Work for Women, N.Y. ................. m .50 .10 Woman's Magazine, St. Louis .................. m .10 1.00 Woodworker, Indianapolis .............. in Mech. .85 BOTH $2.25 _A FULL YEAR_ THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL _MONTHLY_ _THE SATURDAY EVENING POST Weekly_ Pub. Price Our Price .75 Word & Works, with almanac .............. m Sci. .60 1.50 World's Crisis, Boston (n. 1.35) ............... 1.45 .50 Wool Market and Sheep .......................... .40 1.50 Work, N.Y. ..................................... 1.25 1.00 World Wide, Montreal ........................... .70 1.00 World's Events, Dansville ...................... .60 World's Events in Offer No. 3: with Normal Instructor or Cosmopolitan ....... 1.25 with Primary Education (new) or Leslies ...... 1.25 with Pop Educator, American Boy or Success ... 1.25 with Am. Education or Am. Boy ................ 1.25 with Primary Plans or Sunset ................. l.25 with any two of above ........................ 1.75 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 2.50 World's Fair Bulletin, St. Louis ............. m 2.10 1.00 World's Review, Buffalo ................. w News .75 1.00 World To-day, Chicago (F.P. 1.00) ....... m Lit. 1.00 World Today: with Leslies or Cosmopolitan ................. 1.60 with Am. Education or Pearsons ............... 1.60 with Popular Educator or Sunset (new) ........ 1.60 with any two of above ........................ 2.10 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 8.00 World's Work, N.Y. (F.P. 96) ............ m Lit. 3.00 World's Work in class B: with Success and Pearson's ................... 3.00 with Etude or School Review .................. 3.25 with Art Interchange and Success ............. 4.00 with Country Life ............................ 4.50 with Outlook (new) ........................... 4.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 World Wide, Montreal ......................... w .70 1.00 Writer, Boston For literary workers .......... m .90 Y .50 Young Americans, N.Y. .................. m Youth .50 Young Americans: with Am. Boy or Little Folks (new.) .......... 1.25 with Success or Am. Education ................ 1.25 with Leslies or Am. Primary Teacher .......... 1.25 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.00 Young Catholic Magazine, N.Y. .............. s-m .65 1.00 Young Folks' Musical Monthly ............ m Mus. .75 .50 Young Idea, Boston Club of 10.3.15. ..... m Juv. .40 4 00 Young Ladies' Jour. (reprint) N.Y. ..... m Fash. 3.65 3.75 Young Ladies' Journal, London .......... m Fash. 3.25 .75 Young Peoples Weekly, Elgin .................. w .75 1.00 Youth, Philadelphia ............................ .75 Youth in class A: with Am. Boy or Success ...................... 1.50 with Popular Educator or Leslies (new) ....... 1.50 with Am. Prim. Teacher or Cosmopolitan ....... 1.50 with Am. Education or 20th Century Home ...... .50 with any two of above ........................ 2.00 See other club offers in forepart of this catalogue. 1.75 Youth's Companion, Boston ............. w Family 1.75 1.75 Youth's Companion NEW (see below) ..... w Family Ask YOUTH'S COMPANION, NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS, BIG PAY, To agents who agree to charge subscribers $1.75 we will give a BIG commission (same as last year) for new subscribers, or you can send $1.75 and we will return or credit the discount, as you prefer. NO DISCOUNT TO SUBSCRIBERS. Youth's Companion will not accept a transfer from one member to another of same family as new. Do not send less than $1.75 for transfers or renewals. SPECIAL OFFER. New subscribers to the Youth's Companion received before Jan. 1st, 1905 will receive the balance of 1904 free and all subscribers will receive the Companion Calendar in twelve colors and gold if orders is sent to us. Z 3.00 Zanesville (O) Times-Recorder (6 iss.) ......... 2.65 2.50 Zion's Herald, Boston .................. w Meth. 2.15 1.25 Zion's Watchman, Albany, (n. 1.15) ........... w 1.25 1.00 Zion's Watchtower, Allegheny ................s-m .85 Space at our disposal does not permit us to give our Foreign list of British, German and French periodicals _but on application we will send free, postpaid, to any person interested, our Complete Price List_ of the above, including a large number of American periodicals in foreign languages. Address orders or requests. D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, NEW YORK. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE SEND ME ONLY $3.35 the great leading magazine of the world (price $4.00) or add $3.35 to any combination in this catalogue. THERE IS SOMETHING REMARKABLE when a magazine can treble its circulation in four years. Four years ago the circulation of MCCALL'S MAGAZINE--Fashions and Literature for Ladies--was 200,000. Today the circulation is more than SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND COPIES A MONTH. Every lady who receives McCall's Magazine has paid for it in advance 50 CENTS FOR ONE YEAR. While there are six hundred thousand women who pay in advance to receive McCall's Magazine regularly we believe there are many times this number who would subscribe had they an opportunity of seeing a copy. We will send--without charge--a recent issue to every lady who asks us--a postal card will do. When you see a copy you will know why so many ladies look upon McCall's Magazine as a necessity. THE MCCALL COMPANY, FASHION PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK CITY. [Illustration: family group reading Youth's Companion together: READ BY MEN For its honest treatment of affairs and its manly fiction. READ BY WOMEN For its helpfulness in home life, its entertaining stories and anecdotes. READ BY YOUNG PEOPLE For its wealth of good stories and aid in all educational work.] THE YOUTH'S COMPANION IS READ BY EVERYBODY. It provides a common bond of interest and a never-failing source of entertainment and information for all the members of the family circle. 225 well-known men and women will write for the 1905 Volume. Illustrated Prospectus and Specimen Copies of Paper Free. [[ *Transcriber's note: The following offer was the same as that made publicly for many years by the Youth's Companion to every potential subscriber. ]] EVERY NEW SUBSCRIBER Who cuts out and sends this slip at once (or mentions this offer) to D. D. COTTRELL, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. with $1.75 for The Companion for the fifty-two weeks of 1905 will receive FREE All the Issues of The Youth's Companion for the remaining weeks of 1904 including beautiful holiday numbers. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] The Companion "Carnations" Calendar for 1905, in twelve colors and gold. AS MUCH READING AS WOULD FILL TWENTY OCTAVO VOLUMES. ADD $1.75 FOR THE ABOVE OFFER TO ANY COMBINATION SEND ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS TO D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY. NORTH COHOCTON, NEW YORK. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] AS TO A GREAT DEAL FOR A LITTLE Suppose a book canvasser should come to your door and offer you two volumes as large as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, containing nearly a thousand pages in each volume, and illustrated with ten thousand pictures that interested you; and suppose that within the limits of the volumes there would be the equivalent of a book on dressmaking (carefully illustrated), a book on millinery (carefully illustrated), a book on dress fabrics, a book on fancy work, a book giving all the latest news of New York, London and Paris as related to fashions, a book of Stories and Pastimes for Children, a book of Cookery and Kitchen Information, a book on House-building and House-furnishing; and then suppose that, in addition to all this, the book canvasser should point out that in his two large volumes there were over six hundred pages of stories, poems and literary articles, the latest advice regarding Club Women and Club Life, and, above all, three thousand pictures of styles for all the family, and of hats for women and children, the whole beautifully printed, with many pages in colors on excellent paper; then if this book canvasser should tell you that these two great volumes--a real cyclopedia of all that a woman wishes to read about--could be yours for a dollar, wouldn't it almost suggest to your mind a doubt of his sincerity? But you cannot doubt our sincerity--and for a moment we are this supposed book canvasser. The next twelve issues of The Delineator, covering one year's subscription, give you all (except semi-annual binding) that we have described above, and much more that is unspecified. _JUST ONE DOLLAR A YEAR_ THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO., Butterick Building, New York _THE_ ART INTERCHANGE FOR 1905 SHOULD BE IN EVERY HOME ALWAYS A LEADER AMONG THE ART AND HOME JOURNALS AND FOR 1905 MANY GOOD THINGS ARE PROMISED OUR SUBSCRIBERS. Now in its twenty-seventh year. (Established 1878.) IT IS THE OLDEST, BEST, MOST PROGRESSIVE, AND PRACTICAL (AS WELL AS THE LARGEST) ART AND HOUSEHOLD MONTHLY MAGAZINE PUBLISHED. INDISPENSABLE TO ART WORKERS, AND AN INVALUABLE GUIDE IN ALL BRANCHES OF HOME DECORATION. NO HOME COMPLETE WITHOUT IT. Each number lavishly and beautifully illustrated and accompanied by large full-size design Supplements and exquisite facsimiles of oil and water color paintings. $4.00 a Year. $2.00 for Six Months. 35 Cents per Copy. Among the Regular Departments Constant Attention will be given to Fine Art, Illustration. Wood-Carving, Art Criticism, Artistic Photography, Decorative Art, Sketching, Ceramics, Industrial Art. Biographies of Artists. Paintings in 011 and Water Colors, Pyrography, Modeling in Clay, Home Decoration, China Painting, Architectural Plans. Embroidery, Art Notes and News, etc. FOR ONLY TWENTY-FIVE CENTS In order to introduce "The Art Interchange" into new homes and that everyone may become acquainted with this splendid high-class home magazine we will send a copy of our superb double Christmas number together with a copy of the lovely picture in oil colors shown in this advertisement. This is one of the very best issues ever put out and everyone should have a copy. _Order now. The edition is limited._ [Illustration: Caption: _Magnificent study in oil colors "Piggies in Clover". Size 10 x 35 inches. Price 50 cents sold singly. Given free with the Christmas 1904 issue of the "Art Interchange."_] THE ART INTERCHANGE now occupies the first position among the art journals of America, and its high standard of excellence will be maintained throughout. Every department will be most thorough in every detail, and subscribers for 1905 will be more than pleased. Space will not permit of our full prospectus here, but for the asking our descriptive, illustrated, thirty-two page Catalogue will be sent to any address. FOR $2.00 you will receive The Art Interchange for six months, beginning January, 1905 and will get in addition, _FREE,_ the Sept. Oct. Nov. and Dec. 1904 accompanied by all the beautiful color and other supplements. By taking advantage of this offer NOW, you get 10 months for $2 Sept. 1904 to June 1905. FOR $4.00 we will enter you for the entire year of 1905 and send you FREE, the entire year of 1904 complete thus giving you two full years (1904 and 1905) for only $4.00, with all color and other supplements. FOR $7.00 you will receive Scribner's Magazine for a full year, The Art Interchange for 1904 and 1905 as above and Scribner's Portfolio of 50 Popular Pictures (new series), price of which alone is $7.00. You get $16.00 value for only $7. The above offers are good for a short time only. You should, therefore, lose no time in sending your subscription direct to our office. Send all subscriptions and make all remittances payable to _D. D. COTTRELL'S SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y._ OR THE ART INTERCHANGE CO. 9 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET NEW YORK CITY [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] _THE NEW YORK FAMILY STORY PAPER FOR 1904-5._ FOUNDED in 1873 the NEW YORK FAMILY STORY PAPER is the only literary weekly of its kind which has maintained its pre-eminent position; others have passed away, but THE NEW YORK FAMILY STORY PAPER continues as ever the first in circulation and excellence of its contents. During the coming Fall and Winter season, we shall make a feature of publishing a less number of serial stories, giving more space to _Longer Instalments_ of each continued story and publishing a greater number of short stories in each issue. Our usual departments, including _Legal Aid_ will be kept up to their high standard. The FAMOUS PICTORIAL REVIEW PATTERNS, worth from 15 to 30 cents each, are sold exclusively to our readers for ten cents each. These are the only tissue patterns cut on French models. They are the only patterns that give artistic lines to the figure and French CHIC to the wearer. A home-made dress will not look "Home-Made" if you use Pictorial Review Patterns. _A NEW STORY BEGINS EVERY WEEK_ So that any time you begin reading the paper, you can always find in it the opening chapters of a fascinating romance by a famous American author. [Illustration: Front page of "Golden Hours".] _SPECIAL OFFER TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS TWO PAPERS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE._ If you will send us one dollar for a four-months' subscription (17 weeks) to the NEW YORK FAMILY STORY PAPER, we will send you FREE OF ALL CHARGES in addition to the paper, a copy each month for a year of GOLDEN HOURS, the GREATEST ILLUSTRATED FAMILY MONTHLY MAGAZINE published. Don't fail to take advantage of this splendid offer before it is withdrawn. _SUBSCRIPTION RATES._ For 1 Year ................................................ $3.00 For 6 Months ............................................... 1.50 For 4 Months with a year's subscription to GOLDEN HOURS..... 1.00 For sample copies of THE NEW YORK FAMILY STORY PAPER and GOLDEN HOURS, and pamphlet illustrating and describing our splendid premiums which are given for coupons published in its columns, send postal card request to _MUNRO'S PUB. HOUSE, NORMAN L. MUNRO, PROP. 24-26 VANDEWATER ST., NEW YORK._ WHAT A 25c ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION TO GOLDEN HOURS WILL GIVE YOU 12 complete novels by the most famous American and foreign authors The latest Fashions and Fads every month. Prize Short Story Competition with cash prizes every month. Free Medical Advice Free Legal Aid. A Prize Photography Competition with monthly and yearly cash prizes. Stories and matters of interest for all the members of the family. 20 pages illustrated with fine half-tone and line drawings. GOLDEN HOURS is the best, as well as the cheapest, Monthly Illustrated Family Magazine. Every number complete in itself. TERMS. One year $ .25, Club of 5 Annual Subscriptions $1.00. _NORMAN L. MUNRO, 24-26 VANDEWATER ST., NEW YORK._ COLLIER'S THE NATIONAL WEEKLY Noted for its Clear-cut Editorials; Special Articles by Men of the Hour; Exclusive Photographs and Correspondence on all Important News Events of the World; Fiction by the Most Noted Writers and the Exclusive Art Work of Maxfield Parrish Frederic Remington F. X. Leyendecker Jessie Willcox Smith and Charles Dana Gibson COLLIER'S HOUSEHOLD NUMBERS (issued the last week in each month) have had a success unprecedented in the history of weekly journalism, and their popularity is still increasing. The series of Conan Doyle's famous "Sherlock Holmes" detective stories, each complete in an issue, are now running in these Household Numbers. The exquisite double-page drawings by Charles Dana Gibson are a feature of this series. COLLIER'S FICTION NUMBERS (issued the second week in each month) are virtually magazines in themselves; rich in Art and abounding in good stories. The cream of the prize-winning stories in Collier's recent $8,000 Short Story Contest (in which 12,000 stories were entered) will appear during the coming year in these Fiction Numbers. The double-page features will be by Frederic Remington, reproduced in full color; the cover designs by Jessie Willcox Smith and others 10 CENTS A COPY, ALL NEWSDEALERS $5.20 A YEAR SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ESTABLISHED 1845 _FOR SIXTY YEARS_ the _Scientific American_ has presented in a popular form the progress of science, invention and industry. No periodical contains so vast a fund of trustworthy information on timely topics of the day. Each issue is profusely illustrated. It contains articles on such subjects of special interest as the latest discoveries in the Scientific World, the development in Electricity, Engineering, Machinery, Automobiles, Natural History, Marine Architecture in all its branches, Yachting, etc. Furthermore, each number contains a special column of brief Notes on Science, Engineering, Automobiles, etc. A special Department on Patents is published every second or third number. This contains descriptions and illustrations of interesting and novel inventions, Personal Notes about inventors and Legal Decisions in Patent, Trade-mark and Copyright cases, etc., digested in a popular and readable style. Inquiries in regard to physics, hydraulics, electricity, etc., are answered free of charge in our "Notes and Queries Department." We have special correspondents in various parts of the country, also in London and Paris, who contribute to our columns weekly. SUBSCRIPTION $3 A YEAR. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN BUILDING MONTHLY ESTABLISHED 1885 Is a handsomely illustrated architectural journal of interest not only to professional architects, but especially to those who intend to build their own houses. _The Building Monthly_ Contains Illustrations of houses of all sizes and styles, with full plans. Descriptions of houses illustrated and cost of construction. Monthly comments on architectural matters. Talks with artists and architects. Articles on landscape and domestic gardening. Fire protection; the household; housing problems; and the country house. Legal notes of value to Architects and Builders. Patents of interest to the architect and house owner. The best examples of interior decoration and furniture. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE $2.50 A YEAR THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT ESTABLISHED 1876 is a weekly publication of the same size as the _Scientific American_ and contains articles too long or too technical for the parent paper. Lectures and Papers read by famous scientists before learned societies are published in full or in abstract; articles from foreign papers, otherwise inaccessible to those who read English only, are translated; and original articles on technical subjects are a few of the valuable features of the paper; fully illustrated. SUBSCRIPTION $5.00 A YEAR. MUNN & CO., PUBLISHERS, 361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY COMBINED RATES Scientific American and Supplement .............................. $7.00 Scientific American and Building Edition ......................... 5.00 Scientific American, Scientific American Supplement, and Building Edition ............. 9.00 PATENTS In connection with the publication of the above- mentioned journals, Messrs. MUNN & COMPANY have for fifty years acted as solicitors in preparing and prosecuting applications for patents, trademarks, etc., before the Patent office. HAND BOOK on Patents sent free on application. Patents procured through us are noticed without charge in the _Scientific American._ MUNN & CO., SOLICITORS. 361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY BRANCH OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. MCCLURE'S "Having conceived the idea of investigating and describing from an unbiased standpoint the dangerous tendencies in American life," says the _Norfolk Dispatch_, "Mr. McClure enlisted the service of an editorial staff consisting of Ida M. Tarbell, probably the most talented woman writer of history that this country has produced; of Ray Stannard Baker, whose reputation for the clear and popular presentation of difficult topics of a scientific and abstract nature is world-wide; and of Lincoln Steffens, a man who stands at the head either of the class of literary men who possess a nose for news or of newspaper men who have a turn for literature." In 1905 all of these well-known writers will continue with McClure's. Ida M. Tarbell will contribute an extraordinary character sketch of John D. Rockefeller; Ray Stannard Baker, more of his authoritative labor articles, and Lincoln Steffens, the political stories of Rhode Island, Montana, and other states. Samuel Hopkins Adams, a new member of the staff, will write on Modern Surgery, Tuberculosis, Typhoid Fever, and Pneumonia. The _New York World_ says that "the fiction of McClure's is of the brightness readers expect and always find." In 1905 there will be at least six stories in every number, by Stewart Edward White, George Madden Martin, Myra Kelly, Josephine Daskam Bacon, Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, Henry Wallace Phillips, O. Henry, Alice Brown, Eugene Wood, Marion Hill, Alice Hegan Rice, Rex E. Beach, Mary Stewart Cutting, and others. Edwin LeFevre, author of the "Wall Street Stories," will soon have a serial in McClure's--"The Golden Flood"--an exciting mystery story of a man who deposits a million dollars a day. Booth Tarkington, author of "The Gentleman From Indiana," has a great series of political stories to tell. James Hopper will give McClure's the first literary product of the Philippines. He is going to do for the Philippines what Jack London did for the Klondike. Henry Harland, author of "The Cardinal's Snuff-Box," is working on a new serial for McClure's. _SUBSCRIPTIONS $1.00 A YEAR_ ADDRESS COTTRELL SUBSCRIPTION AGENCY OR S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY, 51-60 EAST 23D STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] The Burr McIntosh Monthly "The Most Beautiful Magazine in the World" Devoted exclusively to the portrayal of scenes, incidents, and celebrated people in the highest perfection of the photographers', engravers' and printers' arts. Every Page Worthy a Frame There is no other magazine like THE BURR McINTOSH MONTHLY. It ALWAYS contains several pages each in a number of colors and all other pages are in double-color ink. It is bound with heavy silk cord, frequently costing for binding almost as much as the entire expense for producing many other publications. Beautify Your Home With the beautiful Japanese Wood Veneer art frames obtainable from us, the pages of THE BURR McINTOSH MONTHLY can be used for home decoration and are suited to homes of culture and refinement where many of these pictures are to be found at this day. SAMPLE COPY--Back Number, 10 CENTS CURRENT NUMBER,--25 CENTS YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION,--$3.00 The yearly subscription includes the 50 CENT Christmas number. THE BURR PUBLISHING COMPANY No. 4 West 22d Street, New York _See special offers of this beautiful magazine elsewhere in this catalogue._ IMPORTANT. THE FOUR-TRACK NEWS The Popular Illustrated Magazine of Travel and Education From 130 to 160 pages each issue, every one of which is of human interest. Subscriptions for 1905 only, will be received until December 31st, 1904, at 50 cents per year; to foreign countries $1.00. After January 1st, 1905, the subscription price will be $1.00; to foreign countries $1.50; at news stands ten cents per copy. SUBSCRIBE NOW and take advantage of this extraordinary low rate. GEORGE H. DANIELS, Publisher, 7 East 42d St., Box No. 72 A. New York. Subscriptions may also be sent to D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency, North Cohocton, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] 25c. A COPY [Illustration: Globe with Review of Reviews pages.] $2.50 A Year THE AMERICAN MONTHLY REVIEW OF REVIEWS [Pointing hand graphic] THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS THE LITTLE MASTERPIECES OF SCIENCE _50c. WITH ORDER, AND 50c. A MONTH FOR 12 MONTHS._ The Masterpieces of Science is a set of six volumes written by the great scientists themselves, explaining the wonders of the telegraph, the camera, the steam engine, modern medicine, astronomy and natural laws. A vast scientific library condensed for the average reader--shipped subject to approval. Send me only $2.50: Review of Reviews ................ $2.50 Success .......................... 1.00 Send me only $2.75: Review of Reviews ................ $2.50 Success .......................... 1.00 McCall's with free pattern ....... .50 or any one in Offer No. 3 Send me only $4.50: Review of Reviews ................ $2.50 Country Life ..................... 3.00 or Craftsman Send me only $4.00: Review of Reviews ............... $2.50 Art Interchange ................. 4.00 or any one in Offer No. 2 Success ......................... 1.00 Send me only $2.75: Review of Reviews ............... $2.50 Leslie's Monthly ................ 1.00 or any one in Offer No. 1 Send me only $3.25: Review of Reviews ............... $2.50 Cosmopolitan .................... 1.00 or any one in Offer No. 1 Pearson's ....................... 1.00 or any one in Offer No. 1 Send me only $6.00: Review of Reviews ............... $2.50 Success ......................... 1.00 North Am. Review (new) .......... 5.00 or International Studio Send me only $4.25: Review of Reviews ............... $2.50 Booklovers Magazine ............ 3.00 or any one in offer No. 2 Good Housekeeping ............... 1.00 or any one in Offer No. 1 Address D. D. COTTRELL, North Cohocton, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] The two great periodicals published by The Century Co. Union Square, New York The Century Magazine There is always one by which the rest are measured. In the magazine world, that one has always been and is to-day THE CENTURY. Ask writers where their best productions are first offered; ask editors which magazine they would rather conduct; ask public men where articles carry most influence; ask artists where they would prefer to be represented; ask the public what magazine is the first choice among people of real influence, and the answer to each question is the same: "THE CENTURY." Are you going to have the best in 1905? The new volume of THE CENTURY begins with November number. Yearly subscription, $4.00. A new serial story by the author of "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch" begins in December,--don't miss it. New features beginning all the time. "I do not know any publication where a bright-minded child can get so much profit as in its fascinating pages." Hon. JOHN HAY, Secretary of State. St. Nicholas A MAGAZINE FOR YOUNG FOLKS Edited by Mary Mapes Dodge Beautifully Illustrated Price $3.00 a year The inspiration of childhood, a supplement to school education, interpreting to the young reader the world of nature, literature, and art in terms he can understand, and omitting only what does not make for true manhood and womanhood. No prig, but a jolly companion, the joy of healthy boys and girls and a blessing to the lonely child or little invalid. _Try it this year._ The new fairy story by the author of "The Wizard of Oz" begins in November,--superbly illustrated in color; runs through the year. One of many attractions. St. Nicholas For Young Folks [The following is a form inserted loose into the booklet. It was to be used by agents or subscribers when sending in their orders directly to D. D. Cottrell.] ALWAYS USE THIS BLANK WHEN SENDING IN ORDERS. Three Months' Subscriptions cost 5 cents more than 1/4 and Six Months' Subscriptions 5 cents more than 1/2 the price to Agents for one year. D. D. COTTRELL Periodical Subscription Agency, NORTH COHOCTON, N.Y. _Make all drafts or money-orders payable to D.D. COTTRELL, North Cohocton, N.Y. [Note that The D. D. COTTRELL company NO LONGER EXISTS!!!] Personal Checks are accepted without any charge for collection. Remit at least twice each week, if possible, as it will save complaints from your subscribers. Be careful to fill in this blank according to the printed headings. Write plainly and keep a copy of order. Write New or Renewal in Old or New Column_ Your Consecutive Order No._______________________ (Date)___________ 190_______ From ________________________________________________________ Street Address ______________________________________________ Post-Office _______________________ State ___________________ _In above space write only name and address of remitter, to whom a receipt for money will be mailed._ [Transcriber's note: the following is a 12-line order blank--the headers are a single row.] Old or New | SUBSCRIBER'S NAME | STREET ADDRESS | POST OFFICE | STATE | Names of Periodicals Wanted | When to Begin | How Long to Send | CASH $ Cts. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 HARPER'S MAGAZINE--THE GREAT LEADING MAGAZINE OF THE WORLD--[$4.00 A YEAR] SEND ME ONLY $3.35 OR ADD $3.35 TO ANY ORDER. When you are out of these Blanks, advise, and we will mail new supply free [The following order for Harper's magazine was on the back of the above subscription form.] A BARGAIN! FOR HARPER'S MAGAZINE (PUBLISHER'S PRICE $4.00 A YEAR) SEND ME ONLY $3.35, OR ADD $3.35 TO ANY CLUB IN THIS CATALOGUE. _HARPER'S MAGAZINE is conceded to be the ONE great magazine of the world. If you have seen any number during the past year YOU yourself KNOW how true this is. It prints more and better short stories, and it contains more pages and more and better paintings. Its serious articles are written at FIRST HAND by the great scientists, historians, and explorers themselves. Mark Twain writes only for Harper's; W.D. Howells writes only for Harper's; Henry James writes only for Harper's; and Howard Pyle, Edwin A. Abbey, and other great artists paint only for Harper's._ FOR HARPER'S WEEKLY, THE GREAT $4.00 A YEAR AUTHORITY UPON ALL MATTERS OF NATIONAL INTEREST, SEND ME ONLY $3.35. THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW (New), $5.00 A YEAR, AND HARPER'S WEEKLY, SEND ME ONLY $7.00. HARPER'S BAZAR--"It sets the fashions." "If you want to know--ask the BAZAR"--the monthly magazine for cultivated women (15 cents a copy). Send ME only 90 cents for a year's subscription. * * * * * MY CLUB PRICE $3.00: WORLD'S WORK or BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE ..................... $3.00 or OUTING, $3.00; or BURR McINTOSH MONTHLY, $3.00; or CURRENT LITERATURE, $3.00; or ART INTERCHANGE, $4.00; or REVIEW OF REVIEWS. $2.50; or INDEPENDENT, $2.00; or SMART SET, $2.50; or JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, $2.50; or ETUDE, $1.50; or LIPPINCOTT'S, $2.50. 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22872	----	[Illustration: "'He _is_ a trouble, Mrs. Lathrop.'" FRONTISPIECE(_See page 21._)] Susan Clegg And a Man in the House BY ANNE WARNER Author of "Susan Clegg and her Friend Mrs. Lathrop," "A Woman's Will," "The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary," "Seeing France with Uncle John," etc. _Illustrated from Drawings by_ ALICE BARBER STEPHENS Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1907 _Copyright, 1906_, By Katharine N. Birdsall _Copyright, 1907_, By The Butterick Company, Ltd. _Copyright, 1907_, By Little, Brown, and Company _All rights reserved_ Published October, 1907 GRIFFITH-STILLINGS PRESS, BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Man's Proposal 1 II. Elijah Doxey and His Locked Box 20 III. The First Issue of the Newspaper 32 IV. Settling down after the Honeymoon 43 V. Susan Clegg's Full Day 64 VI. The Editor's Advice Column 85 VII. Mrs. Macy and the Convention 98 VIII. The Biennial 113 IX. The Far Eastern Tropics 128 X. The Evils of Delayed Decease 142 XI. The Democratic Party 156 XII. The Trials of Mrs. Macy 168 XIII. Monotony of Ministerial Monologues 200 XIV. Advisability of Newspaper Exposures 212 XV. The Trial of a Sick Man in the House 223 XVI. The Beginning of the End 235 XVII. An Old-fashioned Fourth 251 XVIII. Celebrating Independence Day 261 XIX. Exit the Man out of Susan Clegg's House 273 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "'He _is_ a trouble, Mrs. Lathrop.'" _Frontispiece_ PAGE "'A lady come up, looked at my flag, an' asked me if I was a delegate or an alternative'" 119 "'Mrs. Macy was just about plum paralyzed at _that_'" 179 "'The bottom come out an' the duck flew down the car'" 188 Susan Clegg And a Man in the House CHAPTER I MAN'S PROPOSAL Susan Clegg had dwelt alone ever since her father's death. She had not been unhappy in dwelling alone, although she had been a good daughter as long as she had a parent to live with. When the parent departed, and indeed some few days before his going, there had arisen a kind of a question as to the possibility of a life-companion for the daughter who must inevitably be left orphaned and lonely before long. The question had arisen in a way highly characteristic of Miss Clegg and had been disposed of in the same manner.[A] The fact is that Miss Clegg had herself proposed to four men and been refused four times. Then her father had died, and, upon the discovery that he was better endowed with worldly wealth than folks had generally supposed, all four had hastened to bring a return suit at once. But Miss Clegg had also had her mind altered by the new discovery and refused them all. From that time to this period of which I am about to write there had never been any further question in her mind as to the non-advisability of having a man in the house. [A] See "Susan Clegg and her Friend Mrs. Lathrop." "As far as I can see," she said confidentially to her friend, Mrs. Lathrop, who lived next door, "men are not what they are cracked up to be. There ain't but one woman as looks happy in this whole community and that's Mrs. Sperrit, an' she looks so happy that at first glance she looks full as much like a fool as anythin'. The minister's wife don't look happy,--she looks a deal more like somethin' a cat finds an' lugs home for you to brush up,--an' goodness knows Mrs. Fisher don't look happy an' she ain't happy neither, for she told me herself yesterday as since Mr. Fisher had got this new idea of developin' his chest with Japanese Jimmy Jig-songs, an' takin' a cold plunge in the slop jar every mornin', that life hadn't been worth livin' for the wall paper in her room. She ain't got no sympathy with chest developin' an' Japanese jiggin' an' she says only to think how proud she was to marry the prize boy at school an' look at what's come of it. She asked me if I hear about his goin' to town the other day an' buyin' a book on how to make your hair grow by pullin' it out as fast as it comes in, an' then gettin' on the train, an' gettin' to readin' on to how to make your eyebrows grow by pullin' them out, too, an' not noticin' that they'd unhooked his car an' left it behind, until it got too dark to read any further--" "Why, what--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, who was the best of listeners, and never interjectional except under the highest possible pressure of curiosity. "There was n't nothin' for him to do except to put his thumb in at the place where the eyebrows was, an' get down out of the car, an' then she told me, would you believe that with her an' John Bunyan in their second hour of chasin' around like a pair of crazy cockroaches because he was n't on the city train when he said he'd come, he very calmly went up to a hotel an' took a room for the night? An' she says that ain't the worst of it whatever you may think, for he was so interested in the book that he wanted to keep right on readin', an' as the light was too high an' he had n't no way to lower it, he just highered himself by puttin' a rockin'-chair (yes, Mrs. Lathrop, a rockin'-chair!) on the center table, an' there he sit rockin' an' readin' until he felt to go to bed. She says, would n't that drive a good wife right out beside her own mind? To think of a man like Mr. Fisher rockin' away all night on top of a table an' never even gettin' a scare. Why, she says you know an' I know that if he'd been the husband of a poor widow or the only father of a deserving family, of course he'd have rocked off an' goodness knows what, but bein' as he was _her_ husband with a nice life insurance an' John Bunyan wild to go to college, he needs must strike the one rocker in the world as is hung true, an' land safe an' sound in her sorrowin' arms the next mornin'! Oh my, but she says, the shock she got! They was so sure that somethin' had happened to him that she an' John had planned a little picnic trip to the city to leave word with the police first an' visit the Zoölogical Gardens after. Well, she says, maybe you can judge of their feelin's when they was waitin' all smiles an' sunshine for their train, with a nice lunch done up under John's arm, an' he got down from the other train without no preparation a _tall_. She said she done all she could under the circumstances, for she burst out cryin' in spite of herself, an' cryin' is somethin' as always fits in handy anywhere, an' then she says they had nothin' in the wide world to do but to go home an' explain away the hard-boiled eggs for dinner the best they could. She says she hopes the Lord'll forgive her for He knows better than she ever will what she ever done to have Mr. Fisher awarded to her as her just and lawful punishment these last five and twenty years; an', she says, will you only think how awful easy, as long as he got on the table of his own free will an' without her even puttin' him up to it, it would have been for him to of rocked off an' goodness knows what. She says she is a Christian, an' she don't wish even her husband any ill wind, but she did frighten me, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I wanted to speak out frank an' open to you about it because a man in the house _is_ a man in the house, an' I want to take men into very careful consideration before I go a step further towards lettin one have the right to darken my doors whenever he comes home to bed an' board--" Mrs. Lathrop quite jumped in her chair at this startling finale to her neighbor's talk and her little black eyes gleamed brightly. "Bed and bo--" she cried. "He'll have father's room, if I take him, of course," said Susan, "but I ain't sure yet that I'll take him. You know all I stood with father, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I don't really know as I can stand any more sad memories connected with that room. You know how it was with Jathrop yourself, too, an' how happy and peaceful life has been since he lit out, an' I ain't sure that--My heavens alive! I forgot to tell you that Mr. Dill thought he saw Jathrop in the city when he was up there yesterday!" "Saw Ja--" screamed Mrs. Lathrop. Jathrop was her son who had fled from the town some years before, his departure being marked by peculiarly harrowing circumstances, and of whom or from whom she had never heard one word since. "Mr. Dill was n't sure," said Susan; "he said the more he thought about it the more sure he was that he was n 't sure a _tall_. He saw the man in a seed-office where he went to buy some seed, an' he said if it _was_ Jathrop he's took another name because another name was on the office door. He said what made him think as it was Jathrop was he jumped so when he see Mr. Dill. Mr. Dill said he was helpin' himself out of a box of cigars an' his own idea was as he jumped because they was n't his cigars. Jathrop give Mr. Dill one cigar an' when he thanked him he said, 'Don't mention it,' an' to my order of thinkin' that proves as they was n't his cigars, for if they was his cigars why under heaven should he have minded Mr. Dill's mentionin' it? Mr. Dill said another reason as made him think as it was Jathrop was as he never asked about you,--but then if he was n't Jathrop he naturally would n't have asked about you either. Mr. Dill said he was n't sure, Mr. Dill said he was n't a bit sure, Mr. Dill said it was really all a mystery to him, but two things he _could_ swear to, an' one of those was as this man is a full head taller than Jathrop an' the other was as he's a Swede, so I guess it's pretty safe not to be him." Mrs. Lathrop collapsed limply. Susan went on with her tale as calmly as ever. "You see, Mrs. Lathrop, it's like this. I told Mr. Kimball I'd think it over an' consult you before I give him any answer a _tall_. I could see he did n't want to give me time to think it over or to consult you for fear I'd change my mind, but when you ain't made up your mind, changin' it is easy, an' I never was one to hurry myself an' I won't begin now. Hurryin' leads to swallowin' fish-bones an' tearin' yourself on nails an' a many other things as makes me mad, an' I won't hurry now an' I won't hurry never. I shall take my own time, an' take my own time about takin' it, too, an' Mr. Kimball nor no other man need n't think he can ask me things as is more likely to change my whole life than not to change it, an' suppose I'm goin' to answer him like it was n't no greater matter than a sparrow hoppin' his tail around on a fence. I ain't no sparrow nor no spring chicken neither an' I don't intend to decide my affairs jumpin' about in a hurry, no, not even if you was advisin' me the same as Mr. Kimball, Mrs. Lathrop, an' you know how much I think of your advice even if you have yet to give me the first piece as I can see my way to usin', for I will say this for your advice, Mrs. Lathrop, an' that is that advice as is easier left untook than yours is, never yet was given." Mrs. Lathrop opened her mouth in a feeble attempt to rally her forces, but long before they were rallied Susan was off again: "I don't know, I'm sure, whether what I said to Mr. Kimball in the end was wise or not. I did n't say right out as I would, but I said I would maybe for a little while. I thought a little while would give me the inside track of what a long while would be pretty sure to mean. I don't know as it was a good thing to do but it's done now, so help me Heaven; an' if I can't stand him I always stand by my word, so he'll get three months' board anyhow an' I'll learn a little of what it would mean to have a man in the house." "A man in--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, recovering herself sufficiently to illustrate her mental attitude by what in her case always answered the purposes of a start. "That's what I said," said Susan, "an' havin' said it Mr. Kimball can rely on Elijah Doxey's bein' sure to get it now." "Eli--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, again upheaved. "Elijah Doxey," repeated Susan. "That's his name. I ain't surprised over your bein' surprised, Mrs. Lathrop, 'cause I was all dumb did up myself at first. I never was more dumb or more did up since I was a baby, but after the way as Mr. Kimball sprung shock after shock on me last night I got so paralyzed in the end that his name cut very little figger beside our havin' a newspaper of our own, right here in our midst, an' me havin' the editor to board an' him bein' Mr. Kimball's nephew, an' Mr. Kimball havin' a nephew as was a editor, an' Mr. Kimball's never havin' seen fit to mention the fact to any of us in all these many years as we've been friends on an' off an' us always buyin' from him whenever we was n't more friends with Mr. Dill." "I nev--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "No, nor no one else ever heard of him neither. The first of it all was when he came up last night to see would I board him, an' of course when I understood as it was me as was goin' to have to take him in I never rested till I knowed hide an' hair of who I was to take in down to the last button on Job's coat." "And wh--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I'll tell you all I found out myself; an' I tell you I worked hard findin' it out too, for Mr. Kimball is no windmill to pump when it comes to where he gets relations from. Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as he had a sister though as married a Doxey an' that's the why of Elijah Doxey. Seems Elijah is so smart that he'll be offered a place on one of the biggest city papers in a little while, but in the mean time he's just lost the place that he did have on one of the smallest ones an', as a consequence, his mother thought he'd better spend this summer in the country an' so sent him up to Mr. Kimball. Mr. Kimball said he really did n't sense all it meant at first when Elijah arrived at noon yesterday but he said he had n't talked with him long afore he see as this was our big chance 'cause the paper as Elijah was on paid him off with a old printin' press, an' Mr. Kimball says, if we back him up, we can begin right now to have a paper of our own an' easy get to be what they call a 'state issue.' It's easy seen as Mr. Kimball is all ready to be a state issue; he says the printin' press is a four horse-power an' he's sure as he can arrange for Hiram Mullins to work the wringer the day he goes to press. Mr. Kimball says he's positive that Hiram 'll regard it as nothin' but child's play to wring off his grocery bill that way. I don't know what Gran'ma Mullins will say to that--or Lucy either for that matter--but Mr. Kimball's so sure that he knows best that I see it was n't no time to pull Gran'ma Mullins an' Lucy in by the ears. Mr. Kimball says he's been turnin' it over in his mind's eye ever since yesterday when he first see Elijah. He says Elijah is just mad with ideas an' says he 's willin' to make us known far an' wide if we'll only give him a chance. Mr. Kimball says we all ought to feel ready to admit that it's time we was more than a quarter of a column a week in the _Meadville Mixture_. He says the _Meadville Mixture_ ain't never been fair to us an' Judge Fitch says it ain't got right views as to its foreign policy. Mr. Kimball says that after Elijah went back to town yesterday afternoon he went up to Judge Fitch's office an' Judge Fitch said if we had a paper of our own he'd be more than willin' to write a editorial occasionally himself, a editorial as would open the president's eyes to the true hiddenness of things, an' set the German emperor to thinkin', an' give the czar some insight into what America knows about _him_. "Mr. Kimball says this is the day of consolidation an' if we had a paper the Cherry Ponders an' all the Clightville people'd naturally join in an' take it too. He says he's figured that if he can start out with a hundred paid-up subscribers of a dollar each he can make a go of it. He says Elijah says set him up the press an' _he_ don't ask no better fun than to live on bread an' water while he jumps from peak to peak of fame, but Mr. Kimball says Elijah's young an' limber an' he shall want the paid-up subscriptions himself afore he begins to transport a printin' press around the country. "I told him he could count on you an' me takin' one between us before I knowed what was really the main object of his visit, an' then when he come out with what _was_ the main object of his visit, an' when I sensed what he was after I must say I considered as he should have made that his first word an' give me my paper for nothin',--seein' as the whole of the thing is got to rest right on me, for I don't know what _is_ the bottom of a newspaper if it ain't the woman as boards the editor. Yes, Mrs. Lathrop, that's my view in a nutshell, the more so as Mr. Kimball openly says as Elijah Doxey says he's a genius an' can't live in any house where there's other folks or any noise but his own. Mr. Kimball said it seemed as if a good angel had made me for the town to turn to in its bitter need an' that it was on me as the new newspaper would have to build its reputation in its first sore strait; an' he said too as he would in confidence remark as my influence on Elijah's ideas would be what he should be really lookin' to to make the paper a success, for he says as Elijah is very young an' will be wax in my hands an' I can mold him an' public opinion right along together. He said he really did n't look for him to be any great trouble to feed because he'd be out pickin' up items most of the time, an' then too, he says he can always give him a handful of his new brand of dried apples as is advertised to be most puffin' an' fillin'; why, do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, he told me as he'd developed the process now to where if you eat two small pieces you feel like you never wanted another Thanksgivin' dinner as long as you live." "And so--" asked Mrs. Lathrop eagerly, Susan pausing an instant for breath just here. "Well, in the end I said I would, for three months. I don't know as I was wise, but I thought it was maybe my duty for three months. I'm tired of seein' the Clightville folks called 'Glimpses' an' us called 'Dabs' in that _Meadville Mixture_, an' last week you remember how they spelt it wrong an' called us 'Dubs,' which is far from my idea of politeness. It was being mad over that as much as anythin' that made me up an' tell Mr. Kimball as I'd take Elijah an' take care of him an' look to do what I could to make the paper a success for three months. I told him as it was trustin' in the dark, for Elijah was a unknown quantity to me an' I never did like the idea of a man around my nice, clean house, but I said if he'd name the Meadville items the 'Mud Spatters' an' so get even for our feelin's last week I'd do my part by feedin' him an' makin' up his bed mornin's. Mr. Kimball said I showed as my heart an' my brains was both in the right place, an' then he got up an' shook hands an' told me as he would in confidence remark as he expected to make a very good thing all round for he was gettin' the printin' press awful cheap and Elijah likewise." "When--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Next Wednesday. Elijah's comin' up freight with the printin' press. Mr. Kimball says he suggested that himself. He says it cuts two birds with one knife for it makes it look as if the printin' press was extra fine instead of second-hand, an' it gets Elijah here for nothin'." "Dear--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "I would, too," said Miss Clegg, "only you see I have n't got time. I ought not to be here now. I ought to be over gettin' his room ready an' takin' out the little comforts. As far as my order of thinkin' goes, little comforts is lost on men, Mrs. Lathrop, they always trip over them an' smash them in the dark." CHAPTER II ELIJAH DOXEY AND HIS LOCKED BOX "Well," suggested Mrs. Lathrop one pleasant Saturday morning, a few days later, when she and her friend met at the fence. Miss Clegg looked slightly fretted and more than slightly warm, for she had been giving her garden an uncommonly vigorous weeding on account of an uncommonly vigorous shower which had fallen the afternoon before. The weeding had been so strenuous that Miss Clegg was quite disposed to stop and rest, and as she joined her neighbor and read the keen interest that never failed to glow in the latter's eyes, her own expression softened slightly and she took up her end of the conversation with her customary capability at giving forth. "I don't know," she began, "an' Mr. Kimball don't know either. Elijah was tellin' me all about it last night. He _is_ a trouble, Mrs. Lathrop, but I don't know but what it pays to have a man around when you can have them to talk to like I have him. Of course a new broom sweeps clean an' I've no intention of supposin' that Elijah will ever keep on coverin' his soap an' scrapin' his feet long, but so far so good, an' last night it was real pleasant to hear the rain an' him together tellin' how much trouble they're havin', owin' to Hiram's bein' too energetic wringin' the handle of the printin' press an' then to think as when he was all done talkin' it would be him an' not me as in common decency would have to go out in the wet to padlock the chickens. Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as they're really havin' no end o' trouble over the new paper an' Elijah's real put out. He says Hiram had a idea as the more the speed the better the paper an' was just wringin' for dear life, an' the first thing he knew the first issue begin to slide a little cornerways an' slid off into a crank as Elijah never knowed was there, an' him an' Mr. Kimball spent the whole of yesterday runnin' around like mad an' no way to fix it. As a consequence Elijah's very much afraid as there'll be no paper this week an' it's too bad, for every one is in town spendin' the day an' waitin' to take it home with them. Young Dr. Brown is goin' to feel just awful 'cause he'd bought twenty-five papers to mail to all his college class. There was goin' to be a item about him, an' Mrs. Brown says it was goin' to be a good one for she fed Elijah mince pie while he made his notes for it an' had Amelia play on her guitar, too." "What do you--?" began Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I can't say as I really know _what_ to think of him just yet. I never see such a young man afore. He has some very curious ways, Mrs. Lathrop, ways as make me feel that I can't tell you positively what I do think. Now yesterday was the first day as I knowed he'd be gone for long, so I took it to go through all his things, an' do you know, away down at the bottom of one of his trunks I found a box as was locked an' no key anywhere. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I hunted, an' I hunted, an' I hunted, an' I couldn't find that key a _tall_. I never had any thin' of that kind in my house afore an' of course I ain't goin' to give up without a good deal more lookin', but if I can't find that key it'll prove beyond a shadow of a doubt as Elijah Doxey ain't of a trustin' nature an' if that's true I don't know how I ever _will_ be able to get along with him. A trustin' nature is one thing to have around an' a distrustin' nature is another thing, an' I can tell you that there's somethin' about feelin' as you ain't trusted as makes me take my hands right out of my bread dough an' go straight upstairs to begin lookin' for that key again. The more I hunt the wilder I get, for it's a very small box for a man to keep locked, an' it ain't his money or jewelry for it don't rattle when you shake it. It's too bad for me to feel so because in most other ways he's a very nice young man, although I will say as sunset is midnight compared to his hair." "Do--" began Mrs. Lathrop. "Then too, he said yesterday," Miss Clegg continued, "as he wanted it distinctly understood as his things was never to be touched by no one an' I told him as he could freely an' frankly rely on me. Now that's goin' to make it a great deal more work to hunt for that key from now on. An' I don't like to have it made any harder work to find a thing, as I have n't found yet a _tall_." "Wh--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Not me," said Miss Clegg; "I ain't got any give-up in me. I'll keep on until I find it if I have to board Elijah Doxey till he dies or till I drop dead in my huntin' tracks. But I can see that my feelin' towards him is n't goin' to be what it might of been if he'd been frank an' open with me as I am with him an' every one else. He seems so frank an' open, too--in other ways than that box. He read his editorial aloud night afore last an' I must say it showed a real good disposition for he even wished the president well although he said as he knowed he was sometimes goin' to be obliged to maybe be a little bit hard on him. He said as plain speakin' an' to the purpose 'd be the very breath an' blast of the _Megaphone_ an' he should found it on truth, honor an' the great American people, an' carry Judge Fitch to congress on them lines. I thought as Judge Fitch would object to goin' to congress on any lines after all he's said about what he thought of congress in public, but Elijah says a new paper must have a standard, an' he asked Judge Fitch if he minded being nailed to ours, an' the judge said he did n't mind nothin' these degenerate days, so Elijah just up with him." "Did you--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "See Mrs. Macy?--yes, I see her in the square yesterday noon. She was just back from Meadville. She says the editor of the _Meadville Mixture_ is awful bitter over our havin' a paper of our own, an' says he'll cross tinfoils with Elijah any day. I told Elijah what she said last night, but Elijah did n't mind. I hoped tellin' him'd take his appetite away, but he ate eleven biscuits just the same. That reminds me as he's comin' home to dinner to-day, an' I ought to be goin' in." "Goo--" said Mrs. Lathrop. --"But I'll come over after he goes an' tell you how the paper's comin' out," Susan added, as she turned from the fence; and as she was always true to her promises she did come over to Mrs. Lathrop's kitchen after dinner, wearing a clean apron and a new expression--an expression of mixed doubt and displeasure. Mrs. Lathrop hurried to give her a chair and make her welcome, and then took a chair herself and sat at attention. Susan began at once. "Well," she said, "it's a good thing as the Fishers are thinkin' some of sendin' John Bunyan to college, for he's surely a sight too smart for this town." Mrs. Lathrop opened her eyes in wide surprise, as it was certainly not about John Bunyan that she had expected to hear tales. "Elijah says as John Bunyan made them all feel pretty cheap down at the printin' press this mornin'," Miss Clegg went on: "seems the whole community was squeezin' into the back of Mr. Kimball's store to see what under the sun could be done to get the first paper out of the press, when all of a sudden John Bunyan spoke up an' asked why they did n't turn the handle backward an' empty the whole muss out that way. Well, every one see the sense of what he said right off, an' so they began, an' as soon as they began to turn the crank backward the paper began to come out backward, tore, of course, but as nice as pie. "Well, Elijah says he most thought his uncle was goin' to take his job as editor away and give it to John Bunyan right off, he was so pleased. But Mr. Kimball ain't the sort of uncle as Elijah so far supposes himself to of got, an' he only give John Bunyan fifty cents' worth of soda water tickets, an' they're to work to-night (if Lucy'll let Hiram), an' have the paper ready for church to-morrow. The Jilkins an' Sperrits was a little disapp'inted 'cause they was n't comin' in to church, countin' on stayin' home an' readin' the paper all day instead, but Elijah's goin' to put in a late column of late news an' give 'em their money's worth that way. Mr. Kimball had arranged to have one whole column of Ks to draw attention to his dried apples, an' he's goin' to give it up for the occasion an' let Elijah write a Extra about the cause of the delay, for that's really all the late news there is. Then, too, Elijah's goin' to have a joke about the paper's comin' in among us like a man goes into politics, kind of slidin' an' turnin' this way an' that, an' I must say I begin to find some of Elijah's ideas pretty bright. But my mind's taken a new turn on his subjeck from what he said at dinner, an' I will admit, Mrs. Lathrop, as I see now as I misjudged him in one way, for he come an' asked me while I was washin' up if I knowed any way to open a locked box without a key, for he could n't find the key to his flute box nowhere, an' when he was a little nervous nights he always wore it off practisin' on his flute. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can maybe imagine as learnin' as there was a flute in that box an' the key lost, an' him in the habit of playin' that flute nights, altered my views more 'n a little, an' I can tell you that I had to think pretty fast afore answerin' him. While I was thinkin' he said he had n't played since he was here, an' he was gettin' so wild to play he thought the best way would be to maybe pry the lock open. I see then as I'd got to come out firm an' I said I'd never consent to no young man in my house, spoilin' a good box like that an' maybe a fine flute too, just because he had n't got a little patience. He said I was right about its being a fine flute, an' he was just achin' to hear it an' blow it. I told him to let me hunt an' maybe I'd find the key, an' so he went off some soothed, an' now the Lord have mercy on you an' me, for Elijah Doxey never will from this day on. Will you only think of him bein' nervous an' playin' nights! It'll be worse than a tree-toad an' you know what a tree-toad is, Mrs. Lathrop,--I declare to goodness if Elijah acts like a tree-toad he'll drive me stark, ravin' mad." "Ca--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop. "I don't see how I can," said Miss Clegg, dubiously. "I shall do my best, but, oh my, a young man as is a editor an' has red hair an' a flute is awful uncertain to count on. I almost wish I had n't took him." "Why--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "I can't now," said Miss Clegg, "the arrangements of this world is dreadful hard on women. It's very easy to take a man into your house but once a woman has done it an' the man's settled, nobody but a undertaker can get him out in any way as is respectable accordin' to my order of thinkin'." "But you--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop, comfortingly. "I know, but even three months is a long time," said Miss Clegg, "an' he's begun to leave his soap uncovered already, an' oh my heavens alive, how am I ever goin' to stand that flute!" CHAPTER III THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE NEWSPAPER "I'll tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop," said Miss Clegg the next Monday afternoon, "I ain't goin' to stay here so late but what I go home in time to make Elijah something hot an' comfortin' for supper to-night. I ain't any one to take sides, but I will say that my heart has gone out to that poor young man ever since I was down in the square this mornin'. I felt to be real glad as he'd took to-day to go up to the city, for I must say I'd of felt more'n a little sorry for him if he'd heard folks expressin' their opinion about his first paper." "Did he--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, he went to-day," said Miss Clegg. "He went on the early train an' one of the joys of havin' a man in the house was as I had to be up bright an' early to get him his breakfast. I must say I never thought about his wantin' early breakfast when I agreed to take him, but I'm not one to refuse to feed even a editor, so I cooked him cakes just the same as I would any one else." "Why--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I guess maybe he heard things yesterday as made him feel as it'd be just as well to let folks have time to sizzle down some afore they looked on his bright an' shinin' face again. I tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop, I can see as runnin' a newspaper ain't an easy thing an' the town is really so up in arms to-day, that I really would of made waffles for Elijah to eat instead of just plain cakes, if I'd knowed when he got up how mad every one was at him. I can see since I've been down town to-day as the square was n't likely to have been no bed of roses for him yesterday. The whole community is mad as hornets over the paper. Why, I never see folks so mad over nothin' before. Nobody likes his puttin' his own name right under the paper's, an' Dr. Brown says the editor belongs on the inside, anyhow. Dr. Brown's most _awful_ mad 'cause Elijah's put his item right in with the advertisement of Lydia Finkham, an' he says he ain't nothin' as pretends to cure anythin' or everybody. He says he's a regular doctor as you have to take regular chances with an' he feels like suin' Elijah for slander. Gran'ma Mullins is mad, too, 'cause she was put in the personals an' Elijah went an' called her the 'Nestor of the crick,' without never so much as askin' by her leave. She says she ain't never done nothin' with the crick, an' if she ever nested anywhere it was in her own owned an' mortgaged house. Hiram says he'll punch Elijah if he ever refers to his mother's nestin' again, an' I guess Hiram feels kind of sore over Elijah's talkin' of his mother's nestin' when all the town knows how much he wishes as Lucy'd settle down and nest awhile instead of keepin' 'em all so everlastin'ly churned up. Mrs. Macy told me this mornin' as Lucy's whitewashin' the garret this week; she see the brush goin' 'round an' 'round the window on her side--she says it makes her bones ache just to live next door to Lucy's ways. She says they're so different from Gran'ma Mullins' ways. Gran'ma Mullins had n't had no whitewashin' done in twenty years--not since she rented the cottage of father. That's true an' I know it's true too because she's been askin' an' askin' me to have it done an' I said not by no means--so she's left off." "Did--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "The Jilkinses is real mad over the paper, too," Susan continued. "Seems as Elijah went an' called 'em the 'Chirpy Cherry Ponders,' an' Mrs. Jilkins says where he got the idea as either of 'em ever chirped in their lives she cannot conceive, for Mr. Jilkins ain't so much as peeped a good part of the time since they were married an' she says as for being chirpy, _she_ looks upon the word as city slang. But Judge Fitch is about the maddest of all! I did n't read what Elijah said about him but every one else did, an' he says he was willin' to run for congress for the good of his country, but to put him up in a editorial as says he'll be proud to come back from Washington as poor as he goes there, is a very poor way to put heart into any man's contest. He says if he's got to come back from Washington as poor as he goes he can't see no good an' sufficient reason for goin' a _tall_, for he won't gain nothin' an' will be out his car fare there an' back. He says he never heard of no one comin' back from Washington as poor as they went before, an' it was a thing as he supposed could n't be done till he found Elijah had booked him to do it. He says if that's what he's to up an' teach his country, he don't thank Elijah for advertisin' him as any such novelty an' he says he won't go to congress on any such terms--not while he knows himself. Mr. Kimball told me as he spoke to Elijah about it yesterday, an' Elijah said to him as it would be a strong plank for Judge Fitch to stand on in the middle of his platform, but Judge Fitch told Mr. Kimball as he could just tell his nephew frank an' open as that one plank in his platform had better be weak an' he'd take care to remember to step over it every time. He said he was just waitin' for a good chance to tell Elijah his opinion of him right to his face, an' he said as he should give him to understand as after this he must submit all other planks to _him_ afore he printed 'em. Mr. Kimball says that Judge Fitch said good gracious him, there would n't be no knowin' what he'd have to live up to next, if Elijah was n't reined in tighter. Judge Fitch says the old way is good enough for him when he goes to Washington. "But that ain't all the trouble there is. Mr. Fisher feels very much hurt at Elijah's writin' any editorial without consultin' him first. He says he told him as he could have give him a motto out of Shakespeare about layin' on an' dammin' as would have put life in the campaign right off at the beginnin'; an' then there's Mrs. Macy as thinks he was awful mean to call her one as carries weight anywhere; I'm sure I wish Elijah had let Mrs. Macy alone for she's worse than hornets over that remark of his. She says maybe Elijah'll go over two hundred an' fifty hisself some day, an' if he does he'll know as it's no joke. She bu'st her rocker last night when she read what he said about her, an' she says bu'stin' a rocker ought to show better than any words how mad it made her. My, she says, but she was mad! I told Elijah when he was gettin' up the paper as he'd better never say nothin' about nobody in it, but Elijah can't help being a man an' very like all men in consequence, an' he said as a paper was n't nothin' without personal items, an' he thought folks would enjoy being dished up tart an' spicy. I told him my views was altogether different. 'Elijah Doxey,' I says, 'you dish Meadville up tart an' spicy an' we'll all feel to enjoy, but you leave folks here alone.' But he didn't mind me an' now he's got a lesson as will maybe teach him to leave the armchairs of folks as is payin' for his paper unbu'sted henceforth." "Now--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, we get along pretty well," said Susan; "a man's a man, an' of course any house always is pleasanter without one in it, but I guess if you have to have one around Elijah's about as little bother as you could ask. I'm teachin' him to be real orderly in a hurry just by puttin' his things where he couldn't possibly find 'em if he leaves 'em layin' around. You always can manage pleasantly if you're smart, an' I'm smart. If he don't empty his basin, I don't fill his pitcher; if he's late to meals, I eat up all as is hot;--oh! there's lots of ways of gettin' along, an' I try 'em all turn an' turn about. If one don't work another is sure to, an' if he ever does have a wife it won't be my fault--I know that. "Mr. Kimball asked me this mornin' what I thought of him anyhow. Mr. Kimball says as Elijah says as he personally thinks this year is sent to fit him for suthin' demandin' backbone, an' so he'd ought to be resigned to anythin'. That didn't sound just polite to me to my order of thinkin' an' Gran'ma Mullins come back just then an' broke in an' said if Elijah was resigned she wasn't, an' she hoped he'd never come her way any more when he was out pickin' up items." "Is any one--" began Mrs. Lathrop. "I don't know," said Miss Clegg, "I don't believe so. Even the minister is mad; I met him comin' home an' I couldn't see what he had to complain of, for I didn't remember there bein' a single word about him in the whole paper. Come to find out he was all used up 'cause there _wasn't_ nothin' about him in it. He told me in confidence as he never got such a shock in all his life. He says he read the paper over nine times afore he was able to sense it, an' he says his last sermon was on hidin' your light under a bushel basket an' he had a copy all ready if Elijah had only come for it. He says he shall preach next Sunday on cryin' out unto you to get up, an' he shall take a copy to Elijah himself. I cheered him up all I could. I told him as a sermon preached on Sunday was n't likely to be no great novelty to no one on the Saturday after, but I'd see that he got it back all safe if Elijah throwed it into his scrap-basket. That seems to be the big part of bein' a editor--the throwin' things in his scrap-basket. Elijah's scrap-basket is far from bein' the joy of my life for he tears everythin' just the same way an' it makes it a long, hard job to piece 'em together again. Some days I don't get time an' then I _do_ get so aggravated." "Have you ever--" asked Mrs. Lathrop with real interest. "Not yet, but he ain't got really started yet. It's when the paper gets to Meadville an' Meadville begins to write him back what they think about what he thinks of them, that that scrap-basket will be interestin'! I guess I'll go home now an' make biscuits for supper. He was comin' back on the five-o'clock train. Poor Elijah, he'll have a hard day to-morrow but it'll do him good. Men never have to clean house, so the Lord has to discipline their souls any way he can, I suppose, an' to my order o' thinkin' this runnin' a newspaper is goin' to send Elijah a long ways upwards on his heavenly journey." "Does--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, rising heavily to bid her friend good-bye. "Most likely," said Susan; "at any rate if he does n't have any appetite. I like 'em myself." CHAPTER IV SETTLING DOWN AFTER THE HONEYMOON Miss Clegg and Mrs. Lathrop were sitting on the latter's steps about five o'clock one Sunday afternoon when Elijah Doxey came out of the former's house and walked away down town. "I wond--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "I don't believe it," said Miss Clegg; "I know the way you look at it, Mrs. Lathrop, but _I_ don't believe it. All the girls is after him but that ain't surprisin' for girls are made to be after somethin' at that age an' there's almost nothin' for them to run down in this community. We're very short of men to marry, Mrs. Lathrop, an' what men we have got ain't tall enough yet to do it, but still, it ain't no reason why Elijah should be in love just because 'Liza Em'ly and all the other girls is in love with him. To my order o' thinkin' two sets of people have got to love to make a marriage, an' 'Liza Em'ly ain't but one. An' I don't know as I want Elijah to be in love, anyhow--not while he lives in my house. It might lead to his eatin' less but it would surely lead to his playin' the flute more, an' that flute is all I can stand now. He won't marry if I can help it, I know _that_, an' I keep his eagerness down by talkin' to him about Hiram Mullins all I can, an' surely Hiram is enough to keep any man from soarin' into marriage if he can just manage to hop along single an' in peace." "Have you--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, interestedly. "Well, I should say I had--an' it's fresh on my mind, too. It was yesterday an' I see 'em both. Lucy come in the mornin' an' Gran'ma Mullins in the afternoon. I'd like to of had Hiram come in the evenin' an' tell his end, but Hiram don't dare say a word to no man nowadays. As far as my observation's extended a man as lives steady with two women gets very meek as to even men. Hiram's learned as his long suit is to keep still an' saw wood when he ain't choppin' it." "What did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, Lucy come up right after market an' she said the reason she come was because she'd just got to talk or bu'st, an' she was n't anxious to bu'st yet awhile." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, just the usual tale as any one could o' foreseen if they went an' married Hiram Mullins. Any one might of easy knowed as Lucy Dill could n't no more enjoy Hiram Mullins than a cat could enjoy swimmin' lessons, but she _would_ have him, an' she _had_ to have him, an' now she's got him--so help her eternity to come." "Did she--" questioned Mrs. Lathrop. "No," said Miss Clegg, "she ain't been married quite long enough for that yet; she's only been married long enough to come out strong an' bitter as to blamin' Gran'ma Mullins. I will say this for Lucy, Mrs. Lathrop, an' that is that a fairer thing than blamin' Gran'ma Mullins for Hiram could n't be expected of whoever married Hiram, for it stands to reason as no one as had brains could marry Hiram an' not want to begin blamin' his mother five minutes after. Gran'ma Mullins never did seem able to look at Hiram with a impartial eye, an' Lucy says as it beats all kind of eyes the way she looks at him since he's got married. Why, Lucy says it's most made her lose faith in her Bible--the way she feels about Gran'ma Mullins. She says she's got a feelin' towards Gran'ma Mullins as she never knowed could be in a woman. She says she's come to where she just cannot see what Ruth ever stuck to Naomi for when the husband was dead an' Naomi disposed to leave, too. She says if anythin' was to happen to Hiram she'd never be fool enough to hang onto Gran'ma Mullins. She sat down an' told me all about their goin' to town last week. She says she nigh to went mad. They started to go to the city just for a day's shoppin' an' she says it was up by the alarm clock at four an' breakfast at six for fear of missin' the nine-o'clock train an' then if Gran'ma Mullins did n't lose her little black bead bag with her weddin' ring an' the size of Hiram's foot an' eighty-five cents in it, so they could n't get him no bargain socks after all! All they could do was to buy the safety razor, an' when they got home with that there was n't no blade in it, an' they had to go way back to town next day. Come to find out the blade was in the box all the time, done up in the directions, only Hiram never read the directions, 'cause he said as it's a well-known fact as you can't cut yourself with a safety razor whatever you do. "Well, Lucy says it's for that sort of doin's as she left her happy home an' her razor-stroppin' father, an' she says the billin' an' cooin' of Gran'ma Mullins over Hiram is enough to make a wedded wife sick. She says she would n't say it to no one but me, an' I promised her never to breathe it along any further, but she says she's beginnin' to question as to how long she's goin' to be able to stand it all. She says will you believe that nights Gran'ma Mullins is comin' in softly at all hours to tuck up Hiram's feet, an' Lucy's forever thinkin' she's either a rat or a robber or else hittin' at her for Hiram himself. She says as it's Heaven's own truth as Gran'ma Mullins is warmin' his flannels every Saturday to this day, an' that the tears stand in her very eyes when Lucy won't help him off with his boots." "I never--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "No, nor no one else. It's all Gran'ma Mullins' foolishness. She begun to be foolish when Hiram begun to know things. I can remember when he used to run everywhere behind her with a little whip, 'cause he liked to play horse, an' although she used to pretend that she let him 'cause it kept the moths out of her clothes, still every one knowed as it was just her spoilin' of him. Now he's growed up spoiled an' poor Lucy Dill's got the consequences to suffer. "An' Lucy surely is sufferin'! She says she ain't exactly discouraged, but it's swimmin' up Niagara Falls to try an' break either of 'em of their bad habits. She says she has to look on at kisses until the very thought of one makes her seasick, an' she says to see Gran'ma Mullins listenin' to Hiram singin' is enough to make any one blush down to the very ground. "I cheered her all I could. I told her as you can't make no sort of a purse out of ears like Hiram's, an' that what can't be cured has always got to be lived with unless you're a man. She cried some, poor thing, an' said her mother always used to say as Hiram was cut out to make some girl wish he was dead, but she said she always thought as her mother was prejudiced. She said Hiram had a sort of way with him before he was married as was so hopeful, an' he used to look at her an' sigh till it just went all through her how happy they'd be if they could only be together all they wanted to be together. Well, you c'n believe me or not, just as you please, Mrs. Lathrop, but she says he ain't sighed once--not once--since they was married, an' as for bein' happy--well--she says she's about give up hope. She don't want folks to know, 'cause she says she's got some pride, but she says there's no tellin' how soon it'll run out if Gran'ma Mullins keeps on huggin' Hiram, an' tellin' her how perfect he is over his own head." "I don't--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I should say not," said Susan; "but Hiram Mullins always was his mother's white goose, an' the whole town is a witness. My idea if I was Lucy would be to shut right down solid on the whole thing. I'd put a bolt on my door an' keep Gran'ma Mullins an' her tuckin' tendencies on the other side, an' if Hiram Mullins did n't come to time I'd bolt him out, too, an' if he was n't nice about it I'd get out of the window an' go home to my father. I guess Mr. Dill would be very glad to have Lucy home again, for they say 'Liza Em'ly's no great success keepin' house for him. Some one told me as Mr. Dill was in mortal fear as he was practically feedin' the minister's whole family every time she went home, an' that would be enough to make any man, as had only his own self to feed, want his own daughter back, I should think. "There's Mrs. Macy as would be glad to keep house for him if he 'd marry her first, of course, but to my order of thinkin' Mr. Dill don't want to marry Mrs. Macy near as much as Mrs. Macy wants to marry Mr. Dill. Mrs. Macy says he's pesterin' her to death, an' Mr. Dill says if it's pesterin' to speak when you're spoken to, he must buy a new dictionary an' learn the new meanin' of the words by heart. Between ourselves, I guess Mr. Dill is learnin' the lesson of wedded bliss from lookin' at Lucy an' rememberin' her mother. Lucy ain't very happy an' you know as well as I do what Mrs. Dill was. Her husband won't marry again in a hurry, an' he's smart if he don't, for if Lucy ain't home in less 'n a year I'll make you a tea cake." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, you ain't Lucy Dill," said her friend. "If you was you'd be different. Lucy says this being waked up by havin' a hot flatiron slid in among your feet most any time for no better reason than 'cause his mother thought she heard Hiram sneeze, is a game as can be played once too often. I see her temper was on the rise so I struck in, an' give her a little advice of my own, an' as a result she says she's goin' to take a strong upper hand to 'em both an' there won't be no velvet glove on it neither. She says she can see as it's do or die for her now, an' she don't mean to be done nor to die neither. She drank some tea as I made strong on purpose, an' shook her head hard an' went home, an' God help Hiram if he hummed last night; an' as for Gran'ma Mullins, Lucy said if she come stealin' in to feel if Hiram was breathin' reg'lar, she was going to get slapped for a mosquito in a way as she'd long remember." "Dear me--" commented Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I did n't blame her," said Miss Clegg. "Of course I did n't know as I was going to hear the other side afore night fell, but hearin' her side stirred me up so that I give her my advice, an' my advice was to put the bootjack under her pillow. There ain't no sense in women sufferin' any more, to my idea of thinkin'. It's a good deal easier to go to bed with a bootjack, an' I look to see Lucy really happy or Hiram smashed flat soon in consequence." "But you--" said Mrs. Lathrop, wide-eyed. "I know, an' that did change my ideas. Of course when I was talkin' to Lucy I was n't expectin' to see Gran'ma Mullins so soon, but I won't say but what I was glad to see Gran'ma Mullins, too. It's a most curious feelin', I d'n know as I ever feel a curiouser than to hear both sides of anythin' from the both sides themselves right one after the other in the same day. O' course I learned long ago to never take any sides myself unless one of 'em was mine; but I will say as I don't believe no one could feel for others more 'n I do when I hear folks shakin' their heads over what as a general thing a person with brains like mine knows is their own fault, an' knowed was goin' to be their own fault afore they ever even began to think of doin' it. "Now there was Lucy Dill yesterday forenoon mournin' 'cause Hiram is Hiram an' his mother is his mother, an' then after dinner there comes Gran'ma Mullins with her bonnet strings an' her tears all streamin' together, an' wants my sympathy 'cause Lucy herself is Lucy herself. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I can't but feel proud o' being able to hold the reins so hard on my own bit that I never up an' told either on 'em the plain truth, which is as they was all fools together to of ever looked for the weddin' service to have changed any on 'em." "What did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "I don't know as I'm prepared to say what I think. To hear Lucy you'd think _she_ was surely the martyr, but to hear Gran'ma Mullins you would n't be sure after all. Gran'ma Mullins says after the honeymoon is over every one expects to settle down as a matter of course, an' she would n't say a word against it only it's Lucy is doin' all the settlin' an' poor Hiram as is doin' all the down. She says it's heartbreakin' to be a only mother an' watch the way as Hiram is being everlastin'ly downed. She says as we all remember that bright an' happy weddin' day[B] an' how she downed her own feelin's an' waved rice after 'em just like everybody else when they started off weddin'-trippin', each with their own bag in his own hand. But, oh, she says, the way they come back! She says they come back with Hiram carryin' both bags, an' her heart sunk when she see 'em for she says when she was married it was _her_ as come home carryin' both bags an' she says it's one of the saddest straws as ever blows a bride out. She says she never expected much of her marriage 'cause she was engaged on a April Fool's Day in Leap Year, an' he give her an imitation opal for a ring, but she says Hiram give Lucy a real green emerald with a 18 an' a K inside it an' he looked to be happy even with his mother's tears mildewin' his pillow every night that whole summer. She says no one will ever know how hard she did try to get sense into Hiram that summer afore it was too late. She says she used to sit up in tears an' wait for him to come home from seein' Lucy, an' weep on his neck with her arms tight round him for two or three hours afterwards every night, but she says he never used to appreciate it. An' she says what he needed to marry for, anyway, Heaven only knows, with his whole life laid pleasantly out to suit him, an' a strong an' able-bodied mother ready an' smilin' to hand him whatever he wanted just as quick as he wanted it. An' she says she never asked him to do nothin' as she could possibly do herself an' the way Lucy orders him about!--well, she says it's beyond all belief. An' oh, but she says it goes through her like a chained-up bolt of lightnin' the voice Lucy speaks to him in, an' she said she would n't have no one know it for worlds but she says as near as she can figger she hit him over the head with a hairbrush night before last." [B] See "Susan Clegg and her Neighbors' Affairs." "With a--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, aghast. "She says she ain't absolutely positive, but they was a-chasin' a June bug in their room together, an' she heard the smash an' the next mornin' when she went in to make Hiram's side of the bed after Lucy (she says Lucy is a most sing'lar bed-maker) she see the nick on the brush, an' she says when she see the nick an' remembered how hollow it rung, she knew as it could n't possibly have been nothin' in that room except Hiram's head. She says if Lucy's begun on Hiram with a hairbrush now, Heaven only knows what she'll be after him with in a year, for Gran'ma Mullins' own husband went from a cake of soap to a whole cheese in a fortnight an' she says it's a well-known fact as when a married man is once set a-goin' he lands things faster an' faster. She says she thinks about the andirons there, ready to Lucy's hand, until she's scared white, an' yet she's afraid to take 'em for fear it'd attract her to the water pitcher." "Did Mr.--" began Mrs. Lathrop, hurriedly, after several attempts to slide a question-quoit in among Susan's game of words. "Oh, he did n't throw 'em at her. I could n't understand what he did do with them an' so I asked, but it seems it was just as awful for he grated the whole cake o' that soap on her front teeth to teach her not to never refer to the deacon again, an' he dropped the cheese square on her head when he was up on a step-ladder an' she was in a little cupboard underneath leanin' over for a plate, an' then he tried to make out as it was an accident. She says it was n't no accident though. She says a woman as gets a cheese on the back of her head from a husband as is on a step-ladder over her, ain't to be fooled with no accident story; she says that cheese like to of hurt her for life an' was the greatest of the consolations she had when he died. She says she never will forget it as long as she's alive an' he's dead, no sir, so help her heaven she won't; she says when the cemetery committee come to her an' want her to subscribe for keepin' him trimmed with a lawn mower an' a little flag on Decoration Day, she always thinks of that cheese an' says no, thank you, they can just mow him regularly right along with the rest. "But oh, she says it's awful bitter an' cold to see Hiram settin' out along that stony, bony, thorny road, as she's learned every pin in from first to last. She says if Lucy 'd only be a little patient with him, but no, to bed he must go feelin' as bright as a button, an' in the mornin', oh my, but she says it's heartrendin' to hear him wake up, for Lucy washes his face so sudden with cold water that he gives one howl before he remembers he's married, an' five minutes after she hangs every last one of the bedclothes square out of the window. "I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, it was a pretty sad tale first an' last, an' Gran'ma Mullins says Hiram is as meek as a sheep being led to its halter, but she says she can't feel as meekness pays women much. She says she was meek an' Hiram's meek, an' she did n't get no reward but soap an' that cheese, an' all Hiram's got so far is the hairbrush, an' the water pitcher loomin'. "I told her my own feelin's was as marriage was n't enough took into consideration nowadays, an' that it was too easy at the start, an' too hard at the finish. You know yourself, Mrs. Lathrop, as there ain't a mite o' doubt but what if the honeymoon come just afore the funeral there'd be a deal more sincere mournin' than there is as it is now, an' to _my_ order of thinkin', if the grandchildren come afore the children, folks would raise their families wiser. I told Gran'ma Mullins just that very thing but it did n't seem to give her much comfort. She give a little yell an' said oh, Heaven preserve her from havin' to sit by an' watch Lucy Dill raise Hiram's children, for she was sure as she'd never be able to give 'em enough pie on the sly to keep 'em happy an' any one with half an eye could see they'd be washed an' brushed half to death. She says Lucy won't wash a dish without rinsin' it afterwards or sweep a room without carryin' all the furniture out into the yard; oh my, she says her ways is most awful an' I expect that, to Gran'ma Mullins, they are. "I cheered her all I could. I told her she'd better make the best o' things now, 'cause o' course as Lucy got older Hiram'd make her madder an' madder, an' they'll all soon be lookin' back to this happy first year as their one glimpse of paradise. I did n't tell her what Lucy told me o' course, 'cause she'd go an' tell Hiram, an' Hiram must love Lucy or he'd never stand being hit for a June bug or woke with a wash-cloth. But I did kind of wonder how long it would last. If I was Lucy it would n't last long, I know _that_. If I'd ever married a man I don't know how long he'd of stood it or how long I'd of stood him, but I know one thing, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I know that from my heels to my hairpins--an' I said it to Elijah last night, an' I'm goin' to say it to you now--an' that is that if I could n't of stood him I would n't of stood him, for this is the age when women as read the papers don't stand nothin' they don't want to--an' I would n't neither." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, you ain't me," said Miss Clegg, "you ain't me an' you ain't Elijah neither. I talk very kind to Elijah, but there's no livin' in the house with any man as supposes livin' in the house with any other woman is goin' to be pleasanter than livin' in the house with the woman as he's then an' there livin' in the house with. The main thing in life is to keep men down to a low opinion of every woman's cookin' but yours an' keep yourself down to a low opinion of the man. You don't want to marry him then an' he don't want to live with any one else. An' to my order of thinkin' that's about the only way that a woman can take any comfort with a man in the house." CHAPTER V SUSAN CLEGG'S FULL DAY "Well," said Miss Clegg, with strong emphasis, as she mounted Mrs. Lathrop's steps, "I don't know, I'm sure, what I've come over here for this night, for I never felt more like goin' right straight off to bed in all my life before." Then she sat down on the top step and sighed heavily. "It's been a full day," she went on presently; "an' I can't deny as I was nothin' but glad to remember as Elijah was n't comin' home to supper, for as a consequence I sha'n't have it to get. A woman as has had a day like mine to-day don't want no supper anyhow, an' it stands to reason as if I don't feel lively in the first place, I ain't goin' to be made any more so by comin' to see you, for I will remark, Mrs. Lathrop, that seein' you always makes me wonder more'n ever why I come to see you so often when I might just as well stay home an' go to bed. If I was in my bed this blessed minute I'd be very comfortable, which I'm very far from bein' here with this mosquito aimin' just over my slap each time; an' then, too, I'd be alone, an' no matter how hard I may try to make myself look upon bein' with you as the same thing as bein' alone, it is n't the same thing an' you can't in conscience deny _that_, no matter how hard you may sit without movin'." Mrs. Lathrop made no reply to this frank comment on her liveliness, and after a short pause, Miss Clegg sighed heavily a second time, and continued: "It's been a full day, a awful full day. In the first place the rooster was woke by accident last night an' he up an' woke me. He must of woke me about three o'clock as near as I can figure it out now, but I supposed when I was woke as of course it was five so I got right up an' went in an' woke Elijah. Elijah told me last week as he did n't believe he'd ever seen the sun rise an' I was just enough out of sorts to think as to-day would be a good time for him to begin to turn over a new leaf as far as the sunrise was concerned. I must say he was n't very spry about the leaf, for all he did was to turn himself over at first, but I opened his window an' banged the blinds three or four times an' in the end he got woke up without really knowin' just what had woke him. We had breakfast with a candle, an' then Elijah was so tired lookin' out for the sunrise that he looked in at his watch an' see as it was only quarter to four then. He was real put out at that at first 'cause he wrote till half past two last night, an' in the end he went back to bed an' it certainly was a relief to see the last of him, for I may in confidence remark as I never see him look quite so stupid afore. After he was gone back to bed I washed up the breakfast dishes an' then I went out in the wood shed in the dark an' there I got another surprise, for I thought I'd look over the rags I was savin' for the next rag rug an' when I poured 'em out in my lap, what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop, what _do_ you think poured out along with 'em?--Why, a nest of young mice an' two old ones! "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can maybe imagine my feelin's at four in the mornin' with Elijah gone back to bed an' my own lap full of mice, but whatever I yelled did n't disturb him any an' I just made two jumps for the lamp in the kitchen, leavin' the mice wherever they hit to rearrange their family to suit themselves. Well, the second jump must needs land me right square on top of the cistern lid, an' it up an' went in, takin' my left leg along with it as far as it would go. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, talk of girls as can open an' shut, like scissors, in a circus--I was scissored to that degree that for a little I could n't think which would be wisest, to try an' get myself together again in the kitchen or to just give up altogether in the cistern. In the end I hauled the leg as had gone in out again, an' then I see where all the trouble come from, for the cistern lid was caught to my garter an' what I'd thought was a real injury was only it swingin' around an' around my leg. I put the lid back on the cistern an' felt to sit with my legs crossed for quite a while, thinkin' pleasant thoughts of the rooster as woke me, an' by that time it was half past four, an' I could hear all the other chickens stirrin' so I got up an' began to stir again myself. I opened the front door an' looked out an' that did n't bring me no good luck either, for as I looked out a bat flew in an' just as the bat flew in he managed to hook himself right in my hair. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I tell you I _was_ mad then. I don't know as I ever was madder than I was then. I was so mad that I can't tell you how mad I was. The bat held on by diggin' in like he thought I wanted to get him off, an' I pulled at him so hard that I can't in conscience be surprised much over his takin' that view of it. Well, in the end I had to take all my hairpins out first an' then sort of skin him out of my hair lengthways, which, whatever you may think about it, Mrs. Lathrop, is far from bein' funny along afore dawn on a day as you 've begun at three thinkin' as it was five." "Susan!" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop; "don't--" "No, I'll have some when I get home. I like mine better than yours anyway. Now you've made me forget where I was in my story." "You--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh yes, I remember now. Well, I was too put out at first to notice what the bat did after I got him out o' my head, but when I went upstairs I found him circlin' everywhere in a way as took every bit of home feelin' out of the house an' I just saw that I'd have no peace till I could be alone with Elijah again. So I got up an' got a broom an' went a battin' for all I was worth. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can believe me or not just as you please, but for one solid hour I run freely an' gayly up an' down an' over an' under my own house after that bat. I never see nothin' like that bat before or behind. He just sort of sailed here an' there an' everywhere, an' wherever he sailed smoothly an' easily there was me runnin' after him with the broom, whackin' at him every chance I got. We was upstairs, we was downstairs, we was in the wood shed an' out of the wood shed, we was under the kitchen table, we was over father's picture on the mantel--we was everywhere, me an' that bat. Then all of a sudden he disappeared completely an' I sit down in the rockin'-chair to puff an' rest. Elijah slept till most eight an' I was so tired I let him sleep although I never was one to approve of any man's sleepin', but before he woke something worse than a bat come down on me, an' that was Mrs. Sweet's cousin, Jerusha Dodd. You know Jerusha Dodd, Mrs. Lathrop, an' so do I, an' so does everybody an' as far as my observation 's extended bats is wise men bringin' their gifts from afar to visit you compared to Jerusha Dodd when she arrives in the early mornin'. I would n't never have gone to the door only she stepped up on the drain-pipe first an' looked in an' saw me there in the rockin'-chair afore she knocked. I tell you I was good an' mad when I see her an' see as she see me an' I made no bones of it when I opened the door. I says to her frank an' open--I says, 'Good gracious, Jerusha, I hope you ain't lookin' to see me pleased at seein' as it's you.' But laws, you could n't smash Jerusha Dodd not if you was a elephant an' she was his sat-down-upon fly, so I had her sittin' in the kitchen an' sighin' in less'n no time. She was full of her woes an' the country's woes as usual. Congress was goin' to ruin us next year sure, an' she had a hole in her back fence anyway; she did n't approve of Mr. Rockefeller's prices on oil, an' there was a skunk in her cellar, an' she said she could n't seem to learn to enjoy livin' the simple life as she'd had to live it since her father died, a _tall_. She said that accordin' to her views life for single women nowadays was too simple an' she said she really only lacked bein' buried to be dead. She says as all a simple life is, is havin' no rights except them as your neighbors don't want. She says for her part she's been more took into the heart of creation than she's ever cared about. I do hate to have to listen to the way she goes on an' no one can say as I ever was one to encourage her in them views. I don't think it's right to encourage no one in their own views 'cause their views is never mine an' mine is always the right ones. This mornin' I stood it as long as I could from Jerusha an' then I just let out at her an' I says to her, I says, 'Jerusha Dodd, you really are a fool an' Heaven help them as ever makes more of a fool of you, by tellin' you as you ain't.' You know Jerusha Dodd, Mrs. Lathrop; she began to cry hard an' rock harder right off, said she knowed she was a fool, but it was nature's fault an' not hers for she was born so an' could n't seem to get the better of it. I told her my view of the matter would be for her to stay home an' patch up that hole in her fence an' pull up some o' that choice garden full of weeds as she's growin', an' brush the dust off the crown of her bonnet, an' do a few other of them wholesome little trifles as is a good deal nearer the most of us than Mr. Rockefeller] an' what congress in its infinite wisdom is goin' to see fit to deal out in the daily papers next year. "But she only kept on cryin' an' rockin' an' finally I got so tired listenin' to her creak an' sob that I went out an' had a real bright idea. I got the little sink scratcher an' tied a wet piece of rag to the handle an' went around behind her an' hung it suddenly in her back hair. She put up her hand an' felt it, an' give a yell that woke Elijah. You know how Jerusha Dodd acts when she's upset! She spun around so the sink scratcher fell right out but she did n't have sense enough left in her to know it. She yelled, 'What was it? what was it?' an' I yelled, 'It was a bat, it was a bat;' an' at that I see the last of Jerusha Dodd, for she was out of my kitchen an' out of my sight afore Elijah could get to the top of the stairs to begin yellin', 'What was it? what was it?' on his own hook. I had to tell him all about it then an' he wanted it for a item right off. He said he'd have a dash for Jerusha an' a star for me, an' the idea took him like most of his ideas do, an' he laughed till he coughed the coffee as I'd saved for him all the wrong way, an' dropped a soft boiled egg as I'd boiled for him into the water pitcher, an', oh my, I thought misfortunes never would come to a end or even to a turnin'. But after he'd fished out the egg an' eat it, he went off down to his uncle's an' he was n't more'n gone when in come Mrs. Sweet to see if Jerusha left her breastpin, 'cause in her quick breathin' it had fallen somewhere an' Jerusha was havin' hysterics over losin' that now. While I was talkin' to Mrs. Sweet at the gate I smelt somethin' burnin' an' there my whole bakin' of bread was burnt up in the oven owin' to Jerusha Dodd's breathin' her breastpin out over a bat. I felt to be some tempered then, an' Mrs. Sweet saw it an' turned around an' left me, an' after she was gone I went into the house an' pulled down the shades an' locked the door an' went to sleep. I slept till Elijah come home to dinner an' of course there was n't no dinner ready an' that put Elijah out. Elijah's got a good deal of a temper, I find, an' the only thing in the world to do with a man in a temper, when he is in a temper, is to make him so mad that he goes right off in a huff an' leaves you to peace again. So I just made one or two remarks about my opinion of things as he feels very strong about, an' he said he guessed he'd get supper down town an' sleep at the store to-night. So he took himself off an' he was hardly out of the way when Mrs. Macy come to tell me about Judy Lupey's divorce." "Is--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Not yet, but she soon will be," said Miss Clegg. "Mrs. Macy's just back from Meadville an' she says all Meadville is churned up over it. They ain't never had a divorce there afore, an' every one is so interested to know just how to do it, an' I will say this much for Mrs. Macy, an' that is that she was nothin' but glad to tell me all about it. Seems as the Lupeys is most awful upset over it though an' Mrs. Kitts says she ain't sure as she won't change her will sooner than leave money to a woman with two husbands." "Two--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Mrs. Macy says," continued Susan, "as Mrs. Lupey ain't much better pleased than Mrs. Kitts over it all, an', although she did n't say it in so many words, she hinted pretty plain as it seemed hard as the only one of the girls to get married should be the same one as is gettin' divorced. Mrs. Macy said she see her point of view, but to her order of thinkin' the world don't begin to be where old maids need consider divorces yet awhile. She says she stayed in the house with 'em all three days an' she says she cheered Mrs. Lupey all she could; she says she told her to her best ear as no one but a mother would ever have dreamed of dreamin' of Faith or Maria's ever marryin' under any circumstances. She said Mrs. Lupey said it was the quickness of Judy's gettin' tired of Mr. Drake as had frightened her most. Why, she says as before the first baby was through teethin' in her day, Judy was all up an' through an' completely done with Mr. Drake. All done with him an' home again, an' the family not even countin' to consider. "Mrs. Macy says as she's learned a awful lot about divorce as she did n't know before. She said she could n't help being surprised over how much a divorce is like a marriage, for Busby Bell was there every night an' Judy an' the whole family is hard at work gettin' her clothes ready. But Mrs. Macy says them as suppose the real gettin' of the divorce itself is simple had ought to go an' stay at the Lupeys awhile. Why, she says the way the Lupeys is complicated an' tied up by Judy an' Mr. Drake is somethin' beyond all belief. To begin with, Judy decided to be deserted because she thought it'd really be the simplest an' easiest in the end an' she hated to bother with bein' black an' blue for witnesses an' all that kind of business. But it seems being deserted, when you live in the same town with a husband who rides a bicycle an' don't care where he meets you, is just enough to drive a woman nigh to madness itself. Why, Mrs. Macy says that Judy Lupey actually can't go out to walk a _tall_, not 'nless Faith walk a block ahead of her an' Maria a block behind, an' even then Mr. Drake's liable to come coastin' down on 'em any minute. She says it's awful tryin', an' Judy gets so mad over it all that it just seems as if they could _not_ stand it. "But that ain't the only trouble neither, Mrs. Macy says. Seems Judy got Solomon Drake for her lawyer 'cause he knowed the whole story, through eatin' dinner at the Drakes every Sunday while they was stayin' married. She thought havin' Solomon Drake would save such a lot of explainin' 'cause Mr. Drake is so hard to explain to any one as has just seen him ridin' his bicycle an' not really been his wife. Well, seems as Judy never calculated on Solomon's keepin' right on takin' Sunday dinner with Mr. Drake, after he became her lawyer, but he does, an' none of the Lupeys think it looks well, an' Judy finds it most tryin' because all she an' Solomon talk over about the divorce he tells Mr. Drake on Sunday out of gratitude for his dinner an' because it's a subject as seems to really interest Mr. Drake. Seems Mr. Drake is a hard man to interest. Judy says he was yawnin' afore they got to the station on their honeymoon. "But Mrs. Macy says that ain't all, neither, whatever you may think, for she says what do you think of Mr. Drake's goin' an' gettin' Busby Bell of all the men in Meadville for _his_ lawyer, when the whole town knows as it's Busby as Judy's goin' to marry next. Mrs. Lupey says as Judy would have took Busby for her own lawyer only they was so afraid of hurtin' each other's reputations, an' now really it's terrible, 'cause Busby says as he don't well see what's to be done about their reputations if the worst comes to the worst, for he's explained as very likely Judy's goin' to need one more man than a husband to get her her divorce. Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey says as Busby said as if he had n't been Mr. Drake's lawyer he'd have been more than ready to be the other man, but as Mr. Drake's lawyer he can't help Judy no more'n if he was Mr. Drake himself. Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey cried, an' she told her as she knowed as there was any number of quiet elderly men as any one could depend on right here in our own community as'd be nothin' but glad to go over to Meadville an' help anyway they could, but Mrs. Lupey asked Judy about it, an' Judy asked Busby, an' Busby said men as you could depend on anywhere was n't no use in divorce suits a _tall_. It's quite another kind, it seems. Mrs. Macy says she's really very sorry for them all, for it really seems awful to think how the Lupeys need a man an' the only man they've got Judy's busy gettin' rid of as hard as she can. "Mrs. Macy says it's all most upsettin'. She says she never lived through nothin' like it afore. Judy's cross 'cause she can't go out an' meet Busby without runnin' the risk of meetin' Mr. Drake an' losin' all the time she's put in so far bein' deserted. An' then there's a many things as a outsider never would know about or even guess at unless they've lived right in the house with a real live divorce. Mrs. Macy says as Martha Hack, as does the washin' for 'em all, is forever forgettin' an' sendin' Judy's wash home with Mr. Drake's just as if they was still completely married. That would n't be so bad only Mr. Drake waits for Solomon to get 'em Sunday, an' Solomon's kind-hearted an' gives 'em to Busby so as to give him a excuse to make two calls in one day. Well, Mrs. Macy says the come out of it all is as when Judy wants to take a bath just about all Meadville has to turn out to see where under heaven her clean clothes is. "I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, tellin' it all to you does n't matter so much, but to hear Mrs. Macy tell it makes you wonder if it's worth while to try an' leave a man as you can't live with. Seems to me it'd be easier to live with him. Mrs. Macy says as she met Mr. Drake several times herself on his bicycle an' he looked most bloomin'. No one need be sorry for him, an' not many is sorry for Judy. But Mrs. Macy says there's only one person as all Meadville's sorry for, an' that's Busby Bell." Mrs. Lathrop started to speak. "Yes," Susan went on hurriedly. "Elijah said just that same thing the other day when he was talkin' about the Marlboroughs. He thinks as divorces is all a mistake, but then you're a widow an' Elijah ain't married so you're both pretty safe in airin' your views." Susan rose just here and descended the steps. "I must go," she said, "I don't seem to take no particular interest in what you might be goin' to tell me, Mrs. Lathrop, even if there was any chance of your ever gettin' around to tellin' it, an' I've told you all I know, an' I'm very tired talkin'. As I said before, it's been a full day an' I'm pretty well beat out. I forgot to tell you as after Mrs. Macy was gone I found as it was n't the bread I smelt in the oven--it was the bat. I suppose when I see Mr. Kimball he'll make one of his jokes over bread-dough an' bats an' batter, but I'll be too wore out to care. Did I say as Elijah said he'd sleep at the store to-night?" "Will--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, all of a sudden. "Why, of course," said Susan, "it did n't hurt either loaf a mite. I'd be as much of a fool as Jerusha Dodd if I let a little thing like a bat spoil a whole bakin' of bread for me, Mrs. Lathrop. As for Elijah, he did n't know nothin' about it an' I sha'n't tell him, you may be sure, for he's the one as eats all the bread--I never touch it myself, as you well know." CHAPTER VI THE EDITOR'S ADVICE COLUMN "I'm a good deal worried over Elijah," Miss Clegg said to Mrs. Lathrop, one day when the new paper was about three weeks old, and when the town had begun to take both it and its editor with reasonable calm; "he does have so many ideas. Some of his ideas are all right as far as I can see, but he has 'em so thick an' fast that it worries me more'n a little. It ain't natural to have new ideas all the time an' no one in this community ever does it. He's forever tellin' me of some new way he's thought of for branchin' out somewhere an' his branches make me more'n a little nervous. The old ways is good enough for us an' I try to hold him down to that idea, but first he wants me to get a new kind of flatirons as takes off while you heat it, an' next he wants me to fix the paper all over new. "I brought over somethin' as he wrote last night to read you, an' show you how curious his brains do mix up things. He brought it down this mornin' an' read it to me, an' I asked him to give it to me to read to you. I was goin' to bring it to you anyway, but then he said as I could too, so it's all right either way. It's some of his new ideas an' he said he'd be nothin' but glad to have you hear 'em 'cause he says the more he lives with me the more respect he's got for your hearin' an' judgment. He asked me what I thought of it first, an' I told him frank an' open as I did n't know what under the sun to think of it. I meant that, too, for I certainly never heard nothin' like it in my life afore, so he said we could both read it to-day an' I could tell him what we thought to-night, when he come home. "Wh--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, with real interest. "Well, seems he's been thinkin' as it's time to begin to show us how up-to-date he looks on life, he says, an' as a consequence he's openin' up what he calls the field of the future. He says he's goin' to have a editorial this week on beginnin' from now on to make every issue of the _Megaphone_ just twice as good as the one afore. I told him if he really meant what he said it could n't possibly be worth no dollar a year now, but he said wait an' see an' time would tell an' virtue be her own reward. He says he's goin' to make arrangements with a woman in the city for a beauty column, an' arrangements with some other woman as is a practical preserver, an' have a piece each time on how to be your own dressmaker once you get cut out; I thought that these things was about enough for one paper, but oh my! he went on with a string more, as long as your arm. He's goin' to begin to have a advice column too, right off, an' that's this I've brought over to read you; he says lots of folks want advice an' don't want to tell no one nor pay nothin' an' they can all write him an' get their answers on anythin' in the wide world when the paper comes out Saturday. I could n't but open my eyes a little at that, for I know a many as need advice as I should n't consider Elijah knew enough to give, but Elijah's a man an' in consequence don't know anythin' about how little he does know, so I did n't say nothin' more on that subject. He's full of hope an' says he's soon goin' to show big city papers what genius can do single-handed with a second-hand printin' press, an' he talked an' talked till I really had to tell him that if he did n't want his breakfast he'd have to go back to bed or else down town." "Is the--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, this is it. He done it last night an' he give it to me this mornin' to read to you. It's to be called 'The Advice Column' an' he's goin' to head it 'Come to My Bosom' an' sign it 'Aunt Abby' 'cause of course if he signed it himself he'd be liable for breach of promise from any girl as read the headin' an' chose to think he meant her." "But who--?" began Mrs. Lathrop. "Why, nobody the first week, of course. He had to make 'em up himself--an' the answers too, an' that's what makes it all seem so silly to me. But he did work over it,--he says no one knows the work of gettin' people stirred up to enthusiasm in a small town like this, an' he says he'd ought to have a martyr's crown of thorns, he thinks, for even thinkin' of gettin' a advice column started when most of his energies is still got to go tryin' to get our fund for the famine big enough to make it pay to register the letter when the cheque goes. He says the trouble with the fund is no one has no relations there an' a good many thought as it was mostly Chinamen as is starvin' anyhow. Elijah says the world is most dreadful hard-hearted about Chinamen--they don't seem to consider them as of any use a _tall_. He says it's mighty hard to get up a interest in anythin' here anyhow, Lord knows--for he says that San Francisco fund an' what become of it has certainly been a pill an' no mistake. The nearest he come to that was gettin' a letter as Phoebe White wrote the deacon about how the government relief train run right through the town she's in, but Elijah says after all his efforts he has n't swelled the famine fund thirty-five cents this week. He says Clightville has give nine dollars an' Meadville has give fifteen dollars an' two barrels an' a mattress, if anybody wants it C. O. D., an' here we are stuck hard at six dollars an' a quarter an' two pennies as the minister's twins brought just after they choked on them licorish marbles." "Did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "No, I did n't. I tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop, I keep a learnin'; in regard to givin' to funds I've learned a very good trick from Rockefeller an' Carnegie in the papers; they come to me about that San Francisco one an' I said right out frank an' open that if the town would give five hundred dollars I'd give fifty. That shut up every one's mouth an' set every one to thinkin' how much I was willin' to give an' as a matter of fact I did n't give nothin' a _tall_." "But about--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes," said Susan, opening the paper which she had in her hand, "I was just thinkin' of it, too. I'll read it to you right off now an' you see if you don't think about as I do. I think myself as Elijah's made some pretty close cuts at people, only of course every one will guess as he must of made 'em up 'cause they don't really fit to no one. Still, it's a risky business an' I wish he'd let it alone for he lives in my house an' I know lots of folks as is mean enough to say that these things was like enough said to him by me--a view as is far from likely to make my friends any more friendly." "Do--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, I'm goin' to." Then Miss Clegg drew a long breath and re-began thus: "Well, now, the first is, 'How can you put pickles up so they'll keep the year 'round?'" She paused there and looked expectantly at the placid Mrs. Lathrop as if she was asking a riddle or conducting an examination for the benefit of her friend. Mrs. Lathrop, however, had turned and was looking the other way so it was only when the length of the pause brought her to herself with a violent start, that she answered: "My heavens ali--" "The answer is," said Susan promptly, "'Put 'em up so high that nobody can reach them.'" Mrs. Lathrop opened her eyes. "I don't--" she protested. "No, I did n't think as it was very sensible myself," responded Susan, "but do you know, Elijah laughed out loud over it. That's what's funny about Elijah to my order of thinkin'--he's so amused at himself. He thinks that's one of the best things he's done as a editor, he says, an' I'm sure I can't see nothin' funny in it any more than you can. An' you don't see nothin' funny in it, do you?" "No," said Mrs. Lathrop, "I--" "Nor me neither," said Susan, "an' now the next one is sillier yet, to my order of thinkin'. It's a letter an' begins, 'Dear Aunt Abby;' then it says, 'Do you think it is possible to be happy with a young man with freckles? My husband says Yes, but my mother says No. He's my husband's son by his first wife. I have twins myself. I want the boy sent to a home of some sort. What do you think? Yours affectionately--Ada.'" "What under the--" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop. "Just what I said," said Susan. "I could n't make head or tail out of it myself an' I'm afraid it'll make Deacon White mad 'cause Polly's his second wife--yes, an' the minister's got two wives, too. I tried to make Elijah see that but he just said to read the answer." "What is--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, the answer's just as dumbfounderin' as the question, I think. The answer says, 'Hang on to the boy. If you get the twin habit he'll prove invaluable.'" "Well, I--" said Mrs. Lathrop, disgustedly. "I told Elijah that myself. I said that the minister was bound to feel hurt over the second wife part, but with twins in the answer he's sure to feel it means him an' I expect he'll maybe stop takin' the paper an' join Mrs. Macy's club. Mrs. Macy got real mad at somethin' Mr. Kimball sold her last week an' as a consequence she went an' made what she calls her Newspaper Club, she rents her paper for a cent a day now an' she made four cents last week. She says if Elijah Doxey ever says anythin' in the paper about her again she'll take three papers an' rent 'em at two mills a day an' supply the whole town an' wreck him so flat he'll have to hire out to pick hops. I told Elijah what she said an' he said for the Lord's sake to tell Mrs. Macy as her toes was hereafter perfectly safe from all his treads. I told her, but she says he need n't think quotin' from poets is goin' to inspire faith in him in her very soon again. She says over in Meadville it's town talk as Elijah Doxey is havin' just a box of monkeys' fun with us." "Do you--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, open-eyed. "No, I don't, for I asked him an' he crossed his heart to the contrary. But really, Mrs. Lathrop, you must let me read the rest of this for I've got to be gettin' home to get supper." "Go--" said the neighbor. "No, I won't till I've done. The next one is this one an' it says, 'How long ought any one to wait to get married? I have waited several years an' there is nothin' against the man except he's eighty-two an' paralyzed. I am seventy-nine. Pa an' Ma oppose the match an' are the oldest couple in the country,' an' Elijah has signed it 'Lovin'ly, Rosy'--of all the silly things!" "He must be--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "I should think so," said Susan; "why, he was rollin' all over the sofa laughin' over that. The answer is, 'I would wait a little longer--you can lose nothin' by patience.' I call that pretty silly, too." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, indeed," said Susan, folding up the paper, "I felt it an' I said it, an' I knew you'd feel to agree. I like Elijah, but I must say as I don't like his Advice Column, an' I'd never be one to advise no one to write to it for advice. His answers don't seem to tell you nothin', to my order of thinkin', an' that one about the pickles struck me just like a slap in my face." "I'd never--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Nor me neither. If I want to know I come to you." "And I--" said Mrs. Lathrop warmly. "I know you would," said her friend, "whatever faults you've got, Mrs. Lathrop, I'd always feel that about you." CHAPTER VII MRS. MACY AND THE CONVENTION Mrs. Lathrop was out in the garden, pottering around in an aimless sort of way which she herself designated as "looking after things," but which her friend and neighbor called "wastin' time an' strength on nothin'." Whenever Miss Clegg perceived Mrs. Lathrop thus engaged she always interrupted her occupation as speedily as possible. On the occasion of which I write, she emerged from her own kitchen door at once, and called: "Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, come here, I've got a surprise for you." Mrs. Lathrop forthwith ceased to gaze fondly and absent-mindedly over her half-acre of domain, and advanced to the fence. Miss Clegg also advanced to the fence, and upon its opposite sides the following conversation took place. "I went to see Mrs. Macy yesterday afternoon," Miss Clegg began, "an' I saw her an' that's what the surprise come from." "She isn't--" asked Mrs. Lathrop anxiously. "Oh, no, she's all right--that is, she's pretty nearly all right, but I may remark as the sight an' hearin' of her this day is a everlastin' lesson on lettin' women be women an' allowin' men to keep on bein' men for some years to come yet. Mrs. Macy says for her part she's felt that way all along but every one said it was her duty an' she says she always makes a point of doin' her duty, an' this time it was goin' to give her a free trip to town, too, so the hand of Providence seemed to her to be even more'n unusually plainly stuck out at her." "Oh," said Mrs. Lathrop--"you mean--" "Of course I do," said Susan, "but wait till I tell you how it come out. It's come out now, an' all different from how you know." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, you wait an' listen," said the friend,--"you wait an' listen an' then you'll know, too." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop, submissively. "She says," Miss Clegg went on, "that we all know (an' that's true, too, 'cause I told you that before) as she was never much took with the idea even in the first of it. She says as she thinks as Elijah's ideas is gettin' most too progressive an' if he ain't checked we'll very soon find ourselves bein' run over by some of his ideas instead of pushed forward. She says woman's clubs is very nice things an' Mrs. Lupey takes a deal of pleasure with the one in Meadville (whenever they don't meet at her house)--but Mrs. Macy says our sewin' society ain't no club an' never was no club, an' she considers as it was overdrawin' on Elijah's part to start the question of its sendin' a delegate to any federation of any kind of woman's clubs. She says she can't see--an' she said at the meetin' as elected her, that she couldn't see--what our sewin' society could possibly get out of any convention, for you can buy all the patterns by mail now just as well as if you have 'em all to look over. An' then she says, too, as no one on the face of kingdom come could ever be crazy enough to suppose as any convention could ever get anythin' out of our delegates, so what was the use of us an' them ever tryin' to get together a _tall_. I thought she was very sensible yesterday, an' I thought she was very sensible at the meetin' as elected her, an' I tried to talk to Elijah, but Elijah's so dead set on our bein' up to time with every Tom, Dick an' Harry as comes along with any kind of a new plan, that I can't seem to get him to understand as no one in this town wants to be up to time--we're a great deal better suited takin' our own time like we always did until he come among us. Mrs. Macy says as we all know as no one wanted to be a delegate to the federation to begin with, an' you know that yourself, Mrs. Lathrop, for I was there an' Elijah's idea resulted in the first place in every one's stayin' away from that meetin' for fear as they'd be asked to go. They had to set another day for the sewin' society an' even then a good many cleaned house instead for a excuse, an' Mrs. Sweet said right out as she did n't believe as any of us knowed enough to go to a convention an' so we'd better all stay home. I had to speak up at that an' say as Elijah had told me as things was fixed now so folks as did n't know anythin' could go to a convention just as well as any one else, but Mrs. Jilkins said in that case she should feel as if she was wastin' her time along with a lot of fools, an' what she said made such a impression that in the end the only one as they could possibly get to go was Mrs. Macy, so they elected her. Mrs. Macy was n't enthusiastic about bein' elected, a _tall_, but Mrs. Lupey is her cousin an' Mrs. Lupey was the Meadville delegate, an' she says she thought as they could sit together, an' Mrs. Lupey wanted to go to the city anyway about reducin' her flesh, an' Mrs. Macy said that was sure to be interestin' for the one as Mrs. Lupey likes best is the one as you run chains of marbles up an' down your back alone by yourself, an' Mrs. Macy wanted to see them givin' Mrs. Lupey full directions for nothin'--she thought it would be so amusin'--an' so in the end she said she'd go. "Well, she says foreign folks before they come to this country is wise compared to her! She was tellin' me all about it this afternoon. I never hear such a tale--not even from Gran'ma Mullins. She says Elijah sent in her name an' they filed her next day an' she says they've never quit sendin' her the filin's ever since. I told you as I heard in the square she was gettin' a good deal of mail but I never mistrusted how much until she showed me her box for kindlin' fires next winter. Why, she says it's beyond all belief! The right end of the box has got the papers as was n't worth nothin' an' the left end has got them as is really valuable. Well, after I'd looked at the box we set down an' she told me the hide an' hair of the whole thing. She says at first she got letters from everybody under the sun askin' her her opinions an' views, some about things as she never heard of before an' others as to things as she considers a downright insult to consider as she might know about. But she says views an' insults don't really matter much, after you reach her age, so she let those all go into the box together an' thought she'd think no more about it. She says there was only just one as she really minded an' that was the one about her switch. Seems she was n't decided about even wearin' her switch to the convention, for she says it's very hard to get both ends of a switch fastened in at the same do-up an' one end looks about as funny as the other, stickin' out, but she says you can maybe imagine her feelin's when a man as she would n't know from Adam wrote her a letter beginnin', 'Hello, hello, why don't you have that dyed?' an' a picture of him lookin' at a picture of her very own switch with a microscope! She says she never was so took aback in all her life. There was another picture on the envelope of the man at a telephone an' he'd got all the other delegates' switches done an' hangin' up to dry for 'em an' she says she will say as the law against sendin' such things through the mail had certainly ought to be applied to that man right then an' there. She says it's years since she's got red from anythin' but bein' mad, but she was red from both kinds of woman's feelin's then an' don't you forget it. But laws, she says switches is child's play to what another man wrote her about his garters. Not her garters but his garters, mind you, Mrs. Lathrop. Would you believe that that other man had the face to ask her point-blank if, while she was in town, she'd be so kind as to give five minutes to comin' an' lookin' at his garters!--at _his garters_! He said they hooked onto his shoulders an' he just wanted a chance to tell her how comfortable they was. Well, she says the idea of any man's garters bein' of any interest to a widow was surely most new to her, an' it was all she could do to keep from writin' an' tellin' him so. She says she never hear the beat of such impertinence in all her life. Why, she says when she had a husband she never took no special interest in his garters as she recollects. She says she remembers as he used to pull up when he first got up in the mornin' an' then calmly wrinkle down all day, but she says if her lawful husband's garters' wrinkles did n't interest her, it ain't in reason as any other man's not wrinklin' is goin' to. But she says that ain't all whatever I may think (or you either, Mrs. Lathrop), for although the rest ain't maybe so bad, still it's bad enough an' you 'll both agree to that when you hear it, I know. She says more men wrote her, an' more, an' more, an' the things they said was about all she could stand, so help her Heaven! One asked her if she knowed she needed a new carpet an' he happened to keep carpets, an' another told her her house needed paintin' an' he happened to keep paint, an' another just come out flat as a flounder an' said if she knowed how old her stove was, she'd come straight to him the first thing, an' he happened to keep stoves. An' she says they need n't suppose as she was n't sharp enough to see as every last one of them letters was really writ to sound unselfish, but with the meanin' underneath of maybe gettin' her to buy somethin'. "An' then she says there come a new kind as really frightened her by gettin' most too intimate on postal cards." "On postal--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes--on postal cards. One wrote as she could get her husband back if she'd only follow his direction, an' she says the last thing she wants is to get her husband back, even if he is only just simply dead; an' another told her if she'd go through his exercises she could get fat or thin just as she pleased, an' the exercises was done in black without no clothes on around the edge of the card, an' Mrs. Macy says when Johnny handed her the card at the post office she like to of died then an' there. Why, she says they was too bad to put in a book, even--they was too bad to even send Mrs. Lupey!" "Wh--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Then on Monday last still another new kind begin an' they've been comin' more an' more each mail. They was the convention itself beginnin' on her. An' she says she don't know whether they was a improvement or worse to come. One wrote an' told her if she was temperance to report to them the first thing, an' then stand shoulder to shoulder from then on straight through the whole week. Well, Mrs. Macy says she could n't consider goin' anywhere an' standin' up through a whole week so she wrote 'em she was for the Family Entrance, where everybody can sit down, an' she feels bad because she's a great believer in temperance, but she says she can't help it, she's got to have a chair anywhere where she's to stay for a week. So temperance loses Mrs. Macy. Then woman's sufferige did n't wait to ask her what she was, but sent her a button an' told her to sew it right on right then an' there. She says she was feelin' so bad over the temperance that she was only too glad to be agreeable about the button so she done it, but it's hard to button over on a'count of bein' a star with the usual spikes an' the only place where she needed a button was on her placket hole, an' a spiked button in the back of your petticoat is far from bein' amusin' although she says she can't but think as it's a very good badge for sufferige whenever she steps on it in steppin' out of her clothes at night. Then next she got a letter askin' her if she'd join the grand battalion to rally around the flag, an' she says it was right then an' there as she begin to fill the kindlin' box. "Well, she says she'd got the box half full when to-day she got the final slam in her face! "There came this mornin' her directions for goin' an' she says when she see for the first time just the whole width of what she was let in to she most fell over backward then an' there. "First was a badge with a very good safety pin as she can always use; she says she did n't mind the badge. Then there was paper tellin' her as she was M. 1206 an' not to let it slip her mind an' to mark everythin' she owned with it an' sew it in her hat an' umbrella. Then there was a map of the city with blue lines an' pink squares an' a sun without any sense shinin' square in the middle. Then there was a paper as she must fill out an' return by the next mail if she was meanin' to eat or sleep durin' the week. Then there was four labels all to be writ with her name an' her number an' one was for her trunk if it weighed over a hundred pounds, an' one was for her trunk if it weighed under a hundred pounds, an' one was for her trunk if it was a suit case, an' one was for her trunk if it was n't. "Well, Mrs. Macy says you can maybe imagine how her head was swimmin' by this time an' the more she read how she was to be looked out for, the more scared she got over what might possibly happen to her. She says it was just shock after shock. There was a letter offerin' to pray with her any time she'd telephone first, an' a letter tellin' her not to overpay the hack, an' a letter sayin' as it's always darkest afore dawn, an' if she'd got any money saved up to bring it along with her an' invest it by the careful advice of him as had the letter printed at his own expense. Why, she says she didn't know which way to turn or what to do next she was that mixed up. "An' then yesterday mornin' come the final bang as bu'sted Mrs. Macy! She got a letter from a man as said he'd meet her in the station an' tattoo her name right on her in the ladies' waitin'-room, so as her friends could easy find her an' know her body at the morgue. Well, she said that ended her. She says she never was one to take to bein' stuck an' so she just up an' wrote to Mrs. Lupey as she would n't go for love or money--" "Why," cried Mrs. Lathrop, "then she isn't--" "No," said Susan, "she isn't goin'. She ain't got the courage an' it's cruel to force her. I told her to give me the ticket an' I'd go in her place." CHAPTER VIII THE BIENNIAL On the day that the Convention of Women's Clubs opened, Mrs. Lathrop, having seen her friend depart, composed herself for a period of unmitigated repose which might possibly last, she thought, for several days. Susan had awakened her very early that morning to receive her back door key and minute instructions regarding Elijah and the chickens. Elijah had undertaken to look after the chickens, but Miss Clegg stated frankly that she should feel better during her absence if her friend kept a sharp eye on him during the process. "Elijah's got a good heart," said the delegate, "but that don't alter his bein' a man an' as a consequence very poor to depend upon as to all things about the house. I don't say as I lay it up against him for if he was like Deacon White, an' had ideas of his own as to starchin' an' butterin' griddles, he'd drive me mad in no time, but still I shall take it as a personal favor of you, Mrs. Lathrop, if you'll ask him whenever you see him if he's remembered all I told him, an' _don't_ let him forget the hen as is thinkin' some of settin' in the wood shed, for if she does it, she'll need food just as much as if she does n't do it." Then Miss Clegg departed, with her valise, her bonnet in a box, and some lunch in another box. She went early, for the simple reason that the train did the same thing, and as soon as she was gone Mrs. Lathrop, as I before remarked, went straight back to bed and to sleep again. She had a feeling that for a while at least no demand upon her energies could possibly be made, and it was therefore quite a shock to her when some hours later she heard a vigorous pounding on her back door. Stunned dizzy by the heavy slumber of a hot July day, Mrs. Lathrop was some minutes in getting to the door, and when she got there, was some seconds in fumbling at the lock with her dream-benumbed fingers; but in the end she got it open, and then was freshly paralyzed by the sight of her friend, standing without, with her valise, her bonnet-box, her lunch in the other box, and the general appearance of a weary soldier who has fought but not exactly won. "Why, Susan, I thought you--" began Mrs. Lathrop, her mouth and eyes both popping widely open. "I did, an' I've got through an' I've come home." Miss Clegg advanced into the kitchen as she spoke and abruptly deposited her belongings upon the table and herself upon a chair. "I've been to the convention," she said; then, "I've been to the convention, an' I've got through with that, too, an' I've got home from that, too." "Why--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, advancing into a more advanced stage of perplexity, as she came more fully to herself, noted more fully her friend's exceedingly battered appearance, and folding what she had slipped on well about her, sought her rocker. "I don't know, I'm sure," said Susan, "it beats me what anybody else does it for, either. But you must n't ask me questions, Mrs. Lathrop, partly because I'm too tired to answer them, an' partly because I've come over to tell you anyhow an' I can always talk faster when you don't try to talk at the same time." Mrs. Lathrop took a fresh wind-about of her overgarment, and prepared to hold her tongue more tightly than ever. "In the first place," said Susan, speaking in the highly uplifted key which we are all apt to adopt under the stress of great excitement mixed with great fatigue; "in the first place, Mrs. Lathrop, you know as Mrs. Macy insisted on keepin' the badge 'cause she said she wanted to work it into that pillow she's makin', so I had to get along with the card as had her number on it. As a consequence I naturally had a very hard time, for I could n't find Mrs. Lupey an' had to fiddle my own canoe from the start clear through to the finish. I can tell you I've had a hard day an' no one need n't ever say Woman's Rights to me never again. I'm too full of Women's Wrongs for my own comfort from now on, an' the way I've been treated this day makes me willin' to be a turkey in a harem before I'd ever be a delegate to nothin' run by women again. "In the first place when I got to the train it was full an' while I was packin' myself into the two little angles left by a very fat man, a woman come through an' stuck a little flag in my bonnet without my ever noticin' what she done an' that little flag pretty near did me up right in the start. Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as goin' to a Woman's Convention makes you everybody's business but your own from the beginnin', an' that little flag as that woman stuck in my bonnet was a sign to every one as I was a delegate. "I set with a very nice lady as asked me as soon as she see the little flag if I knowed how to tell a ham as has got consumption from one as has n't. I told her I did n't an' she talked about that till we got to town, which made the journey far from interestin' an' is goin' to make it very hard for me to eat ham all the rest of my life. Then we got out an' I got rid of her, but that did n't help me much, for I got two others as see the little flag right off an' they never got off nor let up on me. I was took to a table as they had settin' in the station handy, put in their own private census an' then give two books an' a map an' seven programs an' a newspaper an' a rose, all to carry along with my own things, an' then a little woman with a little black bag as had noticed the little flag too took me away, an' said I need n't bother about a thing for I could go with her an' welcome. [Illustration: "'A lady come up, looked at my flag, an' asked me if I was a delegate or an alternative.'" _Page_ 119] "I did n't want to go with her, welcome or not, but they all seemed pleased with the arrangement, so I went with her, an' I was more'n a little mad for every time I dropped the rose or a program, tryin' to get rid of them, she'd see it an' pick it up an' give it back to me. We walked a little ways in that pleasant way an' then she asked me how I was raisin' my children, an' I said I did n't have none. She said, 'Oh my, what would Mr. Roosevelt say to that?' and I said it was n't his affair nor no other man's. I may in confidence remark as by this time I was gettin' a little warm, Mrs. Lathrop. "We come to the convention hall after a good long walk an' I was quite hot two ways by that time, for I was mad an' awful tired too. The little woman left me then an' a lady come up, looked at my flag, an' asked me if I was a delegate or an alternative 'cause it was important to know right off in the beginnin'. I told her I was for Mrs. Macy an' she got out a book an' looked in it very carefully to see for sure whether to believe me or not an' then she told me to go on in. There was a door as squeaked an' they pushed me through it an' I found myself, bag, flag an' all, in the convention. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I never see the beat of that place in all my life. They'd done what they could to make it cheerful an' homelike by paintin' it green at one end but it was plain to be seen as the paint soon give out an' towards the top the man as was paintin' must of give out too, for he just finished up by doing a few circles here an' there an' then left it mainly plain. Below was all chairs an' they'd started to decorate with banners but they'd given out on banners even quicker than on paint an' the most of the hall was most simple. "I walked up as far towards the front as I could an' then I sat down. I can't say as I was very comfortable nor much impressed an' the folks further back was very restless an' kept sayin' they could n't hear what was goin' on on the platform. There was a lady on the platform hammerin' a table for dear life an' to my order of thinkin' anybody must have been deaf as could n't have heard her hammerin', but she looked happy an' that was maybe the main thing, for a woman behind me whispered as the spirit of her with the hammer just filled the room. Well, I stood it as long as I could an' then I got up an' remarked frank an' open as if every one would keep still every one could easy hear. They all clapped at that, but the lady with the hammer could n't seem to even hear me an' hammered worse than ever all the while they was clappin'. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, to make a long story short it was n't very interestin'--I will even in confidence remark as I found it pretty dull. I read all my seven programs an' made out as the first day was give to greetin' an' the next to meetin'. The next was on trees an' the one after that they was all goin' to drive. An' so on, an' so on. Then I smelt my rose some, an' a thorn stuck into my nose some an' the hammerin' made me very tired an' finally a woman come in an' said I had her seat so I give it to her with a glad heart an' come out, an' I never was happier to do anythin' in my whole life before. But I was hardly out when a lady as I had n't seen yet see my little flag an' pounced on me an' said was I Miss Clegg? an' I did n't see nothin' to be gained by sayin' I was n't so I said Yes, I was. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, that was pretty near to bein' the beginnin' of my end. That woman hustled me into a carriage, give my valise to the driver an' told him to be quick. I was too dumb did up by her actions to be able to think of anythin' to say so I just sit still, an' she pinned a purple ribbon onto me an' told me she'd read two of my books an' died laughin' only to look at me. I was more than afraid as she was crazy but she talked so fast I could n't even see a chance to open my mouth so I did n't try. "She said when they was gettin' ready for the convention an' dividin' up celebrities among themselves that she just took me right off. She said as she was goin' to give a lunch for me an' a dinner for me an' I don't know what all. She was still talkin' when the carriage stopped at a hotel. "She said I must n't mind a hotel much 'cause her husband minded company more, an' I did n't see any sort of meanin' to her remark, but David in the lions' den was a roarin' lion himself compared to me that minute, so I just walked behind her an' she took me in an' up in a elevator an' into a room with a bathroom an' a bouquet an' there she told me to give her the key of the valise an' she'd unpack while I was in the bath tub. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I'm sure I never had no idea of needin' a bath that bad when I set off for the city to-day, an' you'll maybe be surprised at me bein' so wax about extra washin' in her hands, but I was so wild to get away from her an' her steady talk by that time, that I give her the key an' went into the bathroom an' made up my mind as I'd try a bath all over at once for the first time in my life, seein' as there did n't seem to be nothin' else to do, an' the tub was handy. "So I undressed an' when I was undressed I begin to look where I was to leap. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you never see such a tub as that tub in all your life before! There was a hole in the middle of the bottom an' the more water run in the more water run out. At first I could n't see how I was goin' to manage but after a while I figured it out an' see as there was nothin' for me to do but to sit on that hole an' paddle like I was paid for it with both hands at once to keep from being scalded while the tub filled from two steady spurts one boilin' an' one of ice water. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I never felt nothin' like that kind of a bath before! "If I tried to wash anywhere as was at all difficult I lost my grip on the hole an' the water went out with a swish as made Niagara look like a cow's tail afore I could possibly get in position again. I was n't more 'n halfway down my washin' when the awfulest noise begin outside an' the convention itself was babes sleepin' in soothin' syrup compared to whatever was goin' on in that next room. "I tell you I got out of that tub in a hurry an' rubbed off as best I could with a very thick towel marked 'Bath' as was laid on the floor all ready, an' got into my clothes an' went out. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you may believe me or not just as you please, but it was _another_ lady with _another_ delegate with _another_ purple ribbon an' _another_ little flag. The ladies was very mad an' the other delegate was bitin' her lips an' lookin' out the window. In the end the ladies was so mad they went down to the telephone an' left the delegate an' me alone in the room together. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can believe me or not just as you please, but that other delegate asked me my name an' when I told her she said it was her name, too. Then she laughed until she cried an' said she never hear anythin' to beat us. She said it was all as clear as day to her an' that she should write a story about it. She said about all she got out of life was writin' stories about it an' she never lost a chance to make a good one. She said she wished I'd stay with her an' I could have half the bed an' half of that same tub as long as I like. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, the long an' short of it was as I felt that no matter how kind she was I would n't never be able to be happy anywhere where I had to be around with a woman who talked all the time, an' sleep in a bed with another Susan Clegg, an' wash in a tub as you have to stop up with some of yourself, so I just took my things an' come home by the noon train an' I'll stay here one while now, too, I guess." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, I was just going to ask you where you put it," said Miss Clegg, "I shall need it to get in the back door." "It's--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "I can get it myself," said her friend, rising. "Well, good-bye. I won't deny as I'm mad for my lunch won't be any the better for ridin' to town an' back this hot day, but the Lord fits the back to the burden, so I guess Elijah will be able to eat it, leastways if he don't he won't get nothin' else,--I know _that_, for it was him as got up the fine idea of sending a delegate from the sewin' society to the convention an' I don't thank him none for it, I know _that_." "You--" said Mrs. Lathrop, mildly. "I ain't sure," said Miss Clegg. "Elijah strikes me as more thorns than roses this night. I never was one to feel a longin' for new experiences, an' I've had too many to-day, as he'll very soon learn to his sorrow when he comes home to-night." CHAPTER IX THE FAR EASTERN TROPICS "You look--" said Mrs. Lathrop, solicitously, one afternoon, when Susan Clegg had come around by the gate to enjoy a spell of mutual sitting and knitting. "Well, I am," confessed Susan, unrolling her ball and drawing a long breath; "I may tell you in confidence, Mrs. Lathrop, as I really never was more so. What with havin' to look after Elijah's washin' an' his mendin' an' his cookin' an' his room, an' what with holdin' down his new ideas an' explainin' to people as he did n't mean what it sounds like when I ain't been able to hold 'em down, I do get pretty well wore out. I can see as Mr. Kimball sees how Elijah is wearin' on me for he gives me a chair whenever I go in there now an' that just shows how anxious he is for me to rest when I can, but it really ain't altogether Elijah's fault for the way my back aches to-day, for I got this ache in a way as you could n't possibly understand, Mrs. Lathrop, for I got it from sittin' up readin' a book last night as you or any ordinary person would of gone to sleep on the second page of an' slept clear through to the index; but I was built different from you an' ordinary persons, Mrs. Lathrop, an' if I'd thanked the Lord as much as I'd ought to for that I'd never have had time to do nothin' else in _this_ world." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, with interest. "It was a book," said her friend, beginning to knit assiduously--"a book as a boy he went to school with sent Mr. Fisher with a postal card, sayin' as every American man 'd ought to read it thoughtfully. Mrs. Fisher took it out of the post office an' read the postal card, an' she said right off as she did n't approve of Mr. Fisher's reading books as every man ought to know, so she let me have it to bring home an' read till she gets through makin' over her carpets. I brought the book home done up to look like it was a pie, an' I will frankly state, Mrs. Lathrop, as you could have dropped me dead out of any balloon when I found out what it was about. It was n't the kind of book the postal card would have led you to suppose a _tall_--it was about Asia, Mrs. Lathrop, the far side or the near side, just accordin' to the way you face to get the light while you read, an' so far from its bein' only intended for men it's all right for any one at all to read as has got the time. Now that I'm done it an' know I have n't never got to do it again, I don't mind telling you in confidence that for a book as could n't possibly have been meant to be interestin' it was about as agreeable readin' as I ever struck in my life. There was lots in it as was new to me, for it's a thick book, an' all I knowed about that part of the world before was as Java coffee comes from Java an' the Philippines from Spain. But I know it all now, an' Judge Fitch himself can't tell me nothin' from this day on that the man who wrote that book ain't told me first. I'll bet I know more about what that book 's about than any one in this community does, an' now that I know it I see why the man said what he did on the postal card for it _is_ a book as every man ought to read, an' I read in the paper the other day as the main trouble with the men in America was as they knowed all about what they did n't know nothin' about, an' did n't know nothin' a _tall_ about the rest." "What--" began Mrs. Lathrop. "But I don't see how the man that wrote it is ever goin' to make any money out of it," pursued her friend, "for it's pretty plain as it's every bit written about things that Americans don't want to really learn an' what the rest of the world learned long ago. If I was very patriotic I don't believe I'd have read it clear through to the end myself, but I ain't never felt any call to be patriotic since the boys throwed that firecracker into my henhouse last Fourth of July. I will say this for the hen, Mrs. Lathrop, an' that is that she took the firecracker a good deal calmer'n I could, for I was awful mad, an' any one as seed me ought to of felt what a good American was spoiled then an' there, for all I asked was to hit somethin', whether it was him as throwed the cracker or not an' that's what Judge Fitch always calls the real American spirit when he makes them band-stand speeches of his in the square. Oh my, though, but I wish you had n't reminded me of that hen, Mrs. Lathrop, her tail never will come in straight again I don't believe, an' she's forever hoppin' off her eggs to look out of the window since she had that scare." Mrs. Lathrop frowned and looked very sympathetic. "But about this book," Susan went on after a second of slightly saddened reflection. "I'm goin' to tell you all about it. Elijah 's goin' to write a editorial about it, too. Elijah says this business of downtreadin' our only colony has got to be stopped short right now as soon as he can call the government's attention to how to do it. "Well, the book begins very mild an' pleasant with Hongkong an' it ends with the Philippine accounts. Seems Hongkong ain't Chinese for all it's named that an' growed there--it's English--an' as for the Philippines there's eight millions of 'em, not countin' the wild ones as they can't catch to count an' ask questions. In between Hongkong an' the Philippines the man who wrote the book runs around that part of the world pretty lively an' tells who owns it an' what kind of roads they've got an' who'd better govern 'em an' all like that. You might think from hearin' me as he sort of put on airs over knowin' so much himself, but it don't sound that way a _tall_ in the book. It's when he finally got to the Philippines as any one can see as he really did begin to enjoy himself. He enjoyed himself so much that he really made me enjoy myself, too, although I can't in reason deny as I felt as I might not of been quite so happy only for that firecracker. The kind of things he says about our doin's in those countries is all what you don't get in the papers nor no other way, an' if the United States really feels they're in the right as to how they're actin' all they need to do is to read how wrong they are in that book where a man as really knows what he's talkin' about has got it all set down in black an' white. I don't believe it's generally knowed here in America as Dewey took Aguinaldo an' his guns over to Manila an' give him his first start at fightin' an' called him 'general' for a long time after they'd decided in Washington as how he was n't nothin' but a rebel after all. I never knowed anythin' about that, an' I will remark as I think there's many others as don't know it, neither, an' I may in confidence remark to you, Mrs. Lathrop, as that book leads me to think as the main trouble with the Philippines is as they are bein' run by folks as don't know anythin' about the place they're runnin' an' don't know nothin' about runnin' for anythin' but places. The man in the book says the Philippines ain't very well off being pacified, an' that the Americans ain't no great success pacifyin' 'em, for it seems as they made five thousand expeditions after 'em in one year, an' only got hold of five thousand natives in all. That's a expedition to a man, an' I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as it's small wonder we're taxed an' they're taxed, with some of our new fellow citizens as hard to grab as that. To my order of thinkin' it'd be wisest to let 'em chase each other for ten or twenty years first an' then when they was pretty well thinned out we could step in an' settle with the survivors; but accordin' to the man who wrote the book you can't never tell a American nothin', an' I must say that my own experience in this community has proved as he knows what he's sayin' all straight enough. He says the Philippines is in a very bad way, an' so is their roads, but he says that all the folks in this country is so dead satisfied with their way an' poor roads that they ain't goin' to do nothin' to help either along any." "Did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "He says," continued Susan, "that the United States is just so happy sittin' back an' observin' the Philippines, an' the Philippines is so far off that if they die of starvation while being observed no one'll ever be the wiser. He says the United States is payin' for the army, an' the Philippines is tryin' to live with it, an' seein' as they don't work much an' the Chinese is forbidden to work for 'em, he don't see no help nowhere. What he said about the Chinese was very interestin', for I never see one close to, an' it seems they're a clean race only for likin' to raise pigs in their garrets. It seems, too, as if you let 'em into any country they'll work very hard an' live very cheap an' pay most of the taxes with the duty on opium as they've got to eat, an' games as they've got to play." "I sh'd think--" said Mrs. Lathrop, looking startled. "Well, I should, too," said Susan, "but accordin' to the book the Philippines ain't to be allowed any such luxury as havin' the Chinese to develop their country an' pay their taxes. No sir, they've all got to go to school an' learn English first, an' although he says right out plain that the Philippines needs Chinese an' good roads a deal worse 'n they need the army an' the schools, still it's the army an' the schools as America is going to give them, an' they can get along without the roads an' the Chinese as best they can. They certainly must be gettin' a good deal of schoolin', but the man says all the teachers teach is English, an' as none of the children can speak English they don't get much learned. I thought I could sort of see that he thought we 'd ought to of straightened out the South of our own country afore we begun on any other part of the world, an' it _is_ the other half of the world, too, Mrs. Lathrop, for I looked it up on a map an' it begins right under Japan an' then twists off in a direction as makes you wonder how under the sun we come to own it anyway, an' if we did accidentally get it hooked on to us by Dewey's having too much steam up to be able to stop himself afore he'd run over the other fleet, we'd ought anyway to be willin' to give it away like you do the kittens you ain't got time to drown. The whole back of the book is full of figures to prove as it's the truth as has been told in front, but the man who wrote it didn't think much of even the figures in the Philippines for he says they put down some of what they spend in Mexican money an' some in American an' don't tell what they spend the most of it for in either case. He says he met some very nice men there an' they was workin' the best they knew how but they did n't think things were goin' well themselves an' it's plain to be seen that he spoke of 'em just like you give a child a cooky after a spankin'. What interested me most was there's a Malay country over there as the English began on twenty-five years ago an' have got railroaded an' telegraphed an' altogether civilized now, an' we've had the Philippines ten years an' ain't even got the live ones quieted down yet." "What do you--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, earnestly. "Oh," said her friend, "I ain't never had no ideas on the Philippine question since Judge Fitch got his brother made a captain in the war just because he was tired supportin' him. Mr. Kimball said then as all wars was just got up to use up the folks as respectable people did n't want to have around no longer an' I must say as I believe him. Mr. Weskin told me as it's been quietly knowed around for hundreds of years as the crusades was a great success as far as gettin' 'em off was concerned just for that very reason, an' I guess we're hangin' on to the Philippines because it's a place a good long ways off to send poor relations after good salaries. The man who wrote the book said a man did n't need to know hardly anythin' to go there an' I must say from what I see of the few who have come back they don't look like they spent much spare time studyin' up while they was in the country." Susan stopped knitting suddenly and stuck her needles into the ball. "I've got to go home," she said. "I've just remembered as I forgot to fill the tea-kettle. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, we've had a nice talk about our foreign possessions an' all I can say in the end is as that whole book made me feel just like we'd all ought to get to feel as quick as we can. Lots of things in this world might be better only the people that could change 'em don't often feel inclined that way, an' the people who'd like to have a change ain't the ones as have got any say. If I was a Philippine I'd want a Chinaman to do my work an' I'd feel pretty mad that folks as had so many niggers an' Italians that they did n't need Chinamen should say I could n't have 'em neither. I'd feel as if I knowed what was best for me an' I would n't thank a lot of men in another part of the world for sittin' down on my ideas. However, there's one thing that comforted me very much in the book. All the countries around _is_ run, an' pretty well run too, by other countries an' if the Philippines get too awful tired of being badly run by us all those of 'em as know anythin' can easy paddle across to some of them well run countries in the front half of the book to live, an' as for the rest--" Susan stopped short. Mrs. Lathrop was sound asleep! CHAPTER X THE EVILS OF DELAYED DECEASE "I ain't been doin' my duty by Mrs. Macy lately," said Susan Clegg to Mrs. Lathrop; "I declare to goodness I've been so did up with the garden an' Elijah an' house cleanin' this last two weeks that I don't believe I've even thought of the other side of the crick since I begun. I ain't seen Mrs. Macy either an' maybe that's one reason why I ain't done nothin' about her, but it ain't surprisin' as I ain't seen her for she ain't been here--she's been over in Meadville stayin' with the Lupeys, an' I must say I'm right put out with Elijah for not puttin' it in the paper so I'd of knowed it afore. The idea of Mrs. Macy bein' in Meadville for over a week an' me not hearin' of it is a thing as makes me feel as maybe when Gabriel blows his horn I'll just merely sit up an' say, 'Did you call?' But anyway she's been away an' she's got back, an' when I heard it in the square to-day I did n't mince up no matters none but I just set my legs in her direction an' walked out there as fast as I could. It does beat all how many changes can come about in two weeks!--four more pickets has been knocked off the minister's fence an' most every one has hatched out their chickens since I was that way last, but I was n't out picketin' or chickenin'; I was out after Mrs. Macy an' I just kept a-goin' till I got to her." "Was she--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, she was," replied Susan, "an' thank the most kind an' merciful Heavens, there was n't no one else there, so she an' I could just sit down together, an' it was n't nothin' but joy for her to tell me hide an' hair an' inside out of her whole visit. She got back day before yesterday an' she had n't even unpacked her trunk yet she was that wore out; you can judge from that how wore out she really is, for you know yourself, Mrs. Lathrop, as when Mrs. Macy is too wore out to dive head over heels into things, whether her own or other folks', she's been pretty well beat down to the ground. She was mighty glad to see me, though, even if she did n't come to the door, but only hollered from a chair, an' I don't know as I ever had a nicer call on her, for she went over everythin' inside out an' hind side before, an' it was nothin' but a joy for me to listen, for it seems she had a pretty sad visit first an' last what with being specially invited to sit up an' watch nights with Mrs. Kitts an' then stay to the funeral--" "Funeral!" cried Mrs. Lathrop,--"I nev--" "For after bein' specially invited to help lay her out an' go to the funeral," Susan repeated calmly, "Mrs. Kitts did n't die a _tall_." "Oh!" said Mrs. Lathrop, terminating the whole of a remark, for once. "No," said Susan, "an' every one else feels the same as you do about it, too, but it seems as it was n't to be this time. Mrs. Macy says as she never went through nothin' to equal these ten days dead or alive, an' she hopes so help her heaven to never sit up with anybody as has got anythin' but heart disease or the third fit of apoplexy hereafter. Why, she says Mr. Dill's eleven months with Mrs. Dill flat on her back was a child playin' with a cat an' a string in comparison to what the Lupeys an' her have been goin' through with Mrs. Kitts these ten days. She says all Meadville is witness to the way she's skinned 'em down to the bone. Mrs. Dill was give up by a doctor like a Christian, an' after the eleven months she _did_ die, but Mrs. Kitts has been give up over an' over by doctor after doctor till there ain't one in the whole place as ain't mad at her about it; an' there she is livin' yet! Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey is so wore out she can't talk of nothin' else. Mrs. Lupey feels very bitter over it; she says it's all of six years now since they turned the X-rays through her (an' Mrs. Macy says as Mrs. Lupey says she could sit right down an' cry to think how much them X-rays cost an' how little good they done), an' she says it's three years come April Fool's since old Dr. Carter tried her lungs with his new kinetoscope an' found 'em full of air an' nothin' else. Mrs. Lupey says she's always had so much faith in old Dr. Carter an' she had faith in him then, an' was so sweet an' trustin' when he come with the machine, an' after he was done she fully believed his word of honor as to everythin', an' that was why they went an' bought her that bell an' oh heavens alive, Mrs. Lathrop, I only wish you _could_ hear Mrs. Macy on Mrs. Kitts' bell! It seems that kind of bell is a new invention an' as soon as any one is give up for good the doctor as gives 'em up sends a postal to the man as keeps 'em, an' then the man sends it for three days on trial an' then the family buy it, because it lets 'em all sleep easy. Well, Mrs. Macy says it's the quietest lookin' small thing you ever see, but she says Great Scott, Holy Moses, an' ginger tea, the way it works! You only need to put your hand on it an' just stir it an' it unhooks inside like one of them new patent mouse traps as catch you ten times to every once they catch a mouse, an' then it begins to ring like a fire alarm an' bang like the Fourth of July, an' it don't never stop itself again until some one as is perfectly healthy comes tearin' barefoot from somewhere to turn it over an' hook it up an' get Mrs. Kitts whatever she wants." "I should--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop. "I guess they would, too," said Susan; "I guess they'd be only too glad to. Why, Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey says as it was all they could do to live in the house with her mother when she did n't have nothin' but a stick to pound on the floor with, but she says since she's got that bell--! Well! Mrs. Macy says as they're all four worn into just frazzles with it, an' Judy is got so nervous with it going off sudden when Busby an' she is thinkin' about other things that she begins twitchin' the minute the bell begins ringin' an' they've had to hire a electric battery to soothe her with while Faith an' Maria is racin' for the bell. Mrs. Macy says it's somethin' just awful first, last, an' forever, an' Mrs. Lupey told her in confidence as it was Heaven's own truth as they had n't none of them woke of their own accords once since it was bought." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, Mrs. Macy says she's a pretty good judge of sick folks an' she judged Mrs. Kitts for all she was worth, an' she could n't feel as she ought in politeness to say anythin' 'cause the Lupeys sent her the round-trip ticket to go an' come back with. But she says just between her an' me an' not to let it go any further, that to _her_ order of thinkin' (an' she'll take her Bible oath to it anywhere) Mrs. Kitts looks like one of those oldest survivor kinds as they print in the city Sunday papers every week. She says she ain't got the quiet, give-up manner of a person as is really quiet an' really givin' up--she's got the spry air of a person as likes to keep the whole family jumpin' quick whenever they speak. She says Mrs. Lupey says as she really does get awful low just often enough to keep their courage up, but Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey is easy fooled because them's the sort as outlives all their families in the end always. But seems as her gettin' low an' then raisin' up again ain't the only tough part for it seems as she was so low last fall that they really felt safe to send Maria up to the city to buy their mournin' at a bargain sale for there's four of 'em an' they want the veils thick so they'll look sorry from the outside anyhow. And Maria did go, an'-- Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I will say as to hear about it all does go through one even if it ain't my personal crape! Seems as the clerk asked Maria if it was for a deep family mournin' or just a light friendly mournin', an' Maria told him it was _goin'_ to be for her grandmother. Seems he was n't very polite about it, coughed a good deal behind his hand an' such doin's, until Maria got real vexed an' so mad over thinkin' as maybe it was n't all coughin' as he was keepin' his hand over that she lost her wits an' went to work an' bought most twice the crape she needed just to show him as she was n't tryin' to save nothin' on her grandmother, whatever _he_ might think. So now Mrs. Macy says, added to Mrs. Kitts an' the bell they've got the care of all that crape on their hands, an' the damp gathers in it just awful on rainy days, an' of course no Christian can sun twenty yards of crape on their clothesline when the dead person ain't died yet, so they're wild over that, too. They've made their skirts themselves, an' they wanted to do their waists, only what with the way sleeves is puffin' out an' slimmin' up an' fronts is first hangin' over an' then hookin' down, the back it just does seem out of the question. They've worried a lot over the veils since they was bought 'cause they wanted to get into 'em last winter so as to get out of 'em by last spring, an' then even when Mrs. Kitts rallied from her Christmas dinner, they thought maybe they could still be out of 'em by the Fourth of July; but now--Heavens! Mrs. Macy says they don't ask to get out of 'em any more; all they ask is to get _into_ 'em, an' goodness knows when that is _ever_ goin' to happen. She says Mrs. Lupey says what with Judy's divorce an' Mrs. Kitts livin' right along she's going to get moths into her things for the first time in her life, she just knows she is. It's a pretty hard case any one can see, an' of course seein' Mrs. Kitts live like that may get Busby Bell all out of the notion of marryin' Judy, for of course no man ain't goin' to like to look forward to Mrs. Lupey's livin' like that too, maybe--or maybe Judy 'll live herself--you never can tell. Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey says she never guessed as sorrow could come so near to breakin' your back as losin' a grandmother is breakin' theirs. She says when she's really lost it won't be so bad 'cause they can all put on their crape veils an' go straight to bed an' to sleep, but she says this long drawn out losin' of her with that bell throwed into the bargain is somethin' calculated to make a saint out of a Chinaman, an' nothin' more nor less." "Why--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "I tell you, they _can't_," said Susan; "they want to bad enough, but they can't do it. Mrs. Kitts is too smart for that. She keeps her eagle eye on it awake, an' her whole hand on the little string when she's asleep, an' drums 'em up to know if the clock is really right, or if she feels anyways disposed to smell of cologne. Some nights she rolls on the string in her sleep, an' then the bell wakes her along with the rest of 'em, which Mrs. Macy says is a-doin' more aggravatin' to the Lupeys than any words can do justice to. Mrs. Macy says as she really does believe that if Mrs. Kitts took a fancy to oysters in August she'd be fully equal to ringin' that bell for 'em till September came an' they could get 'em for her. She says it would be just like her, she does declare. Mrs. Macy says she sit with Mrs. Kitts considerable an' Mrs. Kitts was very pleasant to her, an' give her two pair of black lace mitts an' a pin, but she found out afterwards as the mitts was Mrs. Lupey's an' the pin was Maria's, so after that she see just how the family felt about her an' her ways. Mrs. Macy says the whole thing is a tragedy right out of Shakespeare an' the only pleasant thing about her whole visit was as it did n't cost her nothin'." "Did she--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh yes, I forgot to tell you about that. She see him four times. I don't know as she wants it generally known, but I wanted to know about it so I got it out of her. It does beat all, Mrs. Lathrop, how a woman of Mrs. Macy's sense, with a income that's only a little too small to get along on, can want to marry any man again. But she seems kind of crazy on the idea, an' if it ain't Mr. Dill, it's goin' to be Dr. Carter, or bu'st, with her. She says she went to his office just to let him know she was in Meadville, an' then she see him on the street, an' then she went to his office again to ask him his real opinion of Mrs. Kitts, an' then just before she left she went to his office again to let him know as she was goin' to come back here. So she see him four times in all." "What did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, he told her as he would n't be surprised if any of 'em died any day. That is, any of 'em except Mrs. Kitts. He did n't seem to think as Mrs. Kitts would ever die." "What do--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, I saw there was nothin' else as Mrs. Macy could talk about just now so I come home an' then I come over here. I declare though, Mrs. Lathrop, I can't help bein' a little blue to-night. Of course I ain't any real relation to you, but we've been neighbors so long that I can't help feelin' a little bit uneasy over thinkin' of Mrs. Kitts an' wonderin' how long you may be goin' to live in the end." CHAPTER XI THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY "Well, Mrs. Lathrop," said Susan Clegg one pleasant May evening, as she and her devoted listener leaned their elbows on the top rail of the fence, "I can't but thank Heaven as these boards is the only thing as you ever take opposite sides from me on. I don't say as your never disagreein' ain't sometimes wearin', but there _are_ days as I feel I'd enjoy a little discussion an' then Elijah an' I discuss on those days till it seems like I can't live to get to you an' do it all alone by myself. Elijah's a very young man but he's a man after all an' there's somethin' about a man as makes him not able to see any side of anythin' except his own side. Now it don't make any difference what we talk about I _always_ take the other side, an' I will in confidence remark as the South fightin' Grant had a easy job compared to me tryin' to get Elijah to see any side but his own. Elijah's a very pig-headed young man an' I declare I don't know I'm sure what ailed him last night--seemed as if he was up a tree about somethin' as made him just wild over the Democratic party. I must say--an' I said it to his face, too--as to my order of thinkin' takin' sides about the Democrats nowadays is like takin' sides with Pharaoh after the Red Sea had swallowed him an' all his chariots up forever, but Elijah never gives up to no man, an' he said, not so, the Democrats was still ready to be the salvation of the country if only Bryan would give 'em a chance. He says they 've been handicapped so far an' it's very tryin' for any party to have to choose between a donkey an' a tiger for its picture of itself, for no sensible person likes to have to ride on either, an' no politics could _ever_ make a success of a donkey for a mascot, whether you judge him from his ears or his heels. I had it in my mind to say somethin' then about turnin' around an' takin' a fresh start with a fresh animal as a sensible person would find it nothin' but a joy to ride, but Elijah, like all newspapers, rips a thing up the back an' then shows you how you can't do better than to sew up the tear an' go on wearin' it again, so after he'd skinned the donkey an' the tiger both alive, so to speak, he went on to say as never's a long game an' him laughs best who keeps sober longest an' altogether his own feelin' was as America 'll soon perceive her only hope lays in electin' a new Democratic party. I just broke in then an' told him it looked to me as if the natural run of mankind would n't let Grover Cleveland skip eight years an' then try it again more 'n six times more, an' that if the Republicans keep it up as they have awhile longer no money won't be able to get 'em out 'cause they'll have all the money there is in the country right in with them, but by that time Elijah'd got his breath, an' he just shook his head an' asked me if I remembered what a lot of fuss the first billion dollar congress made an' if I'd observed how calm they was took now? I told him I had an' then we went at it hammer an' tongs, Elijah for the Democrats an' me against 'em, although I must say I wished he'd give me the other side, for in spite of their actin' so silly I must say I always have a feelin' as the most of the Democrats is tryin' to be honest which is somethin' as even their best friend couldn't say of the most of the Republicans as a general thing." "Did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, I did, an' I don't know but we'd be talkin' yet only Mr. Dill come in on us to ask me if I would n't consider takin' Gran'ma Mullins to board for a month or two, just to see how Hiram an' Lucy would get along if they had the house all alone to themselves." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I told him I'd think about it," said Miss Clegg. "I don't know I'm sure why I should bed an' board Gran'ma Mullins to help Lucy an' Hiram to try to get along any better. They 're a good deal more interestin' to talk about the way they're gettin' along now. I never see Mrs. Macy but what she has somethin' amusin' to tell me about Hiram an' Lucy an' Gran'ma Mullins, an' I like to hear it. She says the other night they was all three runnin' round the house one after another for a hour an' she said she most died laughin' to watch 'em. Seems Lucy got mad an' started to run after Hiram to pull his hair, an' Gran'ma Mullins was so scared for fear she _would_ pull his hair that she run after Lucy to ask her not to do it. Hiram run so much faster than Lucy that finally he caught up with Gran'ma Mullins an' then they all went to bed. Mrs. Macy says that's the way they act all the time, an' she certainly would n't see any more than I should why I should break up the family. I'm sure I never cooked up that marriage an' I told Mr. Dill so. I asked him why he did n't take Gran'ma Mullins to board with him, if he was so wild to get her away from Lucy, but he said he did n't think it'd be proper, an' I said I did n't say nothin' about _bed_--I just spoke about board, an' if there was anythin' as was n't proper about boardin' Gran'ma Mullins he'd ought not to of mentioned the subject to me." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, there was n't nothin' left for him to say then, of course; but law! I did n't see no use mooley-cowin' around Mr. Dill; what I wanted was for him to go so Elijah an' me could go on discussin'. Elijah thinks our paper ought to come out strong now that we've got one an' he said he would in confidence remark to me as he intended to say some very pointed things soon. He says all the editors in the country know as the plans an' the parties is all fixed up beforehand nowadays; the Republicans say how many they'll have in each state an' then they never fail to have 'em an' that's a national disgrace for nobody ought to know beforehand how a election is goin' to pan out for it would n't be possible if folks was anyways honest. He says for a carefully planned an' worked up thing a Republican victory is about the tamest surprise as this country ever gets nowadays, an' yet we keep on gettin' them an' openin' our eyes over 'em every four years like they was somethin' new. "I bu'st in then an' said as there was sure to come a change afore long with prices goin' up like they is an' a reaction bound to drop in the end. Elijah laughed then an' said he knowed well enough as when the deluge come the Republicans would grab the Democrats an' hold 'em just like that rich man who grabbed the clerk an' held him in front of him, when they throwed that bomb at him in his office." "At the--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, opening her eyes. "Yes, the bomb was meant for him, but he held the clerk in front of him so the clerk caught it all. That's what they call presence of mind, an' as far as my observation 's extended, Mrs. Lathrop, the Republicans have got full as much of it--they must have, for they both make money right straight along an' I've observed myself as they always step out when a crash comes an' let the Democrats in to do the economizin' till there's enough money saved up to make it worth while for them to take hold again which comes to much the same thing in the end. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, I see after a little as it was n't no use talkin' to Elijah so I just had to listen to him an' he really did kind of frighten me in the end. Livin' with an editor an' readin' that book of Mr. Fisher's has opened my eyes to a many new ideas. I've lived in a small town all my life but I've got brains an' there's no use denyin' as a woman with brains can apply 'em to the president just as easy as to the minister, once she gets to thinkin' on the subject. This country is in a very bad way an' it's all owin' to our bein' satisfied with what's told us an' not lookin' into nothin' for ourselves. We've got the Philippines now an' we've got Hawaii an' we've got the niggers an' we've got ever so many other things. We've got the Mormons down to one wife as a general thing an' the Italians comin' in by the thousands an' more old soldiers bein' born every year an' the fifth generation of Revolutionary orphans out filin' their pensions--an' we owe 'em all to the Republicans. Elijah says we owe 'em a lot else, too, but I think that's enough in all conscience. Elijah says too it costs a third more to live than it did ten years ago an' he knows that for a fact, an' you an' I know that, too, Mrs. Lathrop. Coal's gone up an' everythin' else. I tell you I got kind of blue, thinkin' about it after I went to bed last night an' it took me a long time to remember as Elijah was maybe more upset over not bein' able to go an' see 'Liza Em'ly on account of the rain, than anythin' else; but then too, Mr. Shores is very much cast down over the country, only I must admit as it's more 'n likely as he ain't really half as mournful over the Democrats as he is over his wife; an' then there's Judge Fitch as is always mad over politics an' we all know that that's just 'cause he's always been called 'judge' ever since he was born, an' nobody ain't never made him judge of nothin' bigger 'n us yet. I guess if he was sure as our paper could get him elected to congress he'd cheer up pretty quick, but he told me yesterday as Elijah did n't know how to conduct a campaign to his order of thinkin'. He don't like that cut of Elijah's being David to the city papers bein' Goliath. He says a cut to do him any good had ought to have him in it somewhere an' I don't know but what he's right. "But, Mrs. Lathrop, we are mighty bad off an' that's a fact, but still I will say this much an' that is that as far as my observation 's extended folks as complains openly of anythin' is always findin' fault with the thing because there's some secret thing as they can't find fault openly with, like Elijah an' the rain, an' Mr. Shores an' his wife. The world's great for takin' its private miseries out publicly in some other direction, an' my own feelin' is as the Democrats is a great comfort to every one as the Republicans can't very conveniently give nothin' to these days. If the president was to suddenly make Sam Duruy a minister to somewhere there'd be a great change of opinion as to politics in this town, you'd see. It would n't give Sam any more brains, but every one 'd be pleased an' the Democrats would n't cut no figure no more." "But--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "That's just it," said Susan, "that's just the trouble. We're like most of the rest of America an' the whole of Cuba an' the Philippines, too little an' too far off to make the big folks really care whether we like the way they do or not. I don't have no idea of carin' whether potato bugs mind bein' picked or not, an' no matter what they said about me before or after their pickin' it 'd be all one to me. An' that's just about the way our government feels about us. An' I guess most other governments is much the same. Which is probably the reason why potato bugs is gettin' worse an' thicker all the time." CHAPTER XII THE TRIALS OF MRS. MACY As Susan set the basket down it began to squawk. "I don't care," she said, "let it squawk!" "But what--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, in whose kitchen Susan had set the basket down and in whose kitchen chair Susan was now sitting herself down. "Let it squawk," Susan repeated; "I guess it's made trouble enough for others so that I may in all confidence feel to set a little while without troublin' about it myself. I look upon it that I was very kind to take it anyhow, not havin' no idea how it'll agree with the chickens when it comes to eatin' with them or with me when it comes to me eatin' it, for you know as I never was one as cared for 'em, Mrs. Lathrop, but still a friend is a friend, an' in Mrs. Macy's state to-night the least her friends could do was for Gran'ma Mullins to stay with her an' for me to take the duck. Gran'ma Mullins was willing to sit up with a under-the-weather neighbor, but she said she could _not_ take a duck on her mind too, an' a spoiled duck at that, for I will in confidence remark, Mrs. Lathrop, as you only need to be in the room with that duck two minutes to see as the Prodigal Son was fully an' freely whipped in comparison to the way as he's been dealt with." "I really--" protested Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I don't know but it _will_ be savin' of breath in the end," said Miss Clegg, and thereupon she arose, laid hold of the squawking basket, bore it into the next room, and coming out, shut the connecting door firmly behind her. "Where under the--" began Mrs. Lathrop. "It's really quite a long story," returned her friend; "but I come in just to tell you, anyhow. It's Mrs. Macy's story an' it begun when she went in town yesterday mornin', an' it's a story of her trials, an' I will say this for Mrs. Macy, as more trials right along one after another I never hear of an' to see her sittin' there now in her carpet slippers with a capsicum plaster to her back an' Gran'ma Mullins makin' her tea every minute she ain't makin' her toast is enough to make any one as is as soft an' tender-hearted as I am take any duck whether it's spoiled or not. An' so I took this duck." "Well, I--" exclaimed Mrs. Lathrop. "You think not now," said Susan, "but you soon will when I tell you, for as I said before, I come over just to tell you, an' I'm goin' to begin right off. It's a long story an' one as 'll take time to tell, but you know me an' you know as I always take time to tell you everythin' so you can rely on gettin' the whole hide an' hair of this; an' you'll get it fresh from the spout too, for I'm just fresh from Mrs. Macy an' Mrs. Macy's so fresh from her trials that they was still holdin' the plaster on to her when I left." "But--" expostulated the listener. "Well, now this is how it was," said Miss Clegg; "an' I'll begin 'way back in the beginnin' so you 'll have it all straight, for it's very needful to have it straight so as to understand just why she is so nigh to half mad. For Mrs. Macy is n't one as gets mad easy, an' so it's well for us as has got to live in the same town with her to well an' clearly learn just how much it takes to use her up. "Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as yesterday mornin' Mrs. Macy set out to go to town to buy her some shoes. Seems as she was goin' to take lunch with Busby Bell's cousin Luther Stott's wife as she met at the Lupeys' in Meadville, 'cause they only live three-quarters of an hour from town on two changes of the electric, an' Mrs. Stott told Mrs. Lupey as any time she or her relations got tired of shoppin' she'd be nothin' but happy to have 'em drop in on her to rest 'cause she kept a girl an' her husband's sister, too, so company was n't no work for her herself. Well, Mrs. Macy was goin' to the city an' so she looked up the address an' made up her mind to go there to lunch, an' so she wrote the address on one side of the piece of paper as she had in her black bag an' she wrote her shoes on the other side, for she says they're a new kind of shoes as is warranted not to pinch you in the back, by every magazine an' newspaper--an' _you_ know what Mrs. Macy is on bein' pinched; why, she says she give up belts an' took to carpet slippers just for the very reason as she could _not_ stand bein' pinched nowhere. "Well, seems as the shoes was Kulosis shoes an' Mrs. Macy says how any one could remember 'em off of paper _she_ can't see anyhow, an' Luther Stott's wife lives 2164 Eleventh Avenue S.W., an' that was very important too, for there's seven other Eleventh Avenues in the city besides eight Eleventh Streets; seems as the new part of the city is laid out that way so as to make it simple to them as knows where they live anyhow. "Well, Mrs. Macy says she put on her bonnet as happy as any one looks to be afore they know they're goin' to be the first to have a new invention tried on 'em an' then she locked up her house an' set off. She says she never was great on new inventions for she's lived under a lightnin' rod for pretty near forty years an' never come anywhere nigh to be struck once yet, but she says she has now learned to her sorrow as bein' fooled by a lightnin' rod man forty years ago ain't nothin' to bein' fooled by a minister for forty years ahead, for she says she'll lose her guess if this last foolin' don't last forty years or even longer if she lives that long, an' make her wear her felt slippers all the forty years too. "Well, she says of course you might know as it would be the minister as done her up first on this day of misery, an' it _was_ the minister! She says after that donation party to fix him out with new shirts last week she surely looked to be spared any further inflictions from him for one while; she says the idea as the congregation is expected to shirt the minister was surely most new to her, an' she was dead set against it at first, but she says she come to the fore an' was one to help make him the six when she see as it was expected to be her duty as a Christian, but she says she surely hoped when she hemmed the tail of the last one as she'd seen the last of him for a good breathin' spell. "But no, Mrs. Lathrop, seems it was n't to be, an' so she learned to her keen an' pinchin' sorrow yesterday mornin', for she was n't more 'n fairly on her way to town when she run square up to him on the bridge an' as a result was just in time to be the first for him to try his new memory system on, an' she told Gran'ma Mullins an' me with tears in her eyes an' her felt slippers solemnly crossed on top of each other, as she can not see why it had to be her of all people an' her shoes of all things, for she says--an' I certainly felt to agree, Mrs. Lathrop--as if there's anythin' on the wide earth as you _don't_ want to apply a memory system to it's your shoes, for shoes is somethin' as is happiest forgot. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, seems as this new memory system of the minister's is a thing as he got out of a Sunday School magazine in reward for workin' out a puzzle. Seems you guess big cities till their capital letters spell 'Memory,' an' then you send the answers to the magazine an' a dollar for postage an' packin' an' then they send you the memory system complete in one book for nothin' a _tall_. Or you can add in a two-cent stamp an' not guess nothin', but the minister guessed 'cause he felt as in his circumstances he had n't ought to waste even two cents! Seems as they had a most awful time afore they found Ypsilanti for the 'Y,' an' for a while they was most afraid they'd have to be reckless with two cents, but they got it in the end an' sent 'em all off, an' the book come back with a injunction forbiddin' it to be lent to no one stamped on every page. Seems it come back day before yesterday an' the minister sat up most of the night commemoratin' the theory, an' then Mrs. Macy says he just got it into him in time for Fate to let him go an' be flung at her right on the bridge! She says she was n't no more mistrustin' trouble than any one does when they meet a loose minister out walkin' an' she says she can't well see how any woman meetin' a man across a bridge can be blamed for not knowin' as he's just grasped a new principle an' is dyin' to apply it to the first thing handy. "She says he asked her where she was goin' an' she told him frank an' open as she was goin' to the city to buy some shoes as was warranted not to pinch. She says he asked her what kind of shoes they was an' she opened her little bag an' got out the paper an' read him as they was Kulosis shoes. He asked her why she had it wrote down an' she told him as she had it wrote down so as not to forget the kind an' maybe get pinched again. "Well, she says she was standin' sideways an' was n't watchin' particular, so she was n't in no state to suspect nothin' when he told her as she could easy throw that piece of paper away an' go to town without it. She says she told him as she knowed that she could easy throw the piece of paper away an' go to town without it, but how was she to remember her shoes which was the reason why she was takin' the piece of paper along with her? Then she says as he said as he'd show her how to remember her shoes an' welcome an' she says as she thought as long as it was welcome she might as well stand still, so she did. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can believe me or not just as you please, but the first thing he did was to ask her what Kulosis reminded her of, which struck her as most strange in the start out. But she told him as it did n't remind her of nothin' but shoes an' let it go at that, an' she says it was plain as then he had to think of somethin' as it _could_ remind somebody of, an' she says he certainly did have to think a long while an' when he said finally as it reminded _him_ of four noses. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, Mrs. Macy says she never heard the beat of that in all her born days, an' her mind went back to her childhood days an' a uncle she had, an' the Lord 'll surely forgive her for thinkin' as he'd surely been drinkin'; she says she was so took aback that he see it in her face an' told her right then an' there as it was a memory system. Seems as the key to the whole is as you must reduce everythin' to Mother Goose so as not to need the brains as you've growed since, an' the minister told Mrs. Macy as she'd find it most simple to apply. He went on to ask her what did four noses remind her of, an' she says she thought she see the whole game at that an' told him as quick as scat that they reminded her of Kulosis, but oh, my, seems that ain't the way it goes a _tall_, an' he begin an' explained it all over again, an' where he come out in the end was as four noses would just naturally remind any one as had more brains'n Mrs. Macy of 'Two legs sat upon three legs.' You know the rhyme in Mother Goose where the dog is four legs an' gets the mutton as is one leg in the man's lap? [Illustration: "'Mrs. Macy was just about plum paralyzed at _that_.'" _Page_ 179.] "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can maybe understand as Mrs. Macy was just about plum paralyzed at _that_! Her story is as she just stood afore him with her mouth open like a Jack-o'-lantern's, wonderin' what under the sun she was goin' to be asked to remember next, an' when he said that was all, an' for her just to simply tear up the paper, she forgot all about Luther Stott's wife on the back an' tore up the paper. He said for her to go right along to town fully an' freely relyin' on 'Two legs sat upon three legs' to get her her shoes, an' she says what with bein' so dumbfoundered, an' what with him bein' the minister into the bargain, she went along to the station thinkin' as maybe she'd be able to do it. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I wish you could hear Mrs. Macy for that ain't nothin' but the beginnin', whatever you may think, an' the rest gets awfuller an' awfuller! "In the first place talkin' so long for the minister made her have to run for the train, an' _you_ know what Mrs. Macy is on a run. She said she got so hot, as she was not only on a run but mostly on a pour all the way to town. Why, she says it was most terrible an' she says nothin' ever give her such a idea as she was a born fool afore, for with it all she had to keep on sayin' 'Two legs sat upon three legs' as regular as a clock, an' she was so afraid she'd forget it that she did n't dare even take her usual little nap on the way an' so had no choice but to land all wore out. "Well, as soon as she was landed she remembered about Luther Stott's wife bein' on the back of the piece of paper an' consequently tore up along with her shoes, an' she says the start she got over rememberin' havin' torn up Luther Stott's wife drove what 'Two legs sat upon three legs' was to remind her of clean out of her head, not to speak of havin' long since lost track of the way to get any connection between that an' her shoes. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I only wish you'd of been there to hear! She says nobody ever did afore! She says she went up one street an' down another like a lost soul, lookin' for a policeman. She says she felt she did n't know where to find nothin'. She could n't look for Luther in the directory 'cause he's long dead an' only his wife lives there, an' as for her shoes she was clean beside herself. She says she was so mad at the minister as she'd have throwed away her baptism an' her marriage then an' there just because it was ministers as done 'em both to her, if there'd been anyway to get 'em off. Finally she just put her pride into her pocket, went into a shoe store an' asked 'em openly if 'Two legs sat upon three legs' reminded 'em of anythin' in the way of shoes. She says the man looked at her in a way as passed all belief an' said it reminded him more of pants than shoes. "Well, she says she went out into the street at that an' her heart was too low for any use; but the end was n't yet, for as she was wanderin' along who should she meet but Drusilla Cobb? "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you know Drusilla Cobb! You know what she was afore she left here, an' Mrs. Macy says ten years ain't altered her a _tall_. Whenever Drusilla was glad to see any one she always had a reason, an' Mrs. Macy says it speaks loud for how clean used up she was over her shoes that she never remembered that way of Drusilla's. Drusilla never saw no one on the street unless she had a reason, an' if she had a reason it was Heaven help them as Drusilla saw on the street. "So now she saw Mrs. Macy an' asked her right home to lunch with her, an' Mrs. Macy very gladly went. She says no words can tell how lively an' pleasant Drusilla was, an' she felt to be glad she met her all the way home. She says Drusilla has a very nice home an' a thin husband an' three very thin boys. She says Drusilla is the only fat one in the family." Susan paused and drew a long breath. Mrs. Lathrop adjusted herself in a new position. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, now's where the duck comes in. The duck was Drusilla's reason, an' Mrs. Macy's next trial. Mrs. Macy says if any one had told her as she was to go to town for shoes an' bring back a duck, or be did in one day first by the minister an' next by Drusilla Cobb, she'd take her Bible oath as whoever said it was lyin', but so it was." "Is--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes," said Miss Clegg, "it's the same one. An' this is its why as told by Mrs. Macy to Gran'ma Mullins an' me." She paused and drew a still longer breath. "Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as Drusilla's husband had got a friend as goes huntin' with a doctor. Seems he found four little red-headed things in a nest of reeds an' took one an' asked the doctor what it was. Seems the doctor said as he thought as it was a golden-headed oriole but the friend thought as it was a mud hen. So he give it to Drusilla's youngest boy to raise in a flat for his birthday. Well, Mrs. Macy says bein' raised in a flat was surely most new to the animal as very soon turned out to be a duck. Seems it snapped at all the black spots in the carpets for bugs an' when they put it in the bath-tub to swim it would n't swim but just kept diving for the hole in the bottom. Seems they had a most lively time with it an' it run after 'em everywhere an' snapped at their shoe-buttons an' squawked nights, an' when Drusilla see Mrs. Macy she thought right off as she could give her the duck to take home with her 'cause she lived in the country. So that was how Mrs. Macy come to be asked to take dinner at Drusilla's so dreadful pleasant. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, Mrs. Macy says as she no more mistrusted what travelin' with a duck is than anythin', so although she could n't say as she really relishes any duck afore he's cooked, she thought as it could swim in the crick, an' maybe grow to be a comfort, so she let them put it in a basket, an' give her a envelope of dead flies for it to lunch on, an' she set off for home. She had to wait a long time for a car an' the duck was so restless it eat eight flies an' bit her twice waitin', but finally the car come along an' she an' the duck got on. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, she says you never hear nothin' like that duck when it felt itself on a electric car! The conductor heard it an' come runnin' an' stopped the car an' put 'em both off afore she realized as she was gettin' off for her duck instead of her depot. "So there was Mrs. Macy stranded high an' dry in a strange part of the city alone with a duck out of the goodness of her heart. You can maybe believe as she was very far from feelin' friendly to Drusilla Cobb when she realized as she couldn't take no car with no duck an' didn't know Drusilla's number to take her back her duck, neither. Mrs. Macy says as she felt herself slowly growin' mad an' she went into a store near by an' asked 'em if they had a telephone. They said they had, an' she says she never will know what possessed her but she just looked that telephone square in the eye an' told it to get her the president of the car company without a second's delay. She says it was astonishin' how quick it got her somebody an' as soon as they'd each said 'Hello' polite enough, she just up an' asked him to please tell her the difference between a duck an' a canary-bird. Well, she says he did n't say nothin' for a minute an' then he said 'Wh-a-t?' in a most feeble manner, an' she asked him it right over again. Then she said he was more nervous an' made very queer noises an' finally asked her what in Noah's ark she wanted to know for. She says she could n't but think that very ill-bred, considerin' her age, but she was in a situation where she had to overlook anythin', so she told him as she knowed an' he knowed, too, as any one could take a canary-bird an' travel anywhere an' never know what it was to be put off for nothin'. She said he shook the wire a little more an' then asked her if she was meanin' to lead him to infer that she had been injected from a car with a duck. She says his tone was so disrespectful that she felt her own beginnin' to rise an' she told him so far from bein' injected she'd been put out an' off a car an' she had the duck right with her to prove it. He told her as he would advise her to try to do the duck up in a derby hat an' smuggle him through that way, an' then without a word more he hung up. "Well, Mrs. Macy says she just about never was so mad afore. She says when she turned around all the men in the store was laughin' an' that made her madder yet, but there was one on 'em as said he felt for her 'cause he owned a pair of ducks himself, an' he went in the back of the store an' found a old hat-box as was pretty large an' he went to work an' took the duck out of the basket an' put him into the box an' give Mrs. Macy 'em both to carry an' put her on another car an' she set off again. "Well, that time she got to the depot all safe, an' if there was n't old Dr. Carter from Meadville an' it goes without sayin' as old Dr. Carter from Meadville could drive any duck clean out of Mrs. Macy's head, so she an' he set out to be real happy to the Junction, an' the first thing he asked her was if she'd been buyin' a new bonnet in town an' she laughed an' give the box a little heave an' the bottom come out an' the duck flew down the car. [Illustration: "'The bottom come out an' the duck flew down the car.'" _Page_ 188.] "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you can maybe guess as that was most tryin' both to Mrs. Macy an' Dr. Carter as well, as is both fat an' was both wedged in one seat expectin' to enjoy all they could of each other to the Junction. Dr. Carter was obliged to unwedge himself an' catchin' the duck was a most awful business an' Dr. Carter had to get off just about as soon as it was done. Well, Mrs. Macy says helpin' to catch your duck seems to make every one feel as free as air, an' a man come right off an' sat with her right off an' asked her right off whether it was a duck or a drake. Why, she says she never did--not in all her life--an' he told her she could easy tell by catchin' a spider an' givin' it to the duck an' if he took it it was a drake an' if she took it it was a duck. He asked her if it was n't so an' she said she could n't deny it, an' then he went back to his own seat an' she rode the rest of the way tryin' to figure on where the hitch was in what he said, for she says as she certainly feels there's a hitch an' yet you can't deny that it's all straight about the spider an' the he and the she. "Well, so she got home an' went right up to her house, put the duck in the rat trap, an' went over to ask the minister about her shoes, an' what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think! The minister had clean forgot himself! He was sittin' there on his piazza advisin' Mrs. Brown to make her pound-cake by sayin' 'One, two, three, Mother caught a flea,' the flea bein' the butter, an' Mrs. Macy says it was plain to be seen as he was n't a bit pleased at her comin' in that way to have his memory system applied to her backward. "She says after that she went home to the duck madder 'n ever an' put on her felt slippers an' made up her mind as she'd make up for her lost day by rippin' up her old carpets, an' that was the crownin' pyramid in her Egyptian darkness, for it's the carpet as has ended her." "Oh--" exclaimed Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, she's alive," said Susan, "but she ain't much more 'n alive, an' it's a wonder that she's that, an' it would be very bad for her if she was n't, for young Dr. Brown says she can die fifty times before he'll ever go near her again. He's awful mad an' he's got a bad bump on his nose too where he fell over her, an' Mrs. Sweet's got to stay in bed three days too for her arm where she dislocated it jerkin'--although goodness knows what she tried jerkin' for--for I'd as soon think of tryin' to jerk a elephant from under a whale as to try to jerk Mrs. Macy from under a carpet. An' even with it all they could n't get her up an' had to get the blacksmith's crowbar an' pry, an' Mrs. Sweet says if any one doubts as pryin' is painful they'd ought to of been there to hear Mrs. Macy an' see Hiram an' the blacksmith." "But what--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "I'm goin' to tell you if you'll just keep still a little longer an' let me get through to the end," said her friend. "I got this part all back an' forth an' upside down from Mrs. Sweet while I was takin' her home by the other arm. Oh, my, but it's awful about her, for she was preservin' an' wanted a extra cullender an' lost her right arm in consequence. I hope her experience 'll be a lesson to you, Mrs. Lathrop, for it's been such a lesson to me that I may mention right here an' now 't if I ever hear you hollerin' I shall put for the opposite direction as quick as I can for I would n't never take no chances at gettin' dislocated like Mrs. Sweet is--not if I knew it. Young Dr. Brown says she's decapitated the angular connection between her collar bone an' somewhere else, an' she says she can well believe it judgin' from the way her ear keeps shootin' into her wrist an' back again." "But--" interrupted Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you know how Mrs. Macy always was forever given to economizin'. I don't say as economizin' is any sin, but I will say as Mrs. Macy's ways of economizin' is sometimes most singular an' to-day's a example of that. Economy's all right as long as you economize out of yourself, but when it takes in Mrs. Sweet an' bumps young Dr. Brown I've no patience--no more 'n Mrs. Sweet an' young Dr. Brown has. Young Dr. Brown says it looks awful to have a black eye an' no reason for it except fallin' over a carpet. He says when he explains as Mrs. Macy was under the carpet no one is goin' to think it any thin' but funny, an' he says a doctor must n't be hurt funny ways. Mrs. Sweet don't feel to blame herself none for her arm 'cause she jerked like she does everythin' else, with her whole heart, an' she says she did so want to set her up that she tried harder an' harder every jerk. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, to go 'way back to the beginnin', seems as Mrs. Macy set out last night, as I said before, to make over her carpet. Seems as she wanted to turn it all around so's it'd fade away under the stove an' fray out in the corner where it don't show. I don't say as the idea was n't a good one--although it's come pretty hard on Mrs. Sweet--but anyhow, good or no good, she dug up the tacks last night an' ripped the widths an' set down to sew this mornin'. Her story is as she turned the duck out to pasture right after breakfast an' then went to work an' sewed away as happy as a bean until about ten o'clock. Then she felt most awful tired from the rippin' an' yesterday an' all, so she thought she'd rest a little. Seems as her legs was all done up in the carpet an' gettin' out was hard so she thought she'd just lay back on the floor. Seems she lay back suddener than she really intended an' as she hit the floor, she was _took_. "She give a yell an' she says she kept on givin' yells for one solid hour, an' no one come. She says as no words can ever tell how awful it was, for every yell sent a pain like barbed wire lightnin' forkin' an' knifin' all ways through her. No one heard her, for the blacksmith was shoein' a mule on one side of her an' Gran'ma Mullins an' Lucy was discussin' Hiram on the other. You know what a mule is to shoe, Mrs. Lathrop, an' you know what Gran'ma Mullins an' Lucy is when they take to discussin' Hiram. I'll take my Bible oath as when Gran'ma Mullins an' Lucy gets to discussin' Hiram they couldn't hear no steam penelope out of a circus, not if it was settin' full tilt right on their very own door-mat. So poor Mrs. Macy laid there an' hollered till Mrs. Sweet came for the cullender. "Mrs. Sweet says, _the_ shock she got when she opened the door an' see Mrs. Macy with the carpet on her was enough to upset anybody. "She says she thought at first as Mrs. Macy was tryin' to take up her carpet by crawlin' under it an' makin' the tacks come out that way. But then she see as her face was up an' of course no Christian'd ever crawl under no carpet with her face up. So she asked her what was the matter, an' Mrs. Macy told her frank an' open as she did n't know what was the matter. Then Mrs. Sweet went to work an' tried to set her up. An' she says the way she yelled! "She says she jerked her by the arms, an' by the legs, an' even by the head, an' her howls only grew awfuler an' awfuler. Mrs. Macy says as her agonies was terrible every time she slid a little along, an' she just begged an' prayed for her to go an' get young Dr. Brown. So finally Mrs. Sweet ran next door an' separated Lucy an' Gran'ma Mullins an' Lucy went for young Dr. Brown an' Gran'ma Mullins an' Mrs. Sweet went for Mrs. Macy. Oh, my, but their story is as they jerked hard then, for they wanted her to be respectable in bed afore he came, but it was no use an' he bounced in an' fell over Mrs. Macy an' the carpet afore his eyes got used to where he was. They had to help him up an' then he had to go in the kitchen an' disinfect his bump afore he could take a look at Mrs. Macy. But seems he got around to her at last an' felt her pulse an' then as he'd forgot his kinetoscope he just pounded her softly all over with the tack-hammer, but he did n't find out nothin' that way for she yelled wherever he hit her. He said then as he'd like to turn X-rays through her, only as there is n't no cellar under her house just there there'd be no way to get a picture of the other side of what was the matter with her. "So he said she _must_ be got up, an' although she howled as she could n't be, he had Lucy an' Hiram an' the blacksmith's crowbar an' the blacksmith, an' it was plain as she'd have to come whether nor no. Mrs. Sweet says it was surely a sight to see. They put the crowbar across a footstool, an' Hiram jerked on the other side at the same time, an' with a yell like Judgment Day they sat her up. "An' what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop? What _do_ you think? There was a tack stickin' square in the middle of her back! "Oh, my, but young Dr. Brown was awful mad! Mr. Kimball says he guesses he's got suthin' out of somebody now as he won't care to preserve in alcohol for a ornament to his mantelpiece. Hiram is mad, too, for he was goin' over to Meadville to fan a baseball team this afternoon an' he says Mrs. Macy has used up all his fannin' muscle. An' Lucy's mad 'cause she says she was way ahead of Gran'ma Mullins in what they were talkin' about an' now she's forgotten what that was. But Gran'ma Mullins was maddest of all when she found out about the duck, 'cause it seems as Drusilla Cobb's husband was a relation of hers an' as a consequence she never could bear Drusilla, so I said I'd take the duck." "What--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "I shall fat him an' eat him." "An' what--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, further. "Oh, I forgot to tell you that: Mrs. Macy hunted up the magazine an' looked 'em up an' for a fact it was Kulosis after all. As soon as she see it she remembered the four noses an' all, but she says she was too done up to go any further at the minister just then." "Is--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, finally. "I don't know, an' I don't care anyhow, an' I ain't goin' to catch no spider for the sake of findin' out. He'll eat just as well as she will, I reckon, an' if I have any doubts, my ways of settlin' 'em 'll be by parboilin' instead of spiders." So saying Susan rose, sought her duck, and departed. CHAPTER XIII MONOTONY OF MINISTERIAL MONOLOGUES Mrs. Lathrop never went to church. She had relinquished church when she had given up all other social joys that called for motive power beyond the limits of her own fence. Elijah rarely ever went to church. The getting the paper out Friday for Saturday delivery wore on him so that he nearly always slept until noon on Sunday. So Susan went alone week after week, just as she had been going alone for years and years and years. She always wore a black dress to church, her mother's cashmere shawl, and a bonnet of peculiar shape which had no strings and fitted closely around her head. She always took about an hour and a half to get home from church, although it was barely ten minutes' walk, and she always went in Mrs. Lathrop's gate instead of her own when she did get home. Mrs. Lathrop knew almost to the minute when to expect her and was invariably seated ready and waiting. One late May day when Susan returned from church she followed her usual course of Sunday observances by going straight to her neighbor's and sitting down hard on one of the latter's kitchen chairs, but she differed from her usual course by her expression, which--usually bland and fairly contented with the world in general--was this morning most bitterly set and firmly assured in displeasure. "Well," said Mrs. Lathrop, somewhat alarmed but attempting to speak pleasantly, "was--" "No," said Susan, "I should say not." Then she unpinned her hat and ran the pin through the crown with a vicious directness that bore out her words to the full. "Susan!" said Mrs. Lathrop, appalled, "why--" "Well, I can't help it if you are," said Miss Clegg, "you don't have to go Sunday after Sunday an' listen like I do. If you did, an' if you had what you ain't got an' that's some spirit, Mrs. Lathrop, you'd be rammin' around with a hat-pin yourself an' understand my feelin's when I say as there ain't a spot in the Bible as I ain't been over fully as often as the minister nor a place where he can open it that I can't tell just what he'll say about it afore he's done settlin' his tie an' clearin' his throat. I'm so tired of that tie-settlin' an' throat-clearin' business I don't know what to do an' then to-day it was the Sermon on the Mount an' he said as he had a new thought to develop out of the mount for us an' the new thought was as life was a mount with us all climbin' up it an' sure to come out on top with the Sermon if our legs held out. It's this new idea of new thoughts as he's got hold of as puts me so out of all patience I don't know what to do; if they was really new I'd revel to listen to 'em, but they're as old as the hills an' I feel like I was offered somethin' to cut my teeth on whenever I hear him beginnin' with a fresh old one. The other day I met him down in the square an' he stopped me short an' told me to my face as the world was gettin' full o' new thoughts, an' that a star as he see the night afore had given him one as he was intendin' to work up for Christmas. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think that particular new thought was? What _do_ you think? It was as God was back o' the stars! My lands, I felt like givin' him a punch with my parasol an' I'd of done it too only I'd left my parasol at home an' had n't nothin' with me but a basket o' currants. I told him though as the idea o' God an' the stars bein' anyways new was surely _most_ new to me, an' then I went on to say as Rachel Rebecca had said she'd come an' pick berries for me Monday an' seein' as Tuesday was lettin' its sun down pretty fast I could only hope as some other new thought had n't run off with her, too. "It's this way, Mrs. Lathrop, I don't get much fun out o' church anyway, for I'm on red-hot porcupines the whole time I'm there thinkin' what I could be doin' at home if I _was_ at home, an' wonderin' whether Elijah is in bed or whether he's up an' about. I don't know a more awful feelin' than the feelin' that you're chained helpless in a church while the man in your house is up an' about your house. Men were n't meant to be about houses an' I always liked father because he never was about, but Elijah is of a inquirin' disposition an' he inquires more Sundays than any other time. The idea as he's wanderin' around just carelessly lookin' into everythin' as ain't locked upsets me for listenin' to the minister anyway, but lately my patience has been up on its hind legs in church clawin' an' yowlin' more 'n ever, for it seems as if the minister gets tamer an' tamer faster an' faster as time rolls on, an' between not likin' to hear him an' bein' half mad to get back to Elijah I'm beginnin' to wish as God in His infinite mercy had let me be somethin' besides a Christian. I don't know what I'd be if I was n't a Christian, but my own view o' this idea o' free-trade in religion as is takin' so many folks nowadays is as it all comes from most anybody with common sense jus' naturally knowin' more than any minister as always has his house an' his potatoes for nothin' ever can possibly get a chance to learn; an' when folks realize as they know more than the minister they ain't apt to like to waste the time as they might be learnin' more yet, sittin' an' listenin' to him tag along behind what they know already. A minister is kind o' like a horse in blinders or a cow as wears a yoke to keep her from jumpin', anyway--he feels as he can't launch out even if he wants to an' so he never does, but my idea would be to give 'em a little rope an' let 'em be a little more interestin'. Here's two hours a week as we sit still an' might be learnin' things much more useful than as Job was patient an' Joseph was n't. I'm tired of Job an' Joseph anyhow. I've heard about 'em both ever since I was old enough to know about either, an' long afore I was old enough to know about Joseph. I was talkin' about this at the sewin' society yesterday an' they all agreed with me. Mrs. Macy said as her feelin' was as she'd been wantin' to go to sleep in church for the last five years, an' she was beginnin' to have it so strong as she did n't care who knowed it. "Was the minister's--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, with vivid curiosity. "No, 'cause Brunhilde Susan thought a moth ball was a lemon drop an' dealt with it a'cordin', an' she was too used up by the bein' up all night to even so much as overcast a plain seam; but the rest was there an' we all aired ourselves inside out, I can assure you, an' was more 'n glad as she was n't there, so we could do it, too. "The general talk was as the minister 'd do well to quit talkin' about Heaven for a while an' come down to earth. We all know about Heaven, 'cause if you don't all you have to do is to tip back your head an' there it is day an' night for you to look at as long as your neck don't ache, but what we don't know about is a lot of what's right around us. Mrs. Macy says as her view would be to take the Bible for the motto an' then apply it right to us here to-day, an' tell us how to understand what's goin' on in the world by its light. She says David an' Goliath could of been Japan an' Russia with Admiral Togo for the sling shot, an' we all felt to agree as _there_ was a idea as _no_ minister ought to mind ownin', for Mrs. Sweet told me comin' home as she never would of give Mrs. Macy credit for thinkin' nothin' out so closely as that. Every one was interested right off an' you ought to of been there to see how the idea took! Gran'ma Mullins said as she'd _always_ wanted to know what a soft-nosed bullet looked like an' how their other features felt, an' a sermon like that could n't but give us all a new understandin' of a war. Then they all got to thinkin' out the thing, an' Mrs. Sweet said as Jezabel bein' throwed to the dogs could apply to that new rule in the city as makes you have to go around with your dog's nose in a lattice an' yourself tied to the dog; she said when she went up there the other day she felt like nothin' but a fool out with her brother an' him bein' jerked here an' there a'cordin' as the dog's feelin's moved him, an' the dog's lattice half the time over one of his two ears so he looked more drunk than sober all day. Of course we ain't got no such rules about dogs' noses here, but no one set down on Mrs. Sweet, because it showed she took an interest; Mrs. Brown said when she was done as she should think as the sun standin' still on Absalom three days could be worked up into havin' our streets lit all night, for she says when young Dr. Brown is out late, Amelia's so awful nervous she has to sit by her an' hold her hand, an' young Dr. Brown always says it takes him a good hour longer than it ought to gettin' home, on a'count o' bein' so afraid o' runnin' into trees in the dark." "They say--" said Mrs. Lathrop, thoughtfully. "Yes, but you could n't make his mother believe it," said Susan; "she thinks he eats peppermint comin' home nights just because he likes to eat peppermint comin' home nights. Mothers is all like that. You know yourself how you was with Jathrop. That'd make another nice talk, about how all sons was n't prodigals, some bein' obliged by fate to be the calf instead. I must say, Mrs. Lathrop, as the more I think of this new idea the more took I am with it. The Bible would be most like a new book if we took it that way an' Sunday would be a day to look forward to all the week long, just to see what the minister was goin' to say about what next. The sewin' society was all in favor of the idea an' now if the square only takes it up with a real mother's heart I don't see why we should n't get some profit out o' keepin' a minister yet. My notion is as the minister might just as well learn to be a lesson to us as to be so dead satisfied with only bein' a trial to us. We've got trials enough, Lord knows, an' just now what with the weather an' the cleanin' house no one wants to go to church to hear about things as they all know anyhow." "I wonder--" said Mrs. Lathrop, thoughtfully. "No, I would n't look for that," said Susan; "every one has their limits an' I would n't expect no man to jump over his own outside. I should n't ever look for the minister to be really equal to workin' up somethin' real spicy as would fill the house out o' Uriah the Hittite or Abigail hangin' upside down to the tree, but I can't well see why he could n't teach us whether well water's healthy or not by quotin' from Rebecca, an' when the time comes he could surely get a real nice Thanksgivin' text out o' John the Baptist's head on the platter." "Well--" said Mrs. Lathrop, slowly. "I'm goin' home to Elijah now," said Susan, "an' I shall talk the matter up with him. Elijah's awful funny, Mrs. Lathrop. However much he roams around while I'm in church he always hops back in bed an' manages to be sound asleep when it's time for me to come home. An' I will say this for him, an' that is as with all his pryin' an' meddlin' he's clever enough to get things back so I can never see no traces of what he's been at. If I was n't no sharper than most others, I'd think as he never had stirred out of bed while I was gone--but I am sharper than others an' it'll take a sharper young man than Elijah to make me suppose as all is gold that glitters or that a man left all alone in a house don't take that time to find out what he's alone in the midst of." CHAPTER XIV ADVISABILITY OF NEWSPAPER EXPOSURES "Well, I don't know I'm sure what I _am_ goin' to do with Elijah," said Susan Clegg to her friend one evening. "He's just as restless in his ideas as he is in bed, an' he's not content in bed without untuckin' everythin' at the foot. I hate a bed as is kicked out at the foot an' I hate a man as makes a woman have to put the whole bed together again new every mornin'. I'm sure I don't see no good to come of kickin' nights an' I've talked to Elijah about layin' still till I should think he could n't but see how right I am an' how wrong he is, but still he goes right on kickin', an' now he's got it into his head as he's got to turn the town topsy-turvy by findin' out suthin' wrong as we'd rather not know, an' makin' us very uncomfortable by knowin' it, an' knowin' as now we know it we've got to do suthin' about it, an' that seems to make him kick more than ever." "Dear--" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop. "He set on the porch for an hour with me last night," Susan went on, "tryin' to think o' suthin' as he could expose in the paper. He says a paper ain't nothin' nowadays without it's exposin' suthin, an' a town ain't fit to have a paper if it ain't got nothin' to expose in it. He says no closet without some skeleton, an' he should think we'd have ours, an' in the end he talked so much that I could n't but feel for a little as maybe he was right an' as we _was_ behind the times, for when you come to think it over, Mrs. Lathrop, nothin' ever does happen here as had n't ought to happen--not since Mr. Shores' wife run off with his clerk, an' that wa'n't no great happenin', for they could n't stand sittin' on the piazza much longer--every one could see that--an' Mrs. Shores wasn't one to have any man but her own husband comin' in an' out o' the house at all hours, an' so if she'd got to the point where she wanted a man as wasn't her own husband comin' in an' out, she just had to up an' run away with him, an' I never have been one to say no ill of her, for I look on Mr. Shores with a cool an' even eye, an' lookin' on Mr. Shores with a cool an' even eye leads me to fully an' freely approve of every thin' as his wife ever done." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, I know it, an' that's why I speak as I do. But Elijah seems to think as suthin' else ought to of happened since then, an' he asked me if I didn't know of nothin' as was bein' tried to be covered up as he could uncover, an' I really did try to think of suthin' but nobody ever covers up nothin' here. Nobody could if they wanted to. Everybody knows everythin' about everybody. We all know about Lucy an' Hiram, 'cause Gran'ma Mullins is always tellin' her side an' Hiram's side, an' Lucy is always tellin' her side an' Hiram's other side. Gran'ma Mullins says when she sees a man like Hiram havin' to devote his strength an' his Sundays to catchin' water-bugs, she most feels she's been a mother in vain, an' Lucy says when she realizes as she's married a man as can't be put to no better use Sundays than catchin' water-bugs, she ain't got no doubt at all as to what she's married. Lucy's gettin' very bitter about marriage; she says when she thinks as she may be picked out for a golden weddin' she feels like tyin' balloons to her feet an' goin' out an' standin' on her head in the crick. Elijah asked me if maybe she was n't in love with some one else as he could just notice in general kind o' terms, but I told him he did n't know what Lucy Dill was on men now as Hiram has got her eyes open. Why, Lucy don't believe no more in love a _tall_. Lucy says if she was rid of men an' left on a desert island alone, with one cow, so she could have eggs an' milk toast regular, she'd never watch for no ship, an' if a ship heaved up anywhere near, she'd heave down so quick that if any one on the ship had seen her they'd think they imagined her afore they'd get ready to go to her rescue. Elijah shook his head then, an' trailed off to Polly Allen; he said there must be thirty-five years between Polly an' the deacon, an' could n't suthin' be hinted at about them. That set me to wonderin', an' it's really very strange when you come to think of it, Mrs. Lathrop, how contented Polly is. I don't believe they've ever had a word. He does the cookin' an' washin' the same as he always did, an' lets her do anythin' else she pleases, an' they say she's always very obligin' about doin' it. "So then Elijah crossed his legs the other way, an' asked if there was n't anythin' bigger as could be looked into, but every one knows Hiram is the biggest man anywhere around here, so that was no use. He asked then if we did n't have a poorhouse or a insane asylum or a slaughter-house or suthin' as he could show up in red ink. He said somebody must be doin' suthin' as they had n't ought to be doin' somewhere, an' it was both his virtue an' his business to print all about it. He says exposin' is the very life o' the newspaper business, an' you can't be nothin' nowadays without you expose. He seemed to feel very much put out about us not bein' able to be exposed, an' I could n't help a kind o' hurt feelin' as it was really so. "But what can I do, Mrs. Lathrop, I did n't know of nothin'? We ain't got no place to do anythin' except in the square an' nobody never does nothin' without everybody knows that day or the next mornin' at the latest. I don't believe as anybody could have a secret with anybody in this town 'cause you'd know very well as if you did n't get 'round pretty quick an' tell it first the other one would be gettin' ahead o' you an' tellin' it before you. Of course I could see Elijah's drift all right. Them city papers has turned his head completely just as they do everybody else's when they first get a new idea. Elijah wants us to be eatin' bluing for blueberries an' cats for calves jus' so he can be the first to tell us about it, but there ain't a cat in town as ain't too well known for anybody to eat without knowin' it, an' as for bluing, if anybody can feed it to me for blueberries it's me as is the fool an' them as is n't, an' that's my views. "I'll tell you what it is, Mrs. Lathrop, I ain't got no great sympathy with this new idea o' keepin' us all stirred up over how awful things is. I won't say as I approved when that man in Chicago made sausage out o' his wife 'cause he was tired o' her, but I will say as if Lucy see her chance at Hiram that way I ain't sure as she could restrain herself. Hiram's perfectly healthy an' could be depended upon not to disagree with no one in sausage to anythin' like the extent Lucy disagrees with him, an' Gran'ma Mullins is so tired of hearin' 'em quarrel that I ain't prepared to say as she'd rebel at anythin' as sent Lucy back to her father. "Elijah went on to tell me a lot about insurance an' railroads, but all about insurance an' railroads is 'way beyond my interest an' 'way beyond the understandin' of every one else here, an' nobody's goin' to remember a thing about any of it a year from now anyhow. That's the trouble with this country,--they don't remember nothin',--everybody forgets everythin' before the month is out. Most of the people never thinks o' San Francisco now, an' as for that fire they had in Baltimore, it's as dead as Moses. "That's the advantage the rest of the country has over us when it comes to exposin'. They can expose an' expose, an' all the folks who read about it forget an' forget, but here in this community it's different an' you can't count on _our_ forgettin' things a _tall_, an' if Elijah was turned loose I'll venture to say every last one o' them papers would be saved until doomsday. I know that an' knowin' that I very carefully restrain him. There's a many as knows as Mr. Kimball's dried apples is often very under rate, an' a many others as knows whose dead cat that was as Mrs. Sweet had to bury after vowin' she would n't till she smelt as she'd got to. Every last one of us knows what Dr. Brown gets at the drug store when he asks for what he usually gets an' there's a good many as thinks as Mrs. Macy goes to Meadville more on a'count o' Dr. Carter than to see her cousin, Mrs. Lupey. But I was n't goin' to set Elijah swimmin' in any such deep water. Elijah is a young man an' the age to go wrong easy, an' when that age see how easy it is to go wrong they're nothin' but foolish if they waste another second goin' right, so if Elijah wants to go to exposin' he'll have to get his stuff from some one else beside me." "You--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "No, I don't say that," said Miss Clegg, "I'm only human after all an' I can't in conscience deny as I should like to see them as I don't like showed up just as much as any other man as is makin' a business of showin' up his neighbors, likes it. But I know I've got to live here an' it'd be very poor livin' for me after I'd aired myself by way of Elijah. There's a great difference between knowin' things all by yourself an' readin' 'em in the paper, an' I know as that dead cat would cause a great deal o' hard feelin' in print, while buried by Mrs. Sweet it only helps her garden grow. So I shall keep on talkin' as usual, but I shall hold Elijah out o' print an' so keep the country safe." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, the paper'll do just as well," said Susan; "he's goin' to print one sheet as comes all printed from the city every week an' he says that'll put new zest in the thing. It'll be a great deal better to get the zest that way than to get it exposin'. Zest is suthin' as is always safest a good ways off. Elijah saw that, too, afore he got done last night, for in his hitchin' about he hitched over the edge o' the piazza in the end." "Did--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, no," said Miss Clegg. "But he tore a lot of things an' smashed a rose bush, but I did n't care about that. I just told him to leave 'em on a chair this mornin' an' I'd sew 'em all up again, an' I done it, an' as to the rose bush, I'll have him get another an' give it to me for a present the next time I go to the city to pick it out myself." CHAPTER XV THE TRIAL OF A SICK MAN IN THE HOUSE "Well, where--" began Mrs. Lathrop in a tone of real pleasure at seeing Miss Clegg come into her kitchen one afternoon a few days after. Miss Clegg dropped into a chair. "Well, I _have_ got trouble now!" she announced abruptly, "Elijah's sick!" "Eli--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "--Jah," finished Susan. "Yes, Mrs. Lathrop, Elijah's sick! He was sick all night an' all this mornin', an' I may in confidence remark as I hope this'll be a lesson to him to never do it again, for I've got a feelin' in my legs as 'll bear me out in lettin' him or any one else die afore I'll ever work again like I've worked to-day an' last night." "Why, what--" "Did n't you see young Dr. Brown?" "No, I--" "Yes, I supposed so," said Susan, resignedly; "I know your ways, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I never look for any other ways in you. It's good as I don't, for if I did I'd be blind from lookin' an' not seein'. I know you, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I know your ways, an' I realize to the full how different they are from me an' my ways, but a friend is a friend an' what can't be endured has got to be cured, so I come to tell you about Elijah just the same as I do anythin' else as is easy heard." "Is--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "No, he is n't. That is, he was n't when I come out, but he had his pen an' said he was goin' to write a editorial sittin' up in bed. He can't get out of bed on a'count of the sheet, but 'Liza Em'ly's there if he wants anythin' so it don't matter if I do leave for a little while. She come an' offered an' I don't see why she should n't have a chance to get married the same as any other girl, so I set her in the next room an' told her not to go near him on no a'count, an' naturally there ain't nothin' as'll make 'em wilder to talk than for Elijah to feel he'd ought to be workin' on his editorial an' for 'Liza Em'ly to feel as he had n't ought to be spoke to. I don't say as I consider Elijah any great catch, but if 'Liza Em'ly can find any joy jumpin' at him with her mouth open I ain't one to deprive her of the hop. Elijah's a very fair young man as young men go, an' I think any girl as is willin' to do her nine-tenths can have a time tryin' to be happy with him. If she ain't happy long it won't be Elijah's fault for he's just as sure his wife 'll be happy as any other man is." "But about--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, that's what I come to tell you. He woke me last night, tappin' on my door, an' hollered as he had the appendicitis on both sides at once." "On both--" "That's what he said. Well, as soon as I got awake enough to know as I was n't asleep, I knowed he was wrong somehow an' I sat up in bed an' hollered back to him to take ten sips o' water, hold his breath while he counted fifteen, an' go back to bed. I was n't calculatin' to get up with no two-sided appendicitis in the middle o' no night if I could help it, an' I knowed anyhow as it was only some of them dried apples o' Mr. Kimball's as was maybe lodged here an' there in him an' no harm done if he'd only let me sleep. "But, no sir, Elijah had no idea o' lettin' me sleep while he set up alone with his own two sides. There's suthin' about a man, Mrs. Lathrop, as 'll never let him suffer in silence if there's any woman to be woke up. A man can't be a hero unless a woman stands by barefooted with a candle, an' he feels a good deal easier groanin' if he can hear her sneezin' between times. So back come Elijah right off to say as I must be up an' doin' or he'd be dead afore dawn. I was so sound asleep I told him to set a mouse trap two times afore my senses come to me an' then when they did I was mad. I tell you I was _good_ an' mad too. I put on my slippers an' father's duster as I always keep hangin' to my bedpost to slip on or dust with just as I feel to need it on or dustin', an' I went to Elijah. He was back layin' in bed done up in a sort o' ring o' rosy, groanin' an' takin' on an' openin' an' shuttin' his eyes like he thought he could make me feel pleased at bein' woke up. But I was n't goin' to feel pleased. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, a stitch in time saves nine, an' I hadn't no idea of encouragin' Elijah to wake me like that, not while there's maybe a chance of me havin' him to board more 'n the three months I promised. I saw as I was gettin' into the duster as all my comfort depended on how I acted right then an' there an' I was decided to be firm. I stood by the bed an' looked at him hard an' then I says to him, I says, 'Well, what did you wake me up for?' 'No one ever felt nothin' like this,' he says; 'I've got two appendixes an' I can feel another comin' in my back.' 'Elijah,' I said, 'don't talk nonsense. You've been an' woke me up an' now I'm woke up what do you want me to do?' I leaned over him as I said it an' let a little hot candle grease drip on his neck an' he give a yowl an' straightened out an' then give another yowl an' shut up again. 'I'll make you some ginger tea,' I says, 'an' put a mustard plaster wherever you like best,' I says, 'an' then I shall look to be let alone,' I says, an' so I went downstairs an' set to work. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I made that tea an' I bet I made it strong; I put some red pepper in it, too, an' poured a little mucilage into the plaster, for I may in confidence remark as I didn't intend as Elijah should ever look forward to wakin' me up in the night again. Then I went upstairs an' he sit up an' took the whole of the cup at one gulp! You never see no one so satisfied with nothin' in all your life! He fell back like he was shot an' said, 'Scott, Scott, Scott,' until really I thought as he was ravin'. Then I said, 'Where do you want the plaster, Elijah?' an' he said, 'On my throat, I guess.' I says, 'No, Elijah, you've waked me up an' wakin' me up is nothin' to joke over. You put this plaster on an' go to sleep an' don't wake me up again unless you feel for more tea.' I spoke kind, but he could see as I felt firm an' I set the candle down an' went back to bed. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think,--what _do_ you think? Seems as Elijah was so afraid o' burnin' himself in another place that he went an' put the _sheet_ between him an' the plaster an' glued himself all together. This mornin' when he awoke up there he was with the sheet stuck firm to him an' I must say I was very far from pleased when he hollered to me an' I went in an' found him lookin' more like a kite than anythin' else an' not able to dress 'cause he could n't take off his sheet. 'Well, Elijah, you _have_ done it now, I guess,' I says; 'I never see nothin' the beat o' this. If I have to send for young Dr. Brown to take that sheet off you, you'll be in the papers from the earthquake to Russia an' back again.' Well, that was all there was to do an' when 'Liza Em'ly come with the milk I had to ask her to go up to young Dr. Brown's an' ask him to kindly come as soon as he could an' amputate Elijah out o' bed. He come right after breakfast an' he had a time, I tell you! We worked with water an' we worked with hot water, we tried loosenin' the edges by jerkin' quick when Elijah was n't expectin', but it was all no use. Dr. Brown said he never see such a plaster, he said it'd be a fortune for mendin' china. Then we got the dish-pan an' tried layin' Elijah face down across it an' pilin' books on his back to keep the right place in front soakin', but even that didn't help. Dr. Brown said in the end as he thought the only way maybe would be to do all the corners of the sheet up in a paper an' let Elijah carry it hugged tight to him an' wear father's duster down to the crick an' sit in it till he just slowly come loose. But Elijah did n't want to go bathin' in a duster an' I had a feelin' myself as if Meadville heard of it we'd surely be very much talked about, so finally Dr. Brown said he thought as he'd go home an' study up the case, an' I let him go for I had my own ideas as to how much he knew about what was makin' the trouble. So he went an' then I got dinner an' took some up to Elijah an' told him jus' what I thought of the whole performance. I talked kind but I talked firm an' I done a lot of good, for he said he did n't know but it would be better if he arranged to live with the Whites after the Fourth of July 'cause he had a feelin' as maybe he was a good deal of trouble to me. I told him I hadn't a mite of doubt as he was a good deal of trouble to me an' then Mrs. Macy come. I had to stop talkin' to him an' go down an' tell her what was the matter. She said right off as her idea would be to shut the windows, build a big fire an' make Elijah jus' work himself loose from the inside out. I told her about the mucilage though an' then she changed her views an' said I'd best fold the sheet neatly an' let him wear it till he wore it off next time he growed a new skin. Mrs. Macy says she's been told we keep sheddin' our skins the same as snakes an' that that's really what makes our clothes need washin' so often. She said the moral was plain as by the time the sheet'd need washin' Elijah would shed it anyhow. I see the p'int o' what she said an' I felt to agree, but while we was talkin' Mrs. Sweet come in an' her view was all different. She said as Elijah would find that sheet a most awful drag on him an' to her order o' thinkin' he'd ought to go down to where Mr. Kimball makes his dried apples an' steam loose in the vat. She says he can steam out very fast an' Mr. Kimball bein' his uncle 'll naturally let him sit in the vat for nothin'." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I don't know," said Susan; "Lucy come in while we was sittin' there an' she said her view'd be for me just to take a firm hold of the sheet an' walk straight out of the room without a so much as 'by your leave' to Elijah, but I'd be afraid of tearin' the sheet if I did that way. An' then Gran'ma Mullins came an' her view was as I'd best sit an' sop Elijah with a sponge, which just shows why Hiram is so tore in two between such a mother an' such a wife's views." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop again. "Well, Elijah was writin' a editorial when I left an' 'Liza Em'ly was lookin' at him an' sighin' to talk an' I come over to tell you all about it." Just here a piercing scream was heard from across the way. "My--" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop. Susan sprang to her feet and ran to the door; as she opened it Eliza Emily was seen flying down the Clegg steps. "What is it?" screamed Miss Clegg from Mrs. Lathrop's steps. "Elijah dropped his pen," screamed Eliza Emily in reply, "an' when he reached for it he fell out o' bed an' tore loose." "Did he tear the sheet any?" "No, but he thinks he's tore himself." Miss Clegg began to walk rapidly towards her own house. "You can see I've got to go," she called back to her friend over her shoulder; "this is what it is to have a man livin' in your house, Mrs. Lathrop." CHAPTER XVI THE BEGINNING OF THE END As June wore on it became more and more apparent that Elijah wore on Miss Clegg. She grew less and less mild towards his shortcomings and more and more severe as to the same. "He's only--" Mrs. Lathrop attempted to explain to her. "I don't care if he is," she replied, "it says in the Bible as a man is a man for all that an' I never was one to go against the Bible even if I ain't never felt in conscience called to say where Cain an' Abel got married, or what it was as the Jews lit out from Egypt on a'count of. I tell you what it is, Mrs. Lathrop, you've forgotten what it is to have a man around your house. There's somethin' just about the way a man eats an' sleeps as gets very aggravatin' to any woman after the new's off. I begin to see what men invented gettin' married for,--it was so they could kite around an' always be sure they had one woman safe chained up at home to do their cookin' an' washin'. Why, I ain't married to Elijah a _tall_, an' yet just havin' him in the house is gettin' me more an' more under his thumb every day that he stays with me. I feel to stay in the square an' I find myself hurryin' home 'cause he likes hot biscuits, an' I feel to turn his washstand around an' I leave it where it is for no better reason than as he likes it where it is. It's awful the way a man gets the upper hand of a woman! Lord knows I've no love for Elijah an' yet I'm caperin' upstairs an' downstairs when he ain't in a hurry an' tearin' my legs off scamperin' when he is, until I declare I feel mad at myself--I certainly do. "An' now, there he is fallin' in love with 'Liza Em'ly, the last girl in the world as he'd ought to even dream of marryin', an' I talk to him an' talk to him, an' tell him so, an' tell him so, an' it don't make no more impression than when you rub a cat behind her ear." "Why, a cat--" protested Mrs. Lathrop. "Yes, an' so does Elijah. It just tickles him half to death to hear 'Liza Em'ly's mere name, an' he don't care what any one says about her just so long as it's about her. "I see the minister down in the square to-day an' I told him my opinion of it all right to his face. But the minister didn't have no heart for 'Liza Em'ly--he's too used up discussin' what under the sun is to be done with Henry Ward Beecher. He says it's suthin' just awful about Henry Ward Beecher's feelin' for Emma Sweet, an' he told me frank an' open as personally it's been so terrible easy for him to get himself married an' get consequences that he can't find nothin' to point his index finger into Henry Ward Beecher with about this unrequited affection of his for Emma. He says as he never knowed as a _man_ could have unrequited affection afore an' he really seems to feel more'n a little hurt over it. He says he can't well see how to restrain Henry Ward Beecher an' it's town talk as Henry Ward Beecher is far past restrainin' himself. I see Polly White afterward an' she says it's gospel truth as he's took indelible ink an' tattoed Emma all over himself, even places where he had to do it by guess or a mirror." "My heavens!" ejaculated Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, I should say so," said Susan, "an' will you only consider, Mrs. Lathrop, what Emma Sweet is to be tattoed all over any man like that! I like all the Sweets an' I like Emma, but it's only in reason as I should regard her with a impartial eye, an' no impartial eye lookin' her way could ever in reason deny as she don't appear likely to set no rivers afire. Emma's a nice girl, an' if her toes turned out an' her teeth turned in I don't say but what she might go along without bein' noticed in a crowd, but with them teeth an' toes all you can call her is good-hearted an' you know as well as I do as bein' called good-hearted is about the meanest thing as anybody can ever call anybody else. Folks in this world never call any one good-hearted unless they can't find nothin' else good to say of 'em, for it stands to reason as any sensible person'd rather have anythin' else about 'em good before their heart, for it's way inside an' largely guesswork what it is anyhow. "They say as Mrs. Sweet says as even though Emma's her own child, still she can't see no reason for Henry Ward Beecher's March-haredness. She says Emma's best p'ints is her gettin' up early an' the way she puts her whole soul into washin' an' bread-kneadin', but she says Henry Ward Beecher ain't sensible enough to appreciate good p'ints like those. She says she's talked to Emma an' any one with half a eye can see as it ain't Emma as needs the talkin' to. She says Emma says as the way he hangs onto her goin' home from choir practice is enough to pull her patience all out of proportion. She says Emma says she'd as soon have a garter-snake seein' her home, an' doin' itself up in rings around her all the while, an' Mrs. Sweet says any one as has ever seen Emma seein' a garter-snake would consider Henry Ward Beecher's chances as very slim after a remark like that. "Mr. Kimball says he wishes he had n't took him into his store just now; he says no young man ain't got a call to the grocery trade when he's in a state of heart as won't let him hear the call o' the man as owns the business, an' Mr. Kimball says when he fell into the vat where he was stirrin' up his dried apples, Henry Ward Beecher never heard one single holler as he gave--not one single solitary holler did that boy hear, an' Mr. Kimball 'most had a real city Turkish bath as a result. Why, he told me as he was in the vat for nigh on to a hour afore Elijah heard him from the other side, an' he says as a consequence he ain't very much took with havin' a clerk as is in love. He says too as only to see Henry Ward Beecher tryin' to pour through a funnel when any member o' the Sweet family is walkin' by on the other side of the square is enough to make him as owns what's bein' spilt wish as Henry Ward Beecher's father had gone unrequited too. Mrs. Macy come in while we was talkin' an' she said it was too bad as Emma wasn't smarter, 'cause if Emma was smarter Henry Ward Beecher'd jus' suit her. Mrs. Macy says the trouble is as Emma's too smart to be willin' to marry a fool an' not quite smart enough to be willin' to. Mrs. Macy says as Mr. Fisher was just such another an' Mrs. Fisher jumped for him like a duck at a bug." "Did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, interestedly. "No," said Susan, "but Gran'ma Mullins did. Gran'ma Mullins is always nothin' but glad to have a chance to shake her head an' wipe her eyes over any one's love-makin'. She come in to wait a little 'cause Lucy wanted to dust an' she says she ain't got no strength to stay in the house while Lucy dusts; she says it lays Hiram out on the sofa every time regular an' sometimes it gives him the toothache. She says she an' Hiram never know when they 're dirty a'cordin' to Lucy's way o' thinkin' but, Heaven help 'em, they always know when they're clean a'cordin' to Lucy's idea of bein' clean. She says Lucy is that kind as takes one of her hairpins an' goes down on her knees an' scratches out the last bit of dirt as the Lord hath mercifully seen fit to allow to settle in His cracks. You can see as Gran'ma Mullins has suffered! She says it's a hard thing to bear, but Hiram grins an' she bears an' their pride helps 'em out. "While we was talkin' Emma come by for the mail an' we see Henry Ward Beecher's face just hoverin' madly over the breakfast-food display in Mr. Kimball's window. Mr. Jilkins was in town buyin' a rake an' he waited to see what would happen. Judge Fitch was there too an' Polly White. We all had our eyes fixed on Henry Ward Beecher an' I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as I never got so tired waitin' for nothin'." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Love affairs is terrible tame to lookers-on, I think. If they get over it your time's wasted an' if they don't get over it the time's wasted all around. My own opinion is as all love affairs is a very foolish kind o' business, for you never find real sensible folks havin' anythin' to do with 'em. But it was no use talkin' that to-day, so Henry Ward Beecher hung up there on the breakfast foods, an' we sat an' watched him like combination cats till long about five Johnny come by an' said as Mr. Sperrit had took Emma home with them to tea." "Oh--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, impulsively. "I don't know why not," said Susan, "my own opinion is as he's a idiot--" "Mr. Sper--" "No, Henry Ward Beecher. It's always struck me as a very strange thing as we had n't got one single idiot in this community an' I guess the real truth is as we've had one all the time an' did n't know him by sight. There's a idiot most everywhere till he gets the idea into his head to kill some one an' so gives others the idea as he's safer shut up, an' so it ain't surprisin' our havin' one too. I see Mrs. Brown on my way home an' I asked her if she did n't think as I was right. She said she would n't be surprised if it was true, an' it was very odd as she'd never thought o' it before, recollectin' her experience with him years ago when she had him that time as the minister went to the Sperrits' on his vacation. She went on to say then as to her order o' thinkin' Mr. an' Mrs. Sperrit come pretty close to bein' idiots themselves, for she says she don't know she's sure what ails 'em but they've been married years now an' is still goin' round as beamin' as two full moons. She says it ain't anythin' to talk of in public but actually to see 'em drivin' back from market sometimes most makes her wish as she was n't a widow, an' she says anythin' as'd make her sorry she's a widow had n't ought to be goin' round loose in a Christian town. She was very much in earnest an' Mrs. Fisher overtook us just then an' she said it all over again to her an' she said more, too--she said as the way she looks at him in church is all right an' really nothin' but a joy to look on afore marriage, but she don't consider it hardly decent afterwards for it's deludin' an' can't possibly be meant in earnest. She says she was married, an' her son is married, an' her father was married, too, an' you can't tell her that the way Mr. an' Mrs. Sperrit go on isn't suthin' pretty close to idiocy even if it ain't the whole thing." "You--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Mrs. Fisher said," continued Susan, "as she thought maybe she got used to lookin' pleasant at him in all them years as she kept house for him afore he made up his mind to get married to her, an' so the habit kind of is on her an' what's dyed in the wool keeps on stickin' to Mr. Sperrit. She said as they do say as he married her 'cause he wanted her bedroom to hang up corn to dry in. She went on to say as for her part she always enjoyed seein' the Sperrits so happy for it done any one good to only look at 'em an' that she'd only be too happy to be a idiot herself if it'd do any human bein' good to look at her an' Mr. Fisher afterwards. She went on to say as she'd heard as the other night Mr. Sperrit drove two miles back in the rain 'cause he'd forgot a cake o' sapolio as she'd asked him to bring. I spoke up at that an' I said I did n't see nothin' very surprisin' in that, for I know if I asked any man as I was married to to bring home a cake o' sapolio I should most surely look to see the cake when he come home." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "I know; but you always spoiled him," said Susan. "Well, what was I sayin'? Oh, yes, Mrs. Brown said as Mrs. Macy was tellin' her the other day as they've got a idiot in Meadville--a real hereditary one; the doctors have all studied him an' it's a clear case right down from his great-grandfather." "His great--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Grandfather," said Susan. "Yes, Mrs. Lathrop, that is how it was, an' Mrs. Macy says it's really so, for she see the tombstones all but the mother's--hers ain't done yet. Seems the idiocy come from the great-grandfather's stoppin' on the train crossin' to pick up a frog 'cause he was runnin' for suthin' in connection with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." "The frog!" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "No, the great-grandfather. Seems he never stopped to consider as what'd kill a frog would be sure to hit him, an' Mrs. Macy says the doctors said as that was one very strong piece o' evidence against the family brains right at the start, but she says he really was smarter than they thought, for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals paid for the funeral an' for the grandmother's, too." "The grand--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "--Mother's," said Susan. "Yes, seems the railway track was their back fence an' she'd always begged an' prayed him at the top o' her voice not to go to town that way, but he would n't listen 'cause he was stone-deaf an' then besides like all that kind he always pretended not to hear what he did n't want to. But anyhow she was in the garden an' she see the train an' she tried to get to him, an' whether she broke a blood vessel yellin' or contracted heart disease hoppin' up an' down, anyway she fell over right then an' there an' it would have been copied in all the newspapers all over the country even if the mother--" "The moth--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Er," said Susan. "Yes, seems she heard the yell an' run to the window so quick she knocked the stick out as held it up an' it come down on her head. So, you see the idiocy come right straight down in the family of the idiot for three generations afore him." "I ain't sure," said Mrs. Lathrop, thoughtfully. "I ain't either," said Susan; "Mrs. Macy says, she was n't either. No one in Meadville never was." "An' yet--" began Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, as to that," said Susan, "that's altogether another kind o' idiot. Henry Ward Beecher won't die of his love even if Emma won't have him, an' they'll both always be the better an' happier for not havin' one another, if they only knew it. It's mighty easy to love folks an' think how happy you'd always be with 'em as long as you don't marry 'em. It's marryin' 'em an' livin' in the house with 'em as shows you how hard it is to be really married. I thank Heaven I'm only livin' in the house with Elijah an' not married to him, so I can see my way ahead to gettin' rid of him in a little while now. You don't know how I ache to draw the curtains of his room an' pin up the bed an' pour the water out of his pitcher an' set a mouse trap in there an' just know it is n't goin' to be mussed up again." Susan sighed deeply. "How long--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "I said three months," said Miss Clegg, "an' that takes it over the Fourth of July. My heavens alive, seems some days as if I could n't but just live, an' the meanest thing about a man is, he's so dead sure as he makes you happy, bein' around the house." CHAPTER XVII AN OLD-FASHIONED FOURTH "Well, Elijah seems to have hit the nail on its foot instead of its head this time," said Miss Clegg to Mrs. Lathrop on the noon of the Sunday before the Fourth of July; "that editorial of his in this week's paper ain't suitin' any one a _tall_. I was down in the square yesterday an' everybody as was there was talkin' about it, an' to-day after church everybody was still talkin' about it, an' gettin' more mad all the time." "What--" began Mrs. Lathrop. "The one about the celebration as he printed in this week's paper," replied her friend; "they was for discussin' nothin' else after church to-day, an' one an' all is dead set against the way as Elijah says. Them as has bought their fireworks ain't pleased, of course, an' Mr. Kimball says as he considers that Elijah had ought to of consulted him afore he printed such a article in the hind part of a uncle's store that had just laid in a new supply of two pounds of punk alone. Mr. Kimball says as he'd planned a window display o' cannon crackers pointin' all ways out of a fort built o' his new dried apples an' now here's Elijah comin' out in Saturday's paper for an old-fashioned Fourth o' July without no firecrackers a _tall_. Mr. Kimball says he thinks Elijah ought to remember whose nephew he is an' show some family feelin'; he says punk is a thing as can never be worked off in no bargain lot of odds an' ends, an' he says his own Fourth o' July is spoiled now anyway just by the shock of the worry 'cause he can't be sure how folks is goin' to be affected until the effect is over, an' the Fourth o' July'll be over mighty quick this year. 'T ain't like they had most a week to calm down from Elijah's new idea--they ain't got but just Monday to decide an' buy their fireworks, too. "Judge Fitch says he can't quite make out what Elijah meant by callin' for patriotic speeches; he says he's willin' to make a speech any day, but he says no one ever wants to stop poppin' long enough to listen to a speech on the Fourth o' July. He says too as it's very hard to get a still crowd that day 'cause people are afraid to get absorbed listenin' for fear suthin' may go off under 'em while they ain't keepin' watch. Mr. Dill said that was true, 'cause he had a personal experience that way in his own dog; he says that dog would of made a fine hunter only some one throwed a torpedo at him one Fourth o' July, when he was lookin' under a sidewalk, an' after that that dog almost had a fit if a sparrow chirped quick behind him. Mr. Dill said he tried to cure him by stuffin' cotton in his ears an' keepin' a cloth tied neatly around his head, but then he read in the paper about some deaf German as when he played the piano always listened with his teeth, an' he said that just made him empty the cotton right out of the dog an' give up. "Mrs. Macy says what she wants to know is what's Elijah tryin' to get at anyhow. She says she always thought a barbecue was a kind of cake an' she did n't know white folks ever could lift their legs that high, even if they felt to want to. She says the idea of its bein' suthin' to eat in the woods is surely most new to her an' she ain't sure she wants to eat in the woods anyhow. She says there's always flies an' mosquitoes in the woods an' she's passed the age o' likin' to drop down anywhere, an' jump up any time, years ago. As for cookin' in the woods she says that part of Elijah's editorial is too much for every one. She says she never hear of roastin' a ox whole in a pit in her life; she says how is the ox to be got into the pit an' what's to cook him while he's in there an' when he's cooked how's he to be got out again to eat? She says she thinks Elijah has got a ox an' a clam mixed in his mind, an' a pit an' a pile. She says she knows they cook clams in piles on the seashore, 'cause she's heard so from people as has been there, an' besides she seen a picture of one once. "Gran'ma Mullins came up an' she's most awful troubled over the ox, too. She says Hiram is got such a name for bein' strong now that she just knows as they'll expect him to put that ox into the pit when they're ready to cook him, an' then lift him out again when he's done. She says it's gettin' too terrible about Hiram, every time as somebody fat dies anywhere or there's a piano to move or a barn to get up on jack-screws they send right for Hiram to be one o' the pallbearers an' give him the heaviest corner. Why, she says the other day when that refrigerator came for Polly White they unloaded it right onto Hiram from the train, an' not a soul dreamed as there was shot packed in both sides of it to save rates, until poor Hiram set it down to put it on the other shoulder. She says too, as she can't well see how a ox can be roasted whole anyway; she says it'll be a awful job gettin' his hair singed off in the first place, an' she just knows they'll expect Hiram to hold him an' twirl him while he's singein'. Then, too, she says as the whole of a ox don't want to be roasted anyhow. The tongue has to be boiled an' the liver has to be sliced an' the calves' brains has to be breaded an' dipped in egg, an' after he's roasted an' Hiram has got him out o' the pit, who's to skin him then, she'd like to know, for you can't tell her as anybody can eat rawhide, even if it is cooked. "Deacon White come up, an' he said he an' Polly would bring their own lunch an' their own pillow an' blanket an' hammock an' look on, 'cause Polly wanted to see the fun an' they were n't intendin' to have any fireworks anyhow. He said he was curious about the ox himself; he said he wondered where they'd get the ox, an' the pit, too, for that matter. "He said he wanted it distinctly understood as he an' Polly'd bring their own lunch an' neither borrow nor lend. He said that rule would apply to the pillow an' the blanket an' the hammock, the same as to the lunch. There was some talk after he was gone on how terrible close he an' Polly are both gettin'. Seems kind of funny, to be so savin' when you ain't got nobody to save for, but the Whites an' Allens was always funny an' what's bred in the flesh always sticks the bones out somewhere, as we all know. "The minister come up an' he said as it says in the Bible as when the ox is in the pit every one must join in an' help him out, so he shall do his part an' bring all his family with him. But he said he must remark as to his order of thinkin' a ox struck him as a most singular way to commemorate the day our forefathers fought an' bled over. He says he should have thought a service o' song an' a much to be desired donation towards cleanin' out his cistern would have been a more fittin' way to spend the glorious Fourth in, than fixin' a ox in a pit an' tryin' to bake him there. He says he don't think it can be done anyhow, he says a ox ain't no chestnut to stick in the ashes till he bounces out cooked o' his own accord. "Mrs. Fisher says she sha'n't have nothin' to do with any of it; they're all goin' to the city, an' Mr. Fisher is goin' to a lecture on that Russian that his country wants to amalgamate for suthin' he's done; an' she an' John Bunyan is goin' to the Hippodrome. They want to see the girl turn upside down in the automobile an' Mrs. Fisher says she can hear about the ox when she comes back. "Mrs. Brown says they sha'n't go, 'cause young Dr. Brown's afraid o' microbes in the woods. He's goin' to disinfect everythin' with that new smell he's invented the day before the Fourth, an' then they're goin' to have huckleberry biscuit an' watermelon an' just spend a quiet day waitin' for any accidents as may maybe come along. Mrs. Brown says young Dr. Brown is always hopin' for another railroad smash-up like that one that came while he was away studyin'. She says it always seems too bad it couldn't have come a year later, when he was just back with that handsome brand new set of doctor's knives an' forks as he got for a prize." Susan paused. "Shall you--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "No, I sha'n't. I ain't interested in the Fourth o' July. I never had nothin' to do with it in the beginnin' an' I ain't never had nothin' to do with it since. My own idea's always been as the Boston people was very foolish to go throwin' their tea overboard sooner'n buy stamps. We all buy stamps now an' no one thinks o' fussin' over it, an' I guess we do a lot other things as we'd never of had to do if we'd kept our tea an' our mouths shut in the beginnin'. They say tea is very cheap in England an' very good, too, an' heaven knows nothin' is cheap with us. Elijah says if it wasn't for his uncle he'd take a strong stand on a low tariff, but my goodness, it looks to me like he'd better not meddle with the tariff--he's set the town by the ears enough with his ox. I had a long talk with him last night about the whole thing. I don't know, I'm sure, how Elijah ever is goin' to get on without me, for I certainly do talk to him enough to keep him in ideas right straight along. I was very kind last night--but I was firm, too. In the end I broke him down completely an' he told me as he never meant it that way a _tall_. He says he only drew a picture o' what the Fourth o' July was in olden times. But this town ain't good on pictures, we take things right up by the handle an' deal with 'em a'cordin'." "But--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, of course not," said Susan, "but they can take him up by the tail an' horns, can't they?" CHAPTER XVIII CELEBRATING INDEPENDENCE DAY "Well," said Miss Clegg to her friend the Sunday after the Fourth, "I'm thankful to say as the game is up to-morrow an' Elijah moves out of my house. We never had no Fourth o' July like this afore an' every one is prayin' as we'll never have such another again. It was really very peaceful in church this mornin' an' the collection was thirty-two cents, so that shows as folks is beginnin' to take heart again, but you could see as they was all nervous an' even the minister kept lookin' anxiously out of the window whenever he thought as he heard a noise. Mr. Weskin says he thinks a house catchin' fire from bein' disinfected comes under some head as lets the insurance get paid anyhow an' he says if not he'll take the case for the Browns on even halves for his heart is full o' sympathy for 'em. The Browns was in church themselves to-day, all but Amelia, an' I had the story from them straight for the first time. Young Dr. Brown says he can't understand any of it; he says the stuff must be stirred in a barrel for two hours without stoppin' an' he says he'll let any man breathe a suspicion as his mother stopped after he once set her at it! Mrs. Brown says she did n't stop neither, she says when she could n't move her arms any more for love or money, she stuck the broomstick through her belt an' sat on the edge o' the barrel an' kept the stuff stirrin' so. They poured in the acid right after breakfast, an' then Dr. Brown wanted the test to be thorough, so they put a live fly in each room, shut the doors between, shut all the windows, took the silver out on the lawn, an' then threw a match into the barrel an' run out the coal cellar door. "Amelia is up at her father's an' ain't able to speak of it yet, but Mrs. Brown says her own view of it will always be as it was a explosion. She says as she can't see how you could call it anythin' else in the world. She says they was all sittin' in the arbor an' Amelia was just gettin' into the hammock an' Dr. Brown was just beginnin' on the King o' Spain's honeymoon in the paper, with a picture of a bullfight to illustrate it, when she heard such a noise as she never will forget again in all her life to come. She says her first thought was as Amelia had bu'st the hammock, for she says she tries to be kind to the bosom wife of her chosen son, but Amelia is surely most awful hard on anythin' as you get in an' out of, but then she heard the second noise, an' she says to her dyin' day she won't be able to swear to nothin' but as she thought it was San Francisco quakin' right in our very middle. Why, she says, she never for one second doubted as it was a earthquake. The canary-bird cage come sailin' out o' the dinin'-room window, all the chimneys went down with a crash, an' Amelia give one yell an' fainted. Mrs. Brown says she an' young Dr. Brown did n't really know which way to turn for a minute. They could n't seem to think whether their first duty was to shake Amelia or run around to the front of the house. The windows was blowin' out as fast as they could an' the most awful smellin' smoke you ever smelt was pourin' out after them! She said the smell was bad enough when she was stirrin' the stuff in the barrel, but exploded, it was just beyond all belief. In the end they left Amelia an' run 'round behind the house an' if there was n't all the kitchen stove lids comin' bangin' out at 'em an' all the feathers from the pillows just rainin' down like snow! They run aroun' to the side an' there was Amelia's sheets o' music all over the lawn an' jars o' pickles with the glass lids gone, an' jelly tumblers an' weddin' gold-rimmed china, an' in front an' on top of all else if the fire did n't bu'st out! "Dr. Brown run for the fire engine then an' every one was at home gettin' ready for the picnic an' there wa'n't no one down town a _tall_. He was all of ten minutes findin' any one an' when he found him it was only Mr. Shores, an' Mrs. Brown says as gettin' out a fire engine with Mr. Shores an' your house burnin' is suthin' as she trusts will never be her lot again. She says Mr. Shores would n't lay hold o' the engine till after the cover was folded up neatly an' then he wanted to dust the wheels afore runnin' it out. Then after it was run out an' got to the house, if there wa'n't no hose, an' Dr. Brown had to run away back to the engine house for the hose an' while he was runnin' he met John Bunyan runnin' too an' John Bunyan told him as the hose was kept coiled up in the part as sticks up behind the engine like a can. So they run back together an' got it out an' run with it to the well an' Dr. Brown was so excited he dropped the hose in the well. Mrs. Brown says she was nigh too mad by this time with the house explodin' all over again every few minutes an' things as you never have around comin' sailin' out o' the windows right in people's faces when they was only there to be neighborly an' look on. She was runnin' back an' forth an' explainin' as it was n't for want o' stirrin', for she stirred it herself, when Sam Duruy come runnin' an' seems there's always another hose tied up under the engine an' he unhooked that an' John Bunyan built a fire in the hole for fire while they fixed the new hose in the cistern, but oh my, the house was too far gone to be saved by that time. So they pumped some on Amelia just to try the hose, an' then they helped pick up the things as was blowed out of the windows. Mrs. Brown says it was all most awful an' she knows from her son's face as he thinks it was all because she stopped stirrin' sometimes durin' the two hours an' she declares with tears as she never stopped stirrin' once--not _once_. "Mrs. Fisher says the way people is sick from the smell shows as all the flies they put in the rooms must of surely been killed, so the experiment's a success in one way at least. Mrs. Fisher walked part way home with me an' we had a nice talk about the Browns. She says the Browns is most amusin' always in the ways they use flies; she says when young Dr. Brown was little, Mrs. Brown used to put a fly in the sugar-box when she went down to the square for things so she could tell when she come back whether he'd been at the sugar, an' so let the fly out. She says young Dr. Brown cured her o' that happy thought by takin' the fly out himself when she was down town one time an' puttin' a mad bee in instead. She says she guesses Dr. Brown has given her many a little lesson like that or he'd never be able to keep her stirrin' anythin' as smells for two hours." "Where--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, the Fitches took Amelia an' her husband of course an' Mrs. Brown is goin' over to Meadville to-morrow. Mrs. Macy says maybe old Dr. Carter will marry her now as she ain't got any house to be attached to. I don't see why that would n't be a good end for Mrs. Brown, she can step right into Mrs. Carter's shoes--an' her clothes, too, for that matter, for he never give away a thing when she died. Yes, he did, too, though, she wanted her nieces to have a souvenir an' he give one the waist an' the other the skirt to the same dress, but Mrs. Fisher says what he would n't give away to no man for love or money was all her union underwear for winter. Seems she always wore the best an' finest, an' when she died Dr. Carter said he'd keep all them union suits an' wear 'em out himself." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "No, an' I would n't either," said Miss Clegg; "there would n't be no comfort marryin' a man whose first wife could n't call even her union suits her own after she died, not to my order of thinkin'." "Was--" asked her friend. "Oh, the picnic?" said Susan, "no, that was n't a success a _tall_. They spread the tablecloth over a flyin' ant nest in the first place an' Mrs. Macy says shad bones is nothin' to the pickin' out as they had to do while eatin' as a consequence. She says they very soon found out as they was under a wood-tick tree too, an' the children run into a burr-patch after dinner. The minister tried to teach the twins to fish an' the bank caved in with 'em all three, an' the minister had to go all the way home that way. Gran'ma Mullins got a gnat in her eye an' Hiram walked way back to town for a flaxseed to put in it to get the gnat out, an' crossin' the bridge he sneezed an' the flaxseed just disappeared completely, an' Lucy would n't let him go back again, so all she could do was to keep a-rubbin' till finally she rubbed it out. Mr. Dill climbed up a tree to show as he could still climb up a tree an' a branch broke an' tore him so bad he had to walk home with the minister,--I guess every one's glad the Fourth's over." "How's--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Elijah? Oh, he went to town for the day. He says it's him for town when there 's anythin' goin' on in the country. He come back lookin' like he'd really enjoyed himself, but I was afraid he was goin' to have a fever at first he talked so queer in his sleep that night an' began all his sentences with 'Here's to--' an' then stopped in a most curious way. I was very much relieved when I see him come downstairs the next mornin', only his appetite ain't what it was yet." "May--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, I don't think so. There ain't any one for him to be in love with anyhow unless it's 'Liza Em'ly. He's really too smart for any girl in this community an' he ain't got a single picture among his things nor a letter as I don't know who wrote it. I thought at first as he used to call 'Annie' in his sleep the nights after we have dumplin's, but it ain't 'Annie' he says; it's 'Aunty,' an' heaven knows a aunt never broke no man's heart yet." Susan rose to go home. "I'm glad the Fourth's over, anyway," she said as she took up her parasol and mitts. "I think it's always a great strain on the country, but even if no one never likes it nor enjoys it, I suppose we must keep on havin' it with us year after year, for Elijah says as, as a nation, we're so proud o' bein' ahead o' everythin' an' everybody, that we'll die afore we'll go on one step further. He says what's one day o' terror a year beside the idea as we're free to do as we please. Gran'ma Mullins says all she can say is as she thanks God for every Fourth o' July as leaves Hiram whole, for he's the only apple she's got for her eye an' she'd go stark ravin' mad if anythin' was to tear him apart in the dream of his youth." "Did--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, solicitously. "Well, I can't stop to see if I did or did n't now," said Miss Clegg; "to-night's my last evenin' with Elijah an' I told him to be sure an' be home early. We'll try an' part pleasantly even though I should be mighty mad at him if I thought as he was half as glad to go as I am to get rid of him. I don't like the ways of a man in the house, Mrs. Lathrop,--they seem to act like they thought you enjoyed havin' 'em around. I can't see where they ever got the idea in the first place, but it certainly does seem to stick by 'em most wonderful." "There--" said Mrs. Lathrop. Susan turned her head. "Yes, that's him comin'," she said; "well, now I must go, Mrs. Lathrop. I'll come over to-morrow an' tell you when I'm free of him, bag an' baggage." "Yes," said Mrs. Lathrop, "I--" "Yes, I do, too," said Miss Clegg, "but you see I said for three months an' the three months ain't up till to-morrow." CHAPTER XIX EXIT THE MAN OUT OF SUSAN CLEGG'S HOUSE "Well, Mrs. Lathrop," said Miss Clegg, coming over the evening after, weary but triumphant, "Elijah is gone an' I tell you I'll never be too tender-hearted for my own good again. I won't say but what it was me an' nobody else as brought him down on my own head, but I must fully an' freely state as it's certainly been me an' no one else as has had to hold my own head up under him. An' he _has_ been a load! "Why, Mrs. Lathrop, do you know that man's stockin's alone has took me about one mornin' a week, an' as to buttons--well, I never knew a editor could bu'st 'em off so fast. An' as to puttin' away what he took off, or foldin' back things into the drawer where they belongs, why, a monkey swingin' upside down by his tail is busy carefully keepin' house compared to Elijah Doxey. "I never see such a man afore! If Hiram's anythin' like him I don't blame Lucy for battin' him about as she does. I did n't suppose such ways could be lived with in oneself. An' that table where he wrote! Well! I tell you I've got it cleared off to-night an' my clean curtains folded off on it, an' no man never sets foot on it again, I can tell you _that_. "I won't say as it wa'n't a little tryin' gettin' him off to-day an' I did feel to feel real sober while I was hangin' his mattress back to the rafters in the attic, but when I remembered as I'd never see them bedclothes kicked out at the foot again I cheered up amazin'. Mrs. Brown come in just afore supper an' she seemed to think it was some queer as I was n't goin' to miss Elijah, but I told her she did n't know me. 'Mrs. Brown,' I says, 'your son was a doctor an' you can't be expected to know what it is to board a editor, so once bit, soonest mended. She's mournin' over her burnt house yet, so she could n't really feel to sympathize with me, but I had n't time to stop an' mourn with her,--I was too busy packin' away Elijah's toilet set. "He got a good deal of ink around the room, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I shall make Mr. Kimball give me a bottle of ink-remover free, seein' as he's his nephew; but I don't see as he done any other real damage. I looked the room over pretty sharp an' I can't find nothin' wrong with it. I shall burn a sulphur candle in there to-morrow an' then wash out the bureau drawers an' I guess then as the taste of Elijah'll be pretty well out of my mouth. "I'm sure I don't know what we're comin' to as to men, Mrs. Lathrop, for I must say they seem more extra in the world every day. Most everythin' as they do the women is able to do better now, an' women is so willin' to be pleasant about it, too. Not as Elijah was n't pleasant--I never see a more pleasant young man, but he had a way of comin' in with muddy boots an' a smile on his face as makes me nothin' but glad as he's left my house an' gone to Polly White's." "Won't you--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "No, I won't,--not if I know myself. I ain't never been lonesome afore in my life an' I ain't goin' to begin now. Bein' lonesome is very fine for them as keeps a girl to do their work, but I have to slave all day long if there's anybody but me around the house, an' I don't like to slave. I guess Elijah's expectin' to be lonesome though, for he asked me if I'd mind his comin' up an' talkin' over the Personal column with me sometimes. I could see as he was more'n a little worried over how under the sun he was goin' to run the paper without me. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Lathrop, I've been the main stay of that paper right from the first. Not to speak o' boardin' the editor, I've supplied most o' the brains as run it. You know as I never am much of a talker, but I did try to keep Elijah posted as to how things was goin' on an' the feelin' as no matter what I said, it was him an' not me as would be blamed if there was trouble, always kept up my courage. There's a many nights as I've kept him at his work an' a many others as I've held him down to it. Elijah has n't been a easy young man to manage, I can tell you." Susan stopped and sighed. "I like to think how he's goin' to miss me now," she said, "I made him awful comfortable. Polly'll never do all the little things as I did. It's a great satisfaction when a man leaves your house, Mrs. Lathrop, to know as he'll be bound to wish himself back there many an' many time." "What--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Oh, I'll find plenty to do," said Susan Clegg, "it ain't made a mite of difference in my life. I shall go on livin' just the same as ever. Nothin's changed for me just because for three months I had a man in the house. I ain't even altered my general views o' men any, for land knows Elijah wa'n't so different from the rest of them that he could teach me much as is new. I ain't never intended to get married anyway, so he ain't destroyed my ideals none, an' I told Mr. Kimball when I took him as I'd agree to keep him three months an' I would n't agree for love or money to keep him any longer, an' I've kept him for three months an' no love or money could of made me keep him a day longer." "Did n't you--" asked Mrs. Lathrop. "Why, yes, I liked him," said Susan, "there were spots durin' the time when I felt to be real fond of him, but laws, that did n't make me want to have him around any more than I had to. But you know as well as I do that a woman can like a man very much an' still be happiest when she ain't got him on her hands to fuss with. I was n't built to fuss, Mrs. Lathrop, as you know to your cost, for if I had been I'd of been over here two days a week tidyin' up out of pure friendship, for the last twenty years. But no, I ain't like that--never was an' never will be--an' I ain't one to go pitchin' my life hither an' yon an' dancin' wildly first on one leg an' then the other from dawn to dusk for other people. Elijah's come an' Elijah's gone an' his mattress is hung back to the rafter in the attic an' his sulphur candle is all bought to burn to-morrow an' when that's over an' the smell's over too I shall look to settle down an' not have nothin' more to upset my days an' nights till your time comes, Mrs. Lathrop, an' I hope to goodness as it won't come in the night, for boardin' a editor has put me all at outs with night work." "I--" said Mrs. Lathrop. "Well, if you say so, I'll believe it," said Miss Clegg; "for I will say this for you, Mrs. Lathrop, an' that is as with all your faults you've never yet told me nothin' as I've found out from others afterwards was n't true." _A Masterpiece of Native Humor_ SUSAN CLEGG AND HER FRIEND MRS. LATHROP By ANNE WARNER Author of "A Woman's Will," etc. With Frontispiece. 227 pages. 12mo. $1.00. It is seldom a book so full of delightful humor comes before the reader. Anne Warner takes her place in the circle of American woman humorists, who have achieved distinction so rapidly within recent years.--_Brooklyn Eagle_. Nothing better in the new homely philosophy style of fiction has been written.--_San Francisco Bulletin_. Anne Warner has given us the rare delight of a book that is extremely funny. Hearty laughter is in store for every reader.--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_. Susan is a positive contribution to the American characters in fiction.--_Brooklyn Times_. Susan Clegg is a living creature, quite as amusing and even more plausible than Mrs. Wiggs. Susan's human weaknesses are endearing, and we find ourselves in sympathy with her.--_New York Evening Post_. No more original or quaint person than she has ever lived in fiction.--_Newark Advertiser_. LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, BOSTON _At all Booksellers'_ _Another Popular "Susan Clegg" Book_ SUSAN CLEGG AND HER NEIGHBORS' AFFAIRS _By_ ANNE WARNER With frontispiece. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00 All the stories brim over with quaint humor, caustic sarcasm, and concealed contempt for male folk and matrimonial chains.--_Philadelphia Ledger_. Anything more humorous than the "Susan Clegg" stories would be hard to find.--Jeannette L. Gilder, Editor of _Putnam's Magazine_. The best work that Anne Warner has published. Miss Clegg has become an institution in the humor of America.--_Baltimore Sun_. Her "Susan Clegg" stories, rich in pungent humor and extremely clever in their portrayal of quaint and amusing character, deserve a place among the choice specimens of American humorous literature--which means the best humorous literature in the world.--_New York Times_. Sure to be welcomed by that large class of readers who found in "Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop" one of the most genuinely humorous books ever written by a woman on this side of the Atlantic.--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_. LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 254 Washington Street. Boston _A New Story by the Author of "Susan Clegg"_ THE REJUVENATION OF AUNT MARY By ANNE WARNER Author of "Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop," "A Woman's Will," etc. With four full page illustrations. 12mo. Decorated cloth, $1.50. This very clever and original story by the creator of "Susan Clegg" will add materially to her reputation as a writer of popular fiction. "Aunt Mary" and her adventures in New York are simply delicious; and her nephew, Jack, and his college friends, who personally conduct her through the metropolis, are brimful of brightness and humor. A pretty love story runs through the book. "Aunt Mary's" magazine début delighted thousands of readers, and the publication of the story in a more permanent form, with new chapters, and scenes, will increase her popularity. Anne Warner takes her place in the circle of American woman humorists, who have achieved distinction so rapidly within recent years.--_Brooklyn Eagle_. Anne Warner is not only a funmaker but adds to that the quality of sympathy with her characters.--_Public Opinion_. LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, BOSTON _At all Booksellers'_ _An International Love Comedy_ A WOMAN'S WILL By ANNE WARNER Author of "Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop." It is a relief to take up a volume so absolutely free from stressfulness. The love-making is passionate, the humor of much of the conversation is thoroughly delightful. The book is as refreshing a bit of fiction as one often finds; there is not a dull page in it.--_Providence Journal_. It is bright, charming, and intense as it describes the wooing of a young American widow on the European Continent by a German musical genius.--_San Francisco Chronicle_. A deliciously funny book.--_Chicago Tribune_. There is a laugh on nearly every page.--_New York Times_. Most decidedly an unusual story. The dialogue is nothing if not original, and the characters are very unique. There is something striking on every page of the book.--_Newark Advertiser_. A more vivacious light novel could not be found.--_Chicago Record-Herald_. Illustrated by I. H. Caliga. 360 pages. 12mo. Decorated cloth, $1.50. LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, BOSTON _At all Booksellers'_ 
31138	----	The So-Called Human Race +----------------------------------------------+ | | | _BOOKS BY | | BERT LESTON TAYLOR_ | | | | A PENNY WHISTLE | | | | THE SO-CALLED HUMAN RACE | | THE EAST WINDOW | | (_Fall, 1922_) | | | | _And others in a uniform collected | | edition, to be ready later._ | | | | _New York: Alfred · A · Knopf_ | | | +----------------------------------------------+ The So-Called Human Race by Bert Leston Taylor _Arranged, with an Introduction, by Henry B. Fuller_ New York 1922 Alfred · A · Knopf COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. _Published, March, 1922 Second Printing, April, 1922_ _Set up and electrotyped by J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York, N. Y. Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y. Printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA _WORLD WITHOUT END_ _Once upon a summer's night Mused a mischief-making sprite, Underneath the leafy hood Of a fairy-haunted wood. Here and there, in light and shade, Ill-assorted couples strayed: "Lord," said Puck, in elfish glee, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"_ _Now he sings the self-same tune Underneath an older moon. Life to him is, plain enough, Still a game of blind man's buff. If we listen we may hear Puckish laughter always near, And the elf's apostrophe, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"_ B. L. T. Foreword By Henry B. Fuller Bert Leston Taylor (known the country over as "B. L. T.") was the first of our day's "colyumists"--first in point of time, and first in point of merit. For nearly twenty years, with some interruptions, he conducted "A Line-o'-Type or Two" on the editorial page of the Chicago _Tribune_. His broad column--broad by measurement, broad in scope, and a bit broad, now and again, in its tone--cheered hundreds of thousands at the breakfast-tables of the Middle West, and on its trains and trolleys. As the "Column" grew in reputation, "making the Line" became almost a national sport. Whoever had a happy thought, whoever could handily turn a humorous paragraph or tune a pointed jingle, was only too glad to attempt collaboration with B. L. T. Others, possessing no literary knack, chanced it with brief reports on the follies or ineptitudes of the "so-called human race." Some of them picked up their matter on their travels--these were the "Gadders." Others culled oddities from the provincial press, and so gave further scope to "The Enraptured Reporter," or offered selected gems of _gaucherie_ from private correspondence, and thus added to the rich yield of "The Second Post." Still humbler helpers chipped in with queer bits of nomenclature, thereby aiding the formation of an "Academy of Immortals"--an organization fully officered by people with droll names and always tending, as will become apparent in the following pages, to enlarge and vary its roster. All these contributors, as well as many other persons who existed independently of the "Line," lived in the corrective fear of the "Cannery," that capacious receptacle which yawned for the trite word and the stereotyped phrase. Our language, to B. L. T., was an honest, living growth: deadwood, whether in thought or in the expression of thought, never got by, but was marked for the burning. The "Cannery," with its numbered shelves and jars, was a deterrent indeed, and anyone who ventured to relieve himself as "Vox Populi" or as a conventional versifier, did well to walk with care. Over all these aids, would-be or actual, presided the Conductor himself, furnishing a steady framework by his own quips, jingles and philosophizings, and bringing each day's exhibit to an ordered unity. The Column was more than the sum of its contributors. It was the sum of units, original or contributed, that had been manipulated and brought to high effectiveness by a skilled hand and a nature wide in its sympathies and in its range of interests. Taylor had the gift of opening new roads and of inviting a willing public to follow. Or, to put it another way, he had the faculty of making new moulds, into which his helpers were only too glad to pour their material. Some of these "leads" lasted for weeks; some for months; others persisted through the years. The lifted wand evoked, marshalled, vivified, and the daily miracle came to its regular accomplishment. Taylor hewed his Line in precise accord with his own taste and fancy. All was on the basis of personal preference. His chiefs learned early that so rare an organism was best left alone to function in harmony with its own nature. The Column had not only its own philosophy and its own æsthetics, but its own politics: if it seemed to contravene other and more representative departments of the paper, never mind. Its conductor had such confidence in the validity of his personal predilections and in their identity with those of "the general," that he carried on things with the one rule of pleasing himself, certain that he should find no better rule for pleasing others. His success was complete. His papers and clippings, found in a fairly forward state of preparation, gave in part the necessary indications for the completion of this volume. The results will perhaps lack somewhat the typographical effectiveness which is within the reach of a metropolitan daily when utilized by a "colyumist" who was also a practical printer, and they can only approximate that piquant employment of juxtaposition and contrast which made every issue of "A Line-o'-Type or Two" a work of art in its way. But no arrangement of items from that source could becloud the essential nature of its Conductor: though "The So-Called Human Race" sometimes plays rather tartly and impatiently with men's follies and shortcomings, it clearly and constantly exhibits a sunny, alert and airy spirit to whom all things human made their sharp appeal. The So-Called Human Race A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _Motto: Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may._ SIMPLE My readers are a varied lot; Their tastes do not agree. A squib that tickles A is not At all the thing for B. What's sense to J, is folderol To K, but pleases Q. So, when I come to fill the Col, I know just what to do. * * * It is refreshing to find in the society columns an account of a quiet wedding. The conventional screams of a groom are rather trying. * * * A man will sit around smoking all day and his wife will remark: "My dear, aren't you smoking too much?" The doctor cuts him down to three cigars a day, and his wife remarks: "My dear, aren't you smoking too much?" Finally he chops off to a single after-dinner smoke, and when he lights up his wife remarks: "John, you do nothing but smoke all day long." Women are singularly observant. * * * NO DOUBT THERE ARE OTHERS. Sir: A gadder friend of mine has been on the road so long that he always speaks of the parlor in his house as the lobby. E. C. M. * * * With the possible exception of Trotzky, Mr. Hearst is the busiest person politically that one is able to wot of. Such boundless zeal! Such measureless energy! Such genius--an infinite capacity for giving pains! * * * Ancestor worship is not peculiar to any tribe or nation. We observed last evening, on North Clark street, a crowd shaking hands in turn with an organ-grinder's monkey. * * * "In fact," says an editorial on Uncongenial Clubs, "a man may go to a club to get away from congenial spirits." True. And is there any more uncongenial club than the Human Race? The service is bad, the membership is frightfully promiscuous, and about the only place to which one can escape is the library. It is always quiet there. * * * Sign in the Black Hawk Hotel, Byron, Ill.: "If you think you are witty send your thoughts to B. L. T., care Chicago Tribune. Do not spring them on the help. It hurts efficiency." * * * AN OBSERVANT KANSAN. [From the Emporia Gazette.] The handsome clerk at the Harvey House makes this profound observation: Any girl will flirt as the train is pulling out. * * * _THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD._ _She formerly talked of the weather, The popular book, or the play; Her old line of chat Was of this thing or that In the fashions and fads of the day._ _But now she discusses eugenics, And things that a pundit perplex; She knocks you quite flat With her new line of chat, And her "What do you think about sex?"_ * * * "Are we all to shudder at the name of Rabelais and take to smelling salts?" queries an editorial colleague. "Are we to be a wholly lady-like nation?" Small danger, brother. Human nature changes imperceptibly, or not at all. The objection to most imitations of Rabelais is that they lack the unforced wit and humor of the original. * * * A picture of Dr. A. Ford Carr testing a baby provokes a frivolous reader to observe that when the babies cry the doctor probably gives them a rattle. * * * WHAT DO YOU MEAN "ALMOST"! [From the Cedar Rapids Republican.] The man who writes a certain column in Chicago can always fill two-thirds of it with quotations and contributions. But that may be called success--when they bring the stuff to you and are almost willing to pay you for printing it. * * * WE'LL TELL THE PLEIADES SO. Sir: "I'll say she is," "Don't take it so hard," "I'll tell the world." These, and other slangy explosives from our nursery, fell upon the sensitive auditory nerves of callers last evening. I am in a quandary, whether to complain to the missus or write a corrective letter to the children's school teachers, for on the square some guy ought to bawl the kids out for fair about this rough stuff--it gets my goat. J. F. B. * * * Did you think "I'll say so" was new slang? Well, it isn't. You will find it in Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." * * * Formula for accepting a second cigar from a man whose taste in tobacco is poor: "Thank you; the courtesy is not _all_ yours." * * * A number of suicides are attributed to the impending conjunction of the planets and the menace of world-end. You can interest anybody in astronomy if you can establish for him a connection between his personal affairs and the movements of the stars. * * * WHERE 'VANGIE LIES. _Rondeau Sentimental to Evangeline, the Office Goat._ Where 'Vangie lies strown folios Like Vallambrosan leaves repose, The sad, the blithe, the quaint, the queer, The good, the punk are scattered here-- A pile of poof in verse and prose. And none would guess, save him who strows, How much transcendent genius goes Unwept, unknown, into the smear Where 'Vangie lies. With every opening mail it snows Till 'Vangie's covered to her nose. Forgetting that she is so near, I sometimes kick her in the ear. Then sundry piteous ba-a-a's disclose Where 'Vangie lies. * * * "This sale," advertises a candid clothier, "lasts only so long as the goods last, and that won't be very long." * * * THE SECOND POST. (_Letter from an island caretaker._) Dear Sir: Your letter came. Glad you bought a team of horses. Hilda is sick. She has diphtheria and she will die I think. Clara died this eve. She had it, too. We are quarantined. Five of Fisher's family have got it. My wife is sick. She hain't got it. If this thing gets worse we may have to get a doctor. Them trees are budding good. Everything is O. K. * * * Just as we started to light a pipe preparatory to filling this column, we were reminded of Whistler's remark to a student who was smoking: "You should be very careful. You know you might get interested in your work and let your pipe go out." * * * It is odd, and not uninteresting to students of the so-called human race, that a steamfitter or a manufacturer of suspenders who may not know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--who may not, indeed, know anything at all--is nevertheless a bubbly-fountain of political wisdom; whereas a writer for a newspaper is capable of emitting only drivel. This may be due to the greater opportunity for meditation enjoyed by suspender-makers and steamfitters. * * * Janesville's Grand Hotel just blew itself on its Thanksgiving dinner. The menu included "Cheese a la Fromage." * * * "It is with ideas we shall conquer the world," boasts Lenine. If he needs a few more he can get them at the Patent Office in Washington, which is packed with plans and specifications of perpetual motion machines and other contraptions as unworkable as bolshevism. * * * HEARD IN THE BANK. A woman from the country made a deposit consisting of several items. After ascertaining the amount the receiving teller asked, "Did you foot it up?" "No, I rode in," said she. H. A. N. * * * The fact that Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and other great departed whose names are taken in vain every day by small-bore politicians, do not return and whack these persons over the heads with a tambourine, is almost--as Anatole France remarked in an essay on Flaubert--is almost an argument against the immortality of the soul. * * * Harper's Weekly refrains from comment on the shipping bill because, says its editor, "we have not been able to accumulate enough knowledge." Well! If every one refrained from expressing an opinion on a subject until he was well informed the pulp mills would go out of business and a great silence would fall upon the world. * * * It is pleasant to believe the sun is restoring its expended energy by condensation, and that the so-called human race is in the morning of its existence; and it is necessary that the majority should believe so, for otherwise the business of the world would not get done. The happiest cynic would be depressed by the sight of humanity sitting with folded hands, waiting apathetically for the end. * * * Perhaps the best way to get acquainted with the self-styled human race is to collect money from it. * * * TO A WELL-KNOWN GLOBE. I would not seem to slam our valued planet,-- Space, being infinite, may hold a worse; Nor would I intimate that if I ran it Its vapors might disperse. Within our solar system, or without it, May be a world less rationally run; There may be such a geoid, but I doubt it-- I can't conceive of one. If from the time our sphere began revolving Until the present writing there had been A glimmer of a promise of resolving The muddle we are in: If we could answer "Whither are we drifting?" Or hope to wallow out of the morass-- I might continue boosting and uplifting; But as it is, I pass. So on your way, old globe, wherever aiming, Go blundering down the endless slopes of space: As far away the prospect of reclaiming The so-called human race. Gyrate, old Top, and let who will be clever; The mess we're in is much too deep to solve. Me for a quiet life while you, as ever, Continue to revolve. * * * "Our editorials," announces the Tampa Tribune, "are written by members of the staff, and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the paper." Similarly, the contents of this column are written by its conductor and the straphangers, and have nothing whatever to do with its policy. * * * "What, indeed?" as Romeo replied to Juliet's query. And yet Ralph Dilley and Irene Pickle were married in Decatur last week. * * * He was heard to observe, coming from the theater into the thick of the wind and snow: "God help the rich; the poor can sleep with their windows shut." * * * We have received a copy of the first issue of The Fabulist, printed in Hingham Centre, Mass., and although we haven't had time to read it, we like one of its ideas. "Contributions," it announces, "must be paid for in advance at space rates." * * * The viewpoint of Dr. Jacques Duval (interestingly set forth by Mr. Arliss) is that knowledge is more important than the life of individual members of the so-called human race. But even Duval is a sentimentalist. He believes that knowledge is important. * * * Among reasonable requests must be included that of the Hotel Fleming in Petersburg, Ind.: "Gentlemen, please walk light at night. The guests are paying 75 cents to sleep and do not want to be disturbed." * * * We have recorded the opinion that the Lum Tum Lumber Co. of Walla Walla, Wash., would make a good college yell; but the Wishkah Boom Co. of Wishkah, Wash., would do even better. * * * Some one was commiserating Impresario Dippel on his picturesque assortment of griefs. "Yes," he said, "an impresario is a man who has trouble. If he hasn't any he makes it." * * * What is the use of expositions of other men's philosophic systems unless the exposition is made lucid and interesting? Philosophers are much like certain musical critics: they write for one another, in a jargon which only themselves can understand. * * * O shade of Claude Debussy, for whom the bells of hell or heaven go tingalingaling (for wherever you are it is certain there are many bells--great bells, little bells, bells in high air, and bells beneath the sea), how we should rejoice that the beautiful things which you dreamed are as a book that is sealed to most of those who put them upon programmes; for these do not merely play them badly, they do not play them at all. Thus they cannot be spoiled for us, nor can our ear be dulled; and when the few play them that understand, they are as fresh and beautiful as on the day when first you set them down. * * * "The increase in the use of tobacco by women," declares the Methodist Board, "is appalling." Is it not? But so many things are appalling that it would be a relief to everybody if a board, or commission, or other volunteer organization were to act as a shock-absorber. Whenever an appalling situation arose, this group could be appalled for the rest of us. And we, knowing that the board would be properly appalled, should not have to worry. * * * Ad of a Des Moines baggage transfer company: "Don't lie awake fearing you'll miss your train--we'll attend to that." You bet they do. * * * The president of the Printing Press and Feeders' (sic) union estimates that a family in New York requires $2,362 a year to get by. Which sets us musing on the days of our youth in Manchester, N. H., when we were envied by the others of the newspaper staff because we got $18 a week. We lived high, dressed expensively (for Manchester), and always had money for Wine and Song. How did we manage it? Blessed if we can remember. * * * The soi-disant human race appears to its best advantage, perhaps its only advantage, in work. The race is not ornamental, nor is it over-bright, having only enough wit to scrape along with. Work is the best thing it does, and when it seeks to avoid this, its reason for existence disappears. * * * "Where," asks G. N., "can I find the remainder of that beautiful Highland ballad beginning-- 'I canna drook th' stourie tow, Nor ither soak my hoggie: Hae cluttered up the muckle doon, An' wow but I was voggie.'" * * * Women regard hair as pianists regard technic: one can't have too much of it. * * * The demand for regulation of the sale of wood alcohol reminds Uncle Henry of Horace Greeley's remark when he was asked to subscribe to a missionary fund "to save his fellow-man from going to hell." Said Hod, "Not enough of them go there now." * * * A few lines on the literary page relate that Edith Alice Maitland, who recently died in London, was the original of "Alice In Wonderland." Lewis Carroll wrote the book for her, and perhaps read chapters to her as he went along. Happy author, happy reader! If the ordering of our labors were entirely within our control we should write exclusively for children. They are more intelligent than adults, have a quicker apprehension, and are without prejudices. In addressing children, one may write quite frankly and sincerely. In addressing grown-ups the only safe medium of expression is irony. * * * Gleaned by R. J. S. from a Topeka church calendar: "Preaching at 8 p.m., subject 'A Voice from Hell.' Miss Holman will sing." * * * Here is a happy little suggestion for traveling men, offered by S. B. T.: "When entering the dining room of a hotel, why not look searchingly about and rub hands together briskly?" * * * What could be more frank than the framed motto in the Hotel Fortney, at Viroqua, Wis.--"There Is No Place Like Home."? * * * As to why hotelkeepers charge farmers less than they charge traveling men, one of our readers discovered the reason in 1899: The gadder takes a bunch of toothpicks after each meal and pouches them; the farmer takes only one, and when he is finished with it he puts it back. * * * If Plato were writing to-day he would have no occasion to revise his notion of democracy--"a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing equality to equals and unequals alike." * * * The older we grow the more impressed we are by the amount of bias in the world. Thank heaven, the only prejudices we have are religious, racial, and social prejudices. In other respects we are open to reason. * * * From the calendar of the Pike county court: "Shank vs. Shinn." Strange all this difference should have been 'Twixt Mr. Shank and Mr. Shinn. * * * HOME TIES. Sir: Discovered, in Minnesota, the country delegate who goes to bed wearing the tie his daughter tied on him before he left home, because he wouldn't know how to tie it in the morning if he took it off. J. O. C. * * * THEY FOUND THEM IN THE ALLEY. Sir: A young man promised a charming young woman, as a birthday remembrance, a rose for every year she was old. After he had given the order for two dozen Killarneys, the florist said to his boy: "He's a good customer. Just put in half a dozen extra." M. C. G. * * * "When," inquires a fair reader, apropos of our remark that the only way to improve the so-called human race is to junk it and begin over again, "when does the junking begin? Because...." Cawn't say when the big explosion will occur. But look for us in a neighboring constellation. When they junk the human species We will meet you, love, in Pisces. * * * THE TOONERVILLE TROLLEY. Sir: Did you ever ride on a street car in one of those towns where no one has any place to go and all day to get there in? The conversation runs something like this between the motorman and conductor: Conductor: "Ding ding!" (Meaning, "I'm ready whenever you are.") Motorman: "Ding ding!" ("Well, I'm ready.") Conductor: "Ding ding!" ("All right, you can go.") Motorman: "Ding ding!" ("I gotcha, Steve.") Then they go. P. I. N. * * * O WILD! O STRANGE! "That wild and strange thing, the press."--H. G. Wells. It's now too late, I fear, to change, For ever since a child I've always been a little strange, And just a little wild. I never knew the reason why, But now the cause I guess-- What Mr. Wells, the author, calls "That wild, strange thing, the press." I've worked for every kind of pape In journalism's range, And some were tame and commonplace, But most were wild and strange. I ran a country paper once-- Or, rather, it ran me; It was the strangest, wildest thing That ever you did see. Some years ago I settled down And thought to find a cure By writing books and plays and sich, That class as litrachoor. And for a time I lived apart, In abject happiness; Yet all the while I hankered for That strange, wild thing, the press. Its fatal fascination I Could not resist for long; I fled the path of litrachoor, And once again went wrong. I resurrected this here Col, By which you are beguiled. I fear you find it strange sometimes, And always rather wild. * * * A delegation of Socialists has returned from Russia with the news that Sovietude leaves everything to be desired, that "things are worse than in the Czarist days." Naturally. The trouble is, the ideal is more easily achieved than retained. The ideal existed for a few weeks in Russia. It was at the time of the canning of Kerensky. Everybody had authority and nobody had it. Lincoln Steffens, beating his luminous wings in the void, beamed with joy. The ideal had been achieved; all government had disappeared. But this happy state could not last. The people who think such a happy state can last are the most interesting minds outside of the high brick wall which surrounds the institution. * * * When one consults what he is pleased to call his mind, this planet seems the saddest and maddest of possible worlds. And when one walks homeward under a waning moon, through Suburbia's deserted lanes, between hedges that exhale the breath of lilac and honeysuckle, the world seems a very satisfactory half-way house on the road to the Unknown. Shall we trust our intelligence or our senses? If we follow the latter it is because we wish to, not because they are a more trustworthy guide. * * * One must agree with Mr. Yeats, that the poetic drama is for a very small audience, but we should not like to see it so restricted. For a good share of the amusement which we get out of life comes from watching the attempts to feed caviar to the general. * * * THE POPOCATEPETL OF APPRECIATION. [From the Paris, Ill., News.] For the past seven days I have been in inmate at the county jail, and through the columns of the Daily News I wish to express my thanks and appreciation to Sheriff and Mrs. McCallister and Mr. McDaniel for the kindness shown to me. I have been in jail before, here and at other places, and never found a like institution kept in such a sanitary condition. The food prepared by Mrs. McCallister was excellent. In my opinion Mr. McCallister is entitled to any office. May Claybaugh. * * * A copy of the second edition of The Ozark Harpist is received. The Harpist is Alys Hale, who sings on the flyleaf: "Sing on, my harp, Sing on some more and ever, For sweet souls are breaking, And fond hearts are aching, Sing on some more and ever!" * * * We quite agree with Mr. Masefield that great literary work requires leisure. Lack of leisure is handicapping us in the writing of a romance. We compose it while waiting for trains, while shoveling snow and coal, while riding on the L, while shaving; and we write it on the backs of envelopes, on the covering of packages, on the margins of newspapers. The best place to write a book is in jail, where Cervantes wrote Don Quixote; but we can't find time to commit a greater misdemeanor than this column, and there is no jail sentence for that. The only compensation for the literary method we are forced to adopt is that there is a great deal of "go" in it. * * * Replying to an extremely dear reader: Whenever we animadvert on the human race we include ourself. We share its imperfections, and we hope we are tinctured with its few virtues. As a race it impresses us as a flivver; we feel as you, perhaps, feel in your club when, looking over the members, you wonder how the dickens most of them got in. * * * Prof. Pickering is quoted as declaring that a race of superior beings inhabits the moon. Now we are far from claiming that the inhabitants of our geoid are superior to the moon folk, or any other folk in the solar system; but the mere fact that the Moonians are able to exist in conditions peculiar to themselves does not make them superior. The whale can live under water. Is the whale, then, superior to, say, Senator Johnson? True, it can spout farther, but it is probably inferior to Mr. Johnson in reasoning power. * * * The man who tells you that he believes "in principles, not men," means--nothing at all. One would think that in the beginning God created a set of principles, and man was without form and void. * * * "Lost--Pair of trousers while shopping. Finder call Dinsmore 1869."--Minneapolis Journal. The female of the shopping species is rougher and more ruthless than the male. * * * "Ancient Rome, in the height of her glory, with her lavish amusements, Olympian games," etc.--The enraptured advertiser. The proof reader asks us if it was an eruption of Mt. Olympus that destroyed Pompeii. * * * GARDENS. My lady hath a garden fair, Wherein she whiles her hours: She chides me that I do not share Her rage for springing flowers. I tell her I've a garden, too, Wherein I have to toil-- The kind that Epicurus knew, If not so good a soil. And I must till my patch with care, And watch its daily needs; For lacking water, sun, and air, The place would run to weeds. In this the garden of the mind, My flowers are all too few; Yet am I well content to find A modest bloom or two. My lady hath a garden fair, Or will when buds are blown: I've but a blossom here and there-- Poor posies, but mine own. * * * "Very well, here is a constructive criticism," declared Col. Roosevelt, tossing another grenade into the administration trenches. The Colonel is our favorite constructive critic. After he has finished a bit of construction it takes an hour for the dust to settle. * * * Judgment day will be a complete performance for the dramatic critics. They will be able to stay for the last act. * * * Why is it that when a woman takes the measurements for a screen door she thinks she has to allow a couple of inches to turn in? * * * "Woman Lights 103 Candles With One Match." Huh! Helen, with one match, lit the topless towers of Ilium. * * * It may be--nay, it is--ungallant so to say, but---- Well, have you, in glancing over the beauty contest exhibits, observed a face that would launch a thousand ships? Or five hundred? * * * "Learn to Speak on Your Feet," advertises a university extension. We believe we could tell all we know about ours in five hundred words. * * * GOOD NIGHT! [From the Omaha Bee.] Mrs. Riley gave a retiring party in honor of her husband. * * * At the Hotel Dwan, in Benton Harbor, "rooms may be had en suite or connecting." Or should you prefer that they lead one into another, the management will be glad to accommodate you. * * * Government census blanks read on top of sheet: "Kindly fill out questions below." One of the questions is: "Can you read? Can you write? Yes or No?" This reminds a Minneapolis man of the day when he was about 15 miles from Minneapolis and read on a guide post: "15 miles to Minneapolis. If you cannot read, ask at the grocery store." * * * The wave of spiritualism strikes Mr. Leacock as absurd, simply absurd. "And yet people seem to be going mad over it," he adds. What do you mean "and yet," Stephen? Don't you mean "consequently"? * * * A Joliet social item mentions the engagement of Miss Lucille Muff De Line. We don't recall her contribution. Gilded Fairy Tales. (_Revised and regilded for comprehension by the children of the very rich._) THE BABES IN THE WOOD. I Once upon a time there dwelt in a small but very expensive cottage on the outskirts of a pine forest a gentleman with his wife and two children. It was a beautiful estate and the neighborhood was the very best. Nobody for miles around was worth less than five million dollars. One night the gentleman tapped at his wife's boudoir, and receiving permission to enter, he said: "Pauline, I have been thinking about our children. I overheard the governess say to-day that they are really bright and interesting, and as yet unspoiled. Perhaps if they had a fair chance they might amount to something." "Reginald," replied his wife, "you are growing morbid about those children. You will be asking to see them next." She shrugged her gleaming shoulders, and rang for the maid to let down her hair. "Remember our own youth and shudder, Pauline," said the gentleman. "It's a shame to allow Percival and Melisande to grow up in this atmosphere." "Well," said the lady petulantly, "what do you suggest?" "I think it would be wise and humane to abandon them. The butler or the chauffeur can take them into the wood and lose them and some peasant may find and adopt them, and they may grow up to be worthy citizens. At least it is worth trying." "Do as you please," said the lady. "The children are a collaboration; they are as much yours as mine." This conversation was overheard by little Melisande, who had stolen down from her little boudoir in her gold-flowered nightdress for a peep at her mamma, whom she had not seen for a long, long time. The poor child was dreadfully frightened, and crept upstairs weeping to her brother. "Pooh!" said Percival, who was a brave little chap. "We shall find our way out of the wood, never fear. Give me your pearl necklace, Melisande." The wondering child dried her eyes and fetched the necklace, and Percival stripped off the pearls and put them in the pocket of his velvet jacket. "They can't lose us, sis," said he. II In the morning the butler took the children a long, long way into the woods, pretending that he had discovered a diamond mine; and, bidding them stand in a certain place till he called, he went away and did not return. Melisande began to weep, as usual, but Percival only laughed, for he had dropped a pearl every little way as they entered the wood, and the children found their way home without the least difficulty. Their father was vexed by their cleverness, but their mamma smiled. "It's fate, Reginald," she remarked. "They were born for the smart set, and they may as well fulfill their destinies." "Let us try once more," said the gentleman. "Give them another chance." When the servant called the children the next morning Percival ran to get another pearl necklace, but the jewel cellar was locked, and the best he could do was to conceal a four-pound bunch of hothouse grapes under his jacket. This time they were taken twice as far into the wood in search of the diamond mine; and alas! when the butler deserted them Percival found that the birds had eaten every grape he had dropped along the way. They were now really lost, and wandered all day without coming out anywhere, and at night they slept on a pile of leaves, which Percival said was much more like camping out than their summer in the Adirondacks. All next day they wandered, without seeing sign of a road or a château, and Melisande wept bitterly. "I am so hungry," exclaimed the poor child. "If we only could get a few _marrons glacés_ for breakfast!" "I could eat a few macaroons myself," said Percival. III On the afternoon of the third day Percival and Melisande came to a strange little cottage fashioned of gingerbread, but as the children had never tasted anything so common as gingerbread they did not recognize it. However, the cottage felt soft and looked pretty enough to eat, so Percival bit off a piece of the roof and declared it was fine. Melisande helped herself to the doorknob, and the children might have eaten half the cottage had not a witch who lived in it come out and frightened them away. The children ran as fast as their legs could work, for the witch looked exactly like their governess, who tried to make them learn to spell and do other disagreeable tasks. Presently they came out on a road and saw a big red automobile belonging to nobody in particular. It was the most beautiful car imaginable. The hubs were set with pigeon blood rubies and the spokes with brilliants; the tires were set with garnets to prevent skidding, and the hood was inlaid with diamonds and emeralds. Even Percival and Melisande were impressed. One door stood invitingly open and the children sprang into the machine. They were accustomed to helping themselves to everything that took their fancy; they had inherited the instinct. Percival turned on the gas. "Hang on to your hair, sis!" he cried, and he burnt up the road all the way home, capsizing the outfit in front of the mansion and wrecking the automobile. Their mamma came slowly down the veranda steps with a strange gentleman by her side. "These are the children, Edward," she said, picking them up, uninjured by the spill. "Children, this is your new papa." The gentleman shook hands with them very pleasantly and said he hoped that he should be their papa long enough to get really acquainted with them. At which remark the lady smiled and tapped him with her fan. And they lived happily, after their fashion, ever afterward. LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD. I Once upon a time there was a little girl who was the prettiest creature imaginable. Her mother was excessively fond of her, and saw her as frequently as possible, sometimes as often as once a month. Her grandmother, who doted on her even more, had made for her in Paris a little red riding hood of velvet embroidered with pearl passementerie, which became the child so well that everybody in her set called her Little Red Riding-Hood. One day her mother said to her: "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother does, for I hear she has been ill with indigestion. Carry her this filet and this little pot of foie gras." The grandmother lived in a secluded and exclusive part of the village, in a marble cottage situated in the midst of a wooded park. Little Red Riding-Hood got out of the motor when she came to the park, telling the chauffeur she would walk the rest of the way. She hardly passed the hedge when she met a Wolf. "Whither are you going?" he asked, looking wistfully at her. "I am going to see my grandmother, and carry her a filet and a little pot of foie gras from my mamma." "Well," said the Wolf, "I'll go see her, too. I'll go this way and you go that, and we shall see who will be there first." The Wolf ran off as fast as he could, and was first at the door of the marble cottage. The butler informed him that Madame was not at home, but he sprang through the door, knocking the servant over, and ran upstairs to Madame's boudoir. "Who's there?" asked the grandmother, when the Wolf tapped at the door. "Your grandchild, Little Red Riding-Hood," replied the Wolf, counterfeiting the child's voice, "who has brought you a filet and a little pot of foie gras." II The good grandmother, who had eaten nothing for two days except a mallard, with a pint of champagne, cried out hungrily, "Come in, my dear." The Wolf ran in, and, falling upon the old lady, ate her up in a hurry, for he had not tasted food for a whole week. He then got into the bed, and presently Little Red Riding-Hood tapped at the door. The Wolf pitched his voice as high and unpleasant as he could, and called out, "What is it, Hawkins?" "It isn't Hawkins," replied Little Red Riding-Hood. "It is your grandchild, who has brought you a filet and a little pot of foie gras." "Come in, my dear," responded the Wolf. And when the child entered he said: "Put the filet and the little pot of foie gras on the gold tabouret, and come and lie down with me." Little Red Riding-Hood did not think it good form to go to bed so very, very late in the morning, but as she expected to inherit her grandmother's millions she obediently took off her gold-flowered frock, and her pretty silk petticoat, and her dear little diamond stomacher, and got into bed, where, amazed at the change for the better in her grandmother's appearance, she said to her: "Grandmother, how thin your arms have got!" "I have been dieting, my dear." "Grandmother, how thin your legs have got!" "The doctor makes me walk every day." "Grandmother, how quiet you are!" "This isn't a symphony concert hall, my dear." "Grandmother, what has become of your diamond-filled teeth?" "These will do, my dear." And saying these words the wicked Wolf fell upon Little Red Riding-Hood and ate her all up. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. I Once upon a time there was a very wealthy widow who lived in a marble cottage approached by a driveway of the same stone, bordered with rhododendrons. She had an only son, Jack--a giddy, thoughtless boy, but very kindhearted, as many a hard-working chorus girl had reason to remember. Jack was an idle fellow, whose single accomplishment was driving an automobile, in which he displayed remarkable skill and recklessness; there was hardly a day he did not run over something or somebody. One day he bumped a very heavy workingman, whose remains messed up the car so badly that Jack's mother lost patience with him. "My dear," she said, "why don't you put your skill and energy to some use? If only you would slay the giant Ennui, who ravages our country, you would be as great a hero in our set as St. George of England was in his." Jack laughed. "Let him but get in the way of my car," said he, "and I'll knock him into the middle of next month." The boy set out gaily for the garage, to have the motor repaired, and on the way he met a green-goods grocer who displayed a handful of beautiful red, white, and blue beans. Jack stopped to look at what he supposed was a new kind of poker chip, and the man persuaded the silly youth to exchange the automobile for the beans. When he brought home the "chips" his mother laughed loudly. "You are just like your father; he didn't know beans, either," she said. "Dig a hole in the tennis court, Jack, and plant your poker chips, and see what will happen." Jack did as he was told to do, and the next morning he went out to see whether anything had happened. What was his amazement to find that a mass of twisted stalks had grown out of his jackpot and climbed till they covered the high cliff back of the tennis court, disappearing above it. II Jack came of a family of climbers. His mother had climbed into society and was still climbing. The funny thing about climbers is that they never deceive anybody; every one knows just what they are up to. As Jack had inherited the climbing passion he began without hesitation to ascend the beanstalk, and when he reached the top he was as tired as if he had spent the day laying bricks or selling goods behind a counter; but he perked up when he beheld a fairy in pink tights who looked very much like a coryphée in the first row of "The Girly Girl." "Is this a roof garden?" asked Jack, looking about him curiously. "No, kid," replied the Fairy, tapping him playfully with her spear. "You are in the Land of Pleasure, and in yonder castle lives a horrid Giant called Ennui, who bores everybody he catches to death." Jack put on a brave face and lighted a cigarette. "Has he ever caught you, little one?" he asked. "No," she laughed, "but I'm knocking wood. Fairies don't get bored until they grow old, or at least middle-aged." "It's a wonder," said Jack, "that the Giant doesn't bore himself to death some day." "He might," said the Fairy, "if it were not for his wonderful talking harp, which keeps harping upon Socialism, and the single tax, and the rights of labor, and a lot of other mush; but you see it keeps Ennui stirred up, so that he is never bored entirely stiff." "Well," said Jack, "me for that harp, if I die for it!" And thanking Polly Twinkletoes for her information, and promising to buy her a supper when he got his next allowance, he sauntered toward the castle. As he paused before the great gate it was opened suddenly by a most unpleasant looking giantess. "Ho! ho!" she cried, seizing Jack by the arm, "you're the young scamp who sold me that lightning cleaner last week. I'll just keep you till you take the spots out of my husband's Sunday pants. If you don't, he'll knock the spots out of _you_!" III While the Giantess spoke she dragged Jack into the castle. "Into this wardrobe," said she; "and mind you don't make the smallest noise, or my man will wring your neck. He takes a nap after dinner, and then you'll have a chance to demonstrate that grease-eradicator you sold me last week." The wardrobe was as big as Jack's yacht, and the key-hole as big as a barrel, so the boy could see everything that took place without. Presently the castle was shaken as if by an earthquake, and a great voice roared: "Wife! wife! I smell gasoline!" Jack trembled, remembering that in tinkering around his car that morning he had spilled gas on his clothes. "Be quiet!" replied the Giantess. "It's only the lightning-cleaner which that scamp of a peddler sold me the other day." The Giant ate a couple of sheep; then, pushing his plate away, he called for his talking harp. And while he smoked, the harp rattled off a long string of stuff about the equal liability of all men to labor, the abolition of the right of inheritance, and kindred things. Jack resolved that when he got hold of the harp he would serve it at a formal dinner, under a great silver cover. What a sensation it would cause among his guests when it began to sing its little song about the abolition of the right of inheritance! In a short time the Giant fell asleep, for the harp, like many reformers, became wearisome through exaggeration of statement. Jack slipped from the wardrobe, seized the harp, and ran out of the castle. "Master! Master!" cried the music-maker. "Wake up! We are betrayed!" Glancing back, Jack saw the Giant striding after him, and gave himself up for lost; but at that moment he heard his name called, and he saw the Fairy, Polly Twinkletoes, beckoning to him from a taxicab. Jack sprang into the machine and they reached the beanstalk a hundred yards ahead of the giant. Down the stalk they slipped and dropped, the Giant lumbering after. Once at the bottom, Jack ran to the garage and got out his man-killer, and when the Giant reached ground he was knocked, as Jack had promised, into the middle of the proximate month. Our hero married the Fairy, much against his mother's wishes; she knew her son all too well, and she felt certain that she should soon come to know Polly as well, and as unfavorably. Things turned out no better than she had expected. After a month of incompatibility, and worse, Polly consented to a divorce in consideration of one hundred thousand dollars, and they all lived happily ever afterward. A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO "_Fay ce que vouldras._" "FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS." _Do what thou wilt._ Long known to fame That ancient motto of Thélème. To this our abbey hither bring, Wisdom or wit, thine offering, Or low or lofty be thine aim. Here is no virtue in a name, But all are free to play the game. Here, welcome as the flow'rs of Spring, _Do what thou wilt._ Each in these halls a place may claim, And is, if sad, alone to blame. Kick up thy heels and dance and sing-- To any wild conceit give wing-- Be fool or sage, 'tis all the same-- _Do what thou wilt._ * * * That was an amusing tale of the man who complained of injuries resulting from a loaded seegar. He knew when he smoked it that it was a trick weed, and knew that it would explode, but he "didn't know when." He reminds us very strongly of a parlor bolshevist. * * * "Man," as they sing in "Princess Ida," "is nature's sole mistake." And he never appears more of a rummy than when some woman kills herself for him, in his embarrassed presence. His first thought is always of himself. * * * A history exam in a public school contains this delightful information: "Patrick Henry said, 'I rejoice that I have but one country to live for.'" * * * Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. There are some who, like a certain capable rounder, lately departed, have time to manage a large business, maintain two or more domestic establishments, razz, jazz, get drunk, and fight; while others of us cannot find time in the four and twenty hours to do half the things we wish to achieve. Although your orator has nothing to do but "write a few headlines and go home," as Old Bill Byrne says, night overtakes him with half his chores undone. Time gallops withal. * * * "They know what they like." There are exceptions. The author of "Set Down in Malice" mentions a number, the most conspicuous being Ernest Newman. And we recall an exception, Mr. Jimmie Whittaker, merriest of critics, who was so far from knowing what he liked that he adopted the plan, in considering the Symphony concerts, of praising the even numbers one week and damning the even numbers the following week. * * * Like Ernest Newman, we shall never again hear the Chopin Funeral March without being reminded of Mr. Sidgwick's summary: "Most funeral marches seem to cheer up in the middle and become gloomy again. I suppose the idea is, (1) the poor old boy's dead; (2) well, after all, he's probably gone to heaven; (3) still, anyhow, the poor old boy's dead." * * * Our readers, we swear, know everything. One of them writes from La Crosse that Debussy's "Canope" has nothing to do with the planet Canopus, but refers to the ancient Egyptian city of that name. Mebbe so (we should like proof of it), but what of it?--as Nero remarked when they told him Rome was afire. The Debussy music does as well for the star as for the city. It is ethereal, far away, and it leaves off in mid-air. There is a passage in "Orpheus and Eurydice" which is wedded to words expressing sorrow; but, as has been pointed out, the music would go as well or better with words expressing joy. * * * "Lincoln," observed Old Bill Byrne, inserting a meditative pencil in the grinder, "said you can fool all the people some of the time. But that was in the sixties, before the Colyum had developed a bunch of lynx-eyed, trigger-brained, hawk-swooping, owl-pouncing fans that nobody can fool for a holy minute." * * * Fishing for errors in a proof-room is like fishing for trout: the big ones always get away. Or, as Old Bill Byrne puts it, while you're fishing for a minnow a whale comes up and bites you in the leg. * * * Whene'er we take our walks abroad we meet acquaintances who view with alarm the immediate future of the self-styled human race; but we find ourself unable to share their apprehension. We do not worry about lead, or iron, or any other element. And human nature is elemental. You can flatten it, as in Russia; you can bend, and twist, and pound it into various forms, but you cannot decompose it. And so the "new order," while perhaps an improvement on the old, will not be so very different. Britannia will go on ruling the waves, and Columbia, not Utopia, will be the gem of the ocean. * * * "Woman's Club Will Hear Dr. Ng Poon Chew."--Minneapolis News. We believe this is a libel on Dr. Poon. * * * The Greek drachma is reported to be in a bad way. Perhaps a Drachma League could uplift it and tide it over the crisis. * * * THE DELIRIOUS CRITIC. [From the Sheridan, Wyo., Enterprise.] Replete with fine etherially beautiful melody and graceful embellishments, it represents Mozart at his best, expressing in a form as clear and finely finished as a delicate ivory carving that mood of restful, sunny, impersonal optimism which is the essence of most of his musical creations. It is like some finely wrought Greek idyl, the apotheosis of the pastoral, perfect in detail, without apparent effort, gently, tenderly emotional, without a trace of passionate intensity or restless agitation, innocent and depending, as a mere babe. It is the mood of a bright, cloudless day on the upland pastures, where happy shepherds watch their peaceful flocks, untroubled by the storm and stress of our modern life, a mood so foreign to the hearts and environment of most present day human beings, that it is rarely understood by player or hearer, and still more rarely enjoyed. It seems flat and insipid as tepid water to the fevered lips of the young passion-driven, ambition-goaded soul in its first stormy period of struggle and achievement; but later, it is welcomed as the answer to that inarticulate, but ever increasingly frequent, sign for peace and tranquil beauty. * * * SOMEWHERE IN THE MICHIGAN WOODS. Sir: Last night I disturbed the family catawollapus--née Irish--with, "Are you asleep, Maggie?" "Yis, sor." "Too bad, Maggie; the northern lights are out, and you ought to see them." "I'm sorry, sor, but I'm sure I filled them all this morning." What I intended to say was that I have taken the liberty of christening a perfectly good he-pointer pup Jet Wimp. Hope it is not lese majesté against the revered president of the Immortals. Salvilinus Fontanalis. * * * A Sheboygan merchant announces a display of "what Dame Nature has decreed women shall wear this fall and winter." * * * In considering additions to the Academy of Immortals shall Anna Quaintance be forgot? She lives in Springfield. * * * A box-office man has won the politeness prize. Topsy-turvy world, did you say? * * * We lamp by the rural correspondence that Mrs. Alfred Snow of Chili, Wis., is on her way to Bismarck, N. D. It is suggested that she detour to Hot Springs and warm up a bit. * * * _BLAKE COMES BACK._ _Little Ford, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee gas and bade thee speed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee cushions hard and tight, Bumpy tires small and white; Gave thee such a raucous voice, Making all the deaf rejoice? Little Ford, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?_ _Little Ford, I'll tell thee, Little Ford, I'll tell thee. He is callèd by thy name, Henry Ford, the very same. He is meek and he is mild, Is pacific as a child. He a child and thou a Ford, You are callèd the same word. Little Ford, God bless thee! Little Ford, God bless thee!_ _B. L._ * * * EVERYBODY CAME IN A FORD. [From the Milwaukee Sentinel.] Miss Evelyn Shallow, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Shallow, and Raymond Bridger, both of Little River, were married recently at Oconto. * * * Considering the pictorial advertisements, A. B. Walkley finds that that triumphant figure of the active, bustling world, the business man, divides his day somewhat as follows: He begins with his toilet, which seems to center in or near his chin, which is prominent, square, firm, and smooth; even the rich, velvety lather cannot disguise it. The business man collects safety razors; he collects collars, too. He seems to be in the habit of calling in his friends to see how perfectly his shirt fits at the neck. Once dressed, he goes to his office and is to be found at an enormous desk bristling with patent devices, pleasantly gossiping with another business man. You next find him in evening dress at the dinner table, beaming at the waiter who has brought him his favorite sauce. Lastly you have a glimpse of him in pajamas, discoursing with several other business men in pajamas, all sitting cross-legged and smoking enormous cigars. This is the end of a perfect business day. * * * Mr. Kipling has obtained an injunction and damages because a medicine company used a stanza of his "If" to boost its pills. While we do not think much of the verses, we are glad the public is reminded that the little things which a poet dashes off are as much private property as a bottle of pills or a washing machine. * * * Animals in a new Noah's Ark are made correctly to the scale designed by a London artist who studies the beasts in the Zoo. Would you buy such an ark for a child? Neither would we. * * * Social nuances are indicated by a farmer not far from Chicago in his use of table coverings, as follows: For the family, oil cloth; for the school teacher, turkey red; for the piano tuner, white damask. * * * SHE SAT APART. Sir: We were talking across the aisle. Presently the girl who sat alone leaned over and said: "You and the lady take this seat. I'm not together." A. H. H. A. * * * THE G. P. P. Sir: What is the gadder's pet peeve? Mine is to be aroused by the hotel maid who jiggles the doorknob at 8 a.m., when the little indicator shows the room is still locked from the inside. It happened to me to-day at the Blackhawk in Davenport. W. S. * * * BEG YOUR PARDON. W. S. writes, after a long session with his boss, that the recent announcement he was disturbed at 8 o'clock by the rattling of his hotel door was a typographical error committed in this office (sic), the hour as stated by him really having been 6.30 a.m. * * * The manager of the Hotel Pomeroy, Barbados, W. I., warns: "No cigarettes or cocktails served to married ladies without husband's consent." * * * It is years since we read "John Halifax, Gentleman," but we must dust off the volume. The Japanese translation has a row of asterisks and the editor's explanation: "At this point he asked her to marry him." * * * Gadders have many grievances, and one of them is the small-town grapefruit. One traveler offers the stopper of a silver flask for an authentic instance of a grapefruit served without half of the tough interior thrown in for good measure. * * * If Jedge Landis has time to attend to another job, a great many people would like to see him take hold of the Senate and establish in it the confidence of the public. It would be a tougher job than baseball reorganization, but it is thought he could swing it. * * * YES? You may fancy it is easy, When the world is fighting drunk, To compile a colyum wheezy With a lot of airy junk-- To maintain a mental quiet And a philosophic ca'm, And to give, amid the riot, Not a dam. You may think it is no trick to Can the topic militaire, And determinedly stick to Jape and jingle light as air-- To be pertly paragraphic And to jollity inclined, In an evenly seraphic State of mind. When our anger justified is, And the nation's on the brink; When Herr Dernburg--durn his hide!--is To be chased across the drink; When the cabinet is meeting, And the ultimatums fly, And the tom-toms are a-beating A defy; When it's raining gall and bitters-- You may think it is a pipe To erect a Tower of Titters With a lot of lines o' type, To be whimsical and wheezy, Full of {quip and quirk and quiz. {quibbles queer and quaint. Do you fancy _that_ is easy? Well--it {is. {ain't. * * * The dissolution of Farmer Pierson, of Princeton, Ill., from rough-on-rats administered, it is charged, by his wife and her gentleman friend, is a murder case that reminds us of New England, where that variety of triangle reaches stages of grewsomeness surpassed only by "The Love of Three Kings." How often, in our delirious reporter days, did we journey to some remote village in Vermont or New Hampshire, to inquire into the passing of an honest agriculturist whose wife, assisted by the hired man, had spiced his biscuits with arsenic or strychnine. * * * On the menu of the Woman's City Club: "Scrambled Brains." Do you wonder, my dear? * * * We quite understand that if Mr. Moiseiwitsch is to establish himself with the public he must play old stuff, even such dreadful things as the Mozart-Liszt "Don Giovanni." It is with Chopin valses and Liszt rhapsodies that a pianist plays an audience into a hall, but he should put on some stuff to play the audience out with. Under this arrangement those of us who have heard Chopin's Fantasie as often as we can endure may come late, while those who do not "understand" Debussy, Albeniz, and other moderns may leave early. The old stuff is just as good to-day as it was twenty years ago, but some of us ancients have got past that stage of musical development. * * * THE MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT. Sir: This story was related to me by Modeste Mignon, who hesitates to give it to the "Embarrassing Moments" editor: "Going down Michigan avenue one windy day, I stopped to fix my stocking, which had come unfastened. Just as my hands were both engaged a gust of wind lifted one of my hair tabs and exposed almost the whole of my left ear. I was never so embarrassed in my life." Ballymooney. * * * THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER. [From the White Salmon Enterprise.] The bridal couple stood under festoons of Washington holly, and in front of a circling hedge of flowering plants, whose delicate pink blossoms gave out a faint echo of the keynote of the bride's ensemble. * * * EVERYTHING CONSIDERED, THE COMMA IS THE MOST USEFUL MARK OF PUNCTUATION. [From the El Paso Journal.] Prof. Bone, head of the rural school department of the Normal University, gave an address to the parents and teachers of Eureka, Saturday evening. * * * Galesburg's Hotel Custer has sprung a new one on the gadders. Bub reports that, instead of the conventional "Clerk on Duty, Mr. Rae," the card reads: "Greeter, Rudie Hawks." * * * A communication to La Follette's Magazine is signed by W.E.T.S. Nurse, N. Y. City. What is the "S" for? * * * BETTER LATE THAN NEVER. [From the Walsh County, N. D., Record.] A quiet wedding occurred Friday, when Francis A. Tardy of Bemidji, Minn., was united in marriage to Miss Leeva Ness. * * * THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER; OR, IT INDEED WAS. [From the St. Andrew's Bay, Fla., News.] Mrs. Paddock, Mrs. Russell, Mrs. Templeton, and Mrs. Cottingham, all of whom are visiting Mrs. Turesdel, the hostess of Monday's picnic, were keenly appreciative of such bits of beauty as the day revealed. Florida, herself a hostess of lavish hospitality, seemed to be more radiant, and when night came and the boat pulled her way out into the bay, still another surprise awaited the northerners. In the wake of the boat shimmered a thousand, yea, a million jewels. The little waves crested with opals and pearls. The weirdly beautiful phenomena filled the visitors with delighted wonder as they leaned over the water and watched the flashing colors born of the night. As the lights of our city hove into view, the voice of Mrs. Templeton, a voice marvelously sweet, sang "The End of a Perfect Day," as indeed it was. * * * A "masquerade pie supper" was given in Paris, Ill., last week. The kind of pie used is not mentioned, but it must have been either cranberry or sweet potato. * * * CONTRETEMPS IN WYOMING SOCIETY. [From the Sheridan Post.] No finer dressed party of men and women ever assembled together in this city than those who took part in the ball given by the bachelors of Sheridan to their married friends. Many of the costumes deserve mention, but the Post man is not capable of describing them properly. The supper and refreshments were of the kind that all appreciated, and was served at just the right time by obliging waiters, who seemed to enter into the spirit of the times and make every one feel satisfied. Only one deplorable thing transpired at the dance, and it was nobody's fault. Dr. Newell had the misfortune to lean too far forward when bowing to a lady and tear his pants across the seams. He had filled his program, and had a beautiful partner for each number, but he had to back off and sit down. * * * MERCIFULLY SEPARATED. Sir: A fellow-gadder is sitting opposite me at this writing table. It seems that some old friend of his in Texas, out of work, funds, and food, has written him for aid, and he is replying: "Glad you're so far away, so we sha'n't see each other starve to death." Sim Nic. * * * Freedom shrieked when Venizelos fell. But Freedom has grown old and hysterical, and shrieks on very little occasion. * * * The attitude of the Greeks toward "that fine democrat Venizelos" reminds our learned contemporary the Journal of the explanation given by the ancient Athenian who voted against Aristides: he was tired of hearing him called "the Just." It is an entirely human sentiment, one of the few that justify the term "human race." It swept away Woodrow the Idealist, and all the other issues that the parties set up. If it were not for the saturation point, the race would be in danger of becoming inhuman. * * * The allies quarreled among themselves during the war, and have been quarreling ever since. A world war and a world peace are much too big jobs for any set of human heads. * * * ACADEMY NOTES. Sir: If there is a school of expression connected with the Academy I nominate for head of it Elizabeth Letzkuss, principal of the Greene school, Chicago. Calcitrosus. Members of the Academy will be pleased to know that their fellow-Immortal, Mr. Gus Wog, was elected in North Dakota. We regret to learn that one of our Immortals, Mr. Tinder Tweed, of Harlan, Ky., has been indicted for shooting on the highway. * * * TO MARY GARDEN--WITH A POSTSCRIPT. So wonderful your art, if you preferred Drayma to opry, you'd be all the mustard; For you (ecstatic pressmen have averred) Have Sarah Bernhardt larruped to a custard. So marvelous your voice, too, if you cared With turns and trills and tra-la-las to dazzle, You'd have (enraptured critics have declared) All other singers beaten to a frazzle. So eloquent your legs, were it your whim To caper nimbly in a classic measure, Terpsichore (entranced reviewers hymn) Would swoon upon her lyre for very pleasure. If there be aught you _cannot_ do, 'twould seem The world has yet that something to discover. One has to hand it to you. You're a scream. And 'tis a joy to watch you put it over. _Postscriptum._ If there be any test you can't survive, The present test will mean your crucifying; But I am laying odds of eight to five That you'll come thro' with all your colors flying. * * * It is chiefly a matter of temperament. And more impudence and assurance is required to crack a safe or burglarize a dwelling than to cancel a shipment of goods in order to avoid a loss; but one is as honest a deed as the other. Or it would be better to say that one is as poor policy as the other. For it is not claimed that man is an honest animal; it is merely agreed that honesty profits him most in the long run. * * * ACADEMY JOTTINGS. J. P. W.: "I present Roley Akers of Boone, Ia., as director of the back-to-the-farm movement." C. M. V.: "For librarian to the Immortals I nominate Mrs. Bessie Hermann Twaddle, who has resigned a similar position in Tulare county, California." * * * This world cannot be operated on a sentimental basis. The experiment has been made on a small scale, and it has always failed; on a large scale it would only fail more magnificently. People who are naturally kind of heart, and of less than average selfishness, wish that the impossible might be compassed, but, unless they are half-witted, or are paid agitators, they recognize that the impossible is well named. Self-interest is the core of human nature, and before that core could be appreciably modified, if ever, the supply of heat from the sun would be so reduced that the noblest enthusiasm would be chilled. The utmost achievable in this sad world is an enlightened self-interest. This we expect of the United States when the peace makers gather. Anything more selfish would be a reproach to our professed principles. Anything less selfish would be a reproach to our intelligence. * * * I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR, IT WENT RIGHT THROUGH MISS BURROUGHS' HAIR. [From the Dallas Bulletin.] We quote Miss Burroughs: "I don't think B. L. T. is so good any more--it takes an intelligent person to comprehend his meaning half the time." * * * The world is running short of carbonic acid, the British Association is told by Prof. Petrie. "The decomposition of a few more inches of silicates over the globe will exhaust the minute fraction of carbonic acid that still remains, and life will then become impossible." But cheer up. The Boston Herald assures us that "there is no immediate cause of alarm." Nevertheless we are disturbed. We had figured on the sun growing cold, but if we are to run out of carbonic acid before the sun winds up its affairs, a little worry will not be amiss. However, everybody will be crazy as a hatter before long, so what does it matter? Ten years ago Forbes Winslow wrote, after studying the human race and the lunacy statistics of a century: "I have no hesitation in stating that the human race has degenerated and is still progressing in a downward direction. We are gradually approaching, with the decadence of youth, a near proximity to a nation of madmen." * * * AS JOYCE KILMER MIGHT HAVE SAID. [Kit Morley in the New York Evening Post.] "_The Chicago Tribune owns forests of pulp wood._" --Full-page advt. I think that I shall never see Aught lovely as a pulpwood tree. A tree that grows through sunny noons To furnish sporting page cartoons. A tree whose fibre and whose pith Will soon be Gumps by Sidney Smith, And make to smile and eke _ha ha!_ go The genial people of Chicago. A tree whose grace, toward heaven rising, Men macerate for advertising-- A tree that lifts her arms and laughs To be made into paragraphs.... How enviable is that tree That's growing pulp for B. L. T. * * * "Remake the World" is a large order--too large for statesmen. Two lovers underneath the Bough may remake the world, remold it nearer to the heart's desire--or come as near to it as possible; but not a gathering of political graybeards. For better or worse the world is made; all we can do is modify it here and there. * * * THE SECOND POST [A Swedish lady seeks congenial employment.] Madam: A few days ago I were happy enough to meet Mrs. J. Hansley and she told me that you migh possible want to engauge a lady to work for you. I am swede, in prime of like, in superb health, queite of habits, and can handle a ordinary house. I can give references as to characktar. If you want me would you kindly write and state wadges. Or if you don't, would you do a stranger a favour and put me in thuch wit any friend that want help. I hold a very good situation in a way, but I am made to eat in the kitchen and made to feel in every way that I am a inferior. I dont like that. I dont want a situation of that kind. They are kind to me most sertainly in a way, but as I jused to be kind to my favorite saddle horse. I dont want that kind of soft soap. Yours very respecktfully, etc. * * * A WISCONSIN PARABLE. [From the Fort Atkinson Union.] A friend asks us why we keep on pounding La Follette. He says there is no use pounding away at a man after he's dead. Maybe we are like the man who was whaling a dead dog that had killed his sheep. "What are you whaling that cur for?" said a neighbor. "There is no use in that; he's dead." "Well," said the man, "I'll learn him, damn him, that there is punishment after death." * * * Another way to impress upon the world the fact that you have lived in it is to scratch matches on walls and woodwork. A banged door leaves no record except in the ear processes of the persons sitting near the door, whereas match scratches are creative work. Lives of such men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Match-marks on the walls of time. * * * HE SHOULD. Sir: Mr. Treetop, 6 feet 2 inches, is a porter at the St. Nicholas Hotel, Decatur. Would he add anything to the landscape gardening surrounding the Academy of Immortals? W. N. C. * * * WHY THE EDITOR BEAT IT. [From the Marengo Republican-News.] Baptist Church, 7:30 p.m.--Popular evening service. Subject, "Fools and Idiots." A large number are expected. * * * Speaking again of "experience essential but not necessary," it was a gadder who observed to a fellow traveler in the smoker: "It is not only customary, but we have been doing it right along." * * * "Even now," remarks an editorial colleague, "the person who says 'It is I' is conscious of a precise effort which exaggerates the ego." No such effort is made by one of our copyreaders, who never changes 'who' or 'whom' in a piece of telegraph copy; because, says he, "I never know which is right." * * * HERE IT IS AGAIN. [From the classified ads.] Saleslady, attractive, energetic, ambitious hustler. Selling experience essential but not necessary. Fred'k H. Bartlett & Co. Her attractiveness, perchance, is also essential but not necessary. * * * We see by the lith'ry notes that Vance Thompson has published another book. Probably we told you about the farmer in Queechee at whose house Vance boarded one summer. "He told me he was going to do a lot of writing," said the h. h. s. of t. to us, "and got me to hitch up and drive over to Pittsfield and buy him a quart bottle of ink. And dinged if he didn't give me the bottle, unopened, when he went back to town in the fall." * * * AFTER READING HARVEY'S WEEKLY. I love Colonel Harvey, His stuff is so warm, And if you don't bite him He'll do you no harm. I'll sit by the fire And feed him raw meat, And Harvey will roar me Clear off'n my feet. * * * The Nobel prize for the best split infinitive has been awarded to the framer of the new administrative code of the state of Washington, which contains this: "To, in case of an emergency requiring expenditures in excess of the amount appropriated by the legislature for any institution of the state, state officer, or department of the state government, and upon the written request of the governing authorities of the institution, the state officer, or the head of the department, and in case the board by a majority vote of all its members determines that the public interest requires it, issue a permit in writing," etc. * * * "'When this art reaches so high a standard the Post deems it a duty to publicly commend it.'--Edward A. Grozier, Editor and Publisher the Boston Post." But ought a Bostonian to split his infinitives in public? It doesn't seem decent. * * * Every now and then a suburban train falls to pieces, and the trainmen wonder why. "What do you know about that?" they say. "It was as good as new this morning." It never occurs to them that the slow but sure weakening of the rolling stock is due to Rule 7 in the "Instructions to Trainmen," which requires conductors and brakemen to close coach doors as violently as possible. Although not required to, many passengers imitate the trainmen. With them it is a desire to make a noise in the world. If a man cannot attract attention in the arts and the professions, a sure way is to bang doors behind him. * * * DOXOLOGY. Praise Hearst, from whom all blessings flow! Praise Hearst, who runs things here below. Praise them who make him manifest-- Praise Andy L. and all the rest. Praise Hearst because the world is round, Because the seas with salt abound, Because the water's always wet, And constellations rise and set. Praise Hearst because the grass is green, And pleasant flow'rs in spring are seen; Praise him for morning, night and noon. Praise him for stars and sun and moon. Praise Hearst, our nation's aim and end, Humanity's unselfish friend; And who remains, for all our debt, A modest sweet white violet. * * * We like Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Kubla Khan, and many other unfinished things, but we have always let unfinished novels alone--unless you consider unfinished the yarn that "Q" finished for Stevenson. And so we are unable to appreciate the periodical eruptions of excitement over "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Were we to read it, we dessay we should be as nutty as the Dickens fans. * * * Mr. Basso, second violin in the Minneapolis Orchestra, would seem to have missed his vocation by a few seats. * * * MY DEAR, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN FRED! [From the Milwaukee Sentinel.] In this one, the orchestra became a troupe of gayly appareled ballerinas, whirling in splendid abandon, with Mr. Stock as première. * * * One lamps by the advertisements that the Fokines are to dance Beethoven's "Moonshine" sonata. The hootch-kootch, as it were. * * * OFT IN THE STILLY WISCONSIN NIGHT. Sir: California may have the most sunshine, but I'll bet Wisconsin has the most moonshine. E. C. M. * * * Did ever a presidential candidate say a few kind words for art and literature, intimate the part they play in the civilizing of a nation, and promise to further them by all means in his power, that the people should not sink deeper into the quagmire of materialism? Probably not. * * * "Hercules, when only a baby, strangled two servants," according to a bright history student. Nobody thought much about it in those days, as there were plenty to be had. * * * Absolute zero in entertainment has been achieved. A young woman recited or declaimed the imperishable Eighteenth Amendment in an Evanston church. * * * With Jedge Landis at the head of grand baseball and Mary Garden at the head of grand opera, the future of the greatest outdoor and indoor sports is temporarily assured. * * * Rome toddled before its fall. The Delectable River. I.--DOCTOR MAYHEW'S SHOP. Stibbs the Grocer zigzagged like a dragon-fly about his crowded store. Within the hour the supplies for our woodland cruise were packed in boxes and tagged, and ready for transportation. It was a brisk transaction; for Stibbs it was only one incident in a busy day. Outside the trolley clanged, and a Saturday crowd footed the main street of the Canadian city by the falls of the Saint Mary. It was hard to realize that solitude and a primal hush were only a few hours away. I contrasted the activity in the store of Stibbs with the drowse that hung over another shop in the North Country where, in earlier years, I used to buy my supplies. Doctor Mayhew kept the shop, which flourished until a pushing Scandinavian set up a more pretentious establishment; after which the Doctor's shop faded away like the grin of Puss of Cheshire. One could not buy groceries of the Doctor in a hurry; one had no wish to. I always allowed the forenoon, as there was much foreign gossip to exchange between items, and the world's doings to be discussed. The Doctor was interested in the remotest subjects. The pestilences of the Orient and the possibility of their spreading to our shores, and eventually to the North Country, gave him much concern; the court life at St. James's and the politics of Persia absorbed him;--local matters interested him not at all. "Ten pounds of flour?"... The Doctor would pause, scoop in hand; then, abruptly reminded of a bit of unfinished business at the warehouse, he would leave the flour trembling in the balance and shuffle off, while I perched on the counter and swung my heels, and discussed packs with Ted Wakeland, another pioneer, who, spitting vigorously, averred that packing grub through the brush was all right for an Indian, but no fit task for a white man. Through the open door I could see the gentle swells of the Big Water washing along the crescent of the beach and heaping the sand in curious little crescent ridges. The sun beat hotly on the board walk. There were faint sounds in the distance, from the Indian village up the shore and the fishing community across the bay. Life in this parish of the Northland drifted by like the fleece of summer's sky. "And three pounds of rice?" The Doctor was back at the scales, and the weighing proceeded in leisurely and dignified fashion. Haste, truly, were unseemly. But at last the supplies were stowed in the brown pack, there were handshakings all round, and a word of advice from old heads, and I marched away with a singing heart. Outfitting in the Doctor's shop was an event, a ceremonial, a thing to be housed in memory along with camps and trails. II.--THE RIVER. He who has known many rivers knows that every watercourse has an individuality, which is no more to be analyzed than the personality of one's dearest friend. Two rivers may flow almost side by side for a hundred miles, separated only by a range of hills, and resemble each other no more than two women. You may admire the one, and grant it beauty and charm; but you will love the other, and dream of it, and desire infinite acquaintance of it. These differences are too subtle for definition. Superficially, two rivers in the North Country are unlike only in this respect, that one has cut a deep valley through the hills and flows swiftly and shallowly to its sea, and the other has kept to the plateaus and drops leisurely by a series of cascades and short rapids, separated by long reaches of deep water. Otherwise their physical aspects coincide. The banks of archaic rock are covered with a thin soil which maintains so dense a tangle that the axe must clear a space for the smallest camp; their overhanging borders are of cedar and alder and puckerbush and osier; their waters are slightly colored by the juices of the swampland; following lines of minimum resistance, they twist gently or sharply every little way, and always to the voyager's delight, for the eye is unprepared for a beautiful vista, as the ear for a sudden and exquisite modulation in music. So winds the Delectable River-- "_through hollow lands and hilly lands_"-- idly where the vale spreads out, quickly where the hills close in; black and mysterious in the deep places, frank and golden in the shoal. In one romantic open, where the stream flows thinly over a long stretch of sand, the bed is of an almost luminous amber, as if its particles had imprisoned a little of the sunlight that had fallen on them through the unnumbered years. The River was somewhat low when I dipped paddle in it, and the ooze at the marge was a continuous chronicle of woodland life. Moose and deer, bear and beaver, mink and fisher, all the creatures of the wild had contributed to the narrative. Even the water had its tale: a line of bubbles would show that a large animal, likely a moose, had crossed a few minutes before our canoes rounded the bend. There were glimpses of less wary game: ducks and herons set sail at the last moment, and partridges, perching close at hand, cocked their foolish heads as we went by; two otters sported on a bit of beach; trout leaped every rod of the way. And never a sign of man or mark of man's destructiveness; nor axe nor fire had harmed a single tree. A journey of unmarred delight through a valley of unending green. III.--SMUDGE. "This," you say, as you step from the canoe and help to fling the cargo ashore, "this looks like good camping ground." The place is more open than is usual, comparatively level, and a dozen feet above the river, which, brawling over a ledge, spreads into an attractive pool. The place also faces the west, where there is promise of a fine sunset; a number of large birches are in sight, and an abundance of balsam. "And," you remark, stooping to untie the tent-bag, "there are not many flies." Instantly a mosquito sings in your ear, and as you still his song you recall a recent statement by the scientist Klein, that an insect's wings flap four hundred times in a second. The mind does not readily grasp so rapid a motion, but you accept the figures on trust, as you accept the distances of interstellar spaces. Very soon you discover that you were in error about the fewness of the flies. They are all there--mosquitoes, black-flies, deer-flies, and punkies, besides other species strictly vegetarian. So you drop the tent-bag and build a smudge. Experience has taught you to make a small but hot fire, and when this is well under way you kick open a rotted, moss-grown cedar and scoop up handfuls of damp mould. This, piled on and banked around the fire, provides a smudge that is continuous and effective. We built smudges morning, noon, and night. Whenever a halt was called, if only for five minutes, I reached mechanically for a strip of birchbark and a handful of twigs. At one camping place the ring of smudges suggested the magic fire circle in "Die Walküre." Brunhilde lay in her tent, in a reek of smoke, while Wotan, in no humor for song, heaped vegetable tinder upon the defending fires. More than once the darkening forest and the steel-gray sky of a Canadian twilight have set me humming the motives of "The Ring," and I shall always remember a pretty picture in an earlier cruise. "Jess" was a stable boy who drove our team to the point where roads ceased, and during a halt in the expedition this exuberant youth reclined upon a log, and with a pipe fashioned from a reed sought to imitate responsively the song of the white-throated sparrow. He looked for all the world like Siegfried in his forest. "Smudge." It is not a poetic word--mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of the enchanted wood. IV.--"BOGWAH." We have been paddling for more than an hour, through dark and slowly moving water. Two or three hundred yards has been the limit of the view ahead, as the stream swerves gracefully from the slightest rise of land, and flows now east, now north, now east, now south again. So long a stretch of navigable water is not common on the Delectable River, and we make the most of it, moving leisurely, and prisoning the everchanging picture with the imperfect camera of the eyes. Presently a too-familiar sound is heard above the dipping of the paddles, and the Indian at the stern announces, "Bogwah!"--which word in the tongue of the Chippewa signifies a shallow. And as we round the next bend we see the swifter water, the rocks in midstream, and the gently slanting line of treetops. "Bogwah" spells work--dragging canoes over sandy and pebbly river-bottom, or unloading and carrying around the foam of perilous rapids. For compensation there is the pleasure of splashing ankle-deep and deeper in the cool current, and casting for trout in the "laughing shallow," which I much prefer to the "dreaming pool." They who choose it may fish from boat or ledge: for me, to wade and cast is the poetry of angling. Assured that the "bogwah" before us extends for half a mile or more, we decide for luncheon, and the canoes are beached on an island, submerged in springtime, but at low water a heap of yellow sands. And I wish I might reconstruct for you the picture which memory too faintly outlines. Mere words will not do it, and yet one is impelled to try. "All literature," says Mr. Arnold Bennett, in one of his stimulating essays, "is the expression of feeling, of passion, of emotion, caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life. What drives a historian to write history? Nothing but the overwhelming impression forced upon him by the survey of past times. He is forced into an attempt to reconstitute the picture for others." And so you are to imagine a marshy, brushy open, circular in shape, from which the hills and forest recede for a considerable distance, and into which a lazy brook comes to merge with the Delectable River; a place to which the moose travel in great numbers, as hoofmarks and cropped vegetation bear witness; a wild place, that must be wonderful in mist and moonlight. Now it is drenched with sunrays from a vaporless sky, and the white-throat is singing all around us--not the usual three sets of three notes, but seven triplets. Elsewhere on the River, days apart, I heard that prolonged melody, and although I have looked in the bird books for record of so sustained a song, I have not found it. V.--FINE FEATHERS. There is a certain school of anglers that go about the business of fishing with much gravity. You should hear the Great Neal discourse of their profundities. Lacking that privilege, you may conceive a pair of these anglers met beside a river, seeking to discover which of the many insects flying about is preferred by the trout on that particular morning. There is disagreement, or there is lack of evidence. It is decided to catch a trout, eviscerate him, and obtain internal and indisputable evidence. For the cast any fly is used, and when the trout is opened it is learned that he has been feeding on a small black insect; whereupon our anglers tie a number of flies to resemble that insect, and proceed solemnly with their day's work. Though the trout scorn their fine feathers, they will not fish with any fly. With the subtleties of this school I have no sympathy. They might be of profit on waters that are much fished, but they are wasted on the wilderness, where the trout will rise to almost any lure. When I make an expedition I take along two or three dozen flies, for the mere pleasure of looking at them, and rearranging them in the fly-book; but I wet less than half a dozen. On the Delectable River we cast only when trout are needed for the frypan. You are to picture canoes drawn up on a sandbar, and a ribbon of black smoke curling from a strip of birch bark that marks the beginning of a fire. It is time to get the fish. So I set up my rod and walk upstream perhaps a hundred yards, casting on the current where it cuts under the farther bank. Almost every cast evokes a trout; this one takes the tail fly, a Silver Doctor, the next one strikes the Bucktail dropper; any other flies would serve. The largest fish is taken on my return, from under the stern of one of the canoes. Where trout are so plentiful and so unwary, there is no call for the preparatory work of the evisceration school of anglers. My reason for using a dropper fly is not to offer the trout two counterfeit insects differing in shape or color; as commonly attached to the leader, the dropper swims with the tail fly. "Sir," said the Great Neal, in the manner of Samuel Johnson, "when the dropper is properly attached, as I attach it, two aspects of the lure are presented to the fish, the one fly moving through the water, the other dancing an inch or so above. This, Sir, is how I tie it." And sitting at the Oracle's feet, ye learn "all ye need to know." VI.--THALASSA! Trails there are that one remembers from their beginnings to their ends, because of the variety and charm of the pictures offered along the way. Monotony marks the trails that fade from memory; they represent hours of marching through timber of a second growth, or skirting hills where dead sticks stand forlorn and only the fireweed blooms. Of rememberable roads the last stage of our journey to the Great Water is the one I have now in mind. It is the longest carry, two miles or less, sharply down hill, though less precipitate than the river, which, after many days of idling, now flings itself impatiently toward the shore. We linger where it makes its first great leap. Many have come thus far from the south, and, looking on the shallow pool beyond, have decided that there is no profit in going farther; or they have explored a bit and, encountering _bogwah_, have reached the same conclusion. Who would conjecture that past the shallows lie leagues of deep and winding waters, reserved by nature as a reward for the adventurer who counts a glimpse of the unknown worth all the labor of the day? We who have come from the headwaters know that nature has as wisely screened the river's source. Where the lake ends is a forbidding tangle of water shrubs and timber; the outlet is an archipelago of sharp rocks, and the stream, if found, is seen to be small and turbulent. The last carry keeps the Delectable River in view; foam, seen through the firs, marks its plunging flight. And then we draw away from it for a space, and cross an open thickly strewn with great stones, a sunlit place, where berries and a few flowers are privileged to exist. A little time is spent here in picking up the trail, which has spilled itself among the stones; then, the narrow footway regained, we drop as quickly as the river, and presently our feet touch sand. We break through a fringe of evergreens and cry out as the Greeks cried out when they saw the sea. The lake at last!-- _The river, done with wandering, The silver, silent shore._ A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO "_Lord, what fools these mortals be._" ARMS AND THE COLYUM. I sing of arms and heroes, not because I'm thrilled by what these heroes do or die for: The Colyum's readers think they make its laws, And I make out to give them what they cry for. And since they cry for stuff about the war, Since war at this safe distance not to _them_'s hell, I have to write of things that I abhor, And far, strange battlegrounds like Ypres and Przemysl. War is an almost perfect rime for bore; And, 'spite my readers (who have cursed and blessed me), Some day I'll throw the war junk on the floor, And write of things that really interest me: Of books in running brooks, and wilding wings, Of music, stardust, children, casements giving On seas unvext by wars, and other things That help to make our brief life worth the living. I sing of arms and heroes, just because All else is shadowed by that topic fearful; But I've a mind to chuck it [Loud applause], And tune my dollar harp to themes more cheerful. * * * Listen, Laura, Mary, Jessica, Dorothy, and other sweet singers! Gadder Roy, who is toiling over the pitcher-and-bowl circuit, wishes that some poet would do a lyric on that salvation of the traveler, Ham and Eggs. He doubts that it can be done by anybody who has not, time out of mind, scanned a greasy menu in a greasier hashery, and finally made it h. and e. * * * WE FEARED WE HAD STARTED SOMETHING. Sir: Should G. E. Thorpe's typewritten communications carrying the suggestion GET/FAT precede or follow our communications which carry EAT/ME? E. A. T. THEY'RE OFF! Sir: What position in your letter file, respecting the suggestions of GET/FAT, will my typewritten letters land, as they end thusly: "HEL/NO"? H. E. L. SWEETLY INEFFECTIVE. Sir: Perhaps the reason my collection letters have so little effect lately is that these cheerless communications always conclude with JAM/JAR. J. A. M. BUT APROPOS. Sir: All this GET/FAT excitement reminds me of the case, so old it's probably new again, of one Simmons, who wrote letters for one Green, and signed them "Green, per Simmons." W. S. SORRY. THERE WERE SEVERAL IN LINE AHEAD OF YOU. Sir: I have been waiting, very patiently, for some one to inform you that the sincerity of A. L. Lewis, manager of the country elevator department of the Quaker Oats Company, is sometimes made questionable by the initials, ALL/GAS, appearing on his business correspondence. O. K. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Received by a clothing company.] Dear Sirs: I received the suits you sent me but in blue not gray as I said. Don't try to send me your refuss, I am sending them back. I ain't color blind or a jack ass, you shouldn't treat me as that. I understand your wife is making coats for ladies now. Have her make one (dark) for my wife who is a stout 42 with a fer neck. Now send me what I asked for, the old woman is perticular. The trousers you sent wouldn't slip over my head. Ever faithful, etc. * * * For Academy Ghost, or Familiar Spirit, P. D. Q. nominates Miss Bessie Spectre of Boston. * * * "The lake is partially frozen over and well filled with skaters."--Janesville Gazette. Three children sliding on the ice, Upon a summer's day, As it fell out, they all fell in, The rest they ran away. Ma Goose. * * * There is plenty of snap to the department of mathematics in the Shortridge high school in Indianapolis. The head of the department is Walter G. Gingery. * * * Wedded, in Chicago, Otho Neer and Lucille Dimond. Fashion your own setting. * * * Oh, dear! Rollin Pease, the singer, is around again, reminding sundry readers of the difficulty of keeping them on a knife. * * * "THOSE FLAPJACKS OF BROWN'S." (_Postscriptum._) I'll write no more verses--plague take 'em!-- Court neither your smiles nor your frowns, If you'll only please tell how to make 'em, Those flapjacks of Brown's. D. W. A. Three cupfuls of flour will do nicely, And toss in a teaspoon of salt; Next add baking powder, precisely Two teaspoons, the stuff to exalt; Of sugar two tablespoons, heaping-- (All spoons should be heaping, says Neal); Then mix it with strokes that are sweeping, And stir like the Deil. Three eggs. (Tho' the missus may sputter, You'll pay to her protest no heed.) A size-of-an-egg piece of butter, And milk as you happen to need. Now mix the whole mess with a beater; Don't get it too thick or too thin. (And I pause to remark that this meter Is awkward as sin.) Of course there are touches that only A genius like Brown can impart; And genius is everywhere lonely, And no one but Brown has the art. I picture him stirring--a gentle Exponent of modern Romance, With his shirttails, in style Oriental, Outside of his pants. * * * THE DICTATERS. Sir: I have lost a year's growth since I went into business in answering questions about the letters that appear after my communications--HAM/AND. H. A. M. Letters from the vice-president of the Badger Talking Machine Company of Milwaukee are signed JAS/AK. What do you make of that, Watsonius? The following was typed at the end of a letter received t'other day: "HEE/HA." Recurring to the dictaters, letters from the O'Meara Paper company of New York are tagged JEW/EM. Irene, she works for David Meyer, Likes her job, not peeved a bit. But when she ends a letter she Marks it with this sign, DAM/IT. Ferro. * * * Hint to students in the School of journalism: Always begin the description of a tumultuous scene by saying that it is indescribable, and then proceed to describe it until the telegraph editor chokes you off. * * * To our young friend who expects to operate a column: Lay off the item about Miss Hicks entertaining Carrie Dedbeete and Ima Proone; it is phony. But the wheeze about the "eternal revenue collector" is still good, and timely. * * * "I am a cub reporter," writes W. H. D., "and am going to conduct a column in a few weeks, I think." Zazzo? Well, you can't do better than to start with the announcement that Puls & Puls are dentists in Sheboygan. And you might add that if the second Puls is a son the firm should be Puls & Fils. * * * Our cub reporter friend, W. H. D., who expects to run a column presently, should not overlook the sure-fire wheeze, "Shoes shined on the inside." * * * Still undiscouraged by the failure of his "shoes shined on the inside" wheeze to get by, the new contrib hopefully sends us the laundry slogan: "Don't kill your wife. Let us do the dirty work." * * * When all the world is safe for democracy, only the aristocracy of taste will remain, and this will cover the world. There is hardly a town so small that it does not contain at least one member. All races belong to it, and its passwords are accepted in every capital. Its mysteries are Rosicrucian to persons without taste. And no other aristocracy was ever, or ever will be, so closely and sympathetically knit together. * * * Whether Europe and Latin America like it or not, the Monroe Doctrine must and shall be preserved. You may remember the case of the man who was accused of being a traitor. It was charged that he had spoken as disrespectfully of the Monroe Doctrine as Jeffrey once spoke of the Equator. This the man denied vigorously. He avowed that he loved the Monroe Doctrine, that he was willing to fight for it, and, if necessary, to die for it. All he had said was that he didn't know what it was about. * * * "There will be no speeches. The entire evening will be given over to entertainment."--Duluth News-Tribune. At least prohibition is a check on oratory. * * * We have just been talking to an optimist, whose nerves have been getting shaky. We fancy that a straw vote of the rocking-chair fleet on a sanitarium porch would show a preponderance of optimists. What brought them there? Worry, which is brother to optimism. We attribute our good health and reasonable amount of hair to the fact that we never flirted with optimism, except for a period of about five years, during which time we lost more hair than in all the years since. * * * May we again point out that pessimism is the only cheerful philosophy? The pessimist is not concerned over the so-called yellow peril--at least the pessimist who subscribes to the theory of the degradation of energy. Europe is losing its pep, but so is Asia. There may be a difference of degree, but not enough to keep one from sleeping soundly o' nights. The twentieth or twenty-first century can not produce so energetic a gang as that which came out of Asia in the fifth century. * * * "If I had no duties," said Dr. Johnson, "and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a postchaise with a pretty woman." And we wonder whether the old boy, were he living now, would choose, instead, a Ford. * * * In time of freeze prepare for thaw. And no better advice can be given than Doc Robertson's: "Keep your feet dry and your gutters open." * * * There was an Irish meeting in Janesville the other night, and the press reported that "Garlic songs were sung." And we recall another report of a lecture on Yeats and the Garlic Revival. Just a moment, while we take a look at the linotype keyboard.... * * * THINGS WORTH KNOWING. Sir: A method of helping oneself to soda crackers, successfully employed by a traveling man, may be of interest to your boarding house readers. Slice off a small piece of butter, leaving it on the knife, then reach across the table and slap the cracker. V. * * * By the way, Bismarck had a solution of the Irish problem which may have been forgotten. He proposed that the Irish and the Dutch exchange countries. The Dutch, he said, would make a garden of Ireland. "And the Irish?" he was asked. "Oh," he replied, "the Irish would neglect the dikes." * * * A city is known by the newspapers it keeps. They reflect the tastes of the community, and if they are lacking in this or that it is because the community is lacking. And so it is voxpoppycock to complain that a newspaper is not what a small minority thinks it ought to be. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our journals, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. Dissatisfaction with American newspapers began with the first one printed, and has been increasing steadily since. In another hundred years this dissatisfaction may develop into positive annoyance. * * * We tried to have a sign in Los Onglaze translated into French for the benefit of Lizy, the linotype operator who sets this column in Paris, and who says she has yet to get a laugh out of it, but two Frenchmen who tried their hand at it gave it up. Perhaps the compositor at the adjacent machine can randmacnally it for Lizy. Here is the enseigne: "Flannels washed without shrinking in the rear." * * * To the fair Murine: "Drink to me only with thine eyes." * * * "Hosiery for Easter," declares an enraptured ad writer in the Houston Post, "reaches new heights of loveliness." * * * If the persons who parade around with placards announcing that this or that shop is "unfair" were to change the legend to read, "God is unfair," they might get a sympathetic rise out of us. We might question the assertion that in creating men unequal the Creator was actuated by malice rather than a sense of humor, but we should not insist on the point. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Received by a construction company.] Dear Sir I an writhing you and wanted to know that can I get a book from your company which will teach me of oprating steam and steam ingean. I was fireing at a plant not long ago and found one of your catalogs and it give me meny good idol about steam. I have been opiratin stean for the last 12 years for I know that there are lots more to learn about steam and I want to learn it so I will close for this time expecting to here from you soon. * * * "Since Frank Harris has been mentioned," communicates C. E. L., "it would be interesting to a lot of folks to know just what standing he has in literature." Oh, not much. Aside from being one of the best editors the Saturday Review ever had, one of the best writers of short stories in English or any other language, and one of the most acute critics in the profession, his standing is negligible. * * * Our young friend who is about to become a colyumist should certainly include in his first string the restaurant wheeze: "Don't laugh at our coffee. You may be old and weak yourself some day." * * * "One sinister eye--the right one--gleamed at him over the pistol."--Baltimore Sun. No wonder foreigners have a hard time with the American language. * * * BALLADE OF THE OUBLIETTE. _And deeper still the deep-down oubliette, Down thirty feet below the smiling day._ --_Tennyson._ _Sudden in the sun An oubliette winks. Where is he? Gone._ --_Mrs. Browning._ Gaoler of the donjon deep-- Black from pit to parapet-- In whose depths forever sleep Famous bores whose sun has set, Daily ope the portal; let In the bores who daily bore. Thrust--sans sorrow or regret-- Thrust them through the Little Door. Warder of Oblivion's keep-- Dismal dank, and black as jet-- Through the fatal wicket sweep All the pests we all have met. Prithee, overlook no bet; Grab them--singly, by the score-- And, lest they be with us yet, Thrust them through the Little Door. Lead them to the awful leap With a merry chansonette; Push them blithely off the steep; We'll forgive them and forget. Toss them, like a cigarette, To the far Plutonian floor. Drop them where they'll cease to fret-- Thrust them through the Little Door. Keeper of the Oubliette, Wouldst thou have us more and more In thine everlasting debt-- Thrust them through the Little Door. * * * To insure the safety of the traveling public, the Maroon Taxicab Company is putting out a line of armored cabs. These will also be equipped with automatic brakes, so that when a driver for a rival taxicab company shoots a Maroon, the cab will come to a stop. * * * A neat and serviceable Christmas gift is a sawed-off shotgun. Carried in your limousine, it may aid in saving your jewels when returning from the opera. * * * "The entertainment committee of the Union League Club," so it says, "is with considerable effort spending some of your money to please you." In the clubs to which we belong there is no observable effort. * * * Certain toadstools are colored a pizenous pink underneath; a shade which is also found on the cheeks of damosels and dames whom you see on the avenue. Poor kalsomining, we call it. * * * When we begin to read a book we begin with the title page; but many people, probably most, begin at "Chapter I." We have recommended books to friends, and they have read them; and then they have said, "Tell me something about the author." The preface would have told them, but they do not read prefaces. Do you? * * * Although ongweed to the extinction point by the subject of names, we have no right to assume that the subject is not of lively interest to other people. So let it be recorded that George Demon was arrested in Council Bluffs for beating his wife. Also, Miss Elsie Hugger is director of dancing in the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. Furthermore, S. W. Henn of the Iowa State College was selected as a judge for the National Poultry Show. Moreover, G. O. Wildhack is in the automobile business in Indianapolis, and Mrs. Cataract takes in washing in Peoria. Sleepy weather, isn't it? * * * SUCH A ONE MIGHT HAVE DRAWN PRIAM'S CURTAIN IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, AND TOLD HIM HALF HIS TROY WAS BURNED. [From the Eagle Grove, Ia., Eagle.] The Rev. Winter was pastor of the M. E. Church many years ago, at the time it was destroyed by a cyclone. Engineer Sam Wood broke the news to Mr. Winter gently by shouting: "Your church has all blown to hell, Elder!" * * * THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER. [From the Lewisville, Ark., Recorder.] The evening was most propitious. The air was balmy. The fragrance of flowers was patent in the breeze. The limpid moonlight, in a glow of beauty, kissed the hills and valleys. While from the vines and bushes the merry twitter of playful birds, symphonies soft and low, entranced with other delight, the romantic party goers. Now a still other delight was in store--some fine music and good singing, which every recipient enjoyed to the highest note. Thanks and compliments for such a model evening were ornate and lavish and all left truly glad that they had been. * * * FULL OF HIS SUBJECT. [From the Evansville, Ind., Courier.] Dr. Hamilton A. Hymes, pastor of Grace Memorial Presbyterian church, has recovered from a recent illness, caused from a carbuncle on his neck. His subject for Sunday night will be "Is There a Hell?" * * * THAT TRIOLET DRIVEL. Will you can it or no?-- That Triolet drivel. It irritates so. Will you can it or no? For the habit may grow, And the thought makes me snivel. Will you can it or no?-- That Triolet drivel. D. A. D. Burnitt. Yes, we'll can it or no, As the notion may seize us. If a thing is de trop, Yes; we'll can it--or no. For we always let go When a thing doesn't please us. Yes, we'll can it, or--no, As the notion may seize us. * * * Sir Oliver Lodge has seen so many tables move and heard so many tambourines, that he now keeps an open mind on miracles. We hope he believes that the three angels appeared to Joan of Arc, as that is our favorite miracle. Had they appeared only once we might have doubted the apparition; but, as we remember the story, they appeared three times. * * * Sir Oliver may be interested in a case reported to us by L. J. S. His company had issued a tourist policy to a lady who lost her trunk on the way to Tulsa, Okla., and who put in a claim for $800. The adjuster at Dallas wrote: "Assured is the famous mind reader, and one of her best stunts is answering questions in regard to the location of stolen property, but she was unable to be of any assistance to me." * * * Some of the members of the Cosmopolitan club are about as cosmopolitan as the inhabitants of Cosmopolis, Mich. * * * At the request of a benedick we are rushing to the Cannery by parcel-post Jar 617: "Don't they make a nice-looking couple!" * * * ENGLISH AS SHE IS MURDERED. Sir: After Pedagogicus' class gets through with Senator Borah's masterpiece, it might look over this legend which the Herald and Examiner has been carrying: "Buy bonds like the victors fought." E. E. E. * * * The Illinois War Savings Bulletin speaks of "personal self-interest." This means you! * * * "Graduation from the worst to the best stuff," is Mr. W. L. George's method of acquiring literary taste. Something can be said for the method, and Mr. George says it well, and we are sorry, in a manner of speaking, not to believe a word of it; unless, as is possible, we both believe the same thing fundamentally. Taste, in literature and music, and in other things, is, we are quite sure, natural. It can be trained, but this training is a matter of new discoveries. A taste that has to be led by steps from Owen Meredith to George Meredith, which could not recognize the worth of the latter before passing through the former, is no true taste. Graduation from the simple to the complex is compatible with a natural taste, but this simple may be first class, as much music and literature is. New forms of beauty may puzzle the possessor of natural taste, but not for long. He does not require preparation in inferior stuff. * * * Speaking of George Meredith, we are told again (they dig the thing up every two or three years) that, when a reader for Chapman & Hall, he turned down "East Lynne," "Erewhon," and other books that afterward became celebrated. What of it? Meredith may not have known anything about literature, but he knew what he liked. Moreover, he was a marked and original writer, and as that tolerant soul, Jules Lemaitre, has noted, the most marked and original of writers are those who do not understand everything, nor feel everything, nor love everything, but those whose knowledge, intelligence, and tastes have definite limitations. * * * BUT WOULD IT NOT REQUIRE A GEOLOGIC PERIOD? Sir: You are kind enough to refer to my lecture on "Literary Taste and How to Acquire It." I venture to suggest that your summary--viz.: "It is to read only first-class stuff," not only fails to meet the problem, but represents exactly the view that I am out to demolish. If, as I presume, you mean that the ambitious person who now reads Harold Bell Wright should sit down to the works of Shakespeare, I can tell you at once that the process will be a failure. My method is one of graduation from the worst to the best stuff. W. L. George. * * * We do not wish to crab W. L. George's act, "Literary Taste and How to Acquire It," but we know the answer. It is to read only first-class stuff. Circumstances may oblige a man to write second-class books, but there is no reason why he should read such. * * * THE STORM. (_By a girl of ten years._) It lightnings, it thunders And I go under, And where do I go, I wonder. I go, I go-- I know. Under the covers, That's where I go. The little poet of the foregoing knew where she was going, which is more than can be said for many modern bards. * * * THE EIGHTH VEIL. (_By J-mes Hun-k-r._) There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and spat acridly upon the pave. "Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!" he raged. Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle's glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger's arm. "Listen!" he commanded. "Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes. Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn't it? But it isn't. It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight kills it. It needs l'obscurité and a high temperature. As Baudelaire said--or was it Maurice Barrès?--dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris. Remy de Gourmont..." The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the bassoon doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. "Woman is a sink of iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria--Grand Dieu! But Frédéric Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura--there you have it. En amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C'est le jouir et non le posséder qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires. As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier, Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupassant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev, Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers Goncourt..." Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. "Swine!" Ulick flung after him. "Swine, before whom I have cast a hatful of pearls!" He spat even more acridly upon the pave and turned away. "After all," he growled, "Stendhal was right. Or was it Huysmans? No, it was neither. It was Cambronne." * * * Though there has been little enough to encourage it, the world is growing kinder; at least friendliness is increasing. Every other day we read of some woman living pleasantly in a well appointed apartment, supplied with fine raiment and an automobile, the fruit of Platonism. "No," she testifies, "there was nothing between us. He was merely a friend." * * * What heaven hath cleansed let no man put asunder. Emma Durdy and Raymond Bathe, of Nokomis, have been j. in the h. b. of w. * * * THE TRACERS ARE AT WORK. Sir: Please consult the genealogical files of the Academy and advise me if Mr. Harm Poppen of Gurley, Nebraska, is a lineal descendant of the w. k. Helsa Poppen, famous in profane history. E. E. M. * * * Our opinion, already recorded, is that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed "worldliness" and "moodiness." Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughbass, etc., of verse we know next to nothing--we play on _our_ tin whistle entirely by ear--but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. One of these is the rhyming of words like utterly, monody, lethargy, etc.; these endings seem weak when they are bunched. Our assistants will apprehend that we are merely offering a suggestion or two, which we hope they will follow up by exploring the authorities. * * * Music like Brahms' Second Symphony is peculiarly satisfying to the listener. The first few measures disclose that the composer is in complete control of his ideas and his expression of them. He has something to say, and he says it without uncertainty or redundancy. Only a man who _has_ something to say may dare to say it only once. * * * Those happy beings who "don't know a thing about art, but know what they like," are restricted to the obvious because of ignorance of form; their enjoyment ends where that of the cultivated person begins. Take music. The person who knows what he likes takes his pleasure in the tune, but gets little or nothing from the tune's development; hence his favorite music is music which is all tune. We recall a naïve query by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment. "What I can't understand," said he, "is why the tune quits just when it's running along nicely." This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands of other "music lovers." * * * A Boston woman complains that school seats have worn out three pairs of pants (her son's) in three months. "Is a wheeze about the seat of learning too obvious?" queries Genevieve. Oh, quite too, my dear! * * * Mr. Frederick Harrison at 89 observes: "May my end be early, speedy, and peaceful! I regret nothing done or said in my long and busy life. I withdraw nothing, and, as I said before, am not conscious of any change in mind. In youth I was called a revolutionary; in old age I am called a reactionary; both names alike untrue.... I ask nothing. I seek nothing. I fear nothing. I have done and said all that I ever could have done and said. There is nothing more. I am ready, and await the call." A very good prose version of Henley's well known poem. As for regretting nothing, a man at forty would be glad to unsay and undo many things. At seventy, and decidedly at eighty-nine, these things have so diminished in importance that it is not worth while withdrawing them. * * * A DAY WITH LORD DID-MORE. "_Mr. Hearst is the home brew; no other hope._" --_The Trib._ At his usual hour Lord Did-More rose-- Renewed completely by repose-- His pleasant duty to rehearse Of oiling up the universe. Casting a glance aloft, he saw That, yielding to a natural law, The sun obediently moved Precisely as he had approved. If mundane things would only run As regularly as the Sun! But Earth's affairs, less nicely planned, Require Lord Did-More's guiding hand. This day, outside Lord Did-More's door, There waited patiently a score Of diplomats from far and near Who sought his sympathetic ear. Each brought to him, that he might scan, The latest governmental plan, And begged of him a word or two Approving what it hoped to do. Lord Did-More nodded, smiled or frowned, Some word of praise or censure found, Withheld or added his "O. K." And sent the ministers away. These harmonized and sent away, Lord Did-More finished up his day By focusing his cosmic brain On our political campaign. And night and morning, thro' the land, The public prints at his command Proclaimed, in type that fairly burst, The doughty deeds of Did-More Hearst. * * * THE SECOND POST. [From a genius in Geneseo, Ill.] Dear sir: I am the champion Cornhusker I have given exhibitions in different places and theater managers and moveing picture men have asked me why I dont have my show put into moves (Film). I beleave it would make a very interesting Picture. We could have it taken right in the Cornfield and also on the stage. It would be very interesting for farmer boys and would be a good drawing card in small towns. I beleave we could make 1000 feet of it by showing me driveing into the field with my extra made wagon. then show them my style and speed of husking and perheps let a common husker husk a while. I could also give my exibition on the stage in a theater includeing the playing of six or eight different Instruments. For instence when I plow with a traction engine or tresh I also lead bands and Orchestra's. * * * There is a stage in almost everybody's musical education when Chopin's Funeral March seems the most significant composition in the world. * * * The two stenogs in the L coach were discussing the opera. "I see," said one, "that they're going to sing 'Flagstaff.'" "That's Verdi's latest opera," said the other. "Yes," contributed the gentleman in the adjacent seat, leaning forward; "and the scene is laid in Arizona." * * * Mr. Shanks voxpops that traffic should be relieved, not prevented, as "the automobile is absolutely important in modern business life." Now, the fact is that the automobile has become a nuisance; one can get about much faster and cheaper in the city on Mr. Shanks' w. k. mare. Life to-day is scaled to the automobile, whereas, as our gossip Andy Rebori contends, it ought to be scaled to the baby carriage. Many lines of industry are short of labor because this labor has been withdrawn for the care of automobiles. * * * "Do you remember," asks a fair correspondent (who protests that she is only academically fair), "when we used to read 'A Shropshire Lad,' and A. E., and Arthur Symons, and Yeats? And you used to print so many of the beautiful things they wrote?" Ah, yes, we do remember; but that, my dear, was a long, long time ago, in the period which has just closed, as Bennett puts it. How worth while those things used to seem, and what pleasant days those were. Men say that they will come again. But men said that Arthur would come again. * * * Our method: We select only things that interest us, assuming that other people will be interested; if they are not--why, chacun à son goût, as the cannibal king remarked, adding a little salt. We printed "The Spires of Oxford" a long time ago because it interested us exceedingly. * * * A valued colleague quotes the emotional line-- "This is my own, my native land!"-- as palliation, if not justification, for the "simple, homely, and comprehensive adjuration, 'Own Your Own Home.'" We acknowledge the homeliness and comprehensiveness, but we deny the value of poetic testimony. Said Dr. Johnson: "Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind from China to Peru," which, De Quincey or Tennyson declared, should have run: "Let observation with extended observation observe mankind extensively." Poets and tautology go walking like the Walrus and the Carpenter. * * * BOLSHEVISM OF LONG AGO. "A radical heaven is a place where every man does what he pleases, and there is a general division of property every Saturday night."--George S. Hillard (1853). * * * _LULLABY._ _In Woodman, Wis., the Hotel Lull Is where a man may rest his skull. All care and fret is void and null When one puts up at Hotel Lull. Ah, might I wing it as a gull Unto the mansion kept by Lull-- By W. K. Lull, the w. k. Lull, Who greets the guests at Hotel Lull._ * * * "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." But if, miraculously, it happens in Chicago, it can, despite the poet's word, "pass into nothingness." The old Field Museum, seen beneath a summer moon, when the mist is on the lake, is as beautiful as anything on the earth's crust. Not to preserve the exterior were a sin against Beauty, which is the unforgivable sin. * * * "LEMME UP, DARLING! LEMME UP!" [From the Detroit Free Press.] My advertisement of Feb. 24 was error. I will be responsible for my wife's debts. Leo Tyo. * * * "I'll make the Line some day or jump into Great Salt Lake," warns C. W. O. Pick out a soft spot, friend. We jumped into it one day and sprained an ankle. Alice in Cartoonland. I. "Hello!" said the Hatter. "I haven't seen you for a long time." "No," said Alice; "I've been all over--in Wonderland, in Bookland, in Stageland, and forty other lands. People must be tired of my adventures. Where am I now? I never know." "In Cartoonland," said the Hatter. "And what are _you_ doing here?" inquired Alice. "I'm searching for an original cartoon idea," replied the Hatter. "Would you like to come along?" "Ever so much," said Alice. "The first thing we have to do is to get across that chasm," said the Hatter, pointing. Alice saw a huge legend on the far wall of the chasm, and spelled it out--"O-b-l-i-v-i-o-n." "Yes, Oblivion," said the Hatter. "That's where they dump defeated candidates and other undesirables. Come on, we can cross a little below here." He indicated a thin plank that lay across the Chasm of Oblivion. "Will it hold us?" said Alice. "It has held the G. O. P. Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, and all sorts of people and things. Let's hurry over, as here comes the Elephant now, with Mr. Taft riding it, and the plank _might_ give way." II. "By the way," said the Hatter, "here is my hat store." There were only two kinds in the window--square paper caps and high silk hats. Alice had never seen paper caps before. "They're worn by the laboring man," said the Hatter; "but you never see them outside of Cartoonland. The plug hats are for Capitalists. I also keep whiskers; siders for Capital and ordinary for Labor." "O, there's a railroad train!" said Alice, suddenly. "No use taking that train," said the Hatter; "it doesn't go. Did you ever see an engine like that outside Cartoonland? And even if it did work we shouldn't get very far, as the rock Obstruction is always on the track." "I'd just as soon walk," said Alice. III. "Mercy! there's a giant!" exclaimed Alice. "Don't be alarmed," said the Hatter; "he's perfectly good natured." "What an awful-looking creature!" said Alice. "He's awfully out of drawing," said the Hatter, critically; "but, then, almost everything in Cartoonland is. It's the idea that counts." "You said you were searching for an original idea," Alice reminded him. "But I don't expect to find one," the Hatter replied. "You see, it wouldn't be any use; nobody would understand it. People like the old familiar things, you know." "Still, we might happen on one," said Alice. "Let's walk along." IV. Suddenly a door opened, and a great quantity of rubbish was swept briskly into the street. "That's the New Broom," said the Hatter. "There's been another election. Evidently the Democrats won, as there goes the Donkey, waving his ears and hee-hawing." "Oh, is that a fruit store?" asked Alice. "No; the Republican headquarters," replied the Hatter. "That huge cornucopia you see is a symbol of Prosperity. Prosperity in Cartoonland is always represented by a horn of plenty with a pineapple in the muzzle. You've heard the expression, 'The pineapple of prosperity.'" "No," said Alice, "but I've heard about the 'pineapple of politeness.'" "That," said the Hatter, "is something else again." V. Presently they came to a collection of factories, the tall chimneys of which poured out smoke in great volume. "Those are the Smoking Stacks of Industry," said the Hatter. "What do they manufacture here?" asked Alice. "Cartoonatums," said the Hatter. "A cartoonatum," he explained, "is a combination of wheels, rods, cogs, hoppers, cranks, etc., which sometimes looks like a sausage grinder and sometimes like a try-your-weight machine. It couldn't possibly go, any more than the locomotives in Cartoonland." "Why don't the Cartoonlanders have machines that _can_ go?" inquired Alice. "That," replied the Hatter, "would require a little study and observation." VI. As Alice and the Hatter walked along they passed many curious things, such as Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, the skin of a Tiger nailed to a barn door, St. George and the Dragon, Father Knickerbocker, barrels of political mud, a huge serpent labeled "Anarchy," a drug store window full of bottles of Political Dope and boxes of Political Pills, an orchard of Political Plum Trees, and other objects which the Hatter said were as old as the hills. "I'm afraid there's nothing to hold us here," he declared. Alice's attention was suddenly attracted by a little girl in a thin and ragged dress who, with an empty basket on her arm, was gazing wistfully at the goodies in a bakeshop window. "She represents Poverty," said the Hatter. "When she isn't staring at a bakeshop she's looking at a proclamation by the ice trust, or something like that." Alice spoke to the child and learned that she was one of a large family. Her father, she said, was a New York cartoonist who one day had been visited by an Original Idea. "Where is he?" cried the Hatter excitedly. "He dropped dead!" replied the child, weeping bitterly. "Good night!" said the Hatter, and walked away. A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli._ --_Juvenal._ Question: Who is this Juvenal wheezer? Readers inquire every day. Give us a line on the geezer-- What is he trying to say? Do you expect us to get stuff That is clear over our bean? What is that "_Quicquid_, et cet." stuff? What does the gibberish mean? Reply: If you're too lazy to look for Juvenal's name in the Dic, Why should _I_ go to the book for Such a cantankerous kick? Still, to avoid all dissension, And my good nature to prove, I am quite willing to mention One or two things about Juve. Juve was a Roman humdinger, Writer of satires and sich. He was consid'rable stinger-- Rare were his sallies and rich. High his poetic position, Lofty his manner and brow; Lived in the time of Domitian;-- That's all I think of just now. As for that "_Quicquid_, and so forth," I have but space to advise If you'd decipher it go forth, Look in the Dic and be wise. Make it a point, in your reading, Always to look up what's new. That is a simple proceeding: Why not adopt it? _I_ do. * * * IT HAS BEEN DONE. Sir: Broke friend wife's favorite Victrola record. Told her about it. She came back with, "Well, that's the only record you ever broke." Do you think she was bawling me out or was she paying me a compliment? E. P. P. * * * "Will the Devil complete the capture of the modern church?" inquires the Rev. Mr. Straton of New York. Why is it assumed that the Old Boy is attempting to capture it? People go to the Devil; the Devil doesn't have to chase after them. The notion that Old Nick, is always around drumming up business is an example of the inordinate vanity of man. * * * Dean Jones of Yale is credited with this definition of freedom of speech: "The liberty to say what you think without thinking what you say." * * * "ON SUCH A NIGHT..." [From the Bethany, Mo., Clipper.] After the serving of light refreshments the young ladies repaired to the third floor and "tripped the light fantastic" while music waved eternal wands. And then the whole company flocked in and enjoyed the beauties of this grand home, lingering and chatting, with the enchanted spell of the glorious evening still strong upon each one, until the crescent moon had veiled her face and the vain young night trembled over her own beauty. And then with expressed regrets that the hours had flown so rapidly the guests bade a fair good night to their charming hostess. * * * TEMPERATURE. An idea pushed along to us by L. O. K. has no doubt been seriously considered by the Congress. It is to move the tubes of all thermometers up an inch on the scale every fall, and down an inch in the spring. This would make our winter temperature much more endurable, and our summer temp. delightful. * * * LET US PERISH, RATHER, BY DEGREES. Sir: Before the Congress adopts the idea of L. O. K. to move the tubes of all thermometers up an inch on the scale every fall and down an inch in the spring, I rush to inquire how shall we, who possess only a two inch thermometer, on which an inch covers at least 70 degrees, be able to withstand the extremes of climate? May I not suggest that the Congress be petitioned to make the move by degrees instead of inches, and thus avoid great suffering? L. J. R. * * * You may have noted--nearly everybody else did--that Jean Paige and Albert Smith were married in Paris, Ill., "at the farm residence of Mr. and Mrs. Wigfall O'Hair." The Academy of Immortals attended in a body. * * * Commuters discuss many interesting topics, including the collection of garbage. Mac was reminded of a Michigan lady of his acquaintance who, with a new maid, was trying to pull off a very correct luncheon. In the midst of it the maid appeared and said, "Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, the garbage man wants a dime." The hostess, without batting an eye, replied: "We are having company to-day. Better get a quarter's worth." * * * "'My mind is open on the question of garbage disposal,' Alderman Link declared." You know what he means. * * * HYMN OF HATE. (_Reprinted at request of Mr. Hoover._) Cranberry pie, or apricot-- We love them not, we hate them not. Of all the victuals in pot or plate, There's only one that we loathe and hate. We love a hundred, we hate but one, And that we'll hate till our race is run-- BREAD PUDDING! It's known to you all, it's known to you all, It casts a gloom, and it casts a pall; By whatso name they mark the mess, You take one taste and you give one guess. Come, let us stand in the Wailing Place, A vow to register, face to face: We will never forego our hate Of that tasteless fodder we execrate-- BREAD PUDDING! Cranberry pie, or apricot-- Some folks like 'em, and some folks not. They're not so bad if they're made just right, Tho' they don't enkindle our appetite. But _you_ we hate with a lasting hate, And never will we that hate abate: Hate of the tooth and hate of the gum, Hate of palate and hate of tum, Hate of the millions who've choked you down, In country kitchen or house in town. We love a thousand, we hate but one, With a hate more hot than the hate of Hun-- BREAD PUDDING! * * * Since prohibition came in, says the Onion King, Americans have taken to eating onions. As Lincoln prophesied, this nation is having a new breath of freedom. * * * Asked what the racket was all about, the inspired waiter at the Woman's Athletic Club replied, "It's the Vassar illumini." * * * In a soi-disant democracy "personal liberty" is an empty phrase, bursting with nothingness. Personal liberty is to be enjoyed only under a benevolent autocracy. It is contained wholly in the code of King Pausole: "I.--Ne nuis pas à ton voisin. "II.--Ceci bien compris, fais ce qu'il te plaît." * * * There are many definitions of "optimist" and "pessimist." As good as another is one that the Hetman of the Boul Mich Cossacks is fond of quoting: "An optimist is a man who sees a great light where there is none. A pessimist is a man who comes along and blows out the light." * * * "Two-piano playing is more or less of a sport, as the gardeners say," observes Mr. Aldrich in the New York Times. And we are reminded of Philip Hale's review of a two-piano recital. "We have heard these two gentlemen separately without being greatly stirred," he said in effect, "but their combination was like bringing together the component parts of a seidlitz powder." * * * Writes H. D., at present in Loz Onglaze: "Alphonse Daudet says that the sun is the real liar, that it alone is responsible for all the exaggerations of its favorite children of the south." And you know what the sun does to Californians. * * * The Paris decision suggests a neat form letter for collection lawyers: "We hope that you will not place us under the necessity of envisaging the grave situation which will be created if you persist in failing to meet this obligation." * * * FOR WHICH MUCH THANKS. Sir: The Heraminer relates that James K. Hackett has refused to play the title rôle in "Mary, Queen of Scots." Gosh, but this is a relief! G. D. C. * * * THE SECOND POST. [An order for a picture.] Dear Sirs: I am sending you two photos and $5. I want you to have this work done as perfect as possible, there is a little alteration which I want made, which you will see as follows. Take the man from the single picture, which is my father, and paint him standing behind my mother which is setting in the chair on the grupe picture, or put him setting in another chair beside the girl on the same picture whichever you think will look the best to make a good picture, but I want the four persons in one big good picture. You will see that the picture has a redish flair, please try to get the others without any of that, also you will see that our eyes in the grupe picture is raised too high, please fix them looking natural, also put our eyebrows thick and natural, and make our faces as pleasant looking as possible, also you will notice in the picture that the girls dress is not sitting good from the waist down, please fix that setting smoothly as the breeze was blowing so hard in the yard that I could not keep my skirt setting in good shape around me, so please rectefy all these foults which I mention and make me a good picture as I want it to keep in memory of my family as we are now; you may put it in rich brown or sepia pastel whichever you think suits the picture the best, let the photoes be enlarged but full stature the same as the origenal. * * * A FIG FOR CEREMONY! [From the East Peoria Post.] New Year's Day our young friends, Miss Hattie Cochran and Mr. Elias King, without any ceremony at all were united in the bonds of holy wedlock. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Received by the Chief of Police of Wichita, Kas.] Der Sir: I am writing you to know if you have seen any thing of my wife in Wichita. She run off from me and a feller told me he seen her in Wichita having a big time. She is kinder Red Headed tolerable tall and has got a prety Bust in fact she is perfectly made up and you mite know of her by a Thing she has got tattooed on her rite thigh kindly in front of her leg. I think they aimed it for a Hart with L. M. in it but they kinder made a bum job of it and it is hard to make out what it is. If you here of her let me know it at wounced and I will come rite up fur her fur I want to See her bad. eny thing you let me no Surtenly will be appreciate. Yours truly, (Name on File). P. S.--I may come rite to Wichita myself and see if I can find her, but you keep a look out fur her. * * * ... What may interest you is that one of the Fords was owned by A. F. Fender. * * * OPEN THE GATES! Sir: That sound of hoof-beats heralds the arrival, to join the Immortals, of Royal Ryder, a mounted copper in San Francisco. G. Gray Shus. * * * Thanks to fifteen or twenty observant travelers for the info that the manager of the drug department of the Alexander Drug Co. in Omaha is George Salzgiver. * * * MISTER TOBIN, EDUCATOR. A gentle, kindly man is he, The soul of generosity; Our little ones he gladly gives The right to split infinitives. The boys and girls who go to school Approve of Mister Tobin's rule. They find no cause to make complaint At learning words like das't and ain't. Two negatives has every boy, And uses them with pride and joy And every girl has utmost skill In interchanging shall and will. Those noble boys and girls decry The priggish use of "It is I." If you should ask, "Who was with he?" They'd answer simply, "It was me." Pantaletta. * * * It is not nice of readers to try to take advantage of our innocence. M. L. J., for example, writes out the valve-handle wheeze in longhand and assures us that "it is an exact copy of a letter received by a stove manufacturing company in St. Louis, from a customer in Arkansas." * * * VARIANT OF THE VALVE-HANDLE WHEEZE. (_Received by a drug concern._) Gentlemen: Your postal received, regarding an order which you sent us and which you have not, as yet, received. Upon referring to our records, we fail to find any record of ever having received the order in question. The last order received from your firm was for a pair of flat cylindrical lenses to match broken sample you enclosed. This was taken care of the same day as received and sent on to you, properly addressed. We would suggest that you enter tracer with the postoffice department in endeavor to locate the package. Regretting that it is necessary for us to give you this information, we remain, etc. P. S. Since writing the above, the order in question was received at this office--this morning. * * * THE VALVE-HANDLE SNEEZE. Sir: The handle on the valve is missing, and I can't turn off the radiator. The room was hot, and I've had to "open wide the windows, open wide the door." The resultant draft has just brought a series of "kerchoos" out of me. Valve-handle sneezes, I called them. Sim Nic. * * * Miss Emily Davis weds Mrs. Charles Parmele.--Wilmington, N. C., Dispatch. Why don't the men propose, mama, why don't the men propose? * * * THE SANDS OF TIME. Whenever I observe a quartette of commuters at cards I regret that the hours I gave to mastering whist were not given instead to the study of Greek. * * * "The military salute," says our neighbor on the left, "is a courtesy of morale when it proceeds from one fighting man to another." This was impressed in 1918 upon a colored recruit who was hauled up for not saluting his s. o. His explanation was, "Ah thought you and me had got so well acquainted Ah didn't have to salute you no mo'." * * * THE TRUTH AT LAST! Sir: Socrates and Epictetus did not learn Greek at 81--they were Greeks. It was the Roman Cato who began to study Greek at 80. C. E. C. * * * Now that we all know it was neither Socrates nor Epictetus who learned Greek at 81 (because, you see, being Greeks they did not have to study the language), you may like to know something about Julius Cæsar. He was, narrates a high school paper, "the noblest of English kings. He learned Latin late in life in order to translate an ecclesiastical work into the vernaculary of the common people." * * * We are reminded by our learned friend, W. F. Y., that Socrates began at 64 to study English, but had to give it up as a bad job. "The fact," he says, "is interestingly set forth in Montefiori's 'Eccentricities of Genius.'" * * * The attitude of our universities and other quasi-educational institutions toward Greek is that 81 is the proper age for beginning the study of it. * * * Breathing defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment, Jay Rye and Jewel Bacchus were married in Russellville, Ark., last Sunday. * * * The Wetmore Shop, on Belmont avenue, advertises "Everything for the baby." * * * Sir: I feel that the time has come to call your attention to a letter received from C. A. Neuenhahn, of St. Louis. It concludes CAN/IT. A. E. W. * * * Persons who cannot compose 200 words of correct and smooth running English will write to a newspaper to criticize a "long and labored editorial." A labored editorial is one with which a reader does not agree. * * * THINK OF IT! Take any life you choose and study it. Take Edgar Lee Masters': He is a lawyer and a poet; Or perhaps it is best to call him A lawyer-poet, Or a poet who was never much at law, Or t'other way around if you prefer. Whichever way 'tis put, the fact remains He wrote a poem that now sells For fifty cents plus four beans. Think of it! Four dollars and fifty cents, Or, if you prefer, $4.50. And Elenor Murray did not have a cent on her When they found her body on the banks Of the Squeehunk river. And the poem is out of stock at half the stores. And Villon starved and Keats, Keats-- Where am I? I don't know. Yseult Potts. * * * The headline, "U. S. to Seize Wet Doctors," has led many readers to wonder whether the government will get after the nurses next. * * * We have always been in sympathy with President Wilson's idea of democracy. He expressed it perfectly when he was president of Princeton. "Unless I have entire power," said he, "how can I make this a democratic college?" * * * The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat the outlines of men and things; and these he may wear until midnight. The only objects which this glass does not blur are children. Seen through blue, or rose, or white, children are always the same. They have not changed since Bethlehem. * * * A very good motto for any family is that which the Keiths of Scotland selected a-many years ago: "They say. What say they? Let them say." It might even do for the top of this Totem-Pole of Tooralay. * * * A frequent question since the war began is, "Why are there so many damn fools in the faculties of American universities?" Chancellor Williams of Wooster turns light on the mystery. Eminent educators who are also damn fools are hypermorons, who are intellectual but not truly intelligent. He says of these queer beings: "The hypermoron may laugh in imitation of others, but he has no original humor and very little original wit. The cause for this is that original wit and humor require unusual combinations of factors; but the very nature of the hypermoron is that he does not arrange and perceive such combinations. When the hypermoron does cause laughter from some speech or action, usually he resents it. But when a normal man unconsciously does or says something laughable, he himself shares in making sport of himself. Though at times amiable, the hypermoron invariably takes himself so seriously as in a long acquaintance to become tiresome." * * * THE ENRAPTURED SOCIETY EDITOR. [From the Charlotte, Ky., Chronicle.] The lovely and elegant home of that crown prince of hospitality, the big hearted and noble souled Ab. Weaver, was a radiant scene of enchanting loveliness, for Cupid had brought one of his finest offerings to the court of Hymen, for the lovable Miss Maude, the beautiful daughter of Mr. Weaver and his refined and most excellent wife, who is a lady of rarest charms and sweetest graces, dedicated her life's ministry to Dr. James E. Hobgood, the brilliant and gifted and talented son of that ripe scholar and renowned educator, the learned Prof. Hobgood, the very able and successful president of the Oxford Female college. * * * THE MISCHIEVOUS MAKE-UP MAN. [From the Markesan, Wis., Herald.] It is a wise man who knows when he has made a fool of himself. A baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Emil Zimmerman of Mackford yesterday. * * * WHY THE MAKE-UP MAN LEFT TOWN. [From the Grinnell Review.] Born, April 19, to Professor and Mrs. J. P. Ryan, a daughter. This experience suggests that simple scientific experiments performed by college students would furnish a very interesting program of entertainment in any community. * * * COOL, INDEED! [From the Tuttle, N. D., Star.] At the burning of a barn in Steele recently, our superintendent displayed some nerve and pluck. Miss Sherman did not wait for the men to get there but hastened to the barn without stopping to dress, and in bare feet untied the horses before they had become unmanageable thus saving them with little trouble. There is not a man, we venture to say, in all Steele but would have stopped to put on his pants before venturing out into the crisp air, but she did not, her whole thought being of the dumb animals imperiled, and it was, indeed, a nervy and cool-headed performance. * * * _RHYMED DEVOTION._ [Robert Louis Stevenson to his wife.] _When my wife is far from me The undersigned feels all at sea._ _R. L. S._ _I was as good as deaf When separate from F._ _I am far from gay When separate from A._ _I loathe the ways of men When separate from N._ _Life is a murky den When separate from N._ _My sorrow rages high When separate from Y._ _And all things seem uncanny When separate from Fanny._ * * * Lacking the equipment of the monk in Daudet's tale, an amateur distiller is gauging his output with an instrument used for testing the fluid in his motor car's radiator. "Yesterday," reports P. D. P., "he confided to me that he had some thirty below zero stuff." * * * Fish talk to each other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation. * * * According to Dr. Eliot, Americans are more and more becoming subject to herd impulses, gregarious impulses, common emotions, and he is considerably annoyed. Heaven be praised if what he says be true! He would have individuality released; which is precisely what we do not want. Americans are not individuals, and they are not free; but they think they are. Therefore is America, in these troublous times, an island in chaos, where civilization, like Custer, will make its last stand. * * * Doctors disagree as to whether 70 degrees is the proper temperature for an apartment. This will intrigue a friend of ours who, preferring 60 degrees himself, is obliged to maintain a temperature of almost 80 because of his mother-in-law. * * * "Women," says Dr. Ethel Smyth, of London (perhaps you know Ethel), "women have undoubtedly invaluable work to do as composers." Quite so. And any time they are ready to begin we'll sit up and take notice. * * * Sh-h-h! On Main street in Buffalo, near the Hotel Iroquois, you can have "Tattooing Done Privately Inside." * * * Shall we not revise Shakespeare: The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty on the Boul. * * * A NEW FIRM IN FISH. [From the Kearney Neb., Democrat.] Fresh Smoked Finn & Haddies at Keller's Market. * * * Our interest in baseball has waned, but we still can watch workmen on a skyscraper throwing and catching red-hot rivets. * * * The dinosaur, having two sets of brains (as we once pointed out in imperishable verse), was able to reason _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ with equal facility. But what we started to mention was an ad in the American Lumberman calling for "a good all around yellow pine office man of broad wholesale experience, well posted on both ends." * * * Among the new publications of Richard G. Badger we lamp, "Nervous Children: Their Prevention and Management." * * * Unrelieved pessimism rather shocks us. In spite of everything we are willing to look on the bright side. We are willing to agree that, in some previous incarnation, we may have inhabited a crookeder world than this. * * * The valued News, of New York, dismisses lightly the fear that the Puritan Sabbath will be restored. Ten or twenty years ago people dismissed as lightly the fear that Prohibition would be saddled on the country. On his way to the compulsory Wednesday-evening prayer meeting, a few years hence, the editor of the News will recall his cheerful and baseless prediction in 1920. * * * Fired by liquor, men maltreat their wives. These wretches deserve public flogging; hanging were a compliment to some of them. On the other hand, men made emotional by liquor have conceived an extravagant fondness for their wives. We have not read about liquor floating the matrimonial bark over the shallows of domestic discord; yet men who have fared homeward with unsteady footsteps under the blinking stars, know that in such moments they are much more humane than in sober daylight; they are appalled by their own unworthiness, and thinking of their wives moves them almost to tears--quite, not infrequently. They resolve to become better husbands and fathers. The spirit of the wine in them captains "an army of shining and generous dreams," an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was a dry. * * * WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WANTS? [Received by Farm Mechanics.] Gentlemen: Will you please send me a specimen copy of the Farm Mechanics. I would like a sample of the Farm Mechanics very much. I sincerely trust that you will mail me a sample copy of Farm Mechanics as I want to see a specimen of your Farm Mechanics very much. Yours very truly, etc. * * * Although Mrs. Elizabeth Hash has retired from the hotel business, Mrs. Peter Lunch has undertaken to manage the Metropole cafeteria in Fargo, N. D. * * * POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. Sioux Falls [From the Sioux Falls Press.] What if we don't have palaces, With damp and musty walls? We have the great Sioux River, And greater yet, Sioux Falls. We don't have to go abroad, God's beauties just to see, But stay at home And take a trip Around Sioux Falls with me. We confess a fondness for verse like the foregoing, and hope some day to find a poem as good as that masterpiece-- "I've traveled east, I've traveled west, I've been to the great Montana, But the finest place I've ever seen Is Attica, Indiana." Another popular pome of sentiment and reflection, heard by L. M. G. in Wisconsin lumber camps, is-- "I've traveled east, I've traveled west, As far as the town of Fargo, But the darndest town I ever struck Is the town they call Chicargo." * * * "USELESS VERBIAGE." [From an abstract of title.] "That said Mary Ann Wolcott died an infant, 2 or 3 years old, unmarried, intestate, and that she left no husband, child, or children." * * * INGENIOUS CALIFORNIA PARADOX. [From the Oakland Post.] The Six-Minute Ferry route across the bay will take only eighteen to twenty minutes. * * * ALMOST. Sir: S. Fein has put his name on the door of his orange-colored taxicab. Can you whittle a wheeze out of that? R. A. J. * * * Knut Hamsun, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, used to be a street-car conductor in Chicago. This is a hint to column conductors. Get a transfer. The Witch's Holiday. A TALE FOR CHILDREN ONLY. I. Matters had gone ill all the day; and, to cap what is learnedly called the perverseness of inanimate things, it came on to rain just as the Boy, having finished his lessons, was on the point of setting out for a romp in the brown fields. "Isn't it perfectly mean, Mowgli?" he complained to his dog. The water spaniel wagged a noncommittal tail and stretched himself before the wood fire with a deep drawn sigh. The rain promised to hold, so the Boy took down a book and curled up in a big leather chair. It was a very interesting book--all about American pioneers, trappers, and Indians; and although the writer of it was a German traveler, no American woodsman would take advantage of a worthy German globe trotter and tell him things which were not exactly so. For example, if you and a trapper and a dog were gathered about a campfire, and the dog were asleep and dreaming in his sleep, and the trapper should affirm that if you tied a handkerchief over the head of a dreaming dog and afterwards tied it around your own head, you would have the dog's dream,--if the trapper should tell you this with a perfectly serious face, you naturally would believe him, especially if you were a German traveler. The Boy got up softly and began the experiment. Mowgli opened an inquiring eye, stretched himself another notch, and fell asleep again. His master waited five minutes, then unloosed the handkerchief and knotted it under his own chin. For a while Mowgli's slumbers were untroubled as a forest pool, his breathing as regular as the tick-tock of the old wooden clock under the stair. Out of doors the rain fell sharply and set the dead leaves singing. The wood fire dwindled to a glow. Tick-tock! tick-tock! drummed the ancient timepiece. The Boy yawned and settled deeper in the leather chair. Tick-tock! Tick-tock! Mowgli was breathing out of time. He was twitching, and making funny little smothered noises, which, if he were awake, would probably be yelps. Something exciting was going on in dreamland. Tick-tock! Tick---- +Hullo!+ There goes a woodchuck! II. The Boy gave chase across the fields, only to arrive, out of breath, at the entrance to a burrow down which the woodchuck had tumbled. He had not a notion where he was. He seemed to have raced out of the world that he knew into one which was quite unfamiliar. It was a broad valley inclosed by high hills, through which a pleasant little river ran; and the landscape wore an odd aspect--the hills were bluer than hills usually are, the trees were more fantastically fashioned, and the waving grass and flowers were more beautiful than one commonly sees. "Good morning, young sir!" On the other side of the stream stood a tall man wrapped in a cloak and leaning with both hands upon a staff. He was well past the middle years, as wrinkles and a beard turned gray gave evidence; but his eyes were youthful and his cheeks as ruddy as a farm lad's. His clothing was worn and dust-laden, but of good quality and unpatched, and there was an air about him that said plainly, "Here is no common person, I can tell you." "You are wondering who I may be," he observed. "Well, then, I am known as the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare." "A queer sort of knight, this!" thought the Boy. "And you--may I ask whither you are bound?" said the stranger. "We may be traveling the same road." The Boy made answer that he had set forth to chase a woodchuck, and that having failed to catch it he had no better plan than to return home. At the word "home" the Knight put on a melancholy smile, and cutting a reed at the river edge he fashioned it into a pipe and began to play. A wonderful tune it was. Tom the Piper's Son knew the way of it, and to the same swinging melody the Pied Piper footed the streets of Hamelin town; for the burden of the tune was "Over the Hills and Far Away," and the Boy's feet stirred at the catch of it. "That," said the Knight, "is the tune I have marched to for many a year, and a pretty chase it has led me." He put down the pipe. "Knocking about aimlessly does very well for an old man, but youth should have a definite goal." The Boy did not agree with this. With that magic melody marching in his head it was hey for the hills and the westering sun, and the pleasant road to Anywhere. "What lies yonder?" he queried, pointing to a deep notch in the skyline. "The Kingdom of Rainbow's End," replied the Knight. "It is an agreeable territory, and you would do very well to journey thither. The King of the country is no longer young, and as he has nothing to say about affairs of state, or anything else for that matter, he spends his time tramping about from place to place, in much the same fashion as myself." "And who governs while he is away?" "+She!+" said the Knight solemnly--"+She That Bosses Everybody!+" III. "You see," said the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare, "the King made a grave mistake some years ago. It is a foolish saying that when a man marries his troubles begin; but it is the law of Rainbow's-End that when a man marries he may chloroform his mother-in-law or not, just as he pleases. But if he forfeit the right he may never again claim it, and the deuce take him for a soft-hearted simpleton." The Boy thought it a barbarous law and so declared. "There is something to be said for it," returned the Knight. "A mother-in-law is like the little girl with the little curl. It so happens that the King's mother-in-law is a very unpleasant old party, and the King made a sad mess of it when he threw the chloroform bottle out of the window." "Tell me about Rainbow's-End," the Boy entreated. "Is there a beautiful Princess, with many suitors for her hand?" "The Princess Aralia is a very pretty girl, as princesses go." The Knight opened a locket attached to a long gold chain and exhibited an exquisite miniature. "I don't mind saying," said he, "that the Princess Aralia and I are on very good terms, and a word from me will procure you a cordial reception. The question is, how shall we set about it? You can't present yourself at court as you are; you must have a horse and a fine costume, and all that sort of thing." "Perhaps there's a good fairy in the neighborhood," said the Boy hopefully. The Knight shook his head. "Not within a dozen leagues. But stop a bit--it is just possible that Aunt Jo can manage the matter. Aunt Jo is the sister of my wife's mother, and one of the cleverest witches in the country. She stands very high in her profession and is thoroughly schooled in every branch of deviltry; and with the exception of my wife's mother, I can think of no person whose society is less desirable. But one day in each year she takes a day off, during which she is as affable and benevolent an old dame as you can possibly imagine; really, you would never know it was the same person. These annual breathing spells do her a world of good, she tells me; for incessant wickedness is just as monotonous and wearisome as unbroken goodness." "And to-day is the Witch's holiday?" "Yes, it so happens; and I always make it a point to spend the night at her cottage if I am in this part of the country." The Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare rose and put his cloak about his shoulders, and with the Boy set forward through the valley. IV. Presently they came to the Witch's cottage, snuggled away in a hollow and hidden from the road by a tangle of witch hazel shrubs. The Boy rather expected a dark, forbidding hut of sinister outlines, but here was as pretty a cabin as ever you saw, weathered a pleasing gray, with green blinds and a tiny porch overrun with Virginia-creeper. The Knight strode boldly up the path, the Boy following less confidently. No one answering the summons at the porch, they tried the kitchen door. It was open, and they stepped inside. The Witch was not at home, but evidently she was not far away, for a fire was crackling in the stove and a kettle singing over the flames. An enormous black cat got up lazily from the hearth and rubbed himself against the visitors with a purr like a small dynamo. With the familiarity of a relative the Knight led the way about the house. One door was locked. "This," said he, "is Aunt Jo's dark room, in which she develops her deviltry. This"--opening the door of a little shed--"is the garage." The Boy peeped in and saw two autobroomsticks. "The small green one is her runabout. The big red one is a touring broomstick, high power and very fast; you can hear her coming a mile off." They returned to the sitting room, and the Boy became greatly taken with Aunt Jo's collection of books. Some of these were: "One Hundred and One Best Broths," "Witchcraft Self-Taught," "The Black Art--Berlitz Method," and "Burbank's Complete Wizard." The Boy took down the "Complete Wizard," but he was not able to do more than glance at the absorbing contents before the clicking of the gate announced that the Witch had returned. Aunt Jo was a sprightly dame of more than seventy years, very thin, but straight and supple, and with hair still jet black. Her eyes were gray-green or green-gray, as the light happened to strike them; her cheeks were hollow, and a long sharp chin slanted up to meet a long sharp nose. Ordinarily, as the Knight had hinted, she was no doubt an unholy terror, but to-day she was in the best of humors, and her eyes twinkled with good nature. "I just stepped out," she explained, "to carry some jelly and cake to one of my neighbors, a woodcutter's wife. The poor woman has been ill all the summer! Mercy! if I haven't had a day of it!" She dropped into a chair, brushing a fly from the tip of her nose with the tip of her tongue. "How is everything in Rainbow's-End?" she asked. "I suppose +She+ is as bad as ever." "Worse," replied the Knight, fetching a sigh. "And +She+ never takes a day off, as you do." "Well, Henry, it's your own fault, as I've told you a thousand times. If you hadn't been so soft-hearted-- But mercy! that's no way to be talking on my holiday." "So!" said the Boy to himself. "This wandering knight is the King of Rainbow's-End and the father of the Princess. I have a friend at court indeed." V. "And how is the Princess Aralia?" asked the Witch. "As pretty as ever, I suppose, and with no prospect of a husband, thanks to her grandmother and the silly tasks she sets for the suitors." "That brings us to the business of our young friend here," said the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare. "He wishes to present himself at court, and is in great need of a horse and wardrobe." "You've come to the wrong shop for horses and fine feathers," said the Witch. "Those things are quite out of my line." The Boy looked his disappointment. "The best I can do," said Aunt Jo kindly, "is to give you a letter to a Mr. Burbank, an excellent wizard of my acquaintance. He has recently invented a skinless grape and a watermelon that is all heart, and is quite the cleverest man in the business. Such a trifle as changing a pig into a horse will give him no trouble whatever. Have you seen my garden, Henry?" "No, but I should like to," said the Knight rising. "Meanwhile," said the Witch, "I will start the supper if our young friend will fetch the wood." The Boy responded with such cheerful readiness that Aunt Jo patted him on the cheek and said: "You're the lad for the Princess Aralia, and have her you shall if Aunt Jo can bring it about. And now go out in the garden and pick me a hatful of Brussels sprouts." It was impossible to imagine a more appetizing supper than that which the three sat down to. Everything was prepared to a nicety, and the Knight could not say enough in praise of the raised biscuits and home made currant jell. As for the doughnuts, "Such doughnuts can't be made without witchcraft, Jo," he declared. "Nonsense!" said the old lady. "I don't put a thing into them that any good cook doesn't use. Making doughnuts always was an art by itself. You must both take some with you when you go." After supper the Knight wiped the dishes while the Witch washed them, Aunt Jo declaring it a shame that a man so domestically inclined should be compelled to wander from one end of the rainbow to the other just because of a foolish tender-heartedness in days gone by. While the pair discussed this fruitful topic the Boy dipped into the fascinating chapters of the "Complete Wizard." "Time for bed," announced the Knight an hour later; and he added for the Boy's ear: "We must make an early start in the morning." "I for one shall sleep soundly," Aunt Jo declared. "I've run my legs off to-day, as I never use a broomstick on my holiday." She conducted her guests to a tiny bedchamber above stairs. "I will leave a bag of doughnuts on the table, Henry," said she, "as I suppose you will be off before I am up. Good-night!" When she had gone below the Knight said: "We must be moving with the first streak of day. Aunt Jo's holiday ends with sun-up, and you would find her a vastly different old party, I can tell you." VI. "I don't think I should be afraid of her," said the Boy. The Knight chuckled, and without further speech got into bed and was soon wrapped in a deep slumber. Next to a clear conscience and the open road, a good bed at night is something to set store by. But the Boy could not sleep for the exciting pictures that danced in his head, and he was impatient for the morning light, that he might be on his way to Rainbow's-End. The moon peeped in the window; the breeze made a pleasant sound in the poplar trees; from somewhere came the music of a little brook. To all these gentle influences the Boy finally yielded. He was awakened by a plucking at his sleeve. "Time to be moving," said the Knight in a hoarse whisper. "We can put on our shoes after we leave the house." They crept down the stair, which creaked in terrifying fashion, but a gentle snoring from the Witch's bedroom reassured them. After they had tiptoed out of the house and gained the road they discovered that they had forgotten the bag of doughnuts. The Knight declared that he would not return for a million doughnuts, but the Boy, remembering how delicious they tasted, stole back to the door and lifted the latch softly. Aunt Jo was still snoring, but, just as he laid hold of the doughnuts, Pluto the cat came leaping in from the kitchen, and the Boy had barely time to put the door between its sharp claws and himself. He ran down the path, vaulted the gate, and looked about for the Knight. Away down the road was a rapidly diminishing figure. The Boy was a good runner, and he was fast overtaking the Knight, when the latter, who had been casting anxious glances over his shoulder as he ran, suddenly plunged into the bushes at one side of the road. The Boy thought it wise to follow his example. And not a moment too soon. A small whirring sound grew louder and louder, and Aunt Jo went whizzing by on her high power autobroomstick, leaving in her wake a horrible reek of gasoline and brimstone. But not the Aunt Jo of the evening before. Her green eyes flashed behind the goggles, and her face was something dreadful to behold. On her shoulder perched Pluto, every hair erect, and spitting fire. The Boy gasped, and hoped he had seen the last of the terrible hag, when the whirring noise announced that she was coming back. She stopped her broomstick directly opposite the hiding-place and began cutting small circles in the air, the while peering sharply about. As the Boy plunged into the thicket, he fell. As he lay there, something cold pressed against his hand. It was Mowgli's nose. The dog's eyes questioned his master, who had cried out in his sleep. "Oh, Mowgli!" he exclaimed, taking the spaniel by his shaggy ears, "did you dream _all_ that wonderful dream? Or did you stop at the woodchuck hole? What a shame, Mowgli, if there shouldn't really be a Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare, and a Princess Aralia and a Witch who makes wonderful doughnuts!" A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO "_Nous ne trouvons guère de gens de bon sens que ceux qui sont de notre avis._" --_La Rochefoucauld._ "THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE." Old Amicus Pop Is the friend of the Wop, The friend of the Chink and the Harp, The friend of all nations And folk of all stations, The friend of the shark and the carp. He sits in his chair With his feet on the table, And lists to the prayer Of Minerva and Mabel, Veritas, Pro Bono, Taxpayer, and the rest, Who wail on his shoulder and weep on his breast. Old Amicus Pop Is the solace and prop Of all who are weary of life. He straightens the tangles And jangles and wrangles That breed in this city of strife. Whatever your "beef," You may pour him an earful; Unbottle your grief Be it ever so tearful. Oh, weep all you wish--he is there with the mop. Bring all of your troubles to Amicus Pop. * * * When we think of the countless thousands who peruse this Cro'-nest of Criticism, a feeling of responsibility weighs heavily upon us, and almost spoils our day. Frezzample, one writes from St. Paul: "We have twenty confirmed readers of the Line in this 'house.'" The quotation marks disturb us. Can it be a sanitarium? * * * Most of the trouble in this world is caused by people who do not know when they are well off. The Germans did not know when they were well off. Your cook, who left last week, as little apprehended her good fortune. Nor will the Filipinos be happy till they get it. * * * Those who stand in awe of persons with logical minds will be reassured by Henry Adams' pertinent reflection that the mind resorts to reason for want of training. His definition of philosophy is also reassuring: "Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems." * * * Among those who have guessed at the meaning of "the freedom of the seas" was Cowper: "Without one friend, above all foes, Britannia gives the world repose." * * * Maxwell Bodenheim has published a book of poems, and the critics allow that Max Boden's brays are bonnie. * * * IF YOU MUST KISS, KISS THE DOCTOR. [From "How to Avoid Influenza."] Avoid kissing, as this habit readily transmits influenza. If physician is available, it is best to consult him. * * * QUICK, WATSON, THE PLUMBER! [From the Cedar Rapids Gazette.] Mrs. T. M. Dripps gave a dinner Friday in honor of Mrs. D. L. Leek of South Dakota. * * * "Kind Captain, I've important information." Mr. Honkavaarra runs an automobile livery in Palmer, Mich. * * * "The first child, Lord Blandford, was born in 1907; the second was born in 1898."--Chicago American. This so annoyed the Duke, that a reconciliation was never possible. * * * When your friend points with pride to a picture that, in your judgment, leaves something to be desired, or when he exhibits the latest addition to his family, you may be perplexed to voice an opinion that will satisfy both him and your conscience. An artist friend of ours is never at a loss. If it is a picture, he exclaims, "Extraordinary!" If it is an infant, he remarks, "_There +is+ a baby!_" He might add, with the English wit, "one more easily conceived than described." * * * The advantages of a classical education are so obvious that the present-day battle in its behalf seems a waste of energy. Frezzample, without a classical education how could you appreciate the fact that Mr. Odessey is now running a Noah's Ark candy kitchen in St. Peter, Wis.? * * * One may believe that the "gift of healing" is nothing more than the application of imaginary balm to non-existent disease, but if one says so he gets into a jolly row with people who consider an open mind synonymous with credulity. Our own state of mind was accurately described by Charles A. Dana: "I don't believe in ghosts," said he, "but I've been afraid of them all my life." * * * The congregation will rise and sing: Bill Bryan's heart is a-mouldering in the grave, But his lungs go marching on. * * * The astronomer Hamilton "made an expedition to Dublin to substitute a semi-colon for a colon"; but, reports J. E. R., "my wife's brother's brother-in-law's doctor charged him $600 for removing only part of a colon." * * * Few readers realize how much time is expended in making certain that commas are properly distributed. Thomas Campbell walked six miles to a printer's to have a comma in one of his poems changed to a semi-colon. * * * Following a bout with the gloves, a Seattle clubman is reported "in a state of comma." A doctor writes us that infection by the colon bacillus can be excluded, but we should say that what the patient needs is not a doctor but a proof reader. * * * "She played Liszt's Rhapsodie No. 2 with remarkable speed," relates the Indianapolis News. In disposing of Liszt's Rhapsodies it is all right to step on the accelerator, as the sooner they are finished the better. * * * GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY CLIMATE, AND FORGIVE US OUR DROPS IN TEMPERATURE! [From the Pasadena Star-News.] To put it in another form of expression, Mother Nature maintains poise and evenness of temper in this state far better than in most regions on this terrestrial ball. If you haven't thanked God to-day that you are privileged to live in California it is not yet too late to do so. Make it a daily habit. The blessing is worth this frequent expression of gratitude to the All High. * * * VARIANT OF A MORE OR LESS WELL KNOWN STORY. [From the Exeter, Neb., News.] Whoever took the whole pumpkin pie from Mrs. W. H. Taylor's kitchen the night of the party was welcome to it as the cat had stepped in it twice and it could not be used. Many thanks for the pan, she says. * * * THE WORLD'S GREATEST WINTER RESORT. "_Because of high temperatures and chinooks Medicine Hat is menaced with an ice famine._" They bask in the sunshine and purr like a cat, The fortunate people of Medicine Hat. Its climate is balmy in spite of the lat.; You have a wrong notion of Medicine Hat. At Christmas they sit on their porches and chat, For it never gets chilly in Medicine Hat. The Medicine Hatters all spoil for a spat With any defamer of Medicine Hat; They're ready and anxious to go to the mat With any one scoffing at Medicine Hat. The birds never migrate--they know where they're at, For it always is summer in Medicine Hat. No day that you can't use a heliostat; Sunlight is eternal in Medicine Hat. They're swatting the fly and the skeeter and gnat, As frost never kills them in Medicine Hat. His nature is skeptic, he's blind as a bat Who can't see the beauties of Medicine Hat. All jesting is flatulent, futile, and flat That libels the climate of Medicine Hat. Away with the knockers who knock it, and drat The jokers who joke about Medicine Hat. In short, it's the one, the ideal habitat. Boy! buy me a ticket to Medicine Hat! * * * According to the Milford Herald a young couple were married "under the strain of Mendelssohn's wedding march." * * * THE VILLAGE OMAR LOSES HIS OUTFIT. [From the Fort Dodge Messenger.] Lost--Grass rug and ukulele between Shady Oaks and Fort Dodge. Finder notify Messenger. * * * "Thelander-Eckblade Wedding Solomonized," reports the Batavia Herald. Interesting and unusual. * * * "TWEET! TWEET!" GOES THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER. [From the Sterling Gazette.] The wedding party wended its way to the grove south of the river and there, in a lovely spot, where pleasant hours of courtship have been passed, the wedding ceremony was performed. No stately church edifice built by man, no gilded altar, no polished pews nor polished floors were there; no stately organ or trained choir; there was an absence of ushers, bridesmaids and parson heavily gowned. No curious crowd thronged without the portal. In place of this display and grandeur they were surrounded by an edifice of nature's planting--the stately forest tree, while the green sward of the verdant grove furnished a velvety carpet. There, in this beautiful spot, where the Creator ordained such events to occur, the young couple, true lovers of the simple life, took upon themselves the vows which united them until "death itself should part." The rustle of the leaves in the treetop murmured nature's sweet benediction, while the bluebird, the robin, and the thrush sang a glorious doxology. * * * Wedded, in Clay county, Illinois, Emma Pickle and Gay Gerking. A wedding gift from Mr. Heinz or Squire Dingee would not be amiss. * * * A SPLENDID RECOVERY. [Waukesha, Wis., item.] Mr. and Mrs. J. Earl Stallard are the proud parents of an eight pound boy, born at the Municipal hospital this morning. Mr. Stallard will be able to resume his duties as county agricultural agent by to-morrow. * * * HOW FAST THE LEAVES ARE FALLING! [From the Waterloo Courier.] Frank Fuller, night operator at the Illinois Central telegraph office, has been kept more than busy to-day, all because of a ten pound boy who arrived at his home last evening. Mr. Fuller has decided that he will spend all of his evenings at his home in the future. * * * HOW SOON IT GETS DARK THESE DAYS! [From the Pillager, Minn., Herald.] That stork is a busy bird. It left a 10-lb baby girl at Ned Mickles last Thursday night. Ned is a neighbor of Cy Deaver. * * * _UPON JULIA'S ARCTICS._ _Whenas galoshed my Julia goes, Unbuckled all from top to toes, How swift the poem becometh prose! And when I cast mine eyes and see Those arctics flopping each way free, Oh, how that flopping floppeth me!_ * * * "We are all in the dark together," says Anatole France; "the only difference is, the savant keeps knocking at the wall, while the ignoramus stays quietly in the middle of the room." We used to be intensely interested in the knocking of the savants, but as nothing ever came of it, we have become satisfied with the middle of the room. * * * A GOOD MOTTO. I was conversing with Mr. Carlton the Librarian, and he quoted from memory a line from Catulle Mendès that seemed to me uncommonly felicitous: "La vie est un jour de Mi-Carême. Quelques-uns se masquent; moi, je ris." * * * In his declining years M. France has associated himself with the bunch called "Clarté," a conscious group organized by Barbusse, the object of which is the "union of all partisans of the true right and the true liberty." How wittily the Abbé Coignard would have discussed "Clarté," and how wisely M. Bergeret would have considered it! Alas! it is sad to lose one's hair, but it is a tragedy to lose one's unbeliefs. * * * Chicago, as has been intimated, rather broadly, is a jay town; but it is coming on. A department store advertises "cigarette cases and holders for the gay sub-deb and her great-grandmother," also "a diary for 'her' if she leads an exciting life." * * * We infer from the reviews of John Burroughs' "Accepting the Universe" that John has decided to accept it. One might as well. With the reservation that acceptance does not imply approval. * * * It is possible that Schopenhauer wrote his w. k. essay on woman after a visit to a bathing beach. * * * We heard a good definition of a bore. A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you. * * * The sleeping sickness (not the African variety) is more mysterious than the flu. It will be remembered that two things were discovered about the flu: first, that it was caused by a certain bacillus, and, second, that it was not caused by that bacillus. But all that is known about the sleeping sickness is that it attacks, by preference, carpenters and plumbers. * * * Slangy and prophetic Mérimée, who wrote, in "Love Letters of a Genius": "You may take it from me that ... short dresses will be the order of the day, and those who are blessed with natural advantages will be at last distinguished from those whose advantages are artificial only." * * * Happy above all other writing mortals we esteem him who, like Barrie, treads with sure feet the borderland 'twixt fact and faery, stepping now on this side, now on that. One must write with moist eyes many pages of such a fantasy as "A Kiss for Cinderella." There are tears that are not laughter's, nor grief's, but beauty's own. A lovely landscape may bring them, or a strain of music, or a written or a spoken line. * * * All we can get out of a Shaw play is two hours and a half of mental exhilaration. We are, inscrutably, denied the pleasure of wondering what Shaw means, or whether he is sincere. * * * WHY THE MAKE-UP FLED. [From the Dodge Center Record.] Mr. and Mrs. Umberhocker returned yesterday from an over Sunday visit with their son and family in Minneapolis. They are in hopes to soon land them in jail as they did the hog thieves, who were to have a hearing but waved it and trial will be held later. * * * "It isn't hard to sit up with a sick friend when he has a charming sister," reports B. B. But if it were a sick horse, Venus herself would be in the way. * * * "Saving the penny is all right," writes a vox-popper to the Menominee News, "but saving the dollar is 100 per cent better." At least. * * * _MUSIC HATH CHAHMS._ _What opus of Brahms' is your pet?-- A concerto, a trio, duet, Sonate No. 3 (For Viol. and P.), Or the second piano quartette?_ Sardi. _Our favorite Brahms? We're not sûr, For all are so classique et pur; But we'll mention an opus With which you may dope us-- One Hundred and Sixteen, E dur._ * * * BRAHMS, OPUS 116. I care for your pet, One Sixteen (Your choice proves your judgment is keen); But in E, you forget, see, It has two intermezzi; Please, which of these twain do you mean? Sardi. Which E? Can you ask? Must we tell? Doth it not every other excel-- The ineffable one, Of gossamer spun, The ultimate spirituelle. * * * A candid butcher in Battle Creek advertises "Terrible cuts." * * * Another candid merchant in Ottumwa, Ia., advises: "Buy to-day and think to-morrow." * * * MUSIC HINT. Sir: P. A. Scholes, in his "Listener's Guide to Music," revives two good laughs--thus: "A fugue is a piece in which the voices one by one come in and the people one by one go out." Also he quotes from Sam'l Butler's Note Books: "I pleased Jones by saying that the hautbois was a clarinet with a cold in its head, and the bassoon the same with a cold in its chest." The cor anglais suffers slightly from both symptoms. Some ambitious composer, by judicious use of the more diseased instruments, could achieve the most rheumy musical effects, particularly if, à la Scriabin, he should have the atmosphere of the concert hall heavily charged with eucalyptus. E. Pontifex. * * * "I will now sing for you," announced a contralto to a woman's club meeting in the Copley-Plaza, "a composition by one of Boston's noted composers, Mr. Chadwick. 'He loves me.'" And of course everybody thought George wrote it for _her_. * * * "Grand opera is, above all others, the highbrow form of entertainment."--Chicago Journal. Yes. In comparison, a concert of chamber music appears trifling and almost vulgar. * * * At a reception in San Francisco, Mrs. Wandazetta Fuller-Biers sang and Mrs. Mabel Boone-Sooey read. Cannot they be signed for an entertainment in the Academy? * * * We simply cannot understand why Dorothy Pound, pianist, and Isabelle Bellows, singer, of the American Conservatory, do not hitch up for a concert tour. * * * Richard Strauss has been defined as a musician who was once a genius. Now comes another felicitous definition--"Unitarian: a Retired Christian." * * * Dr. Hyslop, the psychical research man, says that the spirit world is full of cranks. These, we take it, are not on the spirit level. * * * The present physical training instructor in the Waterloo, Ia., Y. W. C. A. is Miss Armstrong. Paradoxically, the position was formerly held by Miss Goodenough. These things appear to interest many readers. * * * THE HUNTING OF THE PACIFIST SNARK. (_With Mr. Ford as the Bellman._) "Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried, "Just the place for a Snark, I declare!" And he anchored the _Flivver_ a mile up the river, And landed his crew with care. He had bought a large map representing the moon, Which he spread with a runcible hand; And the crew, you could see, were as pleased as could be With a map they could all understand. "Now, listen, my friends, while I tell you again The five unmistakable marks By which you may know, wherever you go, The warranted pacifist Snarks. The first is the taste, which is something like guff, Tho' with gammon 'twill also compare; The next is the sound, which is simple enough-- It resembles escaping hot air. The third is the shape, which is somewhat absurd, And this you will understand When I tell you it looks like the African bird That buries its head in the sand. The fourth is a want of the humorous sense, Of which it has hardly a hint. And last, but not least, this marvelous beast Is a glutton for getting in print. Now, Pacifist Snarks do no manner of harm, Yet I deem it my duty to say, Some are Boojums----" The Bellman broke off in alarm, For Jane Addams had fainted away. * * * Concerning his reference to "Demosthenes' lantern," the distinguished culprit, Rupert Hughes, writes us that of course he meant Isosceles' lantern. The slip was pardonable, he urges, as he read proof on the line only seven times--in manuscript, in typescript, in proof for the magazine, in the copy for the book, in galley, in page-proof, and finally in the printed book. And heaven only knows how many proofreaders let it through. "Be that as it may," says Rupert, "I am like our famous humorist, Archibald Ward, who refused to be responsible for debts of his own contracting. And, anyway, I thank you for calling my attention to the blunder quietly and confidentially, instead of bawling me out in a public place where a lot of people might learn of it." * * * SORRY WE MISSED YOU. Sir:... There were several things I wanted to say to you, and I proposed also to crack you over the sconce for what you have been saying about us Sinn Feiners. I suppose you're the sort that would laugh at this story: He was Irish and badly wounded, unconscious when they got him back to the dressing station, in a ruined village. "Bad case," said the docs. "When he comes out of his swoon he'll need cheering up. Say something heartening to him, boys. Tell him he's in Ireland." When the lad came to he looked around (ruined church on one side, busted houses, etc., up stage, and all that): "Where am I?" sez he. "'S all right, Pat; you're in Ireland, boy." "Glory be to God!" sez he, looking around again. "How long have yez had Home Rule?" Tom Daly. * * * OUR BOYS. [From the Sheridan, Wyo., Enterprise.] Our boys are off for the borders Awaiting further orders From our president to go Down into old Mexico, Where the Greaser, behind a cactus, Is waiting to attack us. * * * The skies they were ashen and sober, and the leaves they were crispèd and sere, as I sat in the porch chair and regarded our neighbor's patch of woodland; and I thought: The skies may be ashen and sober, and the leaves may be crispèd and sere, but in a maple wood we may dispense with the sun, such irradiation is there from the gold of the crispèd leaves. Jack Frost is as clever a wizard as the dwarf Rumpelstiltzkin, who taught the miller's daughter the trick of spinning straw into gold. This young ash, robed all in yellow--what can the sun add to its splendor? And those farther tree-tops, that show against the sky like a tapestry, the slenderer branches and twigs, unstirred by wind, having the similitude of threads in a pattern--can the sun gild their refinèd gold? How delicate is the tinting of that cherry, the green of which is fading into yellow, each leaf between the two colors: this should be described in paint. No, I said; in a hardwood thicket, in October, though it were the misty mid region of Weir, one would not know the sun was lost in clouds. At that moment the sun adventured forth, in blazing denial. It was as if the woodland had burst into flame. * * * As a variation of the story about the merchant who couldn't keep a certain article because so many people asked for it, we submit the following: A lady entered the rural drugstore which we patronize and said, "Mr. Blank, I want a bath spray." "I'm sorry, Mrs. Jones," sezze, "but the bath spray is sold." * * * _IN A DEPARTMENT STORE._ _Customer--"I want to look at some tunics."_ _Irish Floorwalker--"We don't carry musical instruments."_ * * * That Tennessee congressman who was arrested charged with operating an automobile while pifflicated, would reply that when he voted for prohibition he was representing his constituents, not his private thirst. Have we not, many times, in the good old days in Vermont, seen representatives rise with difficulty from their seats to cast their vote for prohibition? One can be pretty drunk and still be able to articulate "Ay." * * * A new drug, Dihydroxyphenylethylmethylamine, sounds as if all it needed was a raisin. * * * The Gluck aria, which Mme. Homer has made famous, was effectively cited by the critic Hanslick to show that in vocal music the subject is determined only by the words. He wrote: "At a time when thousands (among whom there were men like Jean Jacques Rousseau) were moved to tears by the air from 'Orpheus'-- 'J'ai perdu mon Eurydice, Rien n'égale mon malheur,' Boyé, a contemporary of Gluck, observed that precisely the same melody would accord equally well, if not better, with words conveying exactly the reverse, thus-- 'J'ai trouvé mon Eurydice, Rien n'égale mon bonheur.' "We, for our part, are not of the opinion that in this case the composer is quite free from blame, inasmuch as music most assuredly possesses accents which more truly express a feeling of profound sorrow. If however, from among innumerable instances, we selected the one quoted, we have done so because, in the first place, it affects the composer who is credited with the greatest dramatic accuracy; and, secondly, because several generations hailed this very melody as most correctly rendering the supreme grief which the words express." * * * Arthur Shattuck sued for appreciation in Fond du Lac the other evening, playing, according to the Reporter, "a plaintiff melody with great tenderness." The jury returned a verdict in his favor without leaving their seats. * * * Reports of famine in China have recalled a remark about its excessive population. If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point the procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by another generation would have grown up. * * * "Say it with handkerchiefs," advertises a merchant in Goshen, Ind. That is, if the idea you wish to convey is that you have a cold in your head. * * * THE SOIL OF KANSAS. [From the Kansas Farmer.] Formed by the polyps of a shallow, summer sea; fixed by the subtile chemistry of the air, and comminuted by the Æolian geology of the Great Plains, the soil of Kansas has been one of man's richest possessions. Why prose? The soil of Kansas, the Creator's masterpiece, invites to song. Frinstance-- Formed by the polyps of a summer sea, Fixed by the subtile chemistry of air, Ground by Æolian geology, The soil of Kansas is beyond compare! * * * THE GOOD OLD DAYS. Sir: An old stage hand at the Eau Claire opry house was talking. "No, sir, you don't see the actors to-day like we used to. Why, when Booth and Barrett played here you could hear them breathe way up in the fly gallery." E. C. M. * * * "WHAT THE LA HELLE!" [From the Kankakee Republican.] He helped tramp the old Hindenburg line, but this time, beating it on the strains of "Allons enfant de la Patrie le Jour de Gloire est de Triomphe et Arrivee!" * * * Here is a characteristic bit of Vermontese that we picked up. A native was besought to saw some wood, but he declined. The owner of the wood offered double price for the sawing, and still the native declined. He was pressed for a reason, and this was it: "Damned if I'll humor a man." * * * "It is not moral. It is immoral," declared an editorial colleague; and a reader is reminded of Lex Iconles, the old Greek baker of Grammer's Gap, Ark., who used to display in his window the enticing sign: "Doughnuts. Different and yet not the same." * * * The mind of man is subject to many strange delusions, and one of these is that the stock market has a bottom. * * * The manufacturer of a certain automobile advertises that his vehicle "will hold five ordinary people." And, as a matter of fact, it usually does. * * * The Westminster Gazette headlines "The Intolerable Dullness of Country Life in Ireland." And Irene wonders what they would call excitement. * * * An advertisement of dolls mentions, superfluously, that "some may not last the day." One does not expect them to. * * * The London Mendicity Society estimates that £100,000 is given away haphazard every year to street beggars, and that the average beggar probably earns more than the average working man. There is talk of the beggars forming a union. A beggars' strike would be a fearsome thing. * * * I want to be a diplomat And with the envoys stand, A-wetting of my whistle in A desiccated land. The London Busman Story. _I.--As George Meredith might have related it._ "Stop!" she signalled. The appeal was comprehensible, and the charioteer, assiduously obliging, fell to posture of checking none too volant steeds. You are to suppose her past meridian, nearer the twilight of years, noteworthy rather for matter than manner; and her visage, comparable to the beef of England's glory, well you wot. This one's descent was mincing, hesitant, adumbrating dread of disclosures--these expectedly ample, columnar, massive. The day was gusty, the breeze prankant; petticoats, bandbox, umbrella were to be conciliated, managed if possible; no light task, you are to believe. "'Urry, marm!" The busman's tone was patiently admonitory, dispassionate. A veteran in his calling, who had observed the ascending and descending of a myriad matrons, in playful gales. "'Urry, marm!" The fellow was without illusions; he had reviewed more twinkling columns than a sergeant of drill. Indifference his note, leaning to ennui. He said so, bluntly, piquantly, in half a dozen memorable words, fetching yawn for period. The lady jerked an indignant exclamation, and completed, rosily precipitate, her passage to the pave. _II.--As Henry James might have written it._ We, let me ask, what are we, the choicer of spirits as well as the more frugal if not the undeservedly impoverished, what, I ask, are we to do now that the hansom has disappeared, as they say, from the London streets and the taxicab so wonderfully yet extravagantly taken its place? Is there, indeed, else left for us than the homely but hallowed 'bus, as we abbreviatedly yet all so affectionately term it--the 'bus of one's earlier days, when London was new to the unjaded sensorium and "Europe" was so wonderfully, so beautifully dawning on one's so avid and sensitive consciousness? And fate, which has left us the 'bus--but oh, in what scant and shabby measure!--has left us, too, the weather that so densely yet so congruously "goes with it"--the weather adequately enough denoted by the thick atmosphere, the slimy pavements, the omnipresent unfurled umbrella and the stout, elderly woman intent upon gaining, at cost of whatever risk or struggle, her place and portion among the moist miscellany to whom the dear old 'bus-- But perhaps I have lost the thread of my sentence. Ah, yes--that "stout, elderly woman"; so superabundant whether as a type or as an individual; so prone--or "liable"--to impinge tyrannously upon the consciousness of her fellow-traveller, and in no less a degree upon that of the public servant, who, from his place aloft, guides, as it is phrased, the destinies of the conveyance. It was, indeed, one of the most notable of these--a humble friend of my own--who had the fortune to make the acute, recorded, historic observation which, with the hearty, pungent, cursory brevity and point of his class and _métier_--the envy of the painstaking, voluminous analyst and artist of our period-- But again I stray. She was climbing up, or climbing down, perplexed equally, as I gather, by the management of her _parapluie_ and of her--_enfin_, her petticoats. The candid anxiety of her round, underdone face, as she so wonderfully writhed to maintain the standard of pudicity dear--even vital--to the matron of the British Isles appealed--vividly, though mutely--to the forbearance that, seeing, would still seem _not_ to see, her foot, her ankle, her _mollet_--as I early learned to say in Paris, where, however, so exigent a modesty is scarcely ... well, scarcely. "Madam," the gracious fellow said in effect, "_ne vous gênez pas_." Then he went on to assure her briefly that he was an elderly man; that he had "held the ribbons," as they phrase it, for several years; that many were the rainy days in London; that each of these placed numerous women--elderly or younger--in the same involuntary predicament as that from which she herself had suffered; and that so far as he personally was concerned he had long since ceased to take any extreme delight in the-- _Bref_, he was charming; he renewed my fading belief--fading, as I had thought, disastrously but immitigably--in the capacity of the Anglo-Saxon for _esprit_; and I am glad indeed to have taken a line or so to record his _mot_. _III.--As finally elucidated by Arnold Bennett._ Maria Wickwyre, of the Five Towns, emerged from muddy Bombazine Lane and stood in the rain and wind at Pie Corner, eighty-four yards from the door of St. Jude's chapel, in the Strand. She was in London! Yes, she was on that spot, she and none other. It might have been somewhere else; it might have been somebody else. But it wasn't. Wonderful! The miracle of Life overcame her. She had arms. Two of them. They were big and round, like herself. One held a large parcel ("package" for the American edition); the other, an umbrella. She also had two legs. She stood on them. If they had been absent, or if they had weakened, she would have collapsed. But they held her up. Ah, the mysteries of existence! More than ever was she conscious of her firm, strong underpinning. Maria waved her umbrella and her parcel and stopped a 'bus. The driver was elderly, wrinkled, weatherbeaten. Maria got in and rode six furlongs and some yards to Mooge Road, and then she stopped the 'bus to get out. If she was conscious of her upper members and their charges, she was still more conscious of her lower ones. If she had her parcel and her umbrella to think about, she also had her stockings and petticoats to consider. The wind blew, the rain drizzled, the driver looked around, wondering why Maria didn't get out and have done with it. "If he should see them!" she gasped. (You know what she meant by "them.") Her round, broad face mutely implored the 'busman to look the other way. He wearily closed his eyes. He had been rumbling through the Strand for thirty years. "Lor', mum," he said, "legs ain't no treat to me!" Maria collapsed, after all, and took the 4:29 for home that same afternoon. A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may._ APRILLY. Whan that Aprillè with hise shourès soote The droghte of March had percèd to the roote, I druv a motor thro' Aprillè's bliz Somme forty mile, and dam neere lyke to friz. * * * Harriet reports the first trustworthy sign of spring: friend husband on the back porch Sunday morning removing last year's mud from his golf shoes. * * * Old Doc Oldfield of London prescribes dandelion leaves, eggs, lettuce, milk, and a few other things for people who would live long, and a Massachusetts centenarian offers, as her formula, "Don't worry and don't over-eat." But we, whose mission is to enlighten the world, rather than to ornament it, are more influenced by the experiment of Herbert Spencer. Persuaded to a vegetarian diet, he stuck at it for six months. Then reading over what he had written during that time, he thrust the manuscript into the fire and ordered a large steak with fried potatoes and mushrooms. * * * "SPRING HAS COME..." The trees were rocked by April's blast; A frozen robin fell, And twittered, as he breathed his last, "Lykelle, lykelle, lykelle." * * * BYRON WROTE MOST OF THIS. [From the Monticello Times.] Julf Husman, who has been busy for the past several months, building a fine new house and barn, celebrated their completion with a barn dance Wednesday night. "The beauty and chivalry" of Wayne and adjoining townships attended, and did "chase the glowing hours with flying feet," with as much enthusiasm and pleasure as did the guests "When Belgium's capital had gathered then and bright the lamps shone over fair women and brave men." * * * A CANNERY DANCE. [From the Iowa City Press.] "Fair women and brave men" circled hither and thither in the maze of the stately waltz and the festal two-step, and the dainty slippers kept graceful time with the strains of the exceptionally fine music of the hour. Lovely young women, with roses in their cheeks and their hair, caught the reflection of the radiant electric lights and the glory of the superb decorations, and their natural pulchritude was enhanced in impressiveness thereby. The "frou frou" of silks and satins; the enchanting orchestral offerings; the brilliant illuminations; the alluring decorations, and the intoxication of the dance made the event one of the most markedly successful in the history of the university. * * * FOR THE LAST DAY OF MARCH. Just before you go to bed, Push the clock an hour ahead. Little Mary. * * * Don't forget to set the time locks on your safes ahead an hour. Otherwise you'll be all mixed up. * * * At Ye Olde Colonial Inn, according to the Aurora Beacon-News, a special "Table de Haute" dinner was served last Sunday. And the Gem restaurant in St. Louis tells the world: "Our famous steaks tripled our seating capacity." * * * CHANCES, 2; ERRORS, 2. Sir: While in the Hotel Dyckman I noted a sign recommending the 85c dinner in the "Elizabethian Room." After a search I found the place, duly labeled "Elizabethean Room." D. K. M. * * * Just what does the trade jargon mean, "Experience essential but not necessary"? We see it frequently in the advertising columns. * * * A variant of the form, "experience essential but not necessary," is used by the Racine Times-Call, as follows: "Wanted, secretary-treasurer for a local music corporation; must also have a knowledge of music, but not essential." * * * As curious as the advertising form, "experience essential but not necessary," is the form used by the Daily News: "Responsible for no debts contracted by no other than myself." * * * The provincialism indicated by the title of the pop song, "Good bye, Broadway! Hello, France!" reminds us of the headline in a New York paper some years ago: "Halley's Comet Rushing on New York." * * * "The love, the worship of truth is the most essential thing in journalism," says the editor of Le Matin. Or, as the ads read, "love of truth essential but not necessary." * * * The Hopkinsville, Ky., News is a Negro paper, and its motto is: "Man is made of clay, and like a meerschaum pipe is more valuable when highly colored." * * * From the letter of a colored gentleman of leisure, apropos of his wife's suit for divorce: "P. S.: Also, honey, i hope while others have your company i may have your heart." Here is a refrain for a sentimental song. * * * SMACK! SMACK! Sir: May I suggest that the matrimonial bureau of the Academy take steps to introduce Miss Irene V. Smackem of Washington, D.C., and Mr. Kissinger of Fergus Falls, Minn.? They would make a perfect pair. Kaye. * * * _MARCH._ _With heart of gold and yellow frill, Arcturus, like a daffodil, Now dances in the field of gray Upon the East at close of day; A joyous harbinger to bring The many promises of spring!_ W. * * * If no one else cares, the compositor and proof reader will be interested to know that Ignacy Seczupakiewicz brought suit in Racine against Praxida Seczupakiewicz. * * * Referring to Beethoven's anniversary, Ernest Newman remarks that "a truly civilized community would probably celebrate a centenary by prohibiting all performances of the master's works for three or five years, so that the public's deadening familiarity with them might wear off. That would be the greatest service it could do him." * * * Newman, by the way, is a piano-player fan, contending that when the principles of beautiful tone production are understood, mechanical means will probably come nearer to perfection than the human hand. Mr. Arthur Whiting, considering the horseless pianoforte some time ago, was also enthusiastic. The h. p. is entirely self-possessed, and has even more platform imperturbability than the applauded virtuoso. "After a few introductory sounds, which have nothing to do with the music, and without relaxing the lines of its inscrutable face, the insensate artist proceeds to show its power. Its security puts all hand playing to shame; it never hesitates, it surmounts the highest difficulties without changing a clutch." * * * Dixon's Elks were entertained t'other evening by the Artists Trio, and the Telegraph observes that "one of the remarkable facts concerning this company is that while they are finished artists they nevertheless are delightful entertainers." * * * We seldom listen to a canned-music machine, but when we do we realize the great educational value of the discs. They advise us (especially the records of singing comedians) what to avoid. * * * The prejudices against German music will deprive many gluttons for punishment of the opportunity to hear "Parsifal." We remember one lady who was concerned because Dalmorés stood for a long time with his back to the audience. "Why does he have to do that?" she asked her companion. "Because," was the answer, "he shot the Holy Grail." * * * At a concert in Elmira, N. Y., according to the Telegram, William Kincade sang "Tolstoi's Good Bye." Some one sings it every now and then. * * * Among the forty-six professors removed from the universities of Greece were, we understand, all those holding the chair of Greek. Another blow at the classics. * * * LITERATURE. A great deal of very good writing has been done by invalids, but it is not likely that anybody ever produced a line worth remembering while suffering with a plain cold. * * * We were saying to our friend Dr. Empedocles that we kept our enthusiasms green by never taking anything very seriously. "That's interesting," said he: "I, too, have kept my enthusiasm fresh, and I have always taken everything seriously." The two notions seemed irreconcilable, but we presently agreed that by having a great number and variety of enthusiasms one is not likely to ride any of them to death. We all know persons who wear out an enthusiasm by taking it as solemnly as they would a religious rite. * * * We were sure that the headline, "Mint at Chicago Greatly Needed, Houston Says," would inspire more than one reader to remark that the mint is the least important part of the combination. * * * We are reminded of the experience of a friend who has a summer place in Connecticut. At church the pastor announced a fund for some war charity, and asked for contributions. Our friend sent in fifty dollars, and a few days later inquired of the pastor how much money had been raised, "Fifty-five dollars and seventy-five cents," was the answer. The pastor had contributed five dollars. * * * SONG. [In the manner of Laura Blackburn.] _I quested Love with timid feet, And many qualms and perturbations-- Hoping yet fearing we should meet, Because I knew my limitations._ _When Love I spied I fetched a sigh-- A sigh a Tristan might expire on: "I must apologize," said I, "For not resembling Georgie Byron."_ _Love laughed and said, "You know I'm blind," And pinched my ear, the little cutie! "Her heart and yours shall be entwined, Tho' you were twice as shy on beauty."_ * * * Throwing self-interest to the winds, a Chicago sweetshop advertises: "That we may have a part in the effort to bring back normal conditions and reduce the high cost of living, our prices on chocolates and bon-bons are now one dollar and fifty cents per pound." * * * Persons who are so o. f. as to like rhyme with their poetry may discover another reason for their preference in the following passage, which Edith Wyatt quotes from Oscar Wilde: "Rime, that exquisite echo which in the Muse's hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rime, which in the hands of the real artist becomes not merely a material element of material beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rime which can turn man's utterance to the speech of gods"-- * * * We promised Miss Wyatt that the next time we happened on the parody of Housman's "Lad," we would reprint it; and yesterday we stumbled on it. Voila!-- THE BELLS OF FROGNAL LANE. They sound for early Service The bells of Frognal Lane; And I am thinking of the day I shot my cousin Jane. At Frognal Lane the Service Begins at half-past eight, And some folk get there early While others turn up late. But, come they late or early, I ne'er shall be again The careless chap of days gone by Before I murdered Jane. * * * We have been looking over "Forms Suggested for Telegraph Messages," issued by the Western Union. While more humorous than perhaps was intended, they fall short of the forms suggested by Max Beerbohm, in "How Shall I Word It?" As for example: LETTER IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF WEDDING PRESENT. Dear Lady Amblesham, Who gives quickly, says the old proverb, gives twice. For this reason I have purposely delayed writing to you, lest I should appear to thank you more than once for the small, cheap, hideous present you sent me on the occasion of my recent wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china would convict you of tastelessness merely; were you a blind woman, of nothing but an odious parsimony. As you have normal eyesight and more than normal wealth, your gift to me proclaims you at once a Philistine and a miser (or rather did so proclaim you until, less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from its wrappings of tissue paper, I took it to the open window and had the satisfaction of seeing it shattered to atoms on the pavement). But stay! I perceive a flaw in my argument. Perhaps you were guided in your choice by a definite wish to insult me. I am sure, on reflection, that this is so. _I shall not forget._ Yours, etc. Cynthia Beaumarsh. PS. My husband asks me to tell you to warn Lord Amblesham to keep out of his way or to assume some disguise so complete that he will not be recognized by him and horsewhipped. PPS. I am sending copies of this letter to the principal London and provincial newspapers. * * * We hope that Max Beerbohm read far enough in Bergson to appreciate what Mr. Santayana says of that philosopher. He seems to feel, wrote G. S. (we quote from memory), that all systems of philosophy existed in order to pour into him, which is hardly true, and that all future systems would flow out of him, which is hardly necessary. * * * To a great number of people all reasoning and comment is superficial that is not expressed in the jargon of sociology and political economy. Expand a three-line paragraph in that manner and it becomes profound. * * * SING A SONG OF SPRINGTIME. Sing a song of springtime, things begin to grow; Four and twenty bluebirds darting to and fro; When the morning opened the birds began to sing. Wasn't that a pretty day to set before a king! The King was on the golf links, chopping up the ground; The Queen was in the garden, planting seeds around. When the King returned, after many wasted hours, "Don't ever say," the Queen exclaimed, "that you are fond of flowers." * * * Mike Neckyoke drives a taxi in Rhinelander, Wis., and you have only one guess at what he used to drive. * * * From Philadelphia comes word of the nuptials of Mr. Tunis and Miss Fisch. Tunis, we leapingly conclude, is the masculine form! * * * We have the card of another chimney sweep, who is "sole agent for wind in chimneys and furnaces." His name is MacDraft, which may be another nom de flume. * * * The anti-fat brigade may be intrigued to learn that Mr. George Squibb of Wareham, Eng., sought death in the sea at Swanage, but was unable to stay under the water because of his corpulence. * * * Not long ago a mule broke a leg by kicking a man in the head, and this week a horse broke a leg in the same way; in each case the man was not seriously injured. Is this merely luck, or is evolution modifying the human coco? * * * More building is the solution of the unemployment problem. The unemployed are never so occupied and contented as when watching the construction of a sky-scraper. * * * Her publishers having announced that Ellen Glasgow has "gone into leather," Keith Preston explains that going into leather is "like receiving the accolade, taking the veil, or joining the American Academy of Arts and Letters." And we suppose that when one goes into ooze leather, or is padded, one may be said to be fini. * * * A FEW MORE "BEST BAD LINES." Why leapest thou, Why leapest thou So high within my breast? Oh, stay thee now, Oh, stay thee now, Thou little bounder, rest! --Ruskin (at 12). Something had happened wrong about a bill, Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill, So to amend it I was told to go To seek the firm of Clutterbuck & Co. --George Crabbe. But let me not entirely overlook The pleasure gathered from the rudiments Of geometric science. --Wordsworth. Israel in ancient days Not only had a view Of Sinai in a blaze, But heard the Gospel too. --Cowper. Flashed from his bed the electric message came; He is no better; he is much the same. --A Cambridge prize poem. * * * A household hinter advises that "if the thin white curtains blow into the gas and catch fire sew small lead weights into the seams." Before doing this, however, it would be wise to turn in an alarm. * * * The orchestra was playing too loud to suit the manager, so he complained to the leader. "The passage is written in forte," said the latter. "Well, make it about thirty-five." * * * SEIZE HIM, SCOUTS! Sir: I submit for the consideration of the new school of journalism the following, recently perpetrated by an aspiring young journalist: "Information has been received that Mrs. Blank, who was spending a vacation of several weeks in Colorado, was killed in an automobile accident over long distance telephone by her husband." Calcitrosus. * * * "THAT'S GOOD." Sir: A man and three girls were waiting for the bus. The driver slowed up long enough to call, "Full house!" "Three queens!" responded the waiting cit, and turned disgustedly away. X. T. C. * * * WHY BANK CLERKS ARE TIRED. Sir: Voice over the telephone: "Please send me two check books." B. C.: "Large or small?" V. o. t. t.: "Well, I don't write such very large checks, but sometimes they amount to a hundred dollars." Jane. * * * "Why not make room for daddy?" queries the editor of the Emporia Gazette, with a break in his voice. Daddy, we hardly need say, is the silently suffering member of the household who hasn't a large closet all to himself, with rows of, shiny hooks on which to hang his duds. Ah, yes, why not make room for daddy? It is impossible to contemplate daddy's pathetic condition without bursting into tears. Votes for women? Huh! Hooks for men! * * * "NATION-WIDE." How anybody can abide That punk expression, "nation-wide"-- How one can view unhorrified That vile locution, nation-wide, I cannot see. I almost died When first I spotted nation-wide. On every hand, on every side, On every page, is nation-wide. To everything it is applied; No matter what, it's nation-wide. The daily paper's pet and pride: They simply dote on nation-wide. It seems if each with t'other vied To make the most of nation-wide. No doubt the proof-room Argus-eyed Approves the "style" of nation-wide. My colleagues fall for it, but I'd Be damned if I'd use nation-wide. It gets my goat, and more beside, That phrase atrocious, nation-wide. Abomination double-dyed, Away, outrageous "nation-wide"! * * * Speaking of local color, B. Humphries Brown and Bonnie Blue were wedded in Indianapolis. * * * Married, in Evansville, Ind., Ellis Shears and Golden Lamb. Something might be added about wool-gathering. * * * Embarrassed by the riches of modern literature at our elbow, we took refuge in Jane Austen, and re-read "Mansfield Park," marvelling again at its freshness. They who hold that Mark Twain was not a humorist, or that he was at best an incomplete humorist, have an argument in his lack of appreciation of Jane Austen. * * * One of the most delightful things about the author of "Mansfield Park" that we have seen lately is an extract from "Personal Aspects of Jane Austen," by Miss Austen-Leigh. "Each of the novels," she says, "gives a description, closely interwoven with the story and concerned with its principal characters, of error committed, conviction following, and improvement effected, all of which may be summed up in the word 'Repentance.'" * * * Almost as good is Miss Austen-Leigh's contradiction of the statement that sermons wearied Jane. She quotes the author's own words: "I am very fond of Sherlock's Sermons, and prefer them to almost any." What a lot of amusement she must have had, shooting relatives and friends through the hat! * * * Was there ever a character more delightfully detestable than Mrs. Norris? Was there ever another character presented, so alive and breathing, in so few pen strokes? Jane Austen had no need of psychoanalysis. * * * As for William Lyons Phelps' remark, which a contrib has quoted, that "too much modern fiction is concerned with unpleasant characters whom one would not care to have as friends," how would you like to spend a week-end with the characters in "The Mayor of Casterbridge"? With the exception of the lady in "Two on a Tower," and one or two others, Mr. Hardy's characters are not the sort that one would care to be cast away with; yet will we sit the night out, book in hand, to follow their sordid fortunes. * * * "What I want to know is," writes Fritillaria, "whether you think Jane Austen drew Edmund and Fanny for models, or knew them for the unconscionable prigs they are. I am collecting votes." Well, we think that Jane knew they were prigs, but nevertheless had, like ourself, a warm affection for Fanny. Fanny Price, Elizabeth Bennet, and Anne (we forget her last name) are three of the dearest girls in fiction. * * * We are reminded by F. B. T. that the last name of the heroine of "Persuasion" was Elliott. Anne is our favorite heroine--except when we think of Clara Middleton. * * * Space has been reserved for us in the archæological department of the Field Museum for Pre-Dry wheezes, which should be preserved for a curious posterity. We have filed No. 1, which runs: "First Comedian: 'Well, what made you get drunk in the first place?' Second Comedian: 'I didn't get drunk in the first place. I got drunk in the last place.'" * * * Our budding colyumist (who, by the way, has not thanked us for our efforts in his behalf) will want that popular restaurant gag: "Use one lump of sugar and stir like hell. We don't mind the noise." * * * "What," queries R. W. C., "has become of the little yellow crabs that floated in the o. f. oyster stew?" Junsaypa. We never found out what became of the little gold safety pins that used to come with neckties. * * * An innovation at the Murdock House in Shawano, Wis., is "Bouillon in cups," instead of the conventional tin dipper. * * * By the way, has any candid merchant ever advertised a Good Riddance Sale? * * * Much has been written about Mr. Balfour in the last twelvemonth; and Mr. Balfour himself has published a book, a copy of which we are awaiting with more or less impatience. Mr. Balfour is not considered a success as a statesman, because he has always looked upon politics merely as a game; and Frank Harris once wrote that if A. B. had had to work for a living he might have risen to original thought--whatever that may imply. * * * What we have always marveled at is Balfour's capacity for mental detachment. In the first year of the war he found time to deliver, extempore, the Gifford lectures, and in the next year he published "Theism and Humanism." It is said, of course, that he had a great gift for getting or allowing other people to do his work in the war council and the admiralty; but that does not entirely explain his brimming mind. * * * "There is a fine old man," as one of our readers reported his Irish gardener as saying of A. B. "Did you know Mr. Balfour?" he was asked. "Did I know him?" was the reply. "Didn't I help rotten-egg him in Manchester twinty-five years ago!" * * * Col. Fanny Butcher relates that the average reader who patronizes the New York public library prefers Conan Doyle's detective stories to any others. Quite naturally. There is more artistry in Poe, and the tales about the Frenchman, Arsène Lupin, are ten times more ingenious than Doyle's; but Doyle has infused the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the undefinable something known as romance, and that has preserved them. The great majority of detective stories are merely ingenious. * * * Col. Butcher says she uses "The Crock of Gold" to test the minds of people. A friend of ours employs "Zuleika Dobson" for the same purpose. What literary acid do _you_ apply? * * * Our compliments to Mrs. Borah, who possesses a needed sense of humor. "If," she is reported as saying to her husband, "if it were not for the pleasures of life you might enjoy it." * * * A librarian confides to us that she was visited by a young lady who wished to see a _large_ map of France. She was writing a paper on the battlefields of France for a culture club, and she just couldn't find Flanders' Fields and No Man's Land on any of the maps in her books. * * * A sign, reported by B. R. J., in a Cedar Rapids bank announces: "We loan money on Liberty bonds. No other security required." Showing that here and there you will find a banker who is willing to take a chance. * * * The first object of the National Parks association is "to fearlessly defend the national parks and monuments against assaults of private interests." May we not hope that the w. k. infinitive also may be preserved intact? * * * A missionary from the Chicago Woman's Club lectured in Ottawa on better English and less slang, and the local paper headed its story: "Bum Jabber Binged on Beezer by Jane With Trick Lingo." * * * Young Grimes tells us that he would like to share in the advantages of Better Speech weeks, but does not know where to begin. We have started him off with the word "February." If at the end of the week he can pronounce it Feb-ru-ary we shall give him the word "address." * * * "This, being Better English week, everyone is doing their best to improve their English."--Quincy, Mich., Herald. Still, Jane Austen did it. * * * BETTER ENGLISH IN THE BEANERY. Waiter: "Small on two--well!" Chef: "Small well on two!" Tip. * * * HAPPY THOUGHT. This world is so full of a number of singers, We need not be bluffed any longer by ringers. The Magic Kit. A FAIRY TALE FOR SYMPATHETIC ELDERS. I. Once upon a time, not far removed from yesterday, there lived a poor book reviewer named Abner Skipp. He was a kindly man and an excellent husband and a most congenial soul to chat with, for he possessed a store of information on the most remote and bootless subjects drawn from his remarkable library--an accumulation of volumes sent to him for review, and which he had been unable to dispose of to the dealers in second-hand books. For you are to understand that too little literary criticism is done on a cash basis. Occasionally a famous author, like Mr. Howells, is paid real money to write something about Mr. James, or Mr. James is substantially rewarded for writing about Mr. Howells, and heads of departments and special workers are handsomely remunerated; but the journeyman reviewer is paid in books; and these are the source of his income. Thus, every morning in the busy season, or perhaps once a week when trade was dull, Abner Skipp journeyed from the suburbs to the city with his pack of books on his back, and made the rounds of the second-hand shops, disposing of his wares for whatever they would fetch. Novels, especially what are known as the "best sellers," commanded good prices if they were handled, like fruit, without delay; but they were such perishable merchandise that oftentimes a best seller was dead before Abner could get it to market; and as he frequently reviewed the same novel for half a dozen employers, and therefore had half a dozen copies of it in his pack, the poor wretch was sadly out of pocket, being compelled to sell the dead ones to the junkman for a few pennies. Abner Skipp was an industrious artisan and very skillful at his trade; working at top speed, he could review more than a hundred books in a day of eight hours. In a contest of literary critics held in Madison Square Garden, New York, Abner won first prize in all three events--reviewing by publisher's slip, reviewing by cover, and reviewing by title page. But shortly after this achievement he had had the misfortune to sprain his right arm in reviewing a new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which accident so curtailed his earning power that he fell behind in a money way, and was compelled to mortgage his home. But Abner Skipp was a cheerful, buoyant soul; and as his arm grew better and he was again able to wield the implements of his trade, he set bravely to work to mend his broken fortunes. II. If Abner Skipp had had nothing but popular novels to review he would assuredly have perished of starvation, but frequently he received a medical work, or a history, or a volume of sportive philosophy by William James, or some such valuable work, which he could sell for a round sum. There was always plenty to do--all the best magazines employed him, and twice in the year--a month in spring and a month in fall--books came to him in such numbers that the expressman dumped them into the house through a shute like so many coals. Mrs. Skipp assisted her husband all she could, but being a frail little woman she was able to work on only the lightest fiction. Angelica, the oldest daughter, cleared the book bin of a good deal of poetry and gift books, and even Grandpa Skipp was intrusted with a few juveniles. But none of the family was more helpful than little Harold, who, after school time, worked side by side with his father, trimming the ready made review slips which publishers send out with books, and seeing that the paste pot never got empty or the paste too thick. Harold, as his father often proudly observed, was a born book reviewer. From infancy it was observed that the outside of a book always interested him more than the inside, and once when his school teacher directed him to write a sentence containing the word "book," he wrote: "The book is attractively bound and is profusely illustrated." One evening, in the very busiest week of the busy season, little Harold's was the only bright face at the supper table. Abner Skipp had had a bad day in the city; Mrs. Skipp and Angelica were exhausted from reviewing and household cares, and Grandpa was peevish because Abner had taken the "Pea Green Fairy Book" away from him and given him instead a "Child's History of the Congo Free State." "What is the matter, Abner?" his wife asked him when the others of the family had retired. "Does your arm hurt you again?" "No, wife," replied Abner Skipp. "My arm does not trouble me; I have handled only the lightest literature for the last fortnight. Alas! it is the same old worry. The interest on the mortgage will be due again next week, and in spite of the fact that the cellar is so full of books that I can scarcely get into it, we have not a dollar above the sum required to meet our monthly bills." III. "Alas!" exclaimed the hapless Abner Skipp, next morning, "it seems as if nothing was being published this fall except popular novels, and I obtained an average of less than twenty cents on the last sackload I took to town, not counting the dead ones which I sold to the junkman." "If only there were some way of keeping them alive for a few days longer!" said Mrs. Skipp. "If one could only stimulate the heart action by injecting strychnine!" "Or even embalm them," said Abner, sharing his wife's grewsome humor. "But no; it is impossible to deceive a second-hand bookseller. He seems to know to the minute when a novel is dead, and declines to turn his shop into a literary morgue." The poor man sighed. "If my employers would send me a few volumes of biography, or an encyclopedia, or a set of Shakespeare, we could easily meet the interest on the mortgage." "I wish, Abner, that I could be of more help to you," said Mrs. Skipp. "If I could break myself of the habit of glancing at the last chapter of a novel before reviewing it, I could do ever so many more. Angelica is even more thoughtless than I. The poor child declares that some of the stories look so interesting that she forgets her work completely and actually begins to read them. As for Grandpa, he always was a great reader, and consequently has no head at all for reviewing." "If Harold were a few years older----" mused Abner. "But there, wife, we must not spend in vain repining the scant hours allotted to us for sleep. Perhaps the expressman will bring us some scientific books to-morrow. Quite a number were on Appletree's fall list." Abner Skipp kissed his wife affectionately, and presently the house was dark and still. Mrs. Skipp, worn out by the day's work, went quickly to sleep; but Abner, haunted by the mortgage, passed a restless night. Several times he fancied he heard a noise in the cellar, as if the expressman were dumping another ton of books into the bin. At last, just before dawn, there came a loud thump, as if a volume of Herbert Spencer's Autobiography had fallen to the floor. Getting out of bed quietly so that his weary wife should not be disturbed, Abner went to the cellar stairway and listened. A clicking sound was distinctly audible, and a faint light gleamed below. IV. Cautiously descending the stair, Abner Skipp came upon so strange a sight that with difficulty he restrained himself from crying out his astonishment. Little Harold was seated before a queer mechanism, which resembled a typewriter, spinning wheel, and adding machine combined, engaged in turning the tons of books around him into reviews, as the miller's daughter spun the straw into gold, in the ancient tale of "Rumpelstiltzkin." "Child, what does this mean?" cried the bewildered Abner Skipp. "Father," replied Harold, "I am lifting the mortgage. Not long ago I saw among the advertisements in the Saturday Home Herald an announcement of a Magic Kit for book reviewers, with a capacity of 300 books per hour. Fortunately I had enough money in my child's bank to pay the first installment on this wonderful outfit which came to-day. Is it not a marvelous invention, father? Even Grandpa could work it!" Trembling with eagerness Abner Skipp bent over the Magic Kit, while little Harold explained the working of the various parts. To review a book all that was necessary was to press a few keys, pull a lever or two, and the thing was done. Reviewing by publisher's slip was simplicity itself; the slips were dropped into a hopper, and presently emerged neatly gummed to sheets of copy paper; and if an extract from the book were desired, a page was quickly torn out and fed in with the slip. Reviewing by title page was almost as rapid. The operator type-wrote the title, author's name, publisher, price, and number of pages, and then pulled certain levers controlling the necessary words and phrases, such as-- "This latest work is not likely to add to the author's reputation"; or-- "The book will appeal chiefly to specialists"; or-- "An excellent tale to while away an idle hour"; or-- "The book is attractively bound and is profusely illustrated." "Father," said little Harold, his face glowing, "to-morrow we will hire a furniture van and take all these books to the city." "My boy," cried Abner Skipp, folding his little son in his arms, "you are the little fairy in our home. Surely no other could have done this job more neatly or with greater dispatch; and no fairy wand could be more wonder-working than this truly Magic Kit." A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _"Fay ce que vouldras."_ TO B. L. T. (_Quintus Horatius Flaccus loquitur._) Maecenas sprang from royal line, You spring a Line diurnal. (Perhaps my joke is drawn too fine For readers of your journal.) But what I started out to say, Across the gulf of ages, Is that, in our old Roman day, My patron paid me wages. No barren wreath of fame was mine When Mac approved my stuff, But casks of good Falernian wine, And slaves and gold enough. And last, to keep the wolf away And guard my age from harm, He gave me in his princely way My little Sabine farm. But now, forsooth, your merry crew-- _O Tempora! O Mores!_-- What do they ever get from you-- Your Laura, Pan, Dolores? They fill the Line with verse and wheeze, To them your fame is due. What do they ever get for these? Maecenas? Ha! Ha! _You?_ So as I quaff my spectral wine, At ease beside the Styx, Would I contribute to the Line? Nequaquam! Nunquam! Nix! Campion. * * * Our compliments to Old Man Flaccus, whose witty message reminds us to entreat contribs to be patient, as we are snowed under with offerings. For a week or more we have been trying to horn into the column with some verses of our own composing. * * * BRIGHT SAYINGS OF MOTHER. My respected father came to breakfast on New Year's Day remarking that he had treated himself to a present by donning a new pair of suspenders, whereupon mother remarked: "Well braced for the New Year, as it were!" C. T. S. * * * After some years of editing stories of events in high society, a gentleman at an adjacent desk believes he has learned the chief duty of a butler. It is to call the police. * * * "THAT STRAIN AGAIN--IT HAD A DYING SNORT." Sir: Speaking of soft music and the pearly gates, S. T. Snortum is owner and demonstrator of the music store at St. Peter, Minnesota. S. W. E. * * * Warren, O., has acquired a lady barber, and dinged if her name isn't Ethel Gillette. * * * No doubt the Manistee News-Advocate has its reason for running the "hogs received" news under the heading "Hotel Arrivals." * * * "I see by an announcement by the Columbia Mills that window shades are down," communicates W. H. B. "Can it be that the Columbia Mills people are ashamed of something?" Mebbe. Or perhaps they are fixing prices. * * * "For the lovamike," requests the Head Scene-Shifter, "keep the Admirable Crichton out of the Column. We have twenty-five presses, and it takes a guard at each press to prevent it from appearing Admiral Crichton." * * * Pittsburgh Shriners gave a minstrel show the other night, and the inspired reporter for the Post mentions that "an intermission separated the two parts and broke the monotony." * * * A Bach chaconne is on the orchestra programme this week. Some one remarked that he did not care for chaconnes, which moved us to quote what some one else (we think it was Herman Devries) said: "Chaconne à son goût." * * * "Pond and Pond Donate $500 to Union Pool Fund."--Ann Arbor item. Quite so. * * * If we had not been glancing through the real estate notes we should never have known that Mystical Schriek lives in Evansville, Ind. * * * From the Illinois Federal Reporter: "Village of Westville vs. Albert Rainwater. Mr. Rainwater is charged with violation of the ordinance in regard to the sale of soft drinks." Can Al have added a little hard water to the mixture? * * * MEMORY TESTS FOR THE HOME. Sir: Friend wife was naming authors of various well known novels, as I propounded their titles. Follows the result: Me: "The Last Days of Pompeii." She: "Dante." "Les Miserables." "Huguenot." "Adam Bede." "Henry George." "Vanity Fair." "Why, that's in Ecclesiastes." "Ben Hur." "Rider Haggard." "The Pilgrim's Progress." "John Barleycorn." "Don Quixote." (No reply.) "Waverly." "Oh, did Waverly write that?" "Anna Karenina." "Count Leon Trotsky." J. C. * * * We see by the Fargo papers that Mrs. Bernt Wick gave a dinner recently, and we hope that Miss Candle, the w. k. night nurse, was among the guests. * * * LEVI BEIN' A GOOD SPORT. Sir: Levi Frost, the leading druggist of Milton Falls, Vt., set a big bottle of medicine in his show window with a sign sayin' he'd give a phonograph to anybody who could tell how many spoonfuls there was in the bottle. Jed Ballard was comin' downstreet, and when he seen the sign he went and he sez, sezzee, "Levi," sezzee, "if you had a spoon big enough to hold it all, you'd have just one spoonful in that bottle." And, by Judas Priest, Levi give him the phonograph right off. Hiram. * * * "Basing his sermon on the words of Gesta Romanorum, who in 1473 said, 'What I spent I had, what I kept I lost, what I gave I have,' the Rev. Albert H. Zimmerman," etc.--Washington Post. As students of the School of Journalism ought to know, the philosopher Gesta Romanorum was born in Sunny, Italy, although some historians claim Merry, England, and took his doctor's degree at the University of Vivela, in Labelle, France. His Latin scholarship was nothing to brag of, but he was an ingenious writer. He is best known, perhaps, as the author of the saying, "Rome was not built in a day," and the line which graced the flyleaf of his first edition, "Viae omniae in Romam adducunt." * * * "It is a great misfortune," says Lloyd George, "that the Irish and the English are never in the same temper at the same time." Nor is that conjuncture encouragingly probable. But there is hope. Energy is required for strenuous rebellion, and energy is converted into heat and dissipated. If, or as, the solar system is running down, its stock of energy is constantly diminishing; and so the Irish Question will eventually settle itself, as will every other mess on this slightly flattened sphere. * * * Whenever you read about England crumbling, turn to its automobile Blue Book and observe this: "It must be remembered that in all countries except England and New Zealand automobiles travel on the wrong side of the road." * * * The first sign of "crumbling" on the part of the British empire that we have observed is the welcome extended to the "quick lunch." That may get 'em. * * * _LOST AND FOUND._ [Song in the manner of Laura Blackburn.] _Whilst I mused in vacant mood By a wild-thyme banklet, Love passed glimmering thro' the wood, Lost her golden anklet._ _Followed I as fleet as dart With the golden token; But she vanished--and my heart, Like the clasp, is broken._ _Such a little hoop of gold! She ... but how compare her? Till Orion's belt grow cold I shall quest the wearer._ _Next my heart I've worn it since, More than life I prize it, And, like Cinderella's prince, I must advertise it._ * * * Would you mind contributing a small sum, say a dollar or two, to the Keats Memorial Fund. We thought not. It is a privilege and a pleasure. The object is to save the house in which the poet lived during his last years, and in which he did some of his best work. The names of all contributors will be preserved in the memorial house, so it would be a nice idea to send your dollar or two in the name of your small child or grandchild, who may visit Hampstead when he grows up. Still standing in the garden at Hampstead is the plum tree under which Keats wrote, "Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down." * * * Americans who speak at French should confine their conversation to other Americans similarly talented. They should not practise on French people, whose delicate ear is no more proof against impure accent than a stone is proof against dripping water. The mistake which English speaking people make is assuming that French is merely a language, whereas, even in Paris, the speaking of it as much as accomplishment as singing, or painting on china. Many gifted Frenchmen, like M. Viviani, Anatole France, and some other Academicians, speak French extremely well, but even these live in hope of improvement, of some day mastering the finest shades of nasality and cadence, the violet rays of rhythm. * * * Mr. Masefield, the poet, does not believe that war times nourish the arts. The human brain does its best work, he says, when men are happy. How perfectly true! Look at ancient Greece. She was continually at war, and what did the Grecians do for art? A few poets, a few philosophers and statesmen, a few sculptors, and the story is told. On the other hand, look at England in Shakespeare's time. The English people were inordinately happy, for there were no wars to depress them, barring a few little tiffs with the French and the Spanish, and one or two domestic brawls. The human brain does its best work when men are happy, indeed. There was Dante, a cheery old party. But why multiply instances? * * * Having read a third of H. M. Tomlinson's "The Sea and the Jungle," we pause to offer the uncritical opinion that this chap gets as good seawater into his copy as Conrad, and that, in the item of English, he can write rings around Joseph. * * * Like others who have traversed delectable landscapes and recorded their impressions, in memory or in notebooks, we have tried to communicate to other minds the "incommunicable thrill of things": a pleasant if unsuccessful endeavor. When you are new at it, you ascribe your failure to want of skill, but you come to realize that skill will not help you very much. You will do well if you hold the reader's interest in your narrative: you will not, except by accident, make him see the thing you have seen, or experience the emotion you experienced. * * * So vivid a word painter as Tomlinson acknowledges that the chance rewards which make travel worth while are seldom matters that a reader would care to hear about, for they have no substance. "They are no matter. They are untranslatable from the time and place. Such fair things cannot be taken from the magic moment. They are not provender for notebooks." * * * He quotes what the Indian said to the missionary who had been talking to him of heaven. "Is it like the land of the musk-ox in summer, when the mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very often?" These lakes are not charted, and the Indian heard the loon's call in his memory; but we could not better describe the delectable lands through which we have roamed. "When the mist is on the lakes and the loon cries very often." What traveler can better that? * * * Old Bill Taft pulled a good definition of a gentleman t'other day. A gentleman, said he, is a man who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally. * * * Mr. Generous is the claim agent for the New Haven railroad at New Britain, Conn., but a farmer whose cow wandered upon the rails tells us that he lost money by the settlement. * * * William Benzine, who lives near Rio, Wis., was filling his flivver tank by the light of a lantern when-- But need we continue? * * * Our notion of a person of wide tastes is one who likes almost everything that isn't popular. * * * Speaking of the Naval Station, you may have forgotten the stirring ballad which we wrote about it during the war. If so-- YEO-HEAVE-HO! It was a gallant farmer lad Enlisted in the navy. "Give me," said he, "the deep blue sea, The ocean wide and wavy!" A sailor's uniform he'd don, And never would he doff it. He packed his grip, and soon was on His way to Captain Moffett. In cap of white and coat of blue He labored for the nation, A member of the salty crew That worked the Naval Station. He soon became the best of tars, A seaman more than able, By sweeping streets, and driving cars, And waiting on the table. He guarded gates, and shoveled snow, And worked upon the highway. "_All_ lads," said he, "should plough the sea, And would if I had _my_ way." Week-end he took a trolley car, And to the city hied him, Alongside of another tar Who offered for to guide him. The train rolled o'er a trestle high, The river ran below him. "Well, I'll be blamed!" our tar exclaimed, And grabbed his pal to show him. "Yes, dash my weeping eyes!" he cried. "That's water, sure, by gravy! The first blue water I have spied Since joining of the navy!" * * * Now, "landsmen all," the moral's plain: Our navy still is arming, And if you'd plough the well known main, You'd best begin by farming. If you would head a tossing prow Among our navigators, Get up at morn and milk the cow, And yeo-heave-ho the 'taters. Do up your chores, and do 'em brown, And learn to drive a flivver; And some day, when you go to town, You'll see the raging river. * * * The speaker of the House of Commons, who, "trembling slightly with emotion," declared the sitting suspended, needs in his business the calm of the late Fred Hall. While Mr. Hall was city editor of this journal of civilization an irate subscriber came in and mixed it with a reporter. Mr. Hall approached the pair, who were rolling on the floor, and, peering near-sightedly at them, addressed the reporter: "Mr. Smith, when you have finished with this gentleman, there is a meeting at the Fourth Methodist church which I should like to have you cover." * * * In his informing and stimulating collection of essays, "On Contemporary Literature," recently published, Mr. Stuart P. Sherman squanders an entire chapter on Theodore Dreiser. It seems to us that he might have covered the ground and saved most of his space by quoting a single sentence from Anatole France, who, referring to Zola, wrote: "He has no taste, and I have come to believe that want of taste is that mysterious sin of which the Scripture speaks, the greatest of sins, the only one which will not be forgiven." * * * "What is art?" asked jesting Pilate. And before he could beat it for his chariot someone answered: "Art is a pitcher that you can't pour anything out of." * * * It is much easier to die than it is to take a vacation. A man who is summoned to his last long voyage may set his house in order in an hour: a few words, written or dictated, will dispose of his possessions, and his heirs will gladly attend to the details. This done, he may fold his hands on his chest and depart this vexatious life in peace. * * * It is quite another matter to prepare for a few weeks away from town. There are bills to be paid; the iceman and the milkman and the laundryman must be choked off, and the daily paper restrained from littering the doorstep. There is hair to be cut, and teeth to be tinkered, and so on. In short, it takes days to stop the machinery of living for a fortnight, and days to start it going again. But, my dear, one must have a change. * * * JUST A REHEARSAL. [From the Elgin News.] Mr. and Mrs. Perce left immediately on a short honeymoon trip. The "real" honeymoon trip is soon to be made, into various parts of Virginia. * * * LAME IN BOTH REGISTERS? [From the Decatur Review.] Dr. O. E. Williams, who is conducting revival services in the First United Brethren church, spoke to a large audience on Friday night on "Lame in Both Feet." Mrs. Williams sang a solo in keeping with the sermon. * * * FLORAL POME. (_Sign on Ashland Ave.: "Vlk the Florist."_) For flowers fragrant, sweet as milk, Be sure to call on Florist Vlk. Roses, lilies, for the folks Can be purchased down at Vlk's. Of bouquets there is no lack At the flower shop of Vlk. Orchids, pansies, daisies, phlox, All are sold at Florist Vlk's. A wondrous place, a shop de luxe Is this here store of William Vlk's. F. E. C. Jr. * * * The Boston aggregation, by the way (a witty New Yorker, a musician, informed us), is sometimes referred to as the Swiss Family Higginson and the Bocheton Symphony orchestra. * * * Touching on musical criticism, a Chicago writer who visited St. Louis to report a music festival had a few drinks before the opening concert. His telegraphed review began: "Music is frozen architecture." * * * Aside from his super-mathematics, Dr. Einstein is understandable. He prefers Bach to Wagner, Shakespeare to Goethe, and he would rather walk in the valleys than climb the mountains. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Example of pep and tact.] Dear Sir: We absolutely cannot understand why you do not buy stock in the ---- proposition or why we have not heard from you in reference to our letter. A man in your position should be able to invest some of his earnings into a proposition that should turn out a big success. It seems to us that the more rotten a proposition is the better the people will buy. Now if you can explain this as to why the people bite on the many and poor schemes that are out to the public as there has been in the last six months, the information would be more than gladly received by us. Let's get away from all this bunk stuff and think for ourselves and put your money in a real live proposition such as the ----. After you invest your money in our business, do not fail to submit our proposition to some of your friends, so as to put this proposition over the top just as soon as possible. May this letter act on you and try to improve your thought on investing your money with us, for we stand as true and honest as we can in order to make money for our clients. Trusting that you will mail your check or money order to us at your very earliest convenience while the security is still selling at par, $10 per share, or a letter from you stating your reason for not doing so, we are, respectfully yours, etc. * * * In dedicating her autobiography to her husband, Mrs. Asquith quotes Epictetus: "Have you not received powers, to the limit of which you will bear all that befalls? Have you not received magnanimity? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?" Mr. Christopher Morley thinks the gentleman needs them, but we are not so sure. It is said that when Margot mentioned to him the large sum she was to receive for the book, Mr. Asquith remarked, "I hope, my dear, that it isn't worth it." * * * As many know, Mr. Humphry Ward is a person of importance in his line. An American couple in London invited him to dine with them at their hotel, and concluded the invitation with the line, "If there is a Mrs. Ward, we should like to have her come, too." * * * In the Review of Reviews, Mr. Herbert Wade entitles his interview with Prof. Michelson, "Measuring the Suns of the Solar System." Wonder how he explained it to the Prof? * * * "She left a note saying she would do the next worst thing to suicide.... She went to Cleveland but decided to return." Try South Bend. * * * "He decided that life was not worth living after that, so he came to South Bend."--South Bend Tribune. Stet! * * * WHY THE DOG LEFT TOWN. [From the Newton, Ia., News, Dec. 2.] Warning--A resident of North Newton went home from work Saturday night and as he went in the front door a man went out the back door. This party had better leave town, for I know who he is and am after him. W. H. Miller. [From the same paper, Dec. 5.] I have since discovered that it was a neighbor's dog that bounded out of the back door as I came in the front door the other night. My wife had gone to a neighbor's and left the back door ajar, hence a big dog had no trouble getting in. W. H. Miller. * * * "'I don't see why we go to England for nincompoops when we have men like Prof. Grummann here at home,' remarked Fred L. Haller."--Omaha Bee. We trust Mr. Haller called up the Professor and explained what he meant. * * * _THE PASSIONATE PURE FOOD EXPERT TO HIS LOVE._ _Come live with me, my own pure love, And we will all the pleasures prove, In passion unadulterated And bliss that isn't benzoated._ _Love's purest formula we'll spell: Our joys will never fail to jell. The honeyed kisses we imprint Will show of glucose not a hint._ _Your Wiley will your food prepare, And cook a meal to curl your hair; And every morning you shall have a Rare cup of genuine Mocha-Java._ _And you shall have a buckwheat cake Better than mother used to make, And sirup from the maple wood-- Not a vile sorghum "just as good."_ _The eggs, the bacon, and the jam Shall he as pure as Mary's lamb; And nothing sans a pure-food label Shall grace your matutinal table._ _Oh, hearken to your Harvey's suit, And 'ware the phony substitute. If pure delights your mind may move, Come live with me and be my Love._ * * * Prof. Brown of Carlton College complains that college faculties are concerned with the mental slacker and the laggard, that they have geared their machinery to the sluggard's pace. True enough, but not only true of educational institutions. In a democracy everything is geared to the pace of the weak. "As for authors," sighs Shan Bullock, "their case is fairly hopeless. But I recognize that in the new democracy even average intellect has no place at present. The new democracy is on trial. Until it has proven definitely whether it sides with cinemas or ideals, there is not even a living for men who once held an honored place in the scheme of things. That is a dark saying, but I think it is true." * * * We thought the doubtful honor was possessed by the United States, but M. Cambon declares that there is no other country where people take so little interest in foreign politics as they do in France. * * * A nervy Frenchman, M. Bourgeois, has translated "The Playboy of the Western World." You can imagine with what success. "God help me, where'll I hide myself away and my long neck naked to the world?" becomes "Dieu m'aide, où vais-je me cacher et mon long cou tout nu?" * * * The President of the Chicago Chapter of the Wild Flower Preservation Society wrote to the Department of Agriculture for a certain Bulletin on Forestry and another one on Mushrooms for the book table at their Exhibition in the Art Institute. In due time arrived 250 copies of "How to make unfermented grape juice" and 250 copies of "Hog Cholera." Anybody want them? * * * OH, DON'T YOU REMEMBER SWEET MARY, BEN BOLT? "What has become of Mary MacLane?" asks a reader. We don't know, at this moment, but we remember--what is more important--a jingle by the late lamented Roz Field: "She dwelt beside the untrodden ways, Among the hills of Butte, A maid whom no one cared to love, And no one dared to shoot." * * * The Montmartre crowd had a ticket in the Paris municipal election. The design on the carte d'electeur was a windmill, with the legend below, "Bien vivre et ne rien faire." This would do nicely for our city hall push. * * * Is there another person in this wicked world quite so virtuous as a chief of police on the day that he takes office? * * * INDIFFERENCE. Said B. L. T. to F. P. A., "How shall I end the Line to-day?" "It's immaterial to me," Said F. P. A. to B. L. T. M. L. H. Let it, then, go double. Mr. Dubbe's Program Study Class. (ACCOMPANYING THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CONCERTS.) Reported by Miss Poeta Pants. I.--THE NEAPOLITAN SIXTH. Mr. Criticus Flub-Dubbe's program study class began the season yesterday afternoon with every member present and keenly attentive. After a preparatory sketch of old Italian music, Mr. Dubbe told us about the Neapolitan Sixth, which, he said had exercised so strong an influence on music that, if Naples had never done anything else, this alone would have insured to the city fame in history. "The Neapolitan Sixth," said Mr. Dubbe, "is so called because the composers of the Neapolitan school of opera were the first to introduce it freely. D. and A. Scarlatti were at the head of the school and were well-known musicians. Bach, who was not so well known, also used this sixth." "Which used it first?" asked Mrs. Givu A. Payne. "Bach, of course," replied Mr. Dubbe. "Bach used everything first." "Dear old Bach!" exclaimed Miss Georgiana Gush. "The Neapolitan Sixth," continued Mr. Dubbe, "is usually found in the first inversion; hence the name, the sixth indicating the first inversion of the chord." "How clever!" said Mrs. Gottem-Allbeat. "It is an altered chord, the altered tone being the super-tonic. The real character of the chord is submediant of the subdominant key; that is, it is a major chord, and the use of such a major chord in the solemn minor tonalities is indicative of the superficiality of the Italian school--a desire for a change from the strict polyphonic music of the times. Even the stern Bach was influenced." "The Italians are so frivolous," said Mrs. Boru-Stiffe. "A reign of frivolity ensued," went on Mr. Dubbe. "Not only was Italian music influenced by this sixth, but Italian art, architecture, sculpture, even material products. Take, for example, Neapolitan ice-cream. Observe the influence of the sixth. The cream is made in three color tones--the vanilla being the subdominant, as the chord is of subdominant character; the strawberry being the submediant, and the restful green the lowered supertonic or altered tone." "What is the pineapple ice?" asked Miss Gay Votte. "The pineapple ice is the twelfth overtone," replied Mr. Dubbe. "There doesn't seem to be anything that Mr. Dubbe doesn't know," whispered Mrs. Fuller-Prunes to me with a smile. I should say there wasn't! After the lecture we had a lovely hand-made luncheon. Miss Ellenborough presided at the doughnuts and Mrs. G. Clef poured. It was such a helpful hour. II. "You remember," said Mr. Dubbe, "that Herr Weidig, in his lecture on the wood winds, gave a double bassoon illustration from Brahms' 'Chorale of St. Anthony,' which you are to hear to-day. But Herr Weidig neglected to mention the most interesting point in the illustration--that the abysmal-toned double bassoon calls attention to the devil-possessed swine, St. Anthony being the patron saint of swine-herds. I want you to listen carefully to this swine motive. It is really extraordinary." Mr. Dubbe wrote the motive on the blackboard and then played it on his double bassoon, which, he said, is one of the very few in this country. "The bassoon," said Mr. Dubbe, "was Beethoven's favorite instrument. I go further than Beethoven in preferring the double bassoon. Among my unpublished manuscripts are several compositions for this instrument, and my concerto for two double bassoons is now in the hands of a Berlin publisher. "But to recur to the Brahms chorale. You should know that it makes the second best variations in existence. The best are in the Heroic Symphony. The third best are Dvorák's in C major." "C. Major--that's the man who wrote 'Dorothy Vernon,'" giggled Miss Vera Cilly. "I am not discussing ragtime variations," said Mr. Dubbe, severely. "Not knocking anybody," whispered Miss Gay Votte. "Another interesting point in connection with this week's program," resumed Mr. Dubbe, "is the river motive in Smetana's symphonic poem, 'The Moldau.' Three flutes represent (loosely speaking; for, as I have often told you, music cannot represent anything) the rippling of the Moldau, a tributary of the Danube. If the composer had had a larger river in mind he would have used nine flutes. If this composition of Smetana's seems rather unmusical, allowance must be made for him, as the poor man was deaf and couldn't hear how bad his own music was." "Wasn't Beethoven deaf?" asked Miss Sara Band. "Only his physical ears were affected," replied Mr. Dubbe. "Smetana's soul ears were also deaf." At the close of the lecture Miss Ellenborough gave us a surprise in the way of raised doughnuts made in the form of a G clef. Mrs. Gottem-Allbeat poured. III. There was an ominous flash in Dr. Dubbe's eye when he arose to address the class. "We have this week," he began, "a program barbarous enough to suit the lovers of ultra-modern music. There is Saint-Saëns' overture, 'Les Barbares,' to begin with. This is as barbaric as a Frenchman can get, and is interesting chiefly as a study of how not to use the trumpets. But for sheer barbarity commend me to Hausegger's 'Barbarossa.' Here we find the apotheosis of modern exaggeration. Hausegger strove to make up for inimportant themes by a profuse use of instruments. Only one theme, which occurs in the third movement, is of any account, and that is an imitation of an old German chorale. In this most monotonously muted of tone-poems the composer forgot to mute one instrument--his pen." "My! but Dr. Dubbe is knocking to-day," whispered Miss Sara Band. "The thing is in C major and opens with a C major chord," continued Dr. Dubbe. "That is the end of the C major; it never returns to that key. This is modern music. Take the third movement. It opens with a screeching barbershop chord. A little later ensues a prize fight between two themes, which continues until one of them is knocked out. In this edifying composition, also, snare drum sticks are used on the kettle drums. More modern music. Bah!" I have never seen Dr. Dubbe so irritated. "Let us turn to something more cheerful," resumed Dr. Dubbe; and seating himself at the piano he played the Schubert C minor impromptu. "On the second page," he said, "where the key becomes A flat major, occurs a harmony which looks and sounds like a foreign chord. Treated harmonically it is a second dominant formation, and should read C flat, D natural, A flat, diminished seventh of the key of the dominant. Schubert does not, however, use it harmonically, otherwise the B natural would read C flat. These notes are enharmonic because, though different, they sound the same." "How clear!" exclaimed Miss Gay Votte. "But Schubert, instead of progressing harmonically, goes directly back into the tonic of A flat major." "How careless of him!" said Mrs. Givu A. Payne. "Schubert uses it in its natural position. If the enharmonic C flat were used the chord would then be in its third inversion. Each diminished seventh harmony may resolve in sixteen different ways." "Mercy!" murmured Mrs. Fuller-Prunes. "How much there is to know." Dr. Dubbe passed his hand across his brow as if wearied. "I shall never cease to regret," he said, "that Schubert did not write C flat. It would have been so much clearer." After the lecture Miss Ellenborough gave us another surprise--doughnuts made in the shape of flats. Dr. Dubbe ate five, saying that D flat major was his favorite key. I rode down in the elevator with him and he repeated his remark that Schubert had unnecessarily bemuddled the chord. "I am sure you made it very plain," I said. "We all understand it now." "Do you, indeed?" he replied. "That's more than I do." Of course he was jesting. He understands everything. IV. Dr. Dubbe was in his element yesterday. The trinity of B's--Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms--or, as Dr. Dubbe put it, the "trinity of logicians," was much to his taste: a truly Gothic program. "But what a contrast is the second half," said Dr. Dubbe. "In the first we have the Kings of absolute music. In his youth Beethoven strayed from the path (for even he must sow his musical wild oats), but in his maturer years he produced no music that was not absolute. But in the second half we have Berlioz and program music." "I thought program music was music suitable for programs," said Mrs. Givu A. Payne. "Berlioz," continued Dr. Dubbe, "instituted the 'musical reform' in Germany--the new German school of Liszt and Wagner. Berlioz's music is all on the surface, while Brahms' music sounds the depths. He uses the contra-bassoon in about all of his orchestral compositions (you will hear it to-day), and most of his piano works take the last A on the piano. If his bass seems at times muddy it is because he goes so deep that he stirs up the bottom." "How clear!" exclaimed Miss Gay Votte. "Take measure sixty-five in Berlioz's 'Dance of the Sylphs,'" said Dr. Dubbe. "The spirits hover over Faust, who has fallen asleep. The 'cellos are sawing away drowsily on their pedal point D (probably in sympathy with Faust), and what sounds like Herr Thomas tuning the orchestra is the lone A of the fifth. The absent third represents the sleep of Faust. This is a trick common to the new school. Wagner uses it in 'Siegfried,' in the close of the Tarnhelm motive, to illustrate the vanishing properties of the cap. In measure fifty-seven of the Ballet you will find a chord of the augmented five-six, a harmony built on the first inversion of the diminished seventh of the key of the dominant, with lowered bass tone, and which in this instance resolves into the dominant triad. Others claim that this harmony is a dominant ninth with root omitted and lowered fifth." "It has always seemed so to me," said Mrs. Fuller-Prunes. But I don't believe she knows a thing about it. "I think it's all awfully cute," said Miss Georgiana Gush. "The harmony," resumed Dr. Dubbe, frowning, "really sounds like a dominant seventh, and may be changed enharmonically into a dominant seventh and resolve into the Neapolitan sixth. This is all clear to you, I suppose?" "Oh, yes," we all replied. Dr. Dubbe then analyzed and played for us Brahms' First Symphony, after which Miss Ellenborough served doughnuts made in the shape of a Gothic B. We all had to eat them--one for Bach, one for Beethoven, and one for Brahms. V. Dr. Dubbe did not appear enthusiastic over this week's program. I guess because there was no Bach or Brahms on it. But we enjoyed his lecture just the same. "Raff was the Raphael of music," said Dr. Dubbe. "He was handicapped by a superabundance of ideas, but, unlike Raphael, he did not constantly repeat himself. This week we will have a look at his Fifth Symphony, entitled 'Lenore.'" "Oh!" exclaimed Miss Georgiana Gush, "that's the one the hero of 'The First Violin' was always whistling." "As you all know," said Dr. Dubbe, "this symphony is based on Bürger's well-known ballad of 'Lenore,' but as only the last movement is concerned with the actual ballad I will confine my remarks mainly to that. I wish, however, to call your attention to a curious harmony in the first movement. Upon the return of the first theme the trombones break in upon a dominant B major harmony with what is apparently a dominant C major harmony, D, F, and B. But the chords are actually enharmonic of D, E sharp, and B. This is a dominant harmony in F sharp. Listen for these trombone chords, and pay special attention to the E sharp--a tone that is extremely characteristic of Raff." "I think I have read somewhere," said Mrs. Givu A. Payne, "that Raff was exceedingly fond of E sharp." "He was," said Dr. Dubbe. "He often said he didn't see how he could get along without it. But to resume: "The fourth movement opens with Lenore's lamentation over her absent lover and her quarrel with her mother--the oboe being the girl and the bassoon her parent. Lenore foolishly curses her fate (tympani and triangle), and from that moment is lost. There is a knock at the door and her dead lover appears with a horse and suggests something in the nature of an elopement. Not knowing he is dead, Lenore acquiesces, and away they go (trumpets, flutes and clarinets). "'T is a wild and fearful night. Rack scuds across the moon's wan face (violas and second violins). Hanged men rattle in their chains upon the wayside gibbets (triangle and piccolo). But on, on, on go the lovers, one dead and the other nearly so. "At last they reach the grave in the church-yard, and death claims the lost Lenore ('cellos and bass viols _pizzicato_). For a conclusion there is a coda founded on the line in the ballad, 'Gott sei der Seele gnädig.' It is very sad." Dr. Dubbe seemed much affected by the sad tale, and many of us had to wipe tears away. But Miss Ellenborough came to our rescue with some lovely doughnuts made in the shape of a true lovers' knot. These, with the tea, quite restored us. VI. There really wasn't any study class this week--that is, Dr. Dubbe did not appear. While the class waited for him and wondered if he were ill a messenger brought me the following note: "My Dear Poeta: Kindly inform the class that there will be no lecture this week. I cannot stand for such a trivial program as Herr Thomas has prepared. C. F.-D." "He might have told us sooner," said Miss Georgiana Gush. "Why, yes; he knew last week what the next program would be," said Mrs. Faran-Dole. "The eccentricity of genius, my dear," remarked Mrs. Gottem-Allbeat. "Genius is not tied down by rules of conduct of any sort." "Well," said Mrs. Givu A. Payne, "I don't blame him for not wanting to analyze this week's program. There isn't a bit of Bach or Brahms on it." "Ladies," said Miss Ellenborough, coming forward with a gentleman who had just arrived, "let me introduce Mr. Booth Tarkington, of Indiana. Mr. Tarkington came up to attend the lecture, but as Dr. Dubbe will not be here Mr. Tarkington has kindly consented to give a doughnut recital, so to speak." "Oh, how lovely!" we all exclaimed. "Mr. Tarkington," added Miss Ellenborough, "is well known as the author of the Beaucaire doughnut, the pride of Indiana doughnutdom." Saying which Miss Ellenborough removed the screen that conceals her work table and Mr. Tarkington, in an incredibly short time, produced a batch of Beaucaires. They were really excellent, and we didn't leave a single one. Mr. Everham Chumpleigh Keats poured. After tea we all adjourned to the concert, which we enjoyed immensely, in spite of the absence of Bach and Brahms. Not knocking Dr. Dubbe. A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _Inveniat, quod quisque velit; non omnibus unum est, Quod placet; hic spinas colligit, ille rosas._ --_Petronius._ _THE PASSING OF SUMMER._ _Summer is gone with its roses, Summer is gone with its wine; Likewise a lot of dam choses Not so ideal and benign._ _King Sol is visiting Virgo, On his Zodiacal way. 'Morrow's the twenty-third! Ergo, Summer will vanish to-day._ * * * Summer in town is a synonym for dullness. The theaters offer nothing of importance; only trivialities are to be found on "the trestles." Musical directors appeal only to the ears--chiefly the long ears mentioned by Mozart. Bookstores offer "best sellers," "the latest fiction," and "books worth reading" on the same counter; and the magazines become even less consequential. Art in all its manifestations matches our garments for thinness and lightness. During the canicular period intellectual activity is at a stand, and we should be grateful for the accident which tilted earth's axis at its present angle; for when the leaves begin to fly before the "breath of Autumn's being" we plunge into the new season with a cleared mentality and a great appetite for things both new and old. * * * A man asks the Legal Friend of the People, "Will you kindly publish whether or not it is illegal for second cousins to marry in the state of Illinois?" and the Friend replies, "No." Aw, go on and publish it. There's no harm in telling him. * * * WHYNOTT? [From the Boston Globe.] From this date, Sept. 25, 1920, I will not be responsible for any bill contracted by my wife, Mrs. Bernardine Whynott. G. Whynott. * * * In all the world the two most fragile things are a lover's vows and the gut in a tennis racket. Neither is guaranteed to last an hour. * * * It would help along the economic readjustment, suggests Dean Johnson, of New York University's school of commerce, if we all set fire to our Liberty Bonds. We can't go along with the Dean so far, but we have a hundred shares of copper stock that we will contribute to a community bonfire. * * * The height of patriotism, confides P. H. T., is represented by Mr. Aleshire, president of the Chicago Board of Underwriters, who, billed to deliver a patriotic address in an Evanston theater, paid his way into the theater to hear himself talk. * * * IT MUST BE ABOUT TIME. Sir: The Federal Reserve bank at New Orleans has received a letter from a patriot who wants to know where and when he shall pay the interest on his Liberty bond. Rocky. * * * "In fact, I've finished--would you say a sonnet?"--concludes H. G. H., to whom we recommend the remark of James Stephens: "Nobody is interested in the making of sonnets, not even poets." * * * Referring to the persons who are given to the making of sonnets, Norman Douglas wrote: "I have a sneaking fondness for some of the worst of these bards.... And it is by no means a despicable class of folks who perpetrate such stuff; the third rate sonneteer, a priori, is a gentleman, and this is more than can be said of some of our crude fiction writers who have never yielded themselves to the chastening discipline of verse composition, nor warmed their hearts, for a single instant, at the altar of some generous ideal." * * * The trouble with minor poets is well set forth by Conrad Aiken in The Dial, who refers to the conclusions of M. Nicolas Kostyleff after a tentative study of the mechanism of poetic inspiration: "An important part in poetic creation, he maintains, is an automatic verbal discharge, along chains of association, set in motion by a chance occurrence." * * * POETRY. (_Lord Dunsany._) What is it to hate poetry? It is to have no little dreams and fancies, no holy memories of golden days, to be unmoved by serene midsummer evenings or dawn over wild lands, singing or sunshine, little tales told by the fire a long while since, glow-worms and briar rose; for of all these things and more is poetry made. It is to be cut off forever from the fellowship of great men that are gone; to see men and women without their halos and the world without its glory; to miss the meaning lurking behind the common things, like elves hiding in flowers; it is to beat one's hands all day against the gates of Fairyland and to find that they are shut and the country empty and its kings gone hence. * * * Why is it that in nearly all decisions of the Supreme court the most interesting opinions are delivered by the dissenting justices? * * * "New Jack-a-Bean dining room furniture, used two months; will sell cheap."--El Paso Herald. That is the kind that Louis Canns has his apartment furnished with. * * * A CHANGE FROM LATIN ROOTS. [From the Reedsburg, Wis., Free Press.] Miss Edna White resumed her school duties after a week's vacation for potato digging. * * * OUR FAVORITE AUTUMN POEM. (_By a New Jersey poetess._) Autumn is more beautiful, I think, Than Spring or Winter are. For then trees change at the river's brink-- How beautiful they are. I love to see the different colors so bright-- That grow around brooks & grottoes. Leaves that are pressed are a pleasant sight To make photograph frames & mottoes. * * * Dr. Johnson or somebody said that a surgical operation was necessary to get a joke into a Scotchman's head; but the Glasgow Herald, reporting the existence of a London detective named Leonard Jolly Death, conjectures that it was probably an ancestor of his who was drowned in the butt of Malmsey wine. * * * One is usually mistaken in such matters, but we visualize Mr. Imer Pett, general manager of the Bingham Mines, in Salt Lake City, as quite otherwise. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Received by a wholesale grocery house, from an Italian customer.] Gentlemen: My wife wants me to suggest that you observe one of our Italian customs by remembering her with a bit of Christmas cheer. As she is the only wife I got I trust you will help me keep her. Joe. * * * DENTAL FLOSS. Sir: D. Seiver is a dentist on Kedzie avenue. If I were a complete contrib, I might head this, "Now, this isn't going to hurt a bit," but, as I am not, I merely proceed to nominate C. O. Soots, of North Salem, Ind., as chief chimney sweep to the Academy, and propose the Rev. Ed. V. Belles of the First Presbyterian Church of Northville, Mich., to ring in the new for the members. As a substitute for Mr. D. Seiver, you might induce the nominating committee to accept Dr. J. Byron Ache, a dentist of Uniontown, Pa. Ballysloughguttery. * * * The melancholy days have come For him who's naturally glum: But for the man whose liver's right These Autumn days are pure delight. * * * "Complains He Was Called Sexagenarian--Candidate Says Many Voters Thought It Had to Do With Sex."--Boston Herald. Flattered, but unappreciative. * * * Lady Godiva writes from Loz Onglaze: "Have been having wonderful weather. Quite warm yesterday, the first of December. Riding around with just my fur cape on." * * * Some people hold potatoes for higher prices, while others, like Scribner's Sons, hold sets of Henry James' novels at $130, an increase of $82 over the original price. * * * JUST ABOUT. Sir: How long do you suppose the Snow Ball Laundry will last in Quinter, Kansas? The proprietor is G. W. Burns. P. V. W. * * * In an almanack, which is printed once a year, or in a dictionary or encyclopedia, which is republished after ten or twenty years, you would expect to find fewer errors than in a daily newspaper; but apparently time has little to do with it. Consulting the Britannica's article on Anatole France, we were inexpressibly shocked to find therein the atrocities, "L'Ile des Penguins" and "Maurice Bàrrès." * * * We were looking through the France sketch to see whether there was mention of a story he wrote before he became well known, entitled "Marguerite." A Paris publisher found it recently in a magazine and asked M. France to write a preface to it, that it might be issued as a book. Quoth France: "It would be an excess of literary vanity on my part to resurrect the story. But my vanity would, perhaps, be greater were I to try to suppress it." * * * Reference books, as is well known, improve like wine with age, and the efficiency of our proof room is to be accounted for, in part, by the vintage volumes that line its library shelf. There are sixty of these rare old tomes, and five of them are useful; these being, we think, first editions. There is a Who's Who of the last century that is still in good condition, and the dictionary of biography with which Lippincotts began business. Bibliophiles would, we believe, enjoy looking over the shelf. * * * JAW JINGLES. If a Hottentot taught a Hottentot tot To talk ere the tot could totter, Ought the Hottentot tot be taught to say "ought," Or "naught," or what ought to be taught her? If to hoot and to toot a Hottentot tot Be taught by a Hottentot tutor, Ought the Hottentot tutor get hot if the tot Hoot and toot at the Hottentot tutor? G. B. * * * "NATURE NEVER DID DECEIVE..." No sooner had blundering man accomplished the ruin of Halifax than Mother Nature sent a blizzard with a foot or two of snow. A kindly dame--as kindly as the old lady of Endor. She has her gentle, her amorous moods, in which we adore her, and write ballads to her beauty; but we know, if we are wise, that her beauty is "all in your eye," to speak in the way of science, not of slang, and that she is savage as a jungle cat. Like some women and much medicine, she should be well shaken before taken, and always one must keep an eye upon Nature, or one may feel her claws in one's back. So we have reflected on a summer's day in woods; but the forest seemed not less beautiful, nor was our meditation melancholy. To be saddened by the inescapable is a great mistake. * * * NO. 68, COUNTING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT. [From the Goshen, Ind., Democrat.] Albert E. Compton, 68, a former well known Elkhart taxi driver, went to California last summer and told his friends he was going into the movies. A communication from him yesterday informed them of his appearance in a mob scene. * * * "Mrs. Fred L. Olson is on the programme to sing vocal selections."--Portland Telegram. That's the trouble. They will sing them. * * * Our young friend who is about to become a colyumist might lead off with the jape about the switchman who asked for red oil for his lantern. Then there is that side-stitching sign, "Pants pressed, 10 cents a leg, seats free." * * * COMMERCIAL CANDOR. Sir: A tailor in Denver advertises: "If your clothes don't fit we make them." W. V. R. * * * Heard, by R. M., in a department store: Shoe-polish demonstrator: "And if you haven't already ruined your shoes with other cleaners this will do the work." * * * FAREWELL! (_By Poeta._) Comet, Comet, shining bright In the spaces of the night, Every hour swinging higher From the Sun of thy desire; Astral vagrant, stellar rover, Dipping under, dipping over Path of Venus, Earth, and Mars Till there's naught beyond but stars; Cutting, in thy lane elliptic, Thro' the plane of the ecliptic, Far beyond pale Neptune's track-- Good-by, Comet! Hurry back! * * * AN UNCOMMONLY HAPPY THOUGHT. (_A. J. Balfour, Letter to Mary Gladstone, 1891._) "It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth." * * * THE SECOND POST. [The editor of the Winneconne, Wis., Local to his flock.] Dear Subscriber: You probably know that the Local editor and his wife have been away from Winneconne most of the time during the last ten months. Every month we expected to get back again. The suspense was somewhat hard. During the meantime Mrs. Flanagan, each week, would worry and talk about the paper as much as ever. The doctor desired to have it off her mind. During the meantime she did not want the plant closed for even a short time. Now it has been decided to take a holiday vacation, during which time Mr. and Mrs. Flanagan will release themselves from all business cares and build up in health. No doubt, you will realize the delicate situation of the affair, and bear with us in the matter until the Local again resumes its regular publication dates, for surely both of us are very much attached to the paper, the town, and its people, and the surrounding country. M. C. Flanagan. * * * THE DAY OF "DON'TS." Thanksgiving was a holiday I welcomed when a boy, But now it is a solemn feast without a jot of joy. It used to be a pleasure to attack the toothsome turkey, But now when I approach the bird I'm anything but perky. A multitude of dismal "Don'ts" impair my appetite; A fear of what may happen me accompanies each bite. There hovers round this holiday a heavy cloud of dread That never lifts till I am safe, with water-bag, in bed. I used to drink a glass of wine, but that is bad, I'm told, So now I ship in water--just as much as I can hold. To fail to fletcherize my food were fatal, without question; I never touch the stuffing, as it taxes the digestion. When the lugubrious feast is done I hasten from my chair To open all the windows wide, and let in lots of air; And then I sit around an hour and chew a wad of gum Until the fullness disappears from my distended tum. That pleasant, dozy feeling I compel myself to shake, For should I venture on a nap I'd never, never wake; And if I sneeze I take alarm and hasten out of doors, To start a circulation in my poison-clotted pores. The fact that I am still alive is due, I'm glad to say, To heeding all the dinner "Don'ts" that went with yesterday. It was, from soup to raisins, by and large, and all in all, The solemnest Thanksgiving meal that ever I recall. * * * A BALANCED TUITION. Sir: The fourth grade teacher in Roland, Ia., is Viola Grindem. Fortunately for the kids the high school principal is Cora Clement. T. B. * * * "We wish the coöperative factories, a success," says an esteemed contemporary on our left. So do we, with this prediction, that if success is achieved it will be by the same methods that are employed in the iniquitous capitalistic system. * * * Although the name topic bores us to distinction, as a young lady of our acquaintance puts it, we should feel we were posing if we neglected to find room for the following: Sir: Deedonk, can you provide a chaise longue in the Romance language department of the Academy for George E. Ahwee of Colon, Panama? Rusty. * * * We knew what was meant, and yet it gave us a slight start to read in a Minnesota paper, "Pickle your own feet while they are cheap and clean." * * * OPINION CONCURRED IN. Sir: My heart with pleasure filled when I saw that Riquarius quoted it as I always want to do, "with rapture fills." While I realized it is the height of presumption to think I could improve on Wordsworth, don't you agree with me that rapture is more expressive than pleasure? Jay Aye. "Rapture" might be preferred for another reason: the accent falls on a stronger syllable. Suppose George Meredith had used "pleasure" in his lines-- "Lasting, too, For souls not lent in usury, The rapture of the forward view." Every good poet has left lines that could be bettered for another ear. Probably Wordsworth leads the list. * * * TRANSCENDENTAL CALM. Sir: Remember the story about Theodore Parker and Emerson? While they were walking in Concord a Seventh Day Adventist rushed up to them and said, "Gentlemen, the world is coming to an end." Parker said, "That doesn't affect me; I live in Boston." Emerson said, "Very well. I can get along without it." E. H. R. * * * So the President has been converted to universal military training--as a war measure. Better late than never, as Noah remarked to the Zebra, which had understood that passengers arrived in alphabetical order. * * * THIS REFERS, OF COURSE, TO FRANCE. [From Faguet's "Cult of Incompetence."] Democracy has the greatest inducement to elect representatives who are representative, who, in the first place, resemble it as closely as possible, who, in the second place, have no individuality of their own, who, finally, having no fortune of their own, have no sort of independence. We deplore that democracy surrenders itself to politicians, but from its own point of view, a point of view which it cannot avoid taking up, it is absolutely right. What is a politician? He is a man who, in respect of his personal opinions, is a nullity, in respect of education a mediocrity; he shares the general sentiments and passions of the crowds, his sole occupation is politics, and if that career were closed to him he would die of starvation. He is precisely the thing of which democracy has need. He will never be led away by his education to develop ideas of his own; and, having no ideas of his own, he will not allow them to enter into conflict with his prejudices. His prejudices will be, at first, by a feeble sort of conviction, afterward, by reason of his own interest, identical with those of the crowd; and lastly, his poverty and the impossibility of his getting a living outside of politics make it certain that he will never break out of the narrow circle where his political employers have confined him; his imperative mandate is the material necessity which obliges him to obey; his imperative mandate is his inability to quarrel with his bread and butter. Democracy obviously has need of politicians, has need of nothing else but politicians, and has need indeed that there shall be in politics nothing else but politicians. * * * AN IOWA ROMANCE. [From the Clinton Herald.] Lost--A large white tom cat with gray tail and two gray spots on body. Return to 1306 So. Third street and receive reward. Lost--"Topsy" black persian cat. Any one having seen her kindly call 231 5th ave. * * * WE SHOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. [From the Idaho Falls Register.] A lady's leather handbag left in my car while parked on Park avenue two weeks ago. Owner can have same by calling at my office, proving the property and paying for this ad. If she will explain to my wife that I had nothing to do with its being there, I will pay for the ad. C. G. Keller. * * * COME INTO THE GARDEN, MAUD. [From the Tavares, Fla., Herald.] The home of Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Duncan was the center of attraction Sunday afternoon. All the relatives and a few special friends were there to celebrate two happy occasions, the anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan's marriage and the marriage of Miss Cora L. Peet, Mrs. Duncan's sister, to Mr. J. E. Hammond, and the soft winds of March had blown the planet of love over this beautiful home. The composition of the decorations adhered with striking fidelity to nature. The wide veranda was completely screened in by wild smilax and fragrant honeysuckle vines, which entwisted themselves among the branches of sweet myrtle and native palms, fitly transforming it into a typical Arcadian scene beckoning to "Come unto the garden, Maud; I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the muck of the rose is blown." Soon the sound of music greeted the impatient ear. With a voice full of individuality of flavor and unusual quality, Mr. Carl E. Duncan, perfectly accompanied by his mother at the pianoforte, rendered "I Hear You Calling Me." Then the coming of the bridal couple was heralded by the solemn tones of Mendelssohn's wedding march. Never was a bride more beautiful; never-- [Well, hardly ever.] * * * AND HOW CALM THE OCEAN IS! [Correspondence from Florida.] I've fallen in love with the salt water bathing. It feels wonderfully refreshing here, below the equator. * * * POEMS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED. Between the Barn and the Woodhouse. Between the barn and the woodhouse, Where oft old Jersey would stand, I remember 'twas on this self-same spot Where she kicked Elizabeth Ann. I could hear the clang of the bucket, And also poor Annie's refrain, And when the family reached her, She was writhing and groaning with pain. Mother stooped dawn to caress her As she lay there stunned on the ground, And our big, simple minded brother Thought he should examine the wound. Without halt or hesitation, He dropped to his knees in the dirt; Although she lay stunned and bleeding, He asked her where she was hurt. Then Annie, in a half sitting posture, While resting on mother's arm, Feebly responded to brother, "Between the woodhouse and barn." W. T. N. * * * "The Chicago convention left the Democratic party as the sole custodian of the honor of the country."--Orator Cummings. Some custodian, _nous en informerons l'univers!_ * * * To the inspired compositor and proof reader of the York, Neb., News-Times he is General Denuncio. * * * "The plebicide showed an overwhelming majority in favor of King Constantine's return."--St. Paul Pioneer Press. Very good word. * * * We were not alone in financing the war. An income tax payment of $14,000,000 was made in New York yesterday. The identity of the individual is not disclosed, but the painstaking Associated Press says that "he is obviously one of the richest men in the United States." * * * "Thinking as One Walks."--Doc Evans. "Meaning," conjectures Fenton, "that if one is bow-legged one is likely to think in circles." Or if one limps, one is likely to come to a lame conclusion. Or if-- Roll your own. * * * _THE PHILOSOPHY OF BALDNESS._ _One by one the hairs are graying, One by one they blanch and fall; Never stopping, never staying-- W. t. h. and d. i. all!_ _W. R._ * * * A DEAD SHOT. [From the Mt. Carmel, Ill., Republican.] The Mount Carmel Gun club held its weekly shoot this afternoon, the chief feature being the demonstration of expert marksmanship by Mr. Killam of the Du Pont Powder Co. * * * IT WOULD PUT 'EM ON THE STAGE. Why does not some pianist give us a really popular recital programme? Frezzample: Moonlight Sonata. The Harmonious Blacksmith. Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Old Favorites: Recollections of Home. Silvery Waves. Monastery Bells. Etincelles. Waves of the Ocean. Gottschalk's Last Hope. Clayton's Grand March. The Battle of Prague. The Awakening of the Lion. * * * There is an encouraging growth of musical understanding and appreciation in this country. Even now you hear very many people say, "I liked the scherzo." * * * "He sat down in a vacant chair," relates a magazine fictionist. It is, everything considered, the safest way. Much of the discord in the world has been caused by gentlemen--and ladies as well--who sat down in chairs already occupied. * * * A Kenwood pastor has resigned because some members of his flock thought him too broad. The others, we venture, thought him too long. * * * "Prof. Hobbs Will Make Globe Trot"--Michigan Daily. Giddap, old top! Vacation Travels. It is a great pleasure to be free, for a time, from the practice of expressing opinion; free to read the newspapers with no thought of commenting on the contents; free to glance at a few hectic headlines, and then bite into a book that you have meant to get to for a long time past, to read it slowly, without skipping, to read over an especially well done page and to put the book aside and meditate on the moral which it pointed, or left you to point. Unless obliged to, why should anybody write when he can read instead? One's own opinions (hastily formed and lacking even the graces of expression) are of small account; certainly they are of less account than Mr. Mill's observations on Liberty, which I have put down in order to pen a few longish paragraphs. (I would rather be reading, you understand; my pen is running for the same reason some street cars run--to hold the franchise.) And speaking of Mill, do you remember the library catalogue which contained the consecutive items, "Mill on Liberty" and "Ditto on the Floss"? * * * One can get through a good many books on a long railway journey. My slender stock was exhausted before I reached Colorado, and I am compelled to re-read until such time as I can lay in a fresh supply. At home it is difficult to find time to read--that is, considerable stretches of time, so that one may really digest the pages which he is leisurely taking in. Fifty years ago there were not many more books worth reading than there are to-day, but there was more time to assimilate them. A comparatively few books thoroughly assimilated gave us Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Not long ago my friend the Librarian was speaking of this short classic. "Did you ever," said he, "read Edward Everett's address at Gettysburg?" "No," said I, "and I fear I shall never get to it." "It is stowed away among his collected orations," said he. "Not half bad. Unfortunately for its fame, Mr. Lincoln happened along with a few well chosen remarks which the world has preferred to remember." * * * Another advantage of a long railway journey is the opportunity it affords to give one's vocal cords a (usually) well-merited rest. It is possible to travel across the continent without saying a word. A nod or a shake of the head suffices in your dealings with the porter; and you learn nothing from questioning him, as he has not been on that run before. Also, business with the train and Pullman conductors may be transacted in silence, and there is no profit in asking the latter to exchange your upper berth for a lower, as he has already been entreated by all the other occupants of uppers. When the train halts you do not have to ask, "What place is this?"--you may find out by looking at the large sign on the station. Nor is it necessary to inquire, "Are we on time?"--your watch and time-table will enlighten you. You do not have to exclaim, when a fresh locomotive is violently attached, "Well, I see we got an engine"--there is always somebody to say it for you. And you write your orders in the dining car. There is, of course, the chance of being accosted in the club car, but since this went dry the danger has been slight. And conversation can always be averted by absorption in a book, or, in a crisis, by pretending to be dumb. * * * Not everybody can travel three or four days without exchanging words with a fellow traveler. Mr. George Moore, for example, would be quite wretched. Conversation is the breath of his being, he says somewhere. I understand that Mr. Moore has another book on press, entitled "Avowals." Avowals! My dear!... After the "Confessions" and the "Memoirs" what in the world is there left for the man to avow? * * * What a delightful fictionist is Moore! And never more delightful than when he is writing fiction under the appearance of fact. No one has taken more to heart the axiom that the imaginary is the only real. As my friend the Librarian observed, the difference between George Moore and Baron Munchausen is that Moore's lies are interesting. * * * Travelers must carry their own reading matter under government ownership. The club car library now consists of time-tables, maps, and pamphlets setting forth the never to be forgotten attractions of the show places along the way. These are all written by the celebrated prose poet Ibid, and, with a bottle of pseudo beer or lemon pop, help to make the club car as gay a place as a mortician's parlor on a rainy afternoon. * * * The treeless plateau over which the train rolls, hour after hour, is the result of a great uplift. It was not sudden; it was slow but sure. This result is arid and plateautudinous, in a manner of speaking--not the best manner. It makes me think of democracy--and prohibition. To this complexion we shall come at last. To be sure, the genius of man will continue to cut channels in the monotonous plain; erosion will relieve the dreary prospect with form and color, but it bids fair to be, for the most part, a flat and dry world, from which many of us will part with a minimum of regret. There will remain the inextinguishable desire to learn what wonders science will disclose. Perhaps--who knows?--they will discover how to ventilate a sleeping car. * * * At Albuquerque I remarked a line of Mexicans basking in the sun (having, perhaps, finished jumping on their mothers). They looked happy--as happy as the Russian peasants used to be. Men who know Russia tell me that the peasants really were happy, even under the twin despotisms of Vodka and Czar. It was not, of course, a reformer's idea of happiness: a reformer's idea of happiness is perpetual attention to everybody's business but his own. People who are interested academically in other people's happiness usually succeed in making everybody unhappy. Now, the Russian's happiness was a poor thing, but his own. In reality he was wretched and oppressed, and his voice and bearing should have expressed his misery and hopelessness, instead of a foolish content and a silly detachment from political affairs. But he is at last emancipated, and, as was said of Mary's fleecy companion, now contemplate the condemned thing! * * * Liberty, equality, international amity, democracy, the kingdom of heaven on earth--All that is very well, yet Candide remarked to Dr. Pangloss when all was said and done, "Let us cultivate our garden." * * * There are so many interesting things along the way that I should, I suppose, be filling a notebook. But why mar the pleasure of a journey by taking notes? as the good Sylvestre Bonnard inquired. Lovers who truly love do not keep a diary of their happiness. * * * In Phoenix, Arizona, distance lends enchantment to the view. But the hills are far away, and as I did not visit the Southwest to contemplate the works of man, however ingenious, I followed the westering sun to where the mountains come down to the sea. I do not fancy the elevated parts of New Mexico and Arizona; and as there was no thought of pleasing me when they were created, I feel free to express a modified rapture in their contemplation. I should have remembered enough geology to know that granite is not found in this section, except at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The hills I like are made of old-fashioned stuff, not young upstart tufa and sandstone that was not thought of when the Laurentians were built. One really cannot have much respect for a rock that he can kick to pieces. The gay young buttes in this land of quickly shifting horizons are not without their charm; they look well in certain lights, and they are decidedly better than no hills at all. Although immature, they have an air of pretending to be very ancient, to be the ruins of mountains. They are picturesque and colorful. And I would swap a league of them for one archaic boulder the size of a box-car, with a thick coverlet of reindeer moss. * * * When I left the train at Pasadena I saw what I took to be a procession of the K. K. K. It proved to be citizens in flu masks. I was interested, but not alarmed; whereas a lady tourist who debarked on the following day fell in a swoon and was conveyed to the hospital. The newspapers charged her disorder to the masks, but as she was from Chicago I suspect that her reason was unsettled by the sudden revealment of a clean city. And Pasadena is clean--almost immaculate. I was obliged to join the masqueraders, and I found the inconvenience only slight. The mask keeps the nose warm after sundown, and is convenient to sneeze into. And I have never remarked better looking folks than the people of Pasadena. The so-called human race has never appeared to better advantage. The women were especially charming, and were all, for once, equally handicapped, like the veiled sex in the Orient. * * * Whoever christened it the Pacific ocean was the giver of innocent pleasure to every third person who has set eyes on it since. "There's the Pacific!" you hear people exclaim to one another when the train reaches the top of a pass. "Isn't it calm! That's why it is called the Pacific. And it is pacific, isn't it?" Some such observation must have escaped the stout adventurer in Darien, before he fell silent upon his peak. * * * I shall say nothing about the never to be sufficiently esteemed climate of California, nor even allude to the windjammers of Loz Onglaze. The last word concerning those enthusiasts was spoken by a San Francisco man who, addressing the people of "Los," explained how the city might overcome the slight handicap imposed by its distance from the sea. "Lay an iron pipe to tidewater," he advised; "and then, if you can suck as hard as you can blow, you will presently have the ocean at your doors." It would be difficult to improve on that criticism. And so, instead of praising the climate, I will gladly testify that it is easier to live in this part of the country than anywhere east of the Sierras. And San Diego impresses me as the easiest place in the state to live, the year round. * * * The mechanical effort of existence is reduced to its minimum in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, where I am opposing a holiday indolence to pen these desultory lines. "There's lots of good fish in the sea" that beats against this rockbound but not stern coast, and there is a fish market in the village. But each day I see the sign in the window, "No fish." The fisherman, I am told, is "very independent," a euphemism for tired, perhaps. He casts his hooks and nets only when the spirit moves him, and is not impelled to the sea by sordid motives. A true fisherman, I thought, though he never change his window sign. * * * To-day's newspapers contain the protest of the governor of Lower California against the proposed annexing of his territory by the United States, Señor Cantu may be a hairless dog in the manger; he may, as he claims, represent the seething patriotism of all but a negligible percentage of the population; but he is no doubt correct in merely asserting that the peninsula will not be annexed. Incidentally, he is on sure ground when he attributes the chaos in Mexican affairs to "conflicting political criteria." It is all of that. So far as I have casually discovered, there is no active annexation sentiment on this side of the border, for there is no hope of overcoming that provision in the Mexican constitution which makes it a matter of high treason to encourage a movement for the diminution of Mexican territory. * * * Gov. Cantu's phrase, "conflicting political criteria," applies rather happily to the doings in Paris these days. The Peace conference and prohibition in the United States are perhaps the two most prominent topics before the public, and they are the two things which I have not heard mentioned since I began my travels. A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _"Lord, what fools these mortals be."_ COUNTRY LIFE IN AMERICA. Sing high the air like dry champagne, The fields of virgin snow! (Sing low the mile-hike from the train, In five or ten below.) Sing high the joys the gods allot To our suburban state! (Sing low the dinner gone to pot, Because the train is late.) Sing high the white-arched woodland way, Resembling faëry halls! (Sing low the drifts that stay and stay, In which your motor stalls.) Sing high, sing low, sing jack and game, Sing Winter's spangled gown! (Let him who will these things acclaim-- _I'm_ moving in to town.) * * * Scratch a man who really enjoys zero weather, and you will find blubber. * * * Born in Sioux City, to Mr. and Mrs. Matt Hoss, a daughter. Who'll contribute a buggy? * * * "For Sale--1920 Mormon chummy."--Minneapolis Journal. Five-passenger at least. * * * THERE WERE IMMORTALS BEFORE JET WIMP. Sir: In the Lowell (Mass.) Daily Journal and Courier, dated Feb. 4, 1853, I find the following: "What's in a name! The name of the superintendent of the Cincinnati Hospital is Queer Absalom Death." Thus showing that there were candidates for the Academy seventy years ago. Concord. * * * Some sort of jape or jingle might be chiseled from the fact that Lot Spry and Ida Smart were married t'other day in Vinton, Ia. * * * CONTRIBUTIONS THAT HAVE AMUSED US. Proprietor of hotel in Keokuk, answering call from room: "Hello!" Voice: "We are in Room 30 and now ready to come down." Prop.: "Take the elevator down." Voice: "Is the elevator ready?" [Proprietor sends bellboy to Room 30 to escort newly-wedded couple to terra firma.] * * * "Weds 104th Veteran."--Springfield Republican. The first hundred veterans are the hardest. * * * For official announcer in the Academy, E. K. proposes James Hollerup of Endeavor, Wis. * * * SHE PREFERRED HER PSYCHOPATHY STRAIGHT. Sir: At a party last night one of my sex read the recent buffoonery, "Heliogabalus," by the Smart Set editors. When the reader reached the choice second act one of the women (the bobbed hair type) refused to listen to any more of the "salacious rot," and walked over to the bookcase, from which, after careful study, she picked out Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis. I ask you, ain't women funny? Philardee. No, not in this instance. We quite sympathize with the lady. We much prefer Havelock Ellis to "Jurgen," for example. Chacun à son goût. * * * This peculiar and unliterary preference of ours may be due to the fact that once upon a time, in a country job-print, we were obliged to read the proofs of a great many medical works, made up largely of "Case 1, a young man of 28," "Case 2, a woman of thirty," etc. These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when "Case 1" is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or "Case 2" expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of lassitude comes o'er us which is more or less akin to pain. * * * THE COME-BACK. Click! Click! Goes my typewriter, Transcribing letters That the Boss dictates around His chew After he has discussed the weather, And the squeak in his car, And his young hopeful's latest, And the L. of N. Click! Click! While he writes impudent Things For the Line About the Stenos, And asks me how to spell The words. Hark! To the death rattle of The cuspidor Upset, As he departs at two o'clock To golf, While I type on Till five. Agnes. * * * Mr. Gompers advises labor to accomplish its desires at the polls, instead of chasing after the red gods of political theory. This is excellently gomped, and will make as deep an impression as an autumn leaf falling on a rock. * * * Since the so-called working classes are unable or unwilling to do so simple a sum as dividing the total wealth of a nation by the number of its inhabitants; since they cannot or will not understand that if the profits of an industry are exceeded by the wages paid, the industry must stop; since they only reason _a posteriori_ when that is well kicked, and by themselves--it is fortunate that the United States has the opportunity to watch the progress of the experiment now making in England. * * * Nowadays the buying and dispatching of Christmas gifts is scientifically made. One merely selects this or that and orders it sent to So-and So. One turns in to a book store a list of titles and a list of names and addresses, and the book store does the rest. Consequently one misses the pleasant labor of tying up the gift, of journeying to the post-office, to have it weighed and stamped, and of dropping it through the slot and wondering whether the string will break, or whether the package will go astray. * * * We were engaged in dropping newly-minted double-eagles into the Christmas stockings of our contributors when an auto truck got mired near our chamber window, and the roar of it woke us up. * * * Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, and other Orientals are disliked, not because of race or color, but because they are willing to work. Anyone who is willing to work in these times is, like the needy knife-grinder, a wretch whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance. * * * Washladies get more money for less work than any other members of the leisure class, with the exception of the persons who work on putting greens. In addition to their wage, they get car-fare and two or three meals. Why? Because it is not generally known that a mere man, with a washing machine and a bucket of solution, can do more washing in three hours than a washlady does in three days. * * * What do they mean "industrial unrest"? Industry never rested so frequently or for such protracted periods. * * * The natives of Salvador can neither read nor write, but their happy days are numbered. The Baptist church is going to spend three millions on their conversion. Their capacity for resistance is not so great as that of the Chinese. Do you remember what Henry Ward Beecher said of the Chinese? "We have clubbed them, stoned them, burned their houses, and murdered some of them, yet they refuse to be converted. I do not know any way except to blow them up with nitroglycerine, if we are ever to get them to heaven." * * * "Do you not know," writes Persephone, "that with the coming of all this water, all imagination and adventure have fled the world?" Just what we were thinking t'other evening, when we dissipated a few hours with our good gossip the Doctor. "I am," said he, pouring out a meditative three-fingers, "in favor of prohibition; and I believe that some substitute for this stuff will be found." We pursued that lane of thought a while, until it debouched into a desert. The Doctor then took down the works of Byron, and read aloud--touching the high spots in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," "Don Juan," "Childe Harold," "The Prisoner of Chillon"--pausing ever and anon to replenish the glasses. It was midnight ere the book was returned to its shelf. It was a delightful evening. And we wondered whether, without the excellent bourbon and the cigars, we should not have had enough of Byron by 10:30. * * * An English publisher binds all his books in red because, having watched women choosing books in the libraries, he found that they looked first at the red-bound ones. Does that coincide with your experience, my dear? * * * Our interest in Mr. Wells' "Outline of History" has been practically ruined by learning from a geologist that Mr. Wells' story of creation is frightfully out of date. Should he not have given another twenty-four hours to so large an opus? * * * Visiting English authors have a delightful trick of diagramming their literary allusions. Only the few are irritated by it. * * * "And as I am in no sense a lecturer..."--Mr. Chesterton. Seemingly the knowledge of one's limitations as a public entertainer does not preclude one from accepting a fee five or ten times larger than one would receive in London. We are languidly curieux de savoir how far the American equivalent would get in the English capital. * * * You cannot "make Chicago literary" by moving the magazine market to that city. Authors lay the scenes of their stories in New York rather than in Chicago, because readers prefer to have the scene New York, just as English readers prefer London to Manchester or Liverpool. If a story is unusually interesting it is of no consequence where the scene is laid, but most stories are only so-so and have to borrow interest from geography. * * * THANKS TO MISS MONROE'S MAGAZINE. Only a little while ago The pallid poet had no show-- No gallery that he could use To hang the product of his muse. But now his sketches deck the walls Of many hospitable halls, And juries solemnly debate The merits of the candidate. * * * TRADE CLASSICS. Every trade has at least one classic. One in the newspaper trade concerns the reporter who was sent to do a wedding, and returned to say that there was no story, as the bridegroom failed to show up. Will a few other trades acquaint us with their classics? It should make an interesting collection. Sir: The classic of the teaching trade: A school teacher saw a man on the car whose face was vaguely familiar. "I beg your pardon," she said, "but aren't you the father of two of my children?" S. B. Sir: The son of his father on a certain occasion, when the paper was overset, objected to adding two pages, but in a moment of economical inspiration agreed to permit one extra page. C. D. Sir: Don't forget the classic of dry stories. "An Irishman and a Scotchman stood before a bar--and the Irishman didn't have any money." L. A. H. To continue, the Scotchman said: "Well, Pat, what are we going to have to-day? Rain or snow?" Sir: "If you can't read, ask the grocer." But I heard it differently. An Englishman and an American read the sign. The American laughed. The Englishman did not see the humor of it. The American asked him to read it again; whereupon the Englishman laughed and said: "Oh, yes; the grocer might be out." 3-Star. * * * You may know the trade classic about the exchange editor. The new owner of the newspaper asked who that man was in the corner. "The exchange editor," he was informed. "Well, fire him," said he. "All he seems to do is sit there and read all day." * * * Divers correspondents advise us that the trade classics we have been printing are old stuff. Yes; that is the peculiar thing about a classic. Extraordinary, when you come to think of it. * * * "Timerio," which is simpler than Esperanto, "will enable citizens of all nations to understand one another, provided they can read and write." The inventor has found that 7,006 figures are enough to express any imaginable idea. But we should think that a picture book would be simpler. "You can go to any hotel porter in the world," says the perpetrator of Timerio, "and make yourself understood by simply handing him a slip of paper written in my new language." But you can do as well with a picture of a trunk and a few gestures. The only universal language that is worth a hoot is the French phrase "comme ça." * * * DENATURED LIMERICKS. There was a young man of Constantinople, Who used to buy eggs at 35 cents the dozen. When his father said, "Well, This is certainly surprising!" The young man put on his second best waistcoat. * * * "The maddest man in Arizona," postcards J. U. H., who has got that far, "was the one who found, after ten miles' hard drive from his hotel, that he had picked up the Gideon Bible instead of his Blue Book." Still, they are both guide books, and they might be interestingly compared. * * * To one gadder who asked for a small coffee, the waitress in the rural hotel said, "A nickel is as small as we've got." Some people try to take advantage of the bucolic innkeeper. * * * "I have not read American literature; I know only Poe," confesses M. Maeterlinck. Well, that is a good start. For a long time the only French author we knew was Victor Hugo. Live and learn, say we. * * * "He is so funny with the patisserie," says Mme. Maeterlinck of M. Charles Chaplin. "He is an artist the way he throw the pie." Is he not? M. Chaplin is to Americans what the Discus Thrower was to the Greeks. * * * Sings, in a manner of singing, Mr. Lindsay in the London Mercury: "I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Candidate for President who sketched a silver Zion." But we prefer, as simpler and more emotional, the classic containing the lines-- "But my soul is cryin' For old Bill Bryan." * * * You are familiar with the cryptic inscription "TAM HTAB," which ceases to be cryptic when you turn the mat over; but did you ever hear about the woman who christened her child "Nosmo King," having been taken by those names on two glass doors which stood open? * * * A Chippewa Falls advertiser offers for sale "six Leghorn roosters and one mahogany settee." And we are requested to ascertain whether the settee is a Rhode Island Red or a Brown Leghorn. * * * A Rotary club is being formed in the Academy by the Rev. Rodney Roundy of the American Missionary Association. * * * What do you mean "prosperity"? Even the Nonquit Spinning Co. of New Bedford has shut down. * * * Joseph Conrad's latest yarn is the essence of romance. But what is romance? For years we have sought a definition in ten words; but while romance is easily recognized, it is with difficulty defined. Walter Raleigh came the nearest to it in a recent essay. "Romance," said he, "is a love affair in other than domestic surroundings." This would seem also to be the opinion of a West Virginia editor, who, reporting a marriage, noted that "the couple were made man and wife while sitting in a buggy, and this fact rendered somewhat of a romantic aspect to the wedding." * * * MY LOVE, DID YOU KNOW THERE WERE SO MANY KINDS OF MAIDS? [From the Derbyshire Advertiser.] Mrs. Reeves requires--Cooks, £18 to £50, with Kitchenmaids, Scullerymaids, Betweenmaids, and Single-handed; Upper, Single-handed, Second, Under Parlourmaids £14 to £40; Head, Single-handed, Equal, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Under Housemaids, good wages; Ladies' Maids, Useful Maids, Maid-Attendants, Maids, Housemaids, House-Sewingmaids, £18 to £30; Chambermaids, Housemaids, Stillroom-maids, Pantry-maids, Cooks, £20 to £52; Kitchenmaids, £12 to £30; Staffmaids, Hallmaids, etc. * * * A yarn about a clean Turk reminded W. D. W. of a story that came straight from Gallipoli; and in running over the files of the Line we happened on it. Some British officers were arguing as to which had the stronger odor, the regimental goat or a Turk. It was agreed to submit the matter to a practical test, with the Colonel as referee. The goat was brought in, whereupon the Colonel fainted. A Turk was then brought in, whereupon the goat fainted. * * * As confirming that goat and Turk story, the following extract from a British soldier's letter, explaining the retreat before Bagdad, is submitted: "We had been pursuing the Turks for several weeks, and victory was within our grasp, when the wind changed." * * * As a variant for "loophound," may we suggest "prominent hound about town"? * * * The Isle of Yap, the Isle of Yap, Where burning Sappho never sung! You ain't so much upon the map, But Uncle Samuel murmurs, "Stung!" * * * "After submitting a contribution, how long must one remain in suspense?" asks E. L. W. That, sir, depends, as has been well said. But you would be safe in assuming, after, say, three months, that the contribution has been mislaid. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Result of a collection letter that drew a sum on account.] "Don't get peevish about this. I have a wife and large family. More coming." * * * Heard in the Fort Des Moines Hotel: "Call for Mrs. Rugg! Call for Mrs. Rugg! Is she on the floor?" * * * YES, SOMETIMES WE THROW THE WHOLE MAIL AWAY WITHOUT LOOKING AT IT. [From the Madison State Journal.] It isn't "B. L. T." and "F. P. A." that makes the respective columns of these most celebrated of the "conductors" great. It is their daily mail. It comes to them in great bags. They open enough letters to fill that day's column, and consign thousands, unopened, to the waste basket. There is a fortune to some newspaper syndicate in the unopened mail of "B.L.T." and "F.P.A." * * * A limousine delegate from the Federated Order of Line Scribes has waited on us to present the demands of the organization, among which are (1) recognition of the union; (2) appointing a time and place for meeting with a business committee to determine on a system of collective bargaining for Line material; (3) allowing the Order to have a voice in the management of the column. A prompt compliance with the demands of the Order failing, a strike vote will be ordered. We have never limited the output of a contributor; the union will. No matter how excellent the idea, no matter how inspired the contrib may be to amplify it, he will not be permitted to do more than a certain amount of work per day. However brilliant he may be, he will be held down to the level of the most pedestrian performer. In unionizing, moreover, he will be only exchanging one tyrant for another, and perhaps not so benevolent a one. Now, then, go to it, as the emperor said to the gladiators. * * * ALL RIGHT, DAISY. Dear B. L. T., pray take this hint: I shrink to see my name in print, The agate line--O please!--for me. I sign myself just-- Daisy B. * * * THE SHY AND LOWLYS. I'm modest and meek, And not a bit pushing. Please set in Antique, Or 14 point Cushing. Iris. * * * HE MIGHT TRIM THE VIOLETS. Sir: Could you find an inconspicuous job around the Academy for a bashful man like Mr. Jess Mee, whom we had the pleasure of encountering in Toulon, Ill.? * * * We welcome Mr. Mark Sullivan, who fights the high cost of existence by turning his clothes inside out, to our recently established league, The Order of the Turning Worm. Mr. Sullivan, meet Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. * * * Mr. Mark Sullivan may be interested in this case: "My husband," relates a reader, "did a job of turning for a man reputed to be wealthy. He removed the shingles from a roof, and turned all except those which were impossible: these few were replaced by new ones. The last I heard about this man he was said to have refused Liberty loan salesmen to solicit in his factory." * * * Five years ago a neighbor told us that he had his clothes turned after a season or two of wear, but we neglected to ask him how he shifted the buttonholes to the proper side. Left-handed buttoning would be rather awkward, especially if one were in a hurry. * * * Miss Forsythe of the Trades Union league explains that young women in domestic service feel there is a social stigma attached to the work. It is this stigmatism, no doubt, that causes them to break so many dishes. Anyway, Stigma is a lovely name for a maid, just as pretty as Hilda. * * * "Why care for grammar as long as we are good?" inquired Artemus Ward. A question to be matched by that of the superintendent of Cook county's schools, "Why shouldn't a man say 'It's me' and 'It don't'?" Why not, indeed! How absurd was Prof. McCoosh of Princeton, who, having answered "It's me" to a student inquiry, "Who's there?" retreated because of his mortification for not having said "It's I." Silly old duffer! He would not have enjoyed Joseph Conrad, who uses unblushingly the locution, "except you and I." No, let the school children, like them (or like they) of Rheims, cry out, "That's him!" _Usus loquendi_ has made that as mellifluous as "that's me." It don't make you writhe, do it? Besides, we are all sinners, like McCoosh. And as a gentleman writes to the Scott County, Ind., Journal, "Let he that is without fault cast the first stone." * * * "I want to use the 'lightning-bug' verse," writes Ursus. "Please reprint it and say to whom credit should be given." It is easier to reprint the lines than to locate the credit, but we have always associated them with Eugene Ware. They go-- "The lightning-bug is brilliant, but he hasn't any mind; He stumbles through existence with his headlight on behind." * * * The Harmony Cafeteria advertises, "Eat the Harmony Way." A gentleman who lunched there yesterday counted eighteen sword-swallowers. * * * Remindful of the bow-legged floorwalker who said, "Walk this way, madam." * * * Watching the play, "At the Villa Rose," our thoughts wandered back to "Prince Otto," in which piece we first saw Otis Skinner. And we wondered precisely what George Moore means when he says that Stevenson is all right except when he tries to tell a story. According to Moore, a story is not a story if it keeps you up half the night; "it is only the insignificant book that cannot be laid down," he once maintained. * * * What is a story? To us it is drama first, operating on character. To Conrad it is character first, being operated on by drama. That may be why we prefer "The Wrecker" to "The Rescue." * * * Writes M. G. M. from Denver: "Madame Pompadour, late of Chicago, opened a beauty shop here, and one of our up-to-date young ladies asked her if she was doing the hair in the crime wave so popular in Chicago." * * * TRADE ADIEUS. Sir: After I had entertained a saleslady all evening and had said good-night at her abode, she murmured, "Thanks! Will that be all?" C. H. S. * * * According to Dr. Kumm of the Royal British Geographical Society, the natives of Uganda are happier than we. So are the camels of Sahara. But hoonel, as Orpheus asked Eurydice, wants to be a camel? Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. BEING A FEW HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PAGES FROM HIS JOURNAL. I. In this, the seven and twentieth year of my captivity, I have been much distressed by the monotony of my existence. My habitation is as complete as I can wish; I have all the clothing to my need; and my subjects--my man Friday and his father, and the Spaniard--keep me abundantly supplied with food. When I was alone the necessity of husbandry gave me plenty to do, but now I am oppressed by a great lack of matter for occupation, both physical and mental. Questioning myself, I put the blame upon an evil state of mind into which I have fallen, in no longer finding profit in reading my bible and other books, or in meditating on this life and that which is to come. I am rich in that I want for no material thing; and I am idle, in that I do naught to profit myself or my companions; so that, although practically a solitary, I am, as you might say, an idle rich class, and were I multiplied by thousands I should be a grievous burden on society. Friday, perceiving the state of my mind, has set himself to entertain me, and, being an ingenious fellow, will no doubt succeed. As a beginning he took unto himself the management of our simple meals, and he has contrived so to expand them, both in quantity of food and time spent in consuming it, that a large part of my day is now given over to eating. I drink a great deal of wine with my meals, and of rum also, a great store of which I saved from the wreck; and these strong waters, added to the great quantity of food consumed, produce in me a pleasant torpor, which I find to be a satisfactory substitute for meditation. II. My man Friday came running to me this afternoon to relate that "many great number" of savages were landed on our shore, and that, by the preparations the wretches were making, a great feast was intended. The news was extremely welcome, for I have become so bored by the monotony of existence that any pretext for going abroad after nightfall is a godsend. So after disposing of a heavy dinner, that included six kinds of wines and liquors, my carriage, as I called it (though it was no more than a litter), was fetched by Friday and his father; and followed by the Spaniard, carrying my cloak and perspective glass, I set out for a little wooded hill that overlooked the beach on which the savages were encamped. The dreadful wretches had finished their inhuman feast and were squatting on the sand, watching one of their number, a comely female, who was dancing wildly in a circle of strong firelight. The body of this creature was swathed in veils, which she removed, one after the other, until she was wholly naked. This degrading spectacle seemed to be enormously enjoyed by the spectators, who were grouped in the form of a horseshoe. I observed, also, that they were decorated with feathers and glass beads, and that, except for these ornaments, were as naked as the dancer. My Spaniard, a God fearing man, was greatly shocked by the sight, and my man Friday, too, was strongly affected; but to my shame I must confess that I did not share their abhorrence. Yet even my stomach began to protest when the dancer, darting to one of the canoes, appeared with a gory head that had been chopped from one of the victims of the feast, and continued her shocking gyrations, to a most infernal din of barbarous musical instruments that half a hundred of the wretches were beating. The Spaniard and Friday urged, in their indignation, that we discharge our muskets at the unholy crew; but I restrained them from such an intelligible piece of violence, reflecting that the barbarous customs of these people might be regarded as their own disaster, and that I was not called upon to judge their actions, much less to execute the judgment of heaven upon them. Besides, they were in such numbers that, had we attacked, we should have been overwhelmed. So, calling for my litter, I returned to my habitation. A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO _Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may._ An artist friend, back from the Land of Taos, brings word of another artist who is achieving influence by raising hogs--or "picture buyers," as he sardonically calls them. This set us to wondering what had become of Arthur Dove, one of the first of the Einstein school to exhibit in this town. Despairing of the public intelligence, Mr. Dove took up the raising of chickens, and very old readers of this column may recall the verses in which we celebrated his withdrawal from art: THE BROODING DOVE. Arthur Dove is raising chickens, He has put his paints away: Tell me, Chronos, where the dickens Are the Cubes of yesterday! Dove was real, Dove was earnest, But his efforts came to nix. Bowing to decree the sternest, He has gone to raising chicks. There's a strong demand for broilers, There's a call for chicken-pie; Dove declined to paint pot-boilers, So he put his brushes by. Luck attend his every setting! May his inspirations hatch! And, whatever price he's getting, May he market every batch. * * * "Perpetual reduction of my audience is my hobby," observes Mr. Yeats, who aspires to be the Einstein of song. When only twelve disciples are able to understand him, he will be content. * * * A scientific expedition will hunt for the missing link in Asia, and may find it. But it will never be known whether the m. l. was capable of the popular songs which one sees in the windows of music stores, or whether it could have done something better. * * * The gadder contrib who uses the Gideon Bible to hold the shaving mirror at the right angle is properly rebuked by sundry readers. As one of them, M. B. C., says, he may make the Line, but he'll have a close shave if he makes heaven. * * * We imagine the Gideon Bible is read more than may be supposed. Evening in a small town must be desperately dull to many travelers. And there are better love stories in the Bible than can be bought on the trains. Some of our gadding contribs have so good a writing style that we feel sure it must have been influenced by the Great Book. * * * A STERN PEDAGOGUE. [From the Antelope, Montana, local.] Miss Gladys Spank arrived here from Bozeman last Saturday and is again teaching in the school near Williams. * * * Our esteemed contemporaries, F. P. A., Don Marquis, and Chris Morley, have taken the pains to reply to Miss Amy Lowell's recent remark that "colyums" are "ghastly and pitiful." Dear! dear! What has happened to their sense of humor? * * * SHE NOT ONLY HAS A BOOK. SHE HAS TWO! "I wish to buy a book for a young lady," infoed the blond mustached one to a clerk at McClurg's. "She has both the 'Rubaiyat' and 'A Tale of Two Cities.' What do you advise?" O. B. W. * * * "I never could get to Detour, either," communicates Jezebel, "but recently, on a train, I passed through Derail, which seems to be a fairly thriving village, although some of the houses need paint." => _Old readers detour here--_ * * * YES, YES. Sir: Herbert F. Antunes is a piano tuner in Evanston. L. L. B. * * * => _Resume main pike._ YE STUFF. Sir: "Yee Laundry" reads the sign over Yee Hing's washee at Deming, N. M. Wherein ye olde world is joined with ye olde English. C. P. A. * * * "Henry Ford is poverty stricken intellectually, morally, and spiritually."--Comrade Spargo. Hint for Briggs: "Wonder what Henry Ford thinks about?" * * * Powell's taxicab service in Polo, Ill., offers "a rattle with every ride," and for the life of us we can't imagine the kind of car employed. * * * Speaking of Detour and Derail, "I wonder," wonders A. T., "whether in your travels you ever got to Goslow." * * * DATED. Sir: From the Blue Book: "Pleasant View. Saloon on left corner. Turn left. Then follow winding road." A. C. * * * YOU KNOW THE TUNE. "No girl," say the rules of Northwestern University, "must walk the campus after dusk, unless to the library or to lectures, or for purposes of learning." _I'm a merry little campus maid, The campus sward I rove, Picking Greek roots all the day And learning how to love._ * * * Considering "A Treasury of English Prose,"--prose that rivals great poetry--Mr. J. C. Squire came to an interesting conclusion--that "there is an established, an inevitable, manner into which an Englishman will rise when his ideas and images lift into grandeur; the style of the Authorized Version." * * * Auguste Comte listed five hundred and fifty-eight men and women who could be considered great in the history of the world. An English writer, striking from the list names that he had never heard of before, arrives at the "astounding fact" that since the dawn of history fewer than three hundred and fifty great men have lived. We too are astounded. We had no notion there were so many. * * * "Great Britain," says Lloyd George, "must be freed of ignorance, insobriety, penury, and the tyranny of man over man." That ought not to require more than three or four glacial periods. * * * The Woman's Club asks for "jingles for the jaw." Well, here are two from C. L. Edson. Try them on your jaw: THE TREE TOADS. A tree toad loved a she toad That lived up in a tree; She was a three-toed tree toad, But a two-toed toad was he. The two-toed tree toad tried to win The she toad's friendly nod; For the two-toed tree toad loved the ground That the three-toed tree toad trod. But vainly the two-toed tree toad tried-- He couldn't please her whim; In her tree toad bower With her V-toe power, The she toad vetoed him. THE RIDER AND THE ADDER. Miss Tudor was a rider in a famous circus show; For a pet she had an adder--and the adder loved her so! She fed the adder dodder. It's a plant that live on air, Could you find an odder fodder if you hunted everywhere? Miss Tudor bought some madder. It's a color rather rare, And it made the adder shudder when Miss Tudor dyed her hair. Her hair was soft as eider when she tried her madder dye; Then, it had an odder odor--and was redder than the sky. The adder couldn't chide 'er. It could only idle stare, But a sadder adder eyed 'er when the rider dyed 'er hair. * * * One of our readers was dozing in the lobby of a Boston hotel when he was aroused by an altercation near the cigar stand. A was wagering B that the name of the heroine of "The Scarlet Letter" was Hester Thorne, B maintaining that it was Hester Prim. The manager of the hotel was about to call the police, forgetting that there were none, when the gum-chewing divinity behind the case awarded the decision to B, and the crowd reluctantly dispersed. We have on hand a column of favorite wheezes sent in response to our invitation, and the only reason we have not printed them is the preponderance of our own stuff. Naturally, or not, we are better amused by the wheezes of contributors. Frexample the following evoked a smile: "On the train running into Tulsa," wrote a gadder, "a native was fooling with the roller curtain, when suddenly it flew up with a snap. He looked bewildered, stuck his head out of the window, and finally said to himself, 'Well, I reckon that's the last they'll see of _that_ derned thing!'" * * * As we have been informed, and as we repeat for the benefit of the School of Journalism, there is nothing to running a column except the knack of writing more or less apt headlines. And so for the instruction of students whose ambition may be vaulting in that direction we will reopen a short court in head-writing. See what you can do with the divorce suit of Hazel Nutt against John P. Nutt, filed in a Florida court. * * * As to the divorce suit of Hazel Nutt vs. John P. Nutt, M. M. C. offers, "Shucks!" * * * Another happy headline for the Nutt vs. Nutt divorce suit, suggested by Battle Creek: "Two Nutts Will Soon Be Loose." * * * The hand-painted baby-blue pencil for the best headline last week goes to the artist on the San Francisco Chronicle for the following: "Prehistoric Skulls Found Digging Wells." * * * We see by the paper--our favorite medium of information--that Duluth is to have an evening of "wrestling and dance." A keen eye can probably tell the difference. * * * The drawn-work decanter, prize for the best headline for the Nutt vs. Nutt divorce case, is awarded to G. C. H. for his inspiration, "Nutts for the Lawyers." * * * LIMERIK. There was a young man from Art Creek Who went around dressed in Batik. When they asked, "Are you well?" He replied, "Ain't it hell? But in Art it's the very last shriek." * * * Received by a Missouri teacher: "Please excuse Frank for being absent. I kneaded him at home." In the woodshed? Ouch, Maw! * * * How could the teacher rebuke Emil when she read this excuse from his father? "The only excuse I have for Emil being late was nine o'clock came sooner than we expected." * * * For our part, we are moved to protest against the growing practice among parents of rebuking their children for playing with the children of prohibitionists. We should not visit upon the little ones the sins of their intemperate progenitors. * * * "Attention, Members!" postcards the house committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board. "Get your feet under the table and you are putting your shoulder behind your board." This is another good reducing exercise. * * * With the return of the railroads to private control, we look for an immediate improvement in the service. For, as the dining-car waiter said, when requested to brush the crumbs from a table: "We's workin' for the government now. We don't have to brush no crumbs off no more." Well, he'll brush some crumbs off some more now, or he'll be fired. * * * One may send "harmless live animals" by parcel post, with the chances eight to five that the animal will be reduced to pulp or die of old age. * * * THE CHIGGER. When the enterprising chigger is a-chigging And maturing his felonious little plan, He loves to climb the lingerie and rigging And tunnel into Annabel and Ann. The chigger then with chloroform they smother, His little hour of pleasure then is o'er, So take this consideration with the other, A chigger's life is pretty much a bore. * * * A VERSATILE CHAP. [From the Turton, S. D., Trumpet.] Victor LaBrie gave several fine selections on the piano. Victor is a splendid musician. When he plays he has full control of the piano, and has splendid harmony to his selections. Victor LaBrie started dragging Monday afternoon. He used the tractor and stated that it worked up fine. * * * "Seeing is believing," says the vender of a piano player. But perhaps you would prefer auricular evidence. * * * "The only fad I have had for the last twenty-six years is my husband."--Mrs. Harding. This is one of the very few really worthy fads that women have ever taken up. * * * ACT II., SCENE II. JULIET. What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. ROMEO. Thou sayest a mouthful, love. And yet how come That Myra Tinkelpaugh, of Cobleskill, New York, conducts therein The Music Shop? * * * Mr. Sink having resigned as plumber to the Immortals, we are recommending in his place the plumbing firm of Jamin & Jerkin, of St. Petersburg, Fla. * * * "Buy a communication ticket," advises a restaurant. This, understands E. S., gives you the privilege of talking with the waitresses. * * * "Every American man has a mental picture of his wife standing behind the door with a rolling-pin."--Blasco Ibanez. We fear the gifted Spaniard has acquired an idea of American domestic life from Mr. Tom Powers' sketches and other back-page comics. * * * A reader wonders what we can find in a book so childishly egotistical as Margot Asquith's Autobiography. Answer: much that is interesting. When we read an autobiography we are interested in the people written about rather than in the writer. There are exceptions, of course; for example, Henry Adams and Jacques Casanova. * * * THE JANITOR ENTERTAINS. [Iowa City Item.] An unusual function for men in business circles was that which John Voelkel, janitor of the First National bank, supervised, Saturday evening. He gave a dinner, card party and a smoker to all the officers of the bank. Invitations were issued to every member of the staff, from president to clerk, and those who assembled at the custodian's home made merry for several hours at an event probably without a duplicate in banking history in Iowa City. * * * VARIANT OF THE V. H. W. Sir: Please send me a copy of the famous valve handle wheeze. I have heard so much about it. I hope this reaches you before your limited supply is exhausted. O. G. C. P. S.--One of the fellows in the office just told me the joke, so you need not bother to send me a copy. O. G. C. * * * CRUELLE ET INSOLITE. [Transfer slip, Peninsular Railway Co.] This ticket is good for one continuous passage only in the direction shown by conductor's punch in the face hereof. * * * HIGH, LOW, JACK, AND THE GAME. Sir: While visiting in a New England family I accused them of being "highbrows," and they gave me these modern synonyms for highbrow and lowbrow, taken from a Boston paper: Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics, Bacon, the string quartette, the uplift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension, Euripides, "eyether," pâté de fois gras, lemon phosphate, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson. Low-highbrow: Municipal government, Kipling, socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf, grand opera, bridge, chicken à la Maryland, "eether," stocks and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in private. High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball, moving pictures, small steak medium, whisky, Robert W. Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends. Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven't came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the Duchess, beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse John, chewing gum in public. E. S. * * * A bachelor complains to us that prohibition has ruined his life. His companions have deserted their haunts--all, all are gone, the old familiar faces--and he can find no one to talk to; and he talks very well, too. Now, we have as much compassion for him as it is possible to have for any bachelor, and yet we do not esteem his case utterly hopeless. As Mr. Lardner has suggested, when he repairs to his hotel at night he can open the clothespress and talk to his other suit of clothes. * * * Tolstoi's "Power of Darkness" reminds P. G. Wodehouse of a definition of Greek tragedy--the sort of drama in which one character comes to another and says, "If _you_ don't kill mother, _I_ will!" * * * "The jehu of the rubber-neck wagon," reports a gadder from Loz Onglaze, "called out: 'We are now in the center of the old aristocratic center. That palatial residence on our left is the home of Fatty Arbuckle.'" * * * _MORNING IN IOWA_. _A cold, rough, gloomy morning! 'Gainst yellow dawn the smoke Of neighbors' chimneys stains the air, Reminding me that yon grim, white-capped cone, Which like a second Rainier stands in my backyard, Like him of ash and cinders built, now calls For more upbuilding. That white bloom Which last night's snow hath left upon His smooth and awful sides must now Be sicklied o'er with more and yet more Ashes._ _What's that I smell--buckwheats? And What's-his-name's pig sausage? It is? Aha! Gee, what a peach of a morning!_ Abd-el-Kader. * * * AN EVENING WITH SHAKESPEARE. Sir: Overheard at the Studebaker: "What's put him off his nut?" Lady, answering: "He ain't really bugs--it's a stall. The old guy [Polonius] thinks he's got something on him." P. S. D. * * * YOURS, ETC. Sir: The height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, "Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as assurances of self-evident esteem are omitted from our letters." E. A. D. * * * "It costs 30,000 Lenin rubles a day for food alone," says Prof. Zeidler of Viborg, referring to so-called life in Russia. Apparently, then, Lenin has not yet succeeded in making money utterly worthless. * * * HE OUGHT TO BE DEPORTED. Sir: Gum Boot Charlie, an Alaska native, was discussing the present h. c. l. with a group of citizens of Yakutat, and while condemning the present administration and conditions generally, he was interrupted by a Swede who said: "You dam native, if you don't like this country, why don't you go back where you came from?" W. W. K. * * * A Carbondale youth was arrested for hunting out of season, and the possession of a gun and a dog is considered, by the Free Press, "facsimile evidence." * * * Then, as D. B. B. reminds, there are the writers of apostrophic verse who skip lightly from 'you' to 'thou' and 'thee,' and from 'thy' to 'your.' A language less rugged than the English would have been destroyed long ago. * * * We learn from the Monticello, Ind., Journal that a couple narrowly escaped being asphyxicated by gas from an anthricate coal stove. Young Grimes must be reporting for that gazette. * * * Overheard in an osteopath's office: "When does it hurt you most, when you set or when you lay?" * * * NOTES OF THE ACADEMY OF IMMORTALS. The following nominations have been received: For greenskeeper on the Academy links: Mr. Launmore of Pittsburgh. Nom. by S. C. B. For bugler: Mr. Mescall of Chicago. Nom. by Circle W. For legal counsel: Atty. Frank Lawhead of Detroit. Nom. by H. D. T. For any vacancy: Mr. Void Null of Centralia, Mo. Nom. by E. J. C. * * * Miss Seitsinger is organizing a chorus and glee club in the schools of Northwood, Ia. Yes, very. * * * BUTCHER TO THE ACADEMY. Bill Bull, the Butcher, of Bartlett, Ill., Says: "Trade with me. Cut down your bill." A. G. C. * * * The membership committee of the Academy has received numerous protests against the admission of Charles Ranck, the skunk trapper of Ellsworth, Neb., and J. K. Garlick, the "practical horseshoer" of Sublette, Ill. * * * ACADEMY NOTES. The nominations were considered of Ananias Deeds of Guthrie Center, Ia., and Mrs. Tamer Lyons of Upton, Ind. The Academy then resumed work on the Dictionary of Names. * * * "For goodness' sake!" exclaims Frank Harris in Pearson's, expressing his joy in the growth of Lenine's state, "for goodness' sake let us have new experiments on this old earth." For goodness's sake, let's! But why not have one on a grand scale? Let's dig a hole a mile deep and a mile across, fill it with dynamite, and see whether we can't finish the world in one good bang. * * * "Learned Class of Europe In Hard Straits." They are in hard straits everywhere. The more learned you are, the worse you're off. * * * "Budapest Hungriest of Cities in all Europe."--South Bend Tribune. The headliner must have his little joke. * * * WE DON'T LIKE TO THINK OF IT! [From the Cambridge Review.] Think of the portrait that Rembrandt painted of his mother hanging in the living-room of his parents' simple home. * * * Our blithesome contemporary, F. P. A., is not disturbed by the steel strike, as he uses a gold pen; and for a like reason _our_ withers are unwrung. Eugene Field of fragrant memory used a steel pen. A friend of ours was speaking of having dropped in on the poet just as he was fitting a new pen to the holder. "You can't write anything new," said Field, "unless you have a new pen." * * * THE SECOND POST. [Received by a mail order house.] Dear Sir: The peeaney you shipped me sum time ago come duly recd. My, is we souposed to pay the frate charge onit. When we bot this peeanney you claimed to lie it down to me. I want you two send me quick as hell a receet for 2.29 for same. Besyds the kees on sum dont work a tall. Is them ivory finger boards. Are dealer here sed we got beet on this deel. Wer is the thing you seet on? Is it eeen that box on the platform at the depo? That luks two small for it. Yours truely, etc. P. S.--Wen you rite tel me how two tune it. * * * Fireplace heating, says Dr. Evans, is the most wasteful. True. And the most agreeable. So many things that make life endurable in this vale of tears are wasteful. * * * "Since her tour of the Pacific Coast," declares a Berkeley bulletin, "Miss Case has made strident advances in her art." The lady, it appears, sings. * * * THE SECOND POST. [Received by a Birmingham concern.] Dear Sirs and Gents: Would say this lady i got the Range for had applied for a divorce and was to marrey me but she has taken her soldier husband back again and changed her notion so i don't think it right to pay for a range for the other man. let him pay it out if she will live up to her bargin i will pay and could have paid at the time but was afraid this would happen as it has she has never rote or communicated with me since i left there dont think it right or justice that i pay for it and perhaps never see her again had they of rote to me i would have kept up the payments can first see the parties what they expect to do. Very Respect, etc. * * * You have observed the skinned-rabbit hair-cut. The barber achieves a gruesome effect by running the clippers half-way up the skull. But did you know that it originated in Columbus, O.? "Yes, sir," said the Columbus barber to Col. Drury Underwood, "that started here. We call it the two-piece haircut." * * * CUPID CARRIES A CARD. H. H. Lessner, of Alton, Ill., known as "Alton's Marrying Justice of the Peace," carries a union label on his stationery. * * * "I am reading Marcus Aurelius now," confides Mme. Galli-Curci to an interviewer. "One can never really grow tired of it, can one?" Well, if you ask us, one can. * * * "Are we going crazy?"--Senator Smoot. "Wanted, man or woman to give me a few lessons on ouija board."--Denver Post ad. So it seems. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | ANNOUNCEMENT! | | | | In accordance with our immemorial custom of giving our | | readers a Christmas holiday, when it falls on Sunday, the | | Line-o'-Type will not be published to-morrow. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ Transcriber's note: Minor punctuation errors have been repaired, but inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been left as printed in light of the author's extensive use of dialect and deliberate humorous mis-spelling. Emphasis rendered in the original by typographic means other than italics has been marked +thus+. 
33251	----	scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print archive. [Illustration: "_Yes, surrendered. Haven't you sent for money? Haven't you given up? Aren't you trying to run away?_"] HEMPFIELD _A Novel_ By DAVID GRAYSON Author of "Adventures in Contentment," "Adventures in Friendship," "The Friendly Road" [Illustration] _Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty_ GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1915 _Copyright, 1915, by_ DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY [Illustration] [Illustration] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. I Discover the Printing-office 3 II. I Step Boldly into the Story 23 III. Anthy 37 IV. Enter Mr. Ed Smith 51 V. Nort 71 VI. A Man to Help Fergus 83 VII. Phaëton Drives the Chariot of the _Star_ 101 VIII. Nort and Anthy 118 IX. A Letter to Lincoln 123 X. The Wonderful Day 133 XI. In Which Great Plans Are Evolved, and There Is a Surprising Event 151 XII. The Explosion 171 XIII. Anthy Takes Command 190 XIV. We Begin the Subjugation of Nort 204 XV. I Get Better Acquainted with Anthy 222 XVI. The Old Captain Comes into His Own 228 XVII. In Which Certain Deep Matters of the Heart Are Presented 236 XVIII. Nort Sniffs 240 XIX. Fergus's Favourite Poem 250 XX. The Celebration 260 XXI. Starlight 270 XXII. Fergus and Nort 275 XXIII. The Battle 289 XXIV. Two Letters 300 XXV. The Flying machine 305 XXVI. The Return of the Prodigal 312 XXVII. Fergus MacGregor Goes to the Hills 321 [Illustration] ILLUSTRATIONS "Yes, surrendered. Haven't you sent for money? Haven't you given up? Aren't you trying to run away?" _Frontispiece in color_ Ed's innocent suggestion of a house-cleaning was taken by Fergus as a deadly affront 68 John Bass's blacksmith shop 76 He pictured himself sitting in the quiet study of the minister, looking sad, sad ... 78 What a thing is youth! That sunny morning in Hempfield Nort thought that he was drinking the uttermost dregs of life--and yet, somehow, he was able to stand a little aside and enjoy it all 80 "Well!" exclaimed Nort, drawing a long breath, "I never imagined it would feel so good to be orfunts" 104 She turned around quickly--but there was no one there to see 128 After that she opened her heart more and more to me--a little here, a little there 224 "David, I saw a face looking in at that window" 286 _Illustrations in Text_ PAGE It sat there in its garden and watched with mild interest the hasty world go by 11 A very lonely little girl, sitting at a certain place on the third step from the bottom of the stairs 40 The home of her girlhood seemed dreadfully shabby, small, and old-fashioned 42 I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, had begun to be interested in Nort 91 "I tell you, Miss Doane," said Nort, explosively, "the only way to make a success of the _Star_ is to publish the truth about Hempfield----" 169 "Practical!" he exploded. "You are a blackguard, sir! You are a scoundrel, sir!" 185 The old Captain was perfect. He was a very pattern of gallantry 268 "Toys! Mere circus tricks to take in fools!" 310 "I couldn't stay away another minute. I had to know what the old Captain said and did when the flying machine came to Hempfield" 314 Fergus stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's poems in his pocket--and going out of the back door struck out for the hills 332 HEMPFIELD [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER I I DISCOVER THE PRINTING-OFFICE For years my sister Harriet and I confined our relationships with the neighbouring town of Hempfield to the Biblical "yea, yea" and "nay, nay," not knowing how much we missed, and used its friendly people as one might use an inanimate plough or an insensate rolling-pin, as mere implements or adjuncts in the provision of food or clothing for our needs. It came only gradually alive for us. As the years passed the utilitarian stranger with whom we traded became an acquaintance, and the acquaintance a friend. Here and there a man or a woman stepped out of the background, as it were, of a dim picture, and became a living being. One of the first was the old gunsmith of whom I have already written. Another was Doctor North--though he really lived outside the town--whom we came to know late in his career. He was one of the great unknown men of this country; he lives yet in many lives, a sort of immortality which comes only to those who have learned the greatest art of all arts, the art of life. The Scotch preacher, whom we have loved as we love few human beings, was also in reality a part of the town, though we always felt that he belonged to our own particular neighbourhood. He was ever a friend to all men, town or country. It has always been something of a mystery to me, when I think of it, how I happened for so long to miss knowing more about old Captain Doane, and MacGregor, that roseate Scotchman. It is easier to understand why I never knew Anthy, for she was much away from Hempfield in the years just after I came here; and as for Norton Carr and Ed Smith, they did not come until some time afterward. I shall later celebrate Nort's arrival in Hempfield--and may petition the selectmen to set up a monument upon the spot of this precious soil where he first set a shaky foot. I lived before I knew Anthy and Nort and MacGregor and the old Captain, but sometimes I wonder how I lived. When we let new friends into our lives we become permanently enlarged, and marvel that we could ever have lived in a smaller world. So I came to know Hempfield, and all those stories--humorous, tragic, exciting, bitter, sorrowful--which thrive so lustily in every small town. As we treasure finally those books which are not, after all, concerned with clapping finite conclusions to infinite events, but are content to be beautiful as they go (as truth is beautiful), so I love the living stories of Hempfield, nor care deeply whether they are at Chapter I, or in the midst of the climax, or whether they are tapering toward a Gothic-lettered "Finis." Only I have never once come across any Hempfield story that can be said to have reached a final page. Every Hempfield story I know has been like a stone dropped in the puddle of life, with ripples that grow ever wider with the years. And I esteem it the best thing in my life that I have had a part in some of those stories: that a few people, perhaps, are different, as I am different, because I passed that way. How well I remember the evening when my eye was first caught by the twinkle of that luminary, the Hempfield _Star_, with which afterward I was to become so intimately acquainted. It came to me like a fresh breeze on a sultry day, or a new man in the town road. It was a paragraph in the editorial page, headed with a single word printed in robust black type: FUDGE At that time I had been "taking in" the _Star_ (as they say here) for only a few weeks, and had seen little in it that made it appear different from any other weekly newspaper. I am ashamed to say that I had entertained a good-humoured tolerance, mingled with contempt, for country newspapers. They seemed to me the apotheosis of the little, the palladium of the uninteresting. It did not occur to me that anything possessed of such tenacity of life as the country newspaper must have a real meaning and perform a genuine function in our civilization. In this roaring age of efficiency we do not long support any institution that does not set its claws deep into our common life--and hang on. I began to take the _Star_ as a sort of concession, arguing with myself that it would at least give me the weekly price of eggs and potatoes; and, besides, Harriet always wants to know regularly where the Ladies' Literary Society is to hold its meetings. You cannot imagine my surprise and interest then, when I came abruptly upon that explosive, black-typed "Fudge" in the middle of the _Star_. I have always had a fondness for the word. It is like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy library, and any man who can say "Fudge" in a big, round voice has something in him. He's got views and a personality, even though the views may be crooked and the personality prickly. With what joy I read that paragraph--and cut it from the paper, and have it yet in my golden treasury. This is it: FUDGE A fellow named Wright, who lives out in Ohio, says he can fly. Mr. Wright is wrong. If the Lord had intended human beings to fly He would have grown wings on us. He made birds for the air, and fish for the sea, and men to walk on two legs. It is a common characteristic of flying-machine inventors and Democrats that they are not satisfied with the doings of the Lord, but must be turning the world topsy-turvy. Mr. Wright of Ohio should peruse the historic story of Darius Green and his flying machine. If memory serves us right Darius bumped his head, and afterward lived a sensible life. The _Star_ would commend the example of Mr. Green to Mr. Wright--and the Democrats. Harriet heard me laughing, and called from the other room: "David, what _are_ you laughing at?" "Why, a new judge in Israel"--and I read the paragraph aloud with the keenest delight. "But I thought Mr. Wright _could_ fly!" said my sister doubtfully. "Well, he can," said I, "only this writer is a Republican." She was silent for a moment, standing there in the doorway while I watched with interest the gathering question. "But I don't see why a Republican--if he _can_ fly----" "Harriet," I began rather oratorically, "this is a very interesting and amusing world we live in, and it is fortunate that we do not all believe everything we see or hear--at any rate, I'd like to meet the man who wrote that paragraph. I feel certain that he is one of the everlasting rocks of New England." It was this amusing little incident, rather than the really serious purpose that lay back of it, that sent me at last to Hempfield. I kept thinking about the man of the paragraph as I went about my work, chuckling in the cow stable or pausing when I was putting down the hay. I imagined him an old fellow with gray chin whiskers, a pair of spectacles set low on his nose, and a frown between his eyes. "How he does despise Democrats!" I said to myself. And yet--our instinct for the compensatory view being irresistible--a pretty good old chap! I thought I should like him, somehow. One early morning in May, the spring having opened with rare splendour, I hitched up the mare and drove to town. Ostensibly I was going for a few ears of seed corn, a new tooth for my cultivator, and a ham for Harriet--so is the spirit bound down to the mundane--but in reality I was looking for the man who could say "Fudge" with such bluff assurance. It was a wonderful spring morning, and I did not in the least know as I drove the old mare in the town road, with all the familiar hills and trees about me, that I was going into a new country, fairer by far than ours, where the clouds are higher than they are here, and the grass is greener, where all the men grow taller and the women more beautiful. I asked Nort once, long afterward, if he could remember the first impression he had when he came to Hempfield and saw the printing-office. Nort frowned, as though thinking hard, and made a characteristic reply: "I don't rightly remember," said he, "of having any first impression, until I saw Anthy." But I will not be hurried even to my meeting with Anthy; for I have a very vivid first impression of the printing-office as it sat like a contemplative old gentleman in its ancient and shabby garden. First we see things with our eyes, see them flat like pictures in a book, and that isn't really sight at all. Then some day we see them with the heart, or the soul, or the spirit-- I'm not certain just what it is that really sees, but it is something warm and strong and light inside of us--and that is the true sight. I had driven the streets of Hempfield for years, and gone in at the grocery stores, made a familiar resort of the gunsmith shop, and visited the post office, but had never really seen the printing-office at all. [Illustration: It sat there in its garden and watched with mild interest the hasty world go by] Like most things or people really worth knowing, the printing-office is of a retiring disposition. It is an old building, once a dwelling-house, which stands somewhat back from the street, with a quaint old garden around it. An ancient picket fence, nicked and whittled by a generation or so of boys who should have known better, guards its privacy. At the tip of the low cornice is a weatherbeaten bird house, a miniature Greek Parthenon, where the wrens built their nests. Larger and more progressive business buildings had crowded up to the street lines on both sides of it, and yet it managed to preserve somehow an air of ancient gentility. The gate sagged on its hinges, the chimney had lost a brick or two, but it sat there in its garden and watched with mild interest the hasty world go by. I wondered, that morning, why the peculiar air of the place had never before touched me. I paused a moment, looking in at it with such a feeling of expectancy as I cannot well describe. I did not know what adventure might there befall me. At any moment I half expected to see my imagined old fellow appear on the doorstep and cry out, half ironically, half explosively: "Fudge!" Upon which, undoubtedly, I should have disappeared into thin air. There being no sign of life, for it was still very early in the morning, I opened the gate and went in. Over the front door stretched a weatherbeaten sign bearing these words in large letters: THE HEMPFIELD STAR Under this name there was a line of smaller lettering, so faded that one could not easily read it from the street. But as I stood now at the doorway and looked up I could make it out--and it came to me, I cannot tell with what charm, like the far-off echo of ancient laughter: _Hitch Your Wagon to the Star_ Below this legend in fresher paint, bearing indeed the evidence of repainting, for many are the vicissitudes of a country newspaper, was the name of the firm: Doane & Doane I went up the steps to the little porch and looked in at the doorway. I shall never forget the odour of printer's ink which came warmly to my nostrils, the never-to-be-forgotten odour of printer's ink, sweeter than the spices of Araby, more alluring than attar of roses!... It was a long, low room, with pasted pictures on the walls, a row of dingy cases at one side, the press at the farther end, the stones near it, and a cutting machine with its arm raised aloft as though to command attention. The editor's desk in the corner was heaped so high with books and papers and magazines and pamphlets that another single one added to the pile would certainly have produced an avalanche--and ended ignominiously in the capacious wastebasket. For all its dinginess and its picturesque disorder there was something infinitely beguiling about the room. In the front window stood a row of potted geraniums, very thrifty, and there was a yellow canary in a cage, and the editor's ancient chair (one lame leg bandaged with string) was occupied by an old fat gray cat, curled up on a cushion and comfortably asleep. A light breeze came in at one of the windows, fingered a leaf of the calendar to make sure that it was really spring again, and went out blithely at the other window. I liked it: I liked it all. "There is a fine woman around this shop somewhere," I said to myself, "or else a very fine man." My vision of the daring paragrapher who could say "Fudge" with such virgin enthusiasm instantly shifted. I saw him now as something of a poet--still old, but with a pleasing beard (none of your common chin whiskers) and rarely fine eyes, a man who could care for flowers in the window and keep the cat from the canary. At that instant my eyes were smitten with stark reality, my imagination wrecked upon the reef of fact. I saw Fergus MacGregor. Fergus is one of those men who should always be seen for the first time: after you begin to know him, you can't rightly appreciate him. He was sitting away back in the corner of the room, by his favourite window, tipped back in his chair, with one heel hooked over a rung, the other leg playing loose in space, sadly reading the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" which he considers the greatest book in the world--next to Robert Burns's poems. Fergus has always been good for me. He is all facts, like roast beef, or asparagus, or a wheel in a rut. It is almost impossible to idealize Fergus: he has freckles and red hair on his hands. When Fergus first came to Hempfield, one of our good old Yankee citizens, who had never seen much of foreigners and therefore considered them all immoral, said he never had liked Frenchmen. Whenever I am soaring aloft, as I think I am too likely to do, I have to be very firm in the wings, else the sight of Fergus MacGregor, with his red hair, his scorched face, and his angular wiry frame, will bring me straight down to earth. He brought me down the first morning I laid eyes on him. As I stood there in the printing-office, looking about me, Fergus glanced up from the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and said: "Wull?" I can't tell you what worlds of solid reality were packed into that single word. At once all my imaginings came tumbling about me. What, after all, had I come for? Why was I in this absurd printing-office? What wild-goose chase was I on? I should really be at home planting potatoes. Potatoes, cows, corn, cash--surely there were no other realities in life! For an instant the visions of the fields died within me, and I felt sick and weak. You will understand--if you understand. I thought, as I stood there stupidly, that this was indeed the man who would say "Fudge!" to all the world. I groped in a wandering mind for some adequate way of escape, and it occurred to me presently that I could order a thousand envelopes, with my name printed in the corner, and bring him to terms. No, I'd order _five_ thousand--and utterly obliterate him! "Wull?" said Fergus. If it had not been for this second "Wull?" I might have gone back to my immemorial existence and never have brought my new vision to the hard test of life, never have known Anthy, never have felt the glory of a new earth. But with that second "Wull?" which was even more devastating than the first, I felt something electric, warm, strong, stinging through me. I had a curious sense of high happiness, and before I knew it I was saying: "After all, men _do_ fly!" I laugh still when I remember how Fergus MacGregor looked at me. For a long moment he said nothing as eloquently as ever I heard it said. I began to feel the humour of the situation (humour is the fellow that always waits just around the corner until the danger is past), but I said in all seriousness: "I'm looking for the man who wrote an editorial last week headed 'Fudge.' He doesn't appear to approve of flying machines." Fergus had not stirred by so much as the fraction of an inch. He looked at me for another instant and then paid me, if I had known it, a most surprising compliment. He smiled. His face slowly cracked open--I can express it no other way--and remained cracked for the space of two seconds, and returned to its usual condition. Fergus's smile is one of the wonders of nature. "What ye going to do?" asked Fergus. "Thrash the editor?" "No," said I, "convert him." Fergus slowly shook his head. "Ye can't," said he. "I've already begun," said I. Fergus looked me over for a moment, and smiled again, this time winding up with a snort or a cough, which started to be a laugh, but stopped away down somewhere inside of him. "Ye think I wrote it?" "Well," said I, "you look perfectly capable of it." I was just beginning to enjoy thoroughly this give and take of conversation, which of all sports in the world is certainly the most fascinating, when I heard steps behind me and, turning half around, saw Anthy for the first time. "There's the editor," said Fergus. "Ask her yourself." She came down the room toward me with a quick, businesslike step. She wore a little round straw hat with a plain band. She had a sprig of lilac on her coat, and looked at me directly--like a man. She had very clear blue eyes. I have thought of this meeting a thousand times since--in the light of all that followed--and this is literally all I saw. I was not especially impressed in any way, except perhaps with a feeling of wonder that this was the person in authority, really the editor. I have tried to recall every instant of that meeting, and cannot remember that I thought of her either as young or as a woman. Perhaps the excitement and amusement of my talk with Fergus served to prevent a more vivid first impression. I speak of this reaction because all my life, whenever I have met a woman--I have been much alone--I have had a curious sense of being with some one a little higher or better than I am, to whom I should bow, or to whom I should present something, or with whom I should joke. With whom I should not, after all, be quite natural! I wonder if this is at all an ordinary experience with men? I wonder if any one will understand me when I say that there has always seemed to me something not quite proper in talking to a woman directly, seriously, without reservation, as to a man? But I record it here as a curious fact that I met Anthy that morning just as I would have met a man--as one human being facing another. "I am the editor," she said crisply, but with good humour. "Well," I said, "I'm afraid I'm on a rather unusual and unbusinesslike errand." She did not help me. "Last week I read an editorial in your paper which amused--interested--me very much. It was headed 'Fudge,' The writer plainly doesn't believe either in flying machines or in Democrats." I heard Fergus bark behind me. "He's going to thrash the writer," said Fergus. Anthy glanced swiftly across at Fergus. It occurred to me in a flash: "Why, _she_ wrote it!" The sudden thought of the chin whiskers I had fastened upon the imaginary writer was too much for me, and I laughed outright. "Well," said I, "I shall not attempt any extreme measures until I try, at least, to convert her." I saw now that I had said something really amusing, for Fergus barked twice behind me and Anthy broke into the liveliest laughter. "You don't really think I wrote it?" she inquired in the roundest astonishment, with one hand on her breast. "I should certainly be very well repaid for my visit," said I, "if I thought you did." "Won't that amuse the Captain!" she exclaimed. "So the Captain wrote it," I said, not knowing in the least who the Captain was. "Tell me, has he chin whiskers?" "Why?" asked Anthy. "Well, when I read that editorial," I said, beginning again to enjoy the give and take of the conversation, "I imagined the sort of man who must have written it: chin whiskers, spectacles low on his nose, very severe on all young things." Anthy looked at Fergus. "And does he by any chance"--I inquired in as serious a manner as I could command, "I mean, of course, when he is angry--kick the cat?" At this Fergus came down with a bang on all four legs of his chair, and we all laughed together. "Say," said Fergus, "I don't know who ye are, but ye're all right!" And that was the way I came first to the printing-office. [Illustration] CHAPTER II I STEP BOLDLY INTO THE STORY It is one of the provoking, but interesting, things about life that it will never stop a moment for admiration. No sooner do you pause to enjoy it, or philosophize over it, or poetize about it, than it is up and away, and the next time you glance around it is vanishing over the hill--with the wind in its garments and the sun in its hair. If you do not go on with life, it will go on without you. The only safe way, then, to follow a story, I mean a story in real life, is to get right into it yourself. How breathless, then, it becomes, how you long for--and yet fear--the next chapter, how you love the heroine and hate the villain, and never for an instant can you tell how it is all coming out! I should be tempted to say that I arrived at the printing-office at a psychological moment if it were not for the fact, as I soon learned, that most of the moments for several months past had been equally psychological. Indeed, before I had fairly got acquainted with the printing-office, and with Fergus and Anthy, and was expecting momentarily to hear the Captain coming in, crying "Fudge," the story moved on, as majestically as if I hadn't appeared at all. In a story or a play you can set your stage for your crises, and lead up to the entrance of your villain with appropriate literary flourishes. You can artfully let us know beforehand that it is really a villain who is about to intrude upon your paradise, and dim the voice of the canary and frighten the cat. But in real life, events and crises have a disconcerting way of backing into your narrative before ever you are ready for them, and at the most awkward and inconvenient times. It was thus that Bucky Penrose came into the printing-office that spring morning. He was struggling with a small but weighty box filled with literature in metal. When he had got it well inside, he deposited it, not at all gently, on a stool, took off his cap, and wiped his forehead. "Whew, it's hot this morning!" said Bucky. Now, I dislike to speak of Bucky as a villain, for of all the people in Hempfield Bucky certainly least looks the part. He has towy hair and mild, light-blue eyes. He wears a visor cap and carries a long, flat book which he flaps open for you to sign. He is the expressman. I could see, however, from the look in Anthy's face that Bucky was really a hardened villain. And Bucky himself seemed to know it and feel it, for it was in an apologetic voice that he said: "The plates is a dollar this week, Miss Doane, and the insides is seven and a half, C. O. D." Anthy's hand went to the little leather bag she carried. "I--I didn't bring up the insides in this load. Mr. Peters said--the Captain----" Anthy had taken a step forward, and there was a look of sudden determination in her face. "Never mind, Bucky, about the Captain----" "Well, I thought----" He was thinking just what the whole of Hempfield was thinking, and dared not say. The colour came up in Anthy's cheeks, but she only lifted her chin the higher. "Tell Mr. Peters to send up the insides at once, Bucky, _at once_. The money will be ready for him." "All right, Miss Doane, all right--but I thought----" "Don't think," growled MacGregor, who had been standing aside and saying nothing; "it ain't your calling." Bucky turned fiercely to reply, but Anthy suddenly laid a hand on his arm. "In the future, Bucky, don't go to the Captain at all. Come straight to me." "'Tain't my fault," grumbled Bucky; "I got to collect." "Certainly you have," said Anthy; "I'll pay you for the box, and you can bring the insides later. Tell Mr. Peters." It was magnificent the way she carried it off; and when at last the villain had departed, she turned to us with a face slightly flushed, but in perfect control. I had a sudden curious lift of the heart: for there is nothing that so stirs the soul of a man as the sight of courage in a woman. If I had been interested before, I was doubly interested now. It had been one of those lightning-flash incidents which let us more deeply into the real life of men than pages of history. I felt that this printing-office was sacred ground, the scene of battle and trial and commotion. At the same time the whole situation struck me with a sudden sense of amusement and surprise. Back somewhere in my consciousness I had always felt something of awe for the Power of the Press. A kind of institutional sanctity seemed to hedge it round about, so that it spoke with the thunder of authority--and here was the Press quite unable to pay the expressman seven dollars and a half! I think I must have entertained much the same view that Captain Doane so delights to express upon any favourable (or unfavourable) public occasion. How often have I heard him since that memorable time! He does it very impressively, with his right thumb hooked into the buttons of his vest, his beautiful shaggy head thrown well back, and his somewhat shabby frock coat drawn up on the left side--for it is his left hand that he holds so tremulously and impressively aloft--that mighty director of public opinion, that repository of freedom, that palladium of democracy, that ruler of the nation. Whenever I hear the Captain, I can never think of the press without trembling a little at its incredible prescience, without being awed by the way in which it soaks up the life of the community and, having held it for a moment in solution, distributes it--I quote the Captain--"like dew" (sometimes manna) "upon the populace, iridescent with the glories of the printed word." Nor do I ever hear him these days, especially in his moments of biting irony, when he considers those "contemners of the Press" (mostly Democrats) who never tire of "nefarious practices," without thinking of that first morning I spent in the printing-office--and the look in Anthy's eyes. Events after the departure of the mild-eyed Bucky moved swiftly. Anthy walked down the room, and Fergus, after hesitating for a moment, followed her. I suppose I should have departed promptly, but I couldn't--I simply couldn't. After the solitude of my farm and my thoughts, I cannot tell how fascinating I found these stirring events. The little drama which followed was all perfectly clear to me, though I heard not a word, except the last exclamation. As Fergus followed Anthy, he drew a lean tobacco bag slowly out of his hip pocket--and thrust it quickly back again, hesitated, then spoke to Anthy. She shook her head vigorously, and stood up very straight and still. Fergus's hand went back to his pocket again, hesitated, plunged in. He took a bill from the lean bag and fumbled it in his hand. Every line in Anthy's firm body said no. She looked out of the window expectantly. Fergus's looks followed hers. It was evident that they both expected and desired something very much. "There he is now!" exclaimed Anthy, and that was the exclamation I heard. He didn't come in crying "Fudge!" as I half expected, but it was none the less a dramatic moment for me. I heard the preliminary thump, thump, of his cane on the porch. I heard him clear his throat stentoriously, as was his custom, and then the Captain, stepping in, looked about him with a benignant eye. "Anthy, Anthy," he called. "Where are you, Anthy?" "Here, Uncle! Glad to see you. The insides are at the station, and we need----" "Anthy," interrupted the Captain, impressively waving his hand, "I have determined upon one thing." He took off his broad-brimmed hat, and, having with some determination forced the cat from the editorial chair, sat down. There was evidently something unusual on his mind. He sat up straight, resting one hand, which was seen to hold a paper-covered parcel, upon the edge of the desk. If he saw me at all, he gave no sign. I have never thought he saw me. "Anthy----" He paused a moment, very dignified. Anthy said nothing. "I have determined," he continued, "that we must economize." A swift flash swept over Anthy's expressive face, whether of sympathy or amusement I could not tell. I never knew a time in Anthy's life, even when the heavy world rested most heavily upon her (except once), when she wasn't as near to laughter as she was to tears. She had the God-given grace of seeing that every serious thing in life has a humorous side. "You're right, Uncle--especially this very morning----" "Yes, Anthy," he again interrupted, as though he couldn't afford to be diverted by immediate considerations. "Yes, we must economize sharply. Times are not what they were when your father was alive. 'Wealth accumulates and men decay.' The country press is being strangled, forced to the wall by the brute wealth of the city. The march of events----" "Yes, Uncle." He stopped in the midst of his flight and repeated: "We must economize--_and I've begun_!" He said it with great dramatic force, but the effect on Anthy was not what an unprejudiced observer might have expected. I thought she looked a bit alarmed. The Captain cleared his throat, and said with impressive deliberation: "I've given up smoking cigars!" Anthy's laugh was clear and strong. "You have!" she exclaimed. "And from now on," said the Captain, still very serious, "I shall smoke a pipe." With that he took notice for the first time of the package in his hand. It contained a case, which he opened slowly. "Isn't it a beauty?" he said, holding up a new briar pipe. "Yes," she replied faintly; "but, Uncle, how did you get it?" He cleared his throat. "One must make a beginning," he said; "economy is positively necessary. I bought it." "Uncle, you _didn't_ spend Frank Toby's subscription for a pipe!" The Captain looked a little offended. "Anthy, it was a bargain. It was marked down from two dollars." Anthy turned partly aside, quite unconscious of either Fergus or me, and such a look of discouragement and distress swept over her face as I cannot describe. But it was only for an instant. The Captain was still holding up the pipe for her admiration. She laid her hand again quickly on his shoulder. "It _is_ a beauty," she said. "I knew you'd like it," exclaimed the Captain benevolently. "When I saw it in the window I said, 'Anthy'd like that pipe.' I knew it. So I bought it." "But, Uncle--how we _did_ need the money this morning of all mornings! The insides are here, we must have them----" "So I say," said the Captain with great firmness, "we must economize sharply. And I've begun. Let's all get down now to work. Fergus, I've answered the fellow on the Sterling _Democrat_. I've left nothing of him at all--not a pinfeather." With that he took a new pouch of tobacco from his pocket, and began to fill his new pipe. The cat rubbed familiarly against his leg. Silence in the office, interrupted a moment later by the second appearance of that villain, Bucky Penrose, who thrust his head in the door and called out: "Lend a hand, Fergus. I got the insides." Fergus looked at Anthy. She had grown pale. "Go on, Fergus." It is this way with me, that often I think of the great thing to do after I get home and into bed. But it came to me suddenly--an inspiration that made me a little dizzy for a moment--and I stepped into the story. "I forgot a part of my errand," I said, "when we were--interrupted. I want to subscribe to your paper, right away." Anthy looked at me keenly for a moment, her colour slowly rising. "Whom shall we send it to?" she asked in the dryest, most businesslike voice, as though subscriptions were flowing in all the time. For the life of me I couldn't think of anybody. I never was more at sea in my life. I don't know yet how it occurred to me, but I said, suddenly, with great relief: "Why, send it to Doctor McAlway." "He is already a subscriber, one of our oldest," she responded crisply. We stood there, looking at each other desperately. "Well," said I, "send it--send it to my uncle--in California." At that Anthy laughed; we both laughed. But she was evidently very determined. "I appreciate--I know," she began, "but I can't----" "See here," I said severely. "You're in the newspaper business, aren't you?" "Yes." "Then I propose to subscribe for your paper. I demand my rights. And besides"--it came to me with sudden inspiration--"I must have, immediately, a thousand envelopes with my name printed in the corner." With that I drew my pocketbook quickly from my pocket and handed her a bill. She took it doubtfully--but at that moment there was a tremendous bump on the porch, and the voice of Fergus shouting directions. When the two men came in with their burden I was studying a fire insurance advertisement on the wall, and Anthy was stepping confidently toward the door. I wish I could picture the look on Fergus's face when Bucky presented his book and Anthy gave him a bill requiring change. Fergus stood rubbing one finger behind his ear--a sign that there were things in the universe that puzzled him. While these thrilling events and hairbreadth escapes had been taking place, while the doomed _Star_ was being saved to twinkle for another week, the all-unconscious Captain had been sitting at his desk rumbling and grumbling as he opened the exchanges. This was an occupation he affected greatly to despise, but which he would not have given over for the world. By the time he had read about a dozen of his esteemed contemporaries he was usually in a condition in which he could, as he himself put it, "wield a pungent pen." He had arrived at that nefarious sheet, the Sterling _Democrat_, and was leaning back in his chair reading the utterly preposterous lucubrations of Brother Kendrick, which he always saved to the last to give a final fillip to his spirits. Suddenly he dashed the paper aside, sat up straight, and cried out with tremendous vigour: "Fudge!" It was glorious; it came quite up to my highest expectations. But somehow, at that moment, it was enough for me to see and hear the Captain, without getting any better acquainted. I wasn't sure, indeed, that I cared to know him at all. I didn't like his new pipe--which shows how little I then understood the Captain! As I was going out, for even the most interesting incidents must have an end, I stepped over and said to Anthy in a low voice: "I'll see that you get the address of--my uncle in California." [Illustration] CHAPTER III ANTHY It is one of the strange things in our lives--interesting, too--what tricks our early memories play us. What castles in fairyland they build for us, what never-never ships they send to sea! To a single flaming incident imprinted upon our consciousness by the swift shutter of the soul of youth they add a little of that-which-we-have-heard-told, spice it with a bit of that-which-would-be-beautiful-if-it-could-have-happened, and throw in a rosy dream or two--and the compound, well warmed in the fecund soil of the childish imagination, becomes far more real and attractive to us than the drab incidents of our grown-up yesterdays. Long afterward, when we had become much better acquainted, Anthy told me one day, very quietly, of the greatest memory of her childhood. It was of something that never could have happened at all; and yet, to Anthy, it was one of the treasured realities of her life, a memory to live by. She was standing at the bedside of her mother. She remembered, she said, exactly how her mother looked--her delicate, girlish face, the big clear eyes, the wavy hair all loose on the pillow. They had just placed the child in her arms, and she was drawing the small bundle close up to her, and looking down at it, and crying. It was the crying that Anthy remembered the best of all. And the child that Anthy saw so clearly was Anthy herself--and this was the only memory she ever had of her mother. That poor lady, perhaps a little tired of a world too big and harsh for her, and disappointed that her child was not a son whom she could name Anthony, after its father, tarried only a week after Anthy was born. "You see," said Anthy, "I was intended to be a boy." [Illustration: A very lonely little girl, sitting at a certain place on the third step from the bottom of the stairs] After that, Anthy remembered a little girl, a very lonely little girl, sitting at a certain place on the third step from the bottom of the stairs. There were curious urns filled with flowers on the wall paper, and her two friends, Richard and Rachel, came out of the wall near the dining-room door and looked through the stair spindles at her. Rachel had lovely curly hair and Richard wore shiny brass buttons on his jacket, and made faces. She used to whisper to them between the spindles, and whenever any one came they went back quickly through the wall. She liked Rachel better than Richard. There was a time later when her hero was Ivanhoe--just the name, not the man in the book. She read a great deal there in the lonely house, and her taste in those years ran to the gloomy and mysterious. The early chapters of an old book called "Wuthering Heights" thrilled her with fascinated interest, and she delighted in "Peter Ibbetson." Sometimes she would take down the volume of Tennyson in her father's library and, if the light was low, read aloud: I _hate_ the _dreadful_ hollow behind the little wood. As she read, she would thrill with delicious horror. [Illustration: The home of her girlhood seemed dreadfully shabby, small, and old-fashioned] Then she went away to school, not knowing in the least how much her father missed her; and when she came back, the home of her girlhood seemed dreadfully shabby, small, old-fashioned, and she did not like the iron deer on the lawn nor the cabinet of specimens in the corner of the parlour. Anthy did not tell me all these things at one time, and some she never told me at all. They were the slow gatherings of many rich friendships in Hempfield, and a few things afterward came to me, inadvertently, from Nort. I shall venture often in this narrative to assume the omniscience of foreknowledge: for it is one of the beautiful things to me, as I write, that I can look at those early hard days in the printing-office through the golden haze of later events. It was in the vacations from college that Anthy began really to know her father, who was, in his way, a rather remarkable man. Although I never knew him well personally, I remember seeing him often in the town roads during the latter years of his life. He was always in a hurry, always looked a little tired, always wore his winter hat too late in the spring, and his straw hat too late in the fall. Anthy remembered her father as forever writing on bits of yellow paper: "John Gorman lost a valuable pig last Wednesday"; or "Mrs. Bertha Hopkins is visiting her daughter in Arnoville." Anthy was secretly ashamed of this unending writing of local events, just as she was ashamed of the round bald spot on her father's head, and of the goloshes which he wore in winter. And yet, in some curious deep way--for love struggles in youth to harmonize the real with the ideal--these things of which she was ashamed gave her a sort of fierce pride in him, a tenderness for him, a wish to defend him. While she admired her handsome uncle, the Captain, it was her father whom she loved with all the devotion of her young soul. He knew everybody, or nearly everybody, in the town, and treated every one, even his best friends, with a kind of ironical regard. He knew life well--all of it--and was rarely deceived by pretence or surprised by evil. Sometimes, I think, he armoured himself unnecessarily against goodness, lest he be deceived; but once having accepted a man, his loyalty was unswerving. He believed, as he often said, that the big things in life are the little things, and it was his idea of a country newspaper that it should be crowded with all the little things possible. "What's the protective tariff or the Philippine question to Nat Halstead compared with the price of potatoes?" he would ask. He was not at all proud, for if he could not get his pay for his newspaper in cash he would take a ham, or a cord of wood, a champion squash, or a packet of circus tickets. One of Anthy's early memories was of an odd assortment of shoes which he had accepted in settlement of an advertising account. They never quite fitted any one. As he grew older he liked to talk with Anthy about his business, as though she were a partner; he liked especially to have her in the office helping him, and he was always ready with a whimsical or wise comment on the people of the town. He also enjoyed making sly jokes about his older brother, the Captain, and especially about the Captain's thundering editorials (which Anthy for a long time secretly admired, wishing her father had written them). "Now, Anthy," he would say, "don't disturb your Uncle Newt; he's saving the nation," or "Pass this pamphlet along to your uncle; it will come in handy when he gets ready to regulate the railroads." He was not an emotional man, at least to outward view; but once, on a Memorial Day, while the old soldiers were marching past the printing-office on their way to the cemetery, Anthy saw him standing by the window in his long apron, a composing stick in his hand, with the tears rolling unheeded down his face. I think sometimes we do not yet appreciate the influence of that great burst of idealism, which was the Civil War, upon the lives of the men of that generation, nor the place which Lincoln played in moulding the characters of his time. Men who, even as boys, passed through the fire of that great time and learned to suffer with Lincoln, could never again be quite small. Although Anthy's father had not been a soldier--he was too young at the time--the most impressionable years of his boyhood were saturated with stories from the front, with the sight of soldiers marching forth to war, his own older brother, the Captain, among them, the sound of martial drums and fifes, and the heroic figures of wan and wounded men who returned with empty sleeves or missing legs. He never forgot the thrill that came with the news of Lincoln's assassination. There was a portrait of Lincoln over the cases at the office, and another over the mantel in the dining-room--the one that played so important a part, afterward, in Anthy's life. Sometimes, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, Anthy's father would get down a certain volume from the cases, and read Tom Taylor's tribute to the dead Lincoln. She could recall vividly the intonation of his voice as he read the lines, and she knew just where he would falter and have to clear his throat: _You_ lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier; You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complaisant British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, or art to please.... When he had finished reading, he would take off his spectacles and wipe them, and say to Anthy: "Lincoln was the greatest man this country has ever produced." He was a curious combination of hardheadedness, of ironical wisdom, and of humour, and somewhere, hidden deep within, of molten sentiment. He was a regular Yankee. One night he got more than ordinarily tired, and just stopped. They found him in bed the next morning, his legs drawn up under the coverlet, a volume of Don Quixote open on his knees, his empty pipe fallen from his lips, the lamp dying out on a table near him. At his elbow were two of the inevitable yellow slips: Squire Baker of Arnoville was a visitor at Lawyer Perkins's on Monday. Apples stopped yesterday at Banks's store at 30 cents a peck--on their way up (adv). He never knew what a hero he was: he had made a living for thirty years out of a country newspaper. Anthy came home from college to the forlorn and empty and ugly house--and it seemed to her that the end of the world had come. This period of loneliness made a deep impression upon her later years. When at last she could bear to open the envelope labelled: "To Anthy--in case of my death," she found this letter: DEAR ANTHY: I am leaving the _Star_ to you. There is nothing else except the homestead--and the debts. Do what you like with all of them--but look after your Uncle Newt. Now, Anthy's earliest memories were bound up with the printing-office. There was never a time that she did not know the smell of printer's ink. As a child she had delighted to tip over the big basket and play with the paper ribbons from the cutting machine. Later, she had helped on press days to fold and label the papers. She was early a pastmaster in the art of making paste, and she knew better than any one else the temperamental eccentricities of the old-fashioned Dick labeller. She could set type (passably) and run the hand press. But as for taking upon herself the activities of her tireless father--who was at once editor, publisher, compositor, pressman, advertising solicitor, and father confessor for the community of Hempfield--she could not do it. There is only a genius here and there who can fill the high and difficult position of country editor. The responsibility, therefore, fell upon the Captain, who for so many years had been the titular and ornamental editor of the _Star_. It was the Captain who wrote the editorials, the obituaries, and the "write-ups," who attended the political conventions, and was always much in demand for speeches at the Fourth of July celebrations. But, strangely enough, although the _Star_ editorials sparkled with undimmed lustre, although the obituaries were even longer and more wonderful than ever before--so long as to crowd out some of the items about Johnny Gorman's pigs and Mrs. Hopkins's visits to her sister, although the fine old Captain worked harder than ever, the light of the luminary of Hempfield grew steadily dimmer. Fergus saw it early and it distressed his Scotch soul. Anthy felt it, and soon the whole town knew of the decay of the once thrifty institution in the little old printing-office back from the street. Brother Kendrick, of that nefarious rag, the Sterling _Democrat_, even dared to respond to one of the Captain's most powerful and pungent editorials with a witticism in which he referred to the _Weakly Star_ of Hempfield, and printed "Weakly" in capital letters that no one might miss his joke. It was at this low stage in the orbit of the _Star_ that I came first to the printing-office, trying to discover the man who could shout "Fudge" with such fine enthusiasm--and found myself, quite irresistibly, hitching my wagon to the _Star_. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV ENTER MR. ED SMITH It is only with difficulty thus far in my narrative that I have kept Norton Carr out of it. When you come to know him you will understand why. He is inseparably bound up with every memory I have of the printing-office. The other day, when I was describing my first visit to the establishment of Doane & Doane, I kept seeing the figure of Nort bending over the gasoline engine. I kept hearing him whistle in the infectious low monotone he had, and when I spoke of the printing press I all but called it "Old Harry" (Nort christened the ancient Hoe press, Old Harry, which every one adopted as being an appropriate name). I even half expected to have him break out in my pages with one of his absurd remarks, when I knew well enough that he had no business to be in the story at all. He hadn't come yet, and Anthy and Fergus and the old Captain were positively the only ones there. But Nort, however impatient he may be getting, will have to wait even a little while yet, for notable events were to occur in the printing-office just before he arrived, without which, indeed, he never could have arrived at all. If it had not been for the ploughing and harrowing of Ed Smith, painful as it was to that ancient and sedate institution, the Hempfield _Star_, there never would have been any harvest for Norton Carr, nor for me, nor for Anthy. So good may come even out of evil. As I narrate these preliminary events, however, you will do well to keep in your thought a picture of Nort going about his pleasures--I fear, at that time, somewhat unsteadily--in the great city, not knowing in the least that chance, assisted by a troublesome organ within called a soul, was soon to deposit him in the open streets of a town he had never heard of in all his life, but which was our own familiar town of Hempfield. The thought of Nort looking rather mistily down the common--he was standing just in front of the Congregational Church--and asking, "What town am I in, anyhow?" lingers in my memory as one of the amusing things I have known. Late in June I began to feel distinctly the premonitory rumblings and grumblings of the storm which was now rapidly gathering around the _Star_. It was a very clever Frenchman, I believe--though not clever enough to make me remember his name--who, upon observing certain disturbances in the farther reaches of the solar system, calculated by sheer mathematical genius that there was an enormous planet, infinitely distant from the sun, which nobody had yet discovered. It was thus by certain signs of commotion in one of its issues that I recognized a portentous but undiscovered Neptune, which was plainly disturbing the course of the _Star_. A big new advertisement stared at me from the middle of the first page, and there was a certain crisp quality in some of the reading notices--from which the letters "adv" had been suspiciously omitted--the origin of which I could not recognize. The second week the change was even more marked. There were several smart new headings: "Jots and Tittles from Littleton," I remember, was one of them, and even the sanctity of the editorial column had been invaded with an extraordinary production quite foreign to the Captain's pen. It was entitled: "_All Together Now! Boost Hempfield!_" I can scarcely describe how I was affected by these changes; but I should have realized that any man bold enough to hitch his wagon to a star must prepare himself for a swift course through the skies, and not take it amiss if he collides occasionally with the heavenly bodies. I think it was secretly amusing to Harriet during the weeks that followed my first great visit to the printing-office to watch the eagerness with which I awaited the postman on the publication days of the _Star_. I even went out sometimes to meet him, and took the paper from his hand. I have been a devoted reader of books these many years, but I think I have never read anything with sharper interest than I now began to read the _Star_. I picked out the various items, editorials, reading notices, and the like, and said to myself: "That's the old Captain's pungent pen," or "Anthy must have written that," or "I warrant the Scotchman, Fergus, had a finger in _that_ pie." As I read the editorials I could fairly see the old Captain at his littered desk, the cat rubbing against his leg, the canary singing in the cage above him, and his head bent low as he wrote. And I was disturbed beyond measure by the signs of an unknown hand at work upon the _Star_. "I thought, David, you did not care for country newspapers," said my sister. She wore that comfortably superior smile which becomes her so well. The fact is, she _is_ superior. "Well," said I, "you may talk all you like about Browning and Carlyle----" "I have not," said my sister, "referred to Browning or Carlyle." "You may talk all you like"--I disdained her pointed interruption--"but for downright human nature here in the country, give me the Hempfield _Star_." Once during these weeks I paid a short obligatory visit to the printing-office, and gave Anthy the name of my uncle in California and got the envelopes that had been printed for me. I also took in a number of paragraphs relating to affairs in our neighbourhood, and told Anthy (only I did not call her Anthy then) that if agreeable I would contribute occasionally to the _Star_. She seemed exceedingly grateful, and I liked her better than ever. I also had a characteristic exchange with Fergus, in which, as usual, I came off worsted. In those troublous days Fergus was the toiling Atlas upon whose wiry shoulders rested the full weight of that heavenly body. He set most of the type, distributed it again, made up the forms, inked the rollers, printed the paper (for the most part), did all the job work which Hempfield afforded, and smoked the worst pipe in America. When I told him that I was going to write regularly for the _Star_ and showed him the paragraphs I had brought in (I suspect they _were_ rather long) this was his remark: "Oh, Lord, more writers!" It was on this occasion, too, that I really made the acquaintance of the Captain. He was in the best of spirits. He told me how he had beaten the rebels at Antietam. I enjoyed it all very much, and decided that for the time being I would suspend judgment on the pipe incident. One day I reached the point where I could stand it no longer. So I hitched up the mare and drove to town. All the way along the road I tried to imagine what had taken place in the printing-office. I thought with a sinking heart that the paper might have been sold, and that my new friends would go away. I thought that Anthy might be carrying out some new and vigorous plan of reconstruction, only somehow I could not feel Anthy's hand in the changes I had seen. It was all very vivid to me; I had, indeed, a feeling, that afterward became familiar enough, that the _Star_ was a living being, struggling, hoping, suffering, like one of us. In truth, it was just that. No sooner had I turned in at the gate than I perceived that some mysterious and revolutionary force had really been at work. The gate itself had acquired two hinges where one had been quite sufficient before, and inside the office--what a change was there! It was not so much in actual rearrangement, though the editorial desk looked barren and windswept; it was rather in the general atmosphere of the place. Even Tom, the cat, showed it: when I came in at the door he went out through the window. He was scared! No more would he curl himself contentedly to sleep in editorial chairs; no more make his bed in the office wastebasket. Though it was still early in the morning, Fergus was not reading "Tom Sawyer." No, Fergus was hard at work, and didn't even look around when I came in. Anthy was there, too, in her long crisp gingham apron, which I always thought so well became her. She had just put down her composing stick, and was standing quite silent, with a curious air of absorption (which I did not then understand), before the dingy portrait of Lincoln on the wall just over the cases. On her desk, not far away, a book lay open. I saw it later: it was Rand's "Modern Classical Philosophers." It represented Anthy's last struggling effort to keep on with her college work. In spite of all the difficulties and distractions of the printing-office, she had never quite given up the hope that some day she might be able to go back and graduate. It had been her fondest desire, the deepest purpose of her heart. As she glanced quickly around at me I surprised on her face a curious look. How shall I describe it?--a look of exaltation, and of anxiety, too, I thought. But it passed like a flash, and she gave me a smile of friendly recognition, and stepped toward me with the frank and outright way she had. It gave me a curious deep thrill, not, I think, because she was a woman, a girl, and so very good to look upon, but because I suddenly saw her, the very spirit of her, as a fine, brave human being, fighting one of the hard and bitter fights of our common life. I do not pretend to know very much about women in general, and I think perhaps there is some truth in one of Nort's remarks, made long afterward: "David's idea of generalizing about women," said that young upstart, "is to talk about Anthy without mentioning her name." Is yours any different, Nort?--or _yours_? Yes, I think it is true; and this I know because I know Anthy, that, however beautiful and charming a woman may be, as a woman, that which finally rings all the bells in the chambers of the souls of men are those qualities which are above and beyond womanly charm, which are universal and human: as that she is brave, or simple, or noble in spirit. That Anthy was deeply troubled on that summer morning I saw plainly when the Captain came, in the keen glance she gave him. He, too, seemed somehow changed, so unlike himself as to be almost gloomy. He gave me a sepulchral, "Good morning, sir," and sat down at his desk without even lighting his pipe. Something tremendous, I could feel, was taking place there in the printing-office, and I said to Anthy--we had been talking about the paragraphs I brought in: "What's been happening to the _Star_ since I was here before?" "You've discovered it, too!" she said with a whimsical smile. "Well, we're just now in process of being modernized." At this I heard Fergus snort behind me. "Bein' busted, you mean," said he. Fergus, besides being temperamentally unable to contain his opinions, had been so long the prop of the mechanical fortunes of the _Star_ that he was a privileged character. "I knew something was the matter," I said. "As I was coming in I felt like saying, 'Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishmun.'" "Plain Yankee this time," said Fergus. "Now, Fergus!" exclaimed Anthy severely. "You see," she continued, "we positively had to do something. The paper has been going downhill ever since my father's death. Father knew how to make it pay, even with half the families in town taking the cheap city dailies. But times are changing, and we've got to modernize or perish." While she spoke with conviction, her words lacked enthusiasm, and they had, moreover, a certain cut-and-dried sound. "Times are changing. Modernize or perish!" Anthy did not know it, of course, but she was living at the psychological moment in our history when the whole country was turning for salvation to that finished product, that perfect flower, of our institutions, the Practical Business Man. Was a city sick, or a church declining in its membership, or a college suffering from slow starvation, or a newspaper down with neurasthenia, why, call in a Practical Business Man. Let him administer up-to-date remedies; let him hustle, push, advertise. It was thus, as an example of what the historian loves to call "remote causes," that Mr. Ed Smith came to Hempfield and the _Star_. He was a graduate of small-town journalism in its most progressive guises, and if any one was ever entitled to the degree of P. B. M. _cum laude_, it was Ed Smith. He had come at Anthy's call--after having made certain eminently sound and satisfying financial arrangements. When it came finally to the issue, Anthy had seen that the only alternative to the extinction of the _Star_ was some desperate and drastic remedy. And Ed Smith was that desperate and drastic remedy. "I felt," she said to me, "that I must do everything I could to keep the _Star_ alive. My father devoted all his life to it, and then, there was Uncle Newt--how could Uncle Newt live without a newspaper?" I did not know until long afterward what the sacrifice had meant to Anthy. It meant not only a surrender of all her immediate hopes of completing her college work, but she was compelled to risk everything she had. First, she had borrowed all the money she could raise on the old home, and with this she paid off the accumulated debts of the _Star_. With the remainder, which Ed Smith spoke of as Working Capital, she plunged into the unknown and venturesome seas of modernized journalism. She had not gone to these lengths, however, without the advice of old Judge Fendall of Hempfield, one of her father's close friends, and a man I have long admired at a distance, a fine, sound old gentleman, with a vast respect for business and business men. Besides this, Anthy had known Ed for several years; he had called on her father, had, indeed, called on _her_. It was bitter business for the old Captain to find himself, after so many glorious years, fallen upon such evil days. I have always been amused by the thought of the first meeting between Ed Smith and the Captain, as reported afterward by Fergus (with grim joy). "Do you know," Ed asked the Captain, "the motto that I'd print on that door?" The Captain didn't. "_Push_," said he dramatically; "that's my motto." I can see the old Captain drawing himself up to his full stature (he was about once and a half Ed's size). "Well, sir," said he, "we need no such sign on _our_ door. Our door has stood wide open to our friends, sir, for thirty years." When the old Captain began to be excessively polite, and to address a man as "sir," he who was wise sought shelter. It was the old Antietam spirit boiling within him. But Ed Smith blithely pursued his way, full of confidence in himself and in the god he worshipped, and it was one of Anthy's real triumphs, in those days of excursions and alarms, that she was able both to pacify the Captain and keep Fergus down. Ed came in that morning while I was in the printing-office, a cheerful, quick-stepping, bold-eyed young fellow with a small neat moustache, his hat slightly tilted back, and a toothbrush in his vest pocket. "You are the man," he said to me briskly, "that writes the stuff about the Corwin neighbourhood." I acknowledged that I was. "Good stuff," said he, "good stuff! Give us more of it. And can't you drum up a few new subs out there for us? Those farmers around you ought to be able to come up with the ready cash." To save my life I couldn't help being interested in him. It is one of the absurd contrarieties of human nature that no sooner do we decide that a man is not to be tolerated, that he is a villain, than we begin to grow tremendously interested in him. We want to see how he works. And the more deeply we get interested, the more we begin to see how human he is, in what a lot of ways he is exactly like us, or like some of the friends we love best--and usually we wind up by liking him, too. It was so with Ed Smith. He let into my life a breath of fresh air, and of new and curious points of view. I think he felt my interest, too, and as I now look back upon it, I count his friendship as one of the things that helped to bind me more closely and intimately to the _Star_. While he was not at all sensitive, still he had already begun to feel that the glorious progress he had planned for the _Star_ (and for himself) might not be as easy to secure as he had anticipated. He wanted friends in the office, friends of those he desired to be friendly with, especially Anthy. Besides, I was helping fill his columns without expense! I had a good lively talk with him that morning. Before I had known him fifteen minutes he had expressed his opinion that the old Captain was a "back number" and a "dodo," and that Fergus was a good fellow, but a "grouch." He confided in me that it was his principle, "when in Rome to do what the Romans do," but I wasn't certain whether this consisted, in his case, of being a dodo or a grouch. He was full of wise saws and modern instances, a regular Ben Franklin for wisdom in the art of getting ahead. "When the cash is going around," said he, "I don't see why I shouldn't have a piece of it. Do you?" He told me circumstantially all the reasons why he had come to Hempfield. "I could have made a lot more money at Atterbury or Harlan Centre; they were both after me; but, confidentially, I couldn't resist the lady." Well, Ed _was_ wonderfully full of business. "Rustling" was a favourite word of his, and he exemplified it. He rustled. He got in several new advertisements, he published paid reading notices in the local column, a thing never before done on the _Star_. He persuaded the railroad company to print its time tables (at "our regular rates"), with the insinuation that if they didn't he'd ... and he formed a daring plan for organizing a Board of Trade in Hempfield to boost the town and thus secure both news and advertising for the _Star_. Oh, he made things lively! Some men, looking out upon life, get its poetic implications, others see its moral significance, and here and there a man will see beauty in everything; but to Ed all views of life dissolved, like a moving picture, into dollars. [Illustration: _Ed's innocent suggestion of a house-cleaning was taken by Fergus as a deadly affront_] At first Fergus, that thrifty Scotch soul, was inclined to look with favour upon these new activities, for they promised well for the future prosperity of the _Star_; but this friendly tolerance was blasted as the result of a curious incident. Fergus had lived for several years in the back part of the printing-office. It was a small but comfortable room which had once been the kitchen of the house. In the course of his ravening excursions, seeking what he might devour, Ed Smith presently fell upon Fergus's room. Ed never could understand the enduring solidity of ancient institutions. Now Fergus's room, I am prone to admit, was not all that might have been desired, Fergus being a bachelor; but he was proud of it, and swept it out once a month, as he said, whether it needed it or not. Ed's innocent suggestion, therefore, of a house-cleaning was taken by Fergus as a deadly affront. He did not complain to Anthy, though he told _me_, and from that moment he began a silent, obstinate opposition to everything that Ed was, or thought, or did. If it had not been for Anthy, Ed would indeed have had a hard time of it. But Anthy managed it, and in those days, hard as they were, she was finding herself, becoming a woman. "Fergus," she said, "we're going to stand behind Ed Smith. We've _got_ to work it out. It's our last chance, Fergus." So Fergus stuck grimly to the cases, actually doing more work than he had done before in years; Tom, the cat, sat warily on the window sill, ready at a moment's notice to dive to safety; the old Captain was gloomy, and wrote fierce editorials on the Democratic party and on all "new-fangled notions" (especially flying machines and woman suffrage). His ironies about the "initiative, referendum, and recall" were particularly vitriolic during this period of his career. Anthy was the only cheerful person in the office. It was some time in August, in the midst of these stirring events, when the _Star_ was deporting itself in such an unprecedented manner, that the Captain one day brought in what was destined to be one of the most famous news items, if not _the_ most famous, ever published in the _Star_. I was there at the time, and I can testify that he came in quite unconcernedly, though there was an evident look of disapproval upon his countenance. It was thus with the Captain, that nothing was news unless it stirred him to an opinion. An earthquake might have shaken down the Hempfield townhall or tipped over the Congregational Church, but the Captain might not have thought of putting the news in the paper unless it had occurred to him that the selectmen should have been on hand to prevent the earthquake, upon which he would have had a glorious article, not on the earthquake, but on the failure of a free American commonwealth, in this enlightened twentieth century, to secure efficiency in the conduct of the simplest of its public affairs. But truly historic events get themselves reported even through the densest mediums. I saw the Captain with my own eyes as he wrote: What has become of the officer of the law in Hempfield? A strange young man was seen coming down Main Street yesterday afternoon in a condition which made him a sad example for the lads of Hempfield, many of whom were following him. Is this an orderly and law-abiding town or is it not? I may say in passing that the Captain's inquiry: "What has become of the officer of the law in Hempfield?" was purely rhetorical. The Captain knew perfectly well where Steve Lewis was at that critical moment, for he had looked over the fence of Steve's yard as he passed, and saw that officer of the law, in a large blue apron, helping his wife hang out the week's washing. But how could one put that in the _Star_? Such was the exact wording of that historic item. By some chance it did not meet the eagle eye of Ed Smith until the completely printed paper, still moist from the press, was placed in his hands. Then his eye fell upon it. "Who wrote this item about a strange young man?" he asked. "I think the Captain got it," said Anthy. "Well!" exclaimed Ed, "that must be the very chap I have just hired to help Fergus." He paused a moment, reflectively. "I got him dirt cheap, too," said he. And this was the way in which Norton Carr was plunged into the whirl of life at Hempfield. [Illustration] CHAPTER V NORT I love Norton Carr very much, as he well knows, but if I am to tell a truthful story I may as well admit, first as last, that Nort was never quite sure how it was that he got off, or was put off, at Hempfield. In making this admission, however, I do not for a moment accept all the absurd stories which are afloat regarding Nort's arrival in Hempfield. He says the first thing he remembers clearly was of standing in the street at the top of our common, looking down into Hempfield--one of the finest views in our town. The exact historic spot where he stood was nearly in front of a small shoe shop, the one now kept by Tony, the Italian. If ever the Georgia Johnson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution runs out of places upon which to plant stones, tablets, trees, flowers, cannon balls, or drinking fountains, I would respectfully suggest raising a monument in front of Tony's shop with some such inscription as this: Here Stood NORTON CARR On the Morning of His INVOLUNTARY Arrival in Hempfield Nort walked down the street with a number of boys behind him--_three_, to be exact, _not_ a "rabble." He was seen by old Mrs. Parker, one of our most prominent journalists, who was, as usual, beating her doormat on the front porch. He was seen by Jared Sparks, who keeps the woodyard, and by Johnny McGonigal, who drives the hack; and finally he was caught by the eagle eye of the Press, in the person of Captain Doane, as I have already related, and his shame was published abroad to the world through the columns of the _Star_. As nearly as I can make out, for the facts regarding any given event in Hempfield often vary in adverse proportion to the square of the number of persons doing the reporting, the main indictment against Nort upon this occasion was that he appeared in town, a stranger without a hat. _Without a hat!_ I admit that he _did_ stop in front of the Congregational Church; but I maintain that it is well worth any man's while to stop on a fine morning and look at our old church, with its mantle of ivy and the sparrows building their nests in the eaves. I admit also that he _did_ make a bow, a low bow, to the spire, but I deny categorically Johnny McGonigal's absurd yarn that he said: "Good mornin', church. Shorry sheem disrespechtful." Any one who knows Nort as well as I do would not consider his making a bow to a perfectly respectable old church as anything remarkable, or accusing him of having been intoxicated, save with the wine of spring and of youth. Why, I myself have often bowed to fine old oak trees and to hilltops. I wonder why it is that when small communities jump at conclusions, they so often jump the wrong way? And yet I don't want to blame Hempfield. You can see for yourself what it would mean--a stranger, without a hat, bowing to the spire of the Congregational Church--what it would mean in a town which has religiously voted "dry" every spring since the local-option law went into effect, which abhors saloons, which resounds with the thunders of pulpit and press against the iniquity of drink, and where, if there are three or four places where the monster may be quietly devoured, no one is supposed to know anything about them. I do not enlarge upon this picture of Nort with any delight, and yet I have always thought that it was a great help to Nort that he should have appeared in Hempfield in the guise of a vagabond. If we had known then that he had the right kind of a father, had come from the right kind of a college, and had already spent a good deal of money that he had not earned, I fear he would have been seriously handicapped. We should probably have looked the other way while he was bowing to the church--and considered that he was going without a hat for his health. As for putting him in the _Star_, we should never have dreamed of it! I love to think of Nort, coming down our street for the first time--the green common with its wonderful tall elms on one side and the row of neat stores and offices on the other. It must be a real adventure to see Hempfield on a sunny morning with a new eye, to pass Henderson's drygoods store and catch the ginghamy whiff from the open doorway, or go by Mr. Tole's drug store and breathe in the aromatic odour of strange things that should be stoppered in glass bottles and aren't. And then the cool smell of newly watered sidewalks, and the good look of the tomatoes in their baskets, and the moist onions, and spinach, and radishes, and rhubarb in front of the shady market, and the sparrows fighting in the street--and everything quiet, and still, and home-like! [Illustration: _John Bass's blacksmith shop_] And think of coming unexpectedly (how I wish I could do it myself some day and wake up afterward to enjoy it) upon the wide doorway of John Bass's blacksmith shop, and see John himself standing there at his anvil with a hot horseshoe in his tongs. John never sings when his iron is in the fire, but the moment he gets his hand on his hammer and the iron on the horn of the anvil, then all the Baptist in him seems suddenly to effervesce, and he lifts his high and squeaky voice: "Jeru (whack) salem (whack) the gold (whack) en (whack, whack), "With milk (whack) and hon (whack) ey blest (whack, whack, whack)." And what wouldn't I give to clap my eyes newly on old Mr. Kenton, standing there in front of his office, his florid face shaded by the porch roof, but the rotundity of his white waistcoat gleaming in the sunshine, his cane hooked over his arm, and himself looking benignly out upon the world of Hempfield as it flows by, ready to discuss with any one either the origin or the destiny of his neighbours. At the corner above the post office Nort stopped and leaned against the fence, and looked up the street and down the street. His spirits were extremely low. He felt wholly miserable. He had not a notion in the world what he was going to do, did not at that time even know the name of the town he was in. It was indeed pure chance that had led him to Hempfield. If he had had a few cents more in his pocket it might have been Acton, or if a few cents less it might have been Roseburg. His only instinct, blurred at the moment, I am sorry to say, had been to get as far away from New York as possible--and Hempfield happened to be just about the limit of his means. [Illustration: _He pictured himself sitting in the quiet study of the minister, looking sad, sad_] He was already of two minds as to whether he should give it all up and get back to New York as quickly as possible. He thought of dropping in on the most important man in town, say the banker, or the Congregational minister, and introducing himself in the rôle of contrite spendthrift or of remorseful prodigal, as the case might be--trust Nort for knowing how to do it--and by hook or crook raise enough money to take him back. He pictured himself sitting in the quiet study of the minister, looking sad, sad, and his mind lighted up with the wonderful things he could say to prove that of all the sheep that had bleated and gone astray since ever the world began, he was, without any doubt, the darkest of hue. He sketched in the details with a sure touch. He could almost _see_ the good old man's face, the look of commiseration gradually melting to one of pitying helpfulness. It would require only a very few dollars to get him back to New York. He was on the point of carrying this interesting scheme into operation when the scenes and incidents of his recent life in New York swept over him, a mighty and inundating wave of black discouragement. Everything had been wrong with him from the beginning, it seemed to him that morning. He had not had the right parents, nor the right education, nor enough will power, nor any true friends, nor the proper kind of ambition. When Satan first led Nort up on a high hill and offered him all the kingdoms of the earth, Nort had responded eagerly: "Why, sure! I'll take em. Got any more where those come from?" Nort's was an eager, curious, ardent, insatiable nature, which should have been held back rather than stimulated. No sooner had he stepped out into life than he wanted it all--everything that he could see, or hear, or smell, or taste, or touch--and all at once. I do not mean by this that Nort was a vicious or abandoned character beyond the pale of his humankind. He had, indeed, done things that were wrong, that he knew were wrong, but thus far they had been tentative, experimental, springing not from any deeply vicious instincts but expressing, rather, his ardent curiosity about life. I think sometimes that our common definition of dissipation is far too narrow. We confine it to crude excesses in the use of intoxicating liquor or the crude gratification of the passions; but often these are only the outward symbols of a more subtle inward disorder. The things of the world--a thousand clamouring interests, desires, possessions--have got the better of us. Men become drunken with the inordinate desire for owning things, and dissolute with ambition for political office. I knew a man once, a farmer, esteemed an upright man in our community, who debauched himself upon land; fed his appetite upon the happiness of his home, cheated his children of education, and himself went shabby, bookless, joyless, comfortless, that he might buy more land. I call that dissipation, too! And in youth, when all the earth is very beautiful, when our powers seem as limitless as our desires (I know, I know!), we stand like Samson, and for the sheer joy of testing our strength pull down the pillars of the temple of the world. In Nort's case a supply of unearned money had enormously increased his power of seeing, hearing, feeling, doing; everything opened wide to the magic touch of the wand of youth, enthusiasm, money. He could neither live fast enough nor enjoy too much. He had, indeed, had periods of sharp reaction. This was not the first time that the kingdoms of the earth, too easily possessed, had palled upon him, and he had resolved to escape. But he had never yet been quite strong enough; he had never gone quite low enough. The lure of that which was exciting or amusing or beautiful, above all, that which was or pretended to be friendly or companionable, had always proved too strong for him. As time passed, and his naturally vigorous mind expanded--his body was never very robust--the reactions from the diversions with which his life was surrounded grew blacker and more desperate. In his moments of reflection he saw clearly where his path was leading him. There was much in him, though never yet called out, of the native force of his stern old grandfather who had begun life a wage labourer, and in his moments of revolt, as men who dissipate crave that which is cold or bitter or sour, Nort had moments of intense longing for something hard, knotty, difficult, for hunger, cold, privation. Without knowing it, he was groping for reality. And here he was in Hempfield, leaning against the fence of Mrs. Barrow's garden, desperately low in his spirits, at one moment wondering why he had come away, at the next feeling wretchedly that somehow this was his last chance. Fool! fool! His whole being loathed the discomfort of his pampered body, and yet he felt that if he gave up now he might never again have the courage to revolt. [Illustration: _What a thing is youth! That sunny morning in Hempfield Nort thought that he was drinking the uttermost dregs of life--they were pretty bitter--and yet, somehow he was able to stand a little aside and enjoy it all_] What a thing is youth! That sunny morning in Hempfield Nort thought that he was drinking the uttermost dregs of life--they _were_ pretty bitter--and yet, somehow, he was able to stand a little aside and enjoy it all. Black as it was, it had yet the mystical quality of a new adventure, new possibilities. At one moment Nort was hating himself, hating his whole life, hating the town in which fate had dropped him, with all the passion of a naturally robust nature; and at the next he was peeping around the corner of the next adventure to see what he might see. The suffering of youth with honey in its mouth! Oh, to be twenty-four! To feel that one has sounded all the chords of life, known every bitterness, to have become entirely disillusioned, wholly cynical, utterly reckless--and not to know that life and illusion have only just begun! The hard, bristling, painful thing in his insides which Nort couldn't identify, wrongly attributing it to certain things he had been eating and drinking now for several days past, was in fact his soul. How I love to think of Nort at that moment, that wonderful, fertile, despondent, hopeful, passionate moment. How I love to think of him, who is now so dear a friend, quite miserable, but with a half smile on his lips, his vigorous nature full of every conceivable possibility of good or evil, of success or failure, every capability of great love or great bitterness----Nort, arm in arm with Life, tugged at by both God and Satan, standing there, aimless, in the sunny street of Hempfield. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI A MAN TO HELP FERGUS It was really a moment of vast potentialities when Nort turned _down_ the street toward the town instead of _up_ toward the railroad station and the open road. For down the street was the way to the printing-office and the old Captain and Anthy and Fergus and me, and all the things, big and little, I am about to relate. I tremble sometimes when I think how narrowly this story escaped not coming into existence at all. It was upon this brief but historic journey that Ed Smith met Nort, and like any true newspaper man with a "nose for news," stopped to pass the time of day with the singular stranger. It took him not quite two seconds to "size up" Nort. It was easy for Ed to "size up" people, for he had just two classifications: those people whom he could use, and those who could use him. His problem of life thus became quite simple: it consisted in shifting as many as possible of those of the second classification into the first. "If you would not be done by a man, do him first," was one of Ed's treasured Ben Franklinisms. Nort was rather mistily in search of "something to do." Well, what could he do? It took some groping in his mind to discover any accomplishment whatever that was convertible into money, especially in a small town like Hempfield. Finally he said he knew "something about machinery"--he did not specify automobiles--and by some wild chance mentioned the fact that he had once worked in a newspaper office (two months--and was dreadfully tired of it). Now, Ed Smith was as sharp as any lightning known in our part of the world, and there being nothing he loved better than a "bold stroke" in which he could "close a deal" and do it "on the spot," it took him not above five minutes to offer Nort a trial in the office of the _Star_ at wages which approximated nothing at all. If he could "make good," etc., etc., why, there were great opportunities, etc., etc. It was not the first time that Ed had dealt with tramp printers! And Nort, still low in his mind and quite prepared for anything, agreed to come. Your sharp, shrewd man can deal profitably with the ninety-nine men who walk or run or burrow or climb, especially if they happen to look seedy, but he is never quite prepared for the hundredth man who can fly. That is, it sometimes happens that a man who has been comfortably ensconced in the pigeonhole labelled, "To Be Done," is suddenly--and by some hocus-pocus which your sharp one can never quite comprehend, and considers unfair--is suddenly discovered to have disappeared, evaporated, to have escaped classification. I throw in this observation at this point for what it may be worth, and not because I have anything against Ed Smith. We may think a woodpecker's bill to be entirely too long for beauty, but it is fine for the woodpecker. Moreover, I cannot forget that without Ed Smith the Hempfield _Star_ would never have seen Nort. How well I remember my first sight of the "man to help Fergus!" It was about two days, I think, after his arrival, and at a time when the _Star_ was twinkling in the most extraordinary and energetic fashion. You could almost _hear_ it twinkle. As I came into the office Anthy and Fergus were busy at their cases, the old Captain at his desk, Ed Smith in shirtsleeves was making up a new advertisement, and Dick, the canary, swinging in the window. But what was that strange object in the corner on the floor? Why, Nort, sprawled full length, with his head almost touching the gasoline engine! He had parts of it pretty well distributed around him on the floor, and as nearly as I could make out, was trying to get his nose into the boiler, or barrel, or whatever the insides of a gasoline engine are called. Also he was whistling, as he loved to do, in a low monotone, apparently enjoying himself. Presently he glanced up at me. "Ever study the anatomy of a gasoline engine?" he asked. "Never," said I. "Interesting study," said he. "I know something about the anatomy of cows and pigs and hens," I said, "but I suppose a gasoline engine is somewhat different." "Somewhat," said he. He tinkered away industriously for a moment, and when I continued to stand there watching him, he inquired solemnly: "A hen has no spark coil, has it?" "No," I said, just as solemnly, "but neither can a gasoline engine cackle." I shall never forget the sight of Nort as he slowly rose to a sitting position and looked me over--especially the smile of him and the gleam in his eyes. There was a dab of oil on his nose and smudges on his chin, but he took me in. So this was the person who had appeared without a hat on our highly respectable streets, and got his shame heralded in the paper! I felt like saying to him: "Well, you're a cheerful reprobate, I must say!" You see, we are nearly all of us shocked by the cheerfulness of the wicked. We feel that those whom we have set aside as reprobates, or sinful spectacles, should by good right draw long faces and be appropriately miserable; and we never become quite accustomed to our own surprise at finding them happy or contented. In short, I began to be interested in that reprobate, in spite of myself. I had come to town intending to have a talk with Anthy and the old Captain (who was at this moment at work at his desk), but instead I squatted down on the floor near Nort, and while he tinkered and puttered and whistled, we kept up a running conversation which we both found highly diverting. If there is one thing I enjoy more than another it is to crack open a hard fellow-mortal, take him apart, as Nort was taking apart his engine, and see what it is that makes him go round. But in Nort, that morning, I found more than a match. We parried and fenced, advanced and retreated, but beyond a firm conclusion on my part that he was no ordinary tramp printer and, indeed, no ordinary human being, he kept me completely mystified, and, as I could plainly see, enjoyed doing it, too. He told me, long afterward, that he thought me that morning an "odd one." I deny, however, that I was carried away on the spot; I was interested, but I was now too deeply concerned for my friends on the _Star_ to accept him entirely. Even after he brought in his first contribution to our columns, especially the one that began, "There is a man in this town who quarrels regularly with his wife," I was still doubtful about him--but I must not get ahead of my story. Well, it was wonderful the way Nort went through the office of the _Star_. As I think of it now, I am reminded of the description of a remarkable plant called the lantana, which I read about recently in an interesting book on the Hawaiian Islands. It was brought in, a humble and lowly shrub, to help ornament a garden in those delectable isles. Finding the climate highly agreeable and its customary enemies absent, it escaped from the garden, and in a wild spirit of vagabondage spread out along the sunny roads and mountainsides, until it has overrun all the islands; and from being an insignificant shrub, it now grows to the size of a small tree. Most painful to relate, however, the once admired shrub has become a veritable pest, and the people of the islands are using their ingenuity in seeking a way to destroy it. Now, that is very much the early history of Nort in the office of the _Star_. At first, of course, he was way down in the depths, both in his own estimation and in ours--a man to tinker the engine, run the job presses, sweep the floors, and do the thousand and one other useful but menial things to help Fergus. Moreover, he was on his good behaviour and more than ordinarily subdued. It required a reasonable amount of good honest depression in those days to make Nort tolerable. He was like a high-spirited horse that has to be driven hard for a dozen miles before it is any pleasure to hold the reins. If we had known then--but we knew nothing. There are two ways by which men advance in this world--one is by doing, the other by being. We Americans, these many years, have been cultivating and stimulating the doers. We have made the doers our heroes, and have, therefore, had no poetry, no art, no music, no personality, and, I was going to say, no religion. Doing leads the way to riches, power, reputation, and if it occasionally lands a man in the penitentiary, still we feel that there is something grand about it, and reflect that the same process also leads to the Senate or the White House or a palace on Fifth Avenue. Ed Smith was a doer, but Nort was only a be-er. And Nort didn't even _try_ to be: he just was. And we planted him, a humble shrub, in the garden of our lives, and in no time at all the vagabond had spread to the sunny uplands of our hearts. And then---- [Illustration: I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, had begun to be interested in Nort] I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, (at that time, anyway), had begun to be interested in Nort, much as I was. It was not that Nort tried to court our favour by working hard, being sober, appearing willing, in order to get ahead; that would have been Ed Smith's way; but Nort had never in all his short life thought of getting ahead. Of whom was he to get ahead? And why should he get ahead? The fact is that Nort, caught in the rebound from a life that had become temporarily intolerable, found the quietude of Hempfield soothing to him; and the life of the printing-office was so different as to be momentarily amusing to his royal highness. We were a new toy--that's what we were: the rag baby for which the pampered child of wealth temporarily discards her French dolls. It was a fortunate thing that Ed started Nort at once on the task of overhauling the gasoline engine, for it was one of the things that he had always loved to do. When he had finished the engine, he must clean up and repair the belts and pulley that operated the press, and this led him naturally to the press itself, an ancient Hoe model with heavy springs below that operated the running table. By this time he had begun really to wake up, and as he worked, hummed like a hive of bees. He called the press "Old Harry," and gave it such a cleaning up as it had not had since the early days of Anthy's father. All this seemed to amuse him very much, for he imagined things with his fingers. It also amused us, he was so tremendously interested and so personal about it all. He was forever calling in Fergus, never Ed Smith, with such remarks as these: "How does she look now, Fergus? Will she stand for a little stiffer spring, you think? She's a good one, eh, Fergus, for her age?" And so on, and so on. During these days I watched Fergus with almost as much interest as I watched Nort. He seemed nonplussed. He was like a hen that has unexpectedly hatched a duckling. At one moment he seemed resentful at this uprooting of ancient and settled institutions, and he was a little angry all the time at being carried along by Nort's enthusiasm, for he was constitutionally suspicious of enthusiasm; but, on the other hand, he could not resist the constant appeals to his superior judgment. When deferred to he would drop his head a little to one side, partially close one eye, draw down the corners of his mouth, and after smoking furiously for a few puffs, would take out his pipe and remark: "Wull, it looks to me----" etc., etc. As he gave his opinion I could see the live gleam in Nort's eyes, and I knew that he was finding almost as much amusement in tinkering Fergus as he found in tinkering the old press. I think that Fergus liked Nort from the very first, but wild horses could not have dragged a favourable opinion of him out of Fergus. Fergus had a deeply ingrained conviction that no man should think more highly of himself than he ought to think, and lost no opportunity of reducing bumps of self-esteem, wherever discovered. Having finished the old press, Nort's lively mind began to consider what might be done with a perfectly healthy gasoline engine sitting in the corner and wasting most of its time. He fitted up a new belt and pulley to run the two small presses and, there being at that moment quite a job of posters to run off, thrilled the office with the speed and ease with which the work could be done. All this delighted Ed Smith, for it was "something doing"--and didn't cost much: although I think he had already begun to regard it as a suspicious sign that Nort, having fully recovered his spirits, did not demand an immediate increase in wages. It was the first of several unpredictable events quite outside the range of Ed's experience. As for the old Captain, he was stoutly opposed to it all. He called it Ed-Smithism and refused to countenance it in any way. For thirty years the _Star_ had been a power in the councils of Westmoreland County (said the Captain). Why, then, these sensational changes? Why this rank commercialism? Why all this confusion? "I am a reasonable person, as you know, Anthy," said the Captain; "I believe in progress. The earth moves, the suns revolve, but all this business of Ed Smith is bosh, plain, unadulterated bosh!" "But, Uncle----" Anthy was still earnestly trying to keep peace in the office. "Fudge!" roared the Captain, and then, seeing that he had pained Anthy, he was all contrition at once, threw one arm about her shoulders and, regaining his usual jaunty air, remarked: "Never mind, Anthy. I am a patient man. I will await the progress of events." He was firmly convinced that Ed Smith and all his contraptions would soon be abolished from the office of the _Star_. As to Nort--the Captain did not at first see him at all. He was an Ed-Smithism, and the Captain could not get over his first sight of Nort, a spectacle in the streets of Hempfield. After the job presses began to work by power, following a suggestion which it seems the Captain had made in 1899, he apparently discovered Nort afar off, as though looking through the big end of a spy-glass. What was our astonishment, therefore, one evening to find the old Captain and Nort engaged in a most extraordinary and secretive enterprise. By chance we saw an unusual light in the front office--Fergus's light was in the rear--and went in to investigate. A step-ladder stood in the middle of the floor. Upon this was perched the old Captain, coat off, white hair rumpled, head almost touching the ceiling, hammer in hand. "There!" he was saying. He had been sounding the plaster on the ceiling to find a certain stringer. Nort, just below, was gazing up with a half smile on his lips and that look of live amusement, yes, deviltry, which came too easily to his eyes. "Found her, have you, Cap'n?" he was inquiring. "Here she is," responded the Captain triumphantly. And then they saw Fergus and me--the Captain looking very sheepish and Nort like a bad boy caught in the jam closet. Just how Nort did it I never knew exactly, but those two precious partners in mischief were engaged in quite the most extraordinary innovation in the staid old office that had yet been conceived. "Something to cool the Captain's head," was the way Nort described it. It was hot weather, doubly hot in the office of the _Star_, surrounded as it was by taller buildings, and the Captain especially suffered from the heat. In some way Nort had led him guilefully into the scheme of installing a fan on the ceiling of the office, and, what is more, had made the Captain believe it was his own idea. The old Captain was in reality as simple hearted as a child, and once he and Nort had agreed upon the plan, it delighted him to carry it forward secretly and "surprise Anthy," as he was always surprising her with some one or another of his extravagances. Afterward, when he referred to the great new scheme it was at first: "We had the idea," "We thought," "We worked it out." But in no time at all, it had become, "I had the idea," "I thought." And when visitors came in to see the wonderful new fan waving its majestic wooden arms over the devoted heads of the staff of the _Star_, you would have thought the old Captain did it all himself. I laugh yet when I think of the first few moments of the operation of Nort's invention. We had all been a good deal excited about it, Ed not exactly with approval, although it was a good "ad" for the _Star_--but the old Captain was quite beside himself. "How are you getting along, Nort?" he began inquiring early in the afternoon of the great day. He had been particular at first to speak to Nort as "Carr," indicating purely formal relationship, but in the enthusiasm of putting up the fan he soon dropped into the familiar "Nort." "Fine, Cap'n, we'll have her running now in no time." "Good!" "We'll cool your head yet, Cap'n." "I'm waiting, Nort." When Nort finally gave the word, the old Captain drew his lame-legged chair squarely under the fan, sat himself down in it, and stretching out luxuriously, leaned his beautiful old head a little back. I saw the Grand Army button on his coat. "Whir!" went the fan. The Captain's white hair began to flutter. He sat a moment in ecstatic silence, closing and opening his eyes, and taking a deep breath or two. Then he said: "Cool as a cucumber, Anthy, cool as a cucumber." Fergus barked away down inside somewhere, his excuse for a laugh. "Now, Anthy," said the Captain, "this was to be your surprise." So he had Anthy sit down in the chair. "Fine, isn't it?" said he, "regular breeze from Labrador. Greenland's icy mountains." "Fine!" responded Anthy. As Anthy sat there, the fan stirring her light hair, a smile on her lips, I saw Nort looking at her in a curious, amused, puzzled way, as though he had just seen her for the first time and couldn't quite account for her. I myself thought she looked a little sad around the eyes: it came to me, indeed, suddenly, what a fine, strong face she had. She sat with her chin slightly lifted, her hands in her lap, an odd, still way she sometimes had. Since I first met Anthy, that day in the office of the _Star_, I had come to like her better and better. And somehow, deep down inside, I didn't quite like Nort's look. "We can show 'em a thing or two, eh, Nort?" the Captain was saying. "We can, Cap'n." After that, no matter what happened, the Captain swore by Nort. He was a loyal old fellow, and whatever your views might be, whatever you may have done, even though you had sunk to the depths of being a Democrat, if he once came to love you, nothing else mattered. I have sometimes thought that the old Captain really had a deeper influence upon Nort during the weeks that followed than any of us imagined. This incident of the fan marked the apogee of the first stage of Nort's career in the office of the _Star_. It was the era of Nort the subdued; and preceded the era of Nort the obstreperous. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII PHAËTON DRIVES THE CHARIOT OF THE "STAR" I find myself loitering unaccountably over every memory of those days in the office of the _Star_. Not a week passed that I did not make two or three or more trips from my farm to Hempfield, sometimes tramping by the short cut across the fields and through the lanes, sometimes driving my old mare in the town road, and always with the problems of Anthy and Nort uppermost in my mind. Sometimes when I could get away, and sometimes when I couldn't (Harriet smiling discreetly), I went up in the daytime to lend a hand in the office (especially on press days), and often in the evening I went for a talk with Nort or Anthy or the old Captain, or else for a good comfortable silence with Fergus while he sat tipped back in his chair on the little porch of the office, and smoked a pipe or so--and the daylight slowly went out, the moist evening odours rose up from the garden, and the noises in the street quieted down. As I have said, the incident of the fan marked the end of the era of Nort the subdued. From that time onward, for a time, it was Nort the ascendant--yes, Nort the obstreperous! As I look back upon it now I have an amusing vision of one after another of us hanging desperately to the coat tails of our Phaëton to prevent him from driving the chariot of the _Star_ quite to destruction. It was this way with Nort. He had begun to recover from the remorse and discouragement which had brought him to Hempfield. If he had been in the city he would probably have felt so thoroughly restored and so virtuous that he would have sought out his old companions and plunged with renewed zest into the old life of excitement. But being in the quiet of the country he had to find some outlet for his high spirits, some food for his curious, lively, inventive mind. What a fascinator he was in those days, anyway! I think he put his spell upon all of us, even to a certain extent upon Ed Smith at first. To me, in particular, who have grown perhaps too reflective, too introspective, with the years of quietude on my farm, he seemed incredibly alive, so that I was never tired of watching him. He was like the boy I had been, or dreamed I had been, and could never be again. And yet I did not then accept him utterly, as the loyal old Captain had done. I was not sure of him. His attitude toward life in those days, while I dislike the comparison, was similar to that of Ed Smith, though the end was different. If Ed was looking for his own aggrandizement, Nort was not the less eagerly in pursuit of his own amusement and pleasure. I had a feeling that he would play with us a while because we amused him, and when he got tired or bored--that would be the end of us. Up to that moment Nort had never really become entangled with life: life had never hurt him. Things and events were like moving pictures, which he enjoyed hotly, which amused him uproariously, or which bored him desperately. As fate would have it--Ed Smith's fate--Nort's opportunity came in August. It was the occasion, as I remember it, of some outing of the State Editors' Association, and Ed planned to be absent for two weeks. He evidently felt that he could now entrust the destinies of the _Star_ for a brief time to his associates. But he tore himself away with evident reluctance. How could the _Star_ be safely left to the mercies of the old Captain (who had been its titular editor for thirty years), or to Anthy (who was merely its owner), to say nothing of such disturbing elements as Fergus and Nort and me? A deep sigh of relief seemed to rise from the office of the _Star_. One fancied that Dick, the canary, chirped more cheerfully, and Fergus swore that he found Tom, the cat, sleeping in the editorial chair within three hours after Ed departed. As for the Captain, he came in thumping his cane and clearing his throat with something of his old-time energy, and even Anthy wore a different look. I can see Nort yet leaning against the imposing stone, one leg crossed over the other, his bare inky arms folded negligently, his thick hair tumbling about on his head--and amusement darkening in his eyes. Fergus was cocked up on a stool by the cases; the Captain, who had just finished an editorial further pulverizing the fragments of William J. Bryan, was leaning back in his chair comfortably smoking his pipe; and Anthy, having slipped off her apron, was preparing to go home for supper. [Illustration: "_Well!" exclaimed Nort, drawing a long breath, "I never imagined it would feel so good to be orfunts_"] "Well!" exclaimed Nort, drawing a long breath, "I never imagined it would feel so good to be orfunts." The laugh which followed this remark was as irresistible as it was spontaneous. It expressed exactly what we all felt. I glanced at Anthy. She evidently considered it her duty to frown upon such disloyalty, but couldn't. She was laughing, too. It seemed to break the tension and bring us all close together. It will be seen from this how Nort had been growing since he came with us, a mere vagabond, to help Fergus. He had become one of us. "Don't see how we're ever goin' to get out a paper," remarked Fergus. This bit of irony was lost on the old Captain. "Fudge!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Get out a paper! We were publishing the _Star_ in Hempfield before ever Ed Smith was born." "I'll tell you what, Cap'n--and Miss Doane," said Nort, "we ought to get out a paper this week that will show Ed a thing or two, stir things up a bit." I saw Anthy turn toward him with a curious live look in her eyes. Youth had spoken to youth. "We could do it!" she said, with unexpected energy. "We could just do it." Nort unfurled his legs and walked nervously down the office. "What would you put in her?" asked the practical Fergus. "Put in her!" exclaimed Nort. "What couldn't you put in her? Put some life in her, I say. Stir things up." "I have just written an editorial on William J. Bryan," remarked the Captain with deliberation. "My father always used to say," said Anthy, "that the little things of life are really the big things. I didn't used to think so; it used to hurt me to see him waste his life writing items about the visits of the Backuses--you know what visitors the Backuses are--and the big squashes raised by Jim Palmer, and the meetings of the Masons and the Odd Fellows; but I believe he was successful with the _Star_ because he packed it full of just such little personal news." "Your father," I said, "was interested in people, in everything they did. It was what he _was_." "I see that now," said Anthy. "And when you come to think of it," I said, "we are more interested in people we know than in people we don't know. We can't escape our own neighbourhoods--and most of us don't want to." "That's all right," said Nort; "but it seems to me since I've been in this town that it is just the things that are most interesting of all that don't get into the _Star_. Why, there's more amusing and thrilling news about Hempfield published every day up there on the veranda of the Hempfield House than gets into the _Star_ in a month. I could publish a paper, at least once, that would----" "I have always said," interrupted the Captain, "that the basic human interest was politics. Politics is the life of the people. Politics----" Fergus's face cracked open with a smile. "We might print a few poems." He said it in such a tone of ironical humour and it seemed so absurd that we all laughed, except Nort. Nort stopped suddenly, with his eyes gleaming. "Why not, Fergus?" he exclaimed. "Great idea, Fergus." With that he took up an envelope from the desk. "Listen to this now," he said, "it came this morning; the Cap'n showed it to me." He read aloud with great effect: A PLEA FOR THE BALLOT There was a maiden all forlorn, Who milked a cow with a crumpled horn, She churned the butter, and made the cheese, And taught her brothers their A B C's. She worked and scrubbed till her back was broke, And paid her tax, but she couldn't vote. Oh! you men look wise and laugh us to scorn, We'll get the ballot as sure as you're born. "I can guess who wrote _that_!" laughed Anthy. "It was Sophia Rhinehart." "You're right," said Nort, "and I say, print it." "There's a whole drawer full of poetry like that here in the desk," observed the Captain. "I'll tell you, let's print it all!" said Nort. "This town is full of poetry. Let's let it out. That's a part of the life of Hempfield which the _Star_ hasn't considered." For the life of me I could not tell at the moment whether Nort was joking or not, but Fergus was troubled with no such uncertainty. He took his pipe out of his mouth, poked down the fire with his thumb, and observed: "'Tain't poetry." Anthy laughed. "No," she said, "it isn't Robert Burns. Fergus measures everything by 'The Twa Dogs.'" "Whur'll ye do better?" responded Fergus. "No," said Nort, warming up to his argument and convincing himself, I think, as he went along, "but I say it's interesting, and it's by people in Hempfield, and it's news. What could be a better personal item than a poem by--who was it, Miss Doane?" "Sophia Rhinehart." "The poet Sophia! Think of all of Sophia's cousins and uncles and aunts, and all the people in Hempfield, who will be shocked to know that Sophia has written a poem on woman suffrage." "That's what I object to," boomed the Captain, "it's nonsense." As I look back upon it now, it seems absurd, the irresistible way in which Nort swept the orfunts of the _Star_ before him in his enthusiasm. A country newspaper office is one of the most democratic institutions in the world. The whole force, from proprietor down, works together and changes work. The editor is also compositor, and the compositor and office boy are reporters. No one poses as having any very superior knowledge, and it sometimes happens that a printer, like Fergus, comfortably drawing his regular wages, is better off for weeks at a time than the harassed proprietor himself. Nort drew the poems, a big disorderly package of them, out of the editorial drawer, and read some of them aloud in his best manner, his face gleaming with amusement. Occasionally he would glance across at Anthy as if for approval. Anthy's face was a study. While it was evident that she was puzzled and uncertain, I could see that Nort was carrying her wholly with him. It was the common spirit of youth, adventure, daring--the common joy of revolt. The upshot of the matter was that the office worked early and late during the next two or three days setting poetry. We chose mostly the short poems, including a veritable school of limericks, and in each case printed the name of the author in good large type. Some of the verses, to judge by their appearance, must have been in the office for several years--from the days of Anthy's father. Anthy's father had never destroyed the verses sent to him; he kept them, but rarely printed any of them. He had so deep a fondness for human beings, understood them so well, and Hempfield had come to be so much his own family to him, that he kept all these curious outreachings, whether of sorrow, or humour, or of mere empty exuberance or sentimentality. Often he laughed at them--but he kept them. Anthy had much the same deep feeling--which the Nort of that time could not have understood. She felt that there was something not quite sound about Nort's brilliant scheme, but when she objected or protested about some particular poem, Nort always swept her away with his eager, "Oh, put her in, put her in!" For the top of the page Fergus set a heading, proofed it, and showed it to Nort. "Not big enough," said Nort. "Got anything larger?" Fergus thought he had, and presently returned with a heading in regular poster type: POEMS OF HEMPFIELD I can see Nort yet, holding it up for us to view, and shouting: "Bully boy, Fergus, that'll get 'em!" We introduced the poetry with a statement that for several years the _Star_ had received poems, written by the citizens of the town and county, very few of which had been published. We presented them to our readers as one expression of the life, thought, and interests of our town. On Wednesday--we went to press Wednesday afternoon--Nort came in from dinner with a broad smile on his face. "Got another poem," he said. "Humph," growled Fergus, who knew that he would have to set it up. "I stopped at the corner as I came along, and old John Tole was standing out in front of his store." Here Nort, thrusting both hands into his rear trousers pockets, leaned a little back and gave a perfect imitation of the familiar figure of our town druggist. "'Mr. Tole,' I said, 'the _Star_ is going to print the poems of Hempfield this week. Haven't you a favourite poem you can put in?' Well, you should have seen the old fellow grin. 'Yes,' says he, 'I've got a favour-ite poem.' I asked him what it was. He kept on smiling, and finally he said: 'I keep a plaster, in case of disaster, And also a pill, in case of an ill.'" Nort shook with laughter. "George! I wish you could have heard him repeat it: 'And also a pi-ll in case of an i-ll.'" He had the whole office laughing with him. "I say, let's put it in the _Star_! 'John Tole's Favourite Poem,' What do you say, Miss Doane?" He stood there such a figure of irresponsible and contagious youth as I can never forget. "Tole hasn't favoured the _Star_ with any advertising for over twenty years," observed the Captain. "We'll advertise him, anyhow," said Nort. And so it went in, at a special place in the middle of the page. Fergus grumbled and growled, of course, but was really more interested and excited, I think, than he had been before in years. "Fergus's great idea," "Fergus's brilliant thought," was the way Nort referred to the printing of the poetry. For two people so utterly unlike, Fergus and Nort got an extraordinary amount of amusement out of each other. In order to make room for the poetry something else, of course, had to be left out, and partly by chance and partly through the antagonism of the Captain, we omitted two paragraphs that Ed Smith had left on the stone for use in the next issue of the paper. One was a flattering comment on the new electric light company that was about to supply Hempfield and other nearby towns with current. "Seems to me," said Fergus, "we've had enough electric light news for a while." "Cut her out, then," said Nort, as though he owned the paper. The other was a cleverly worded paragraph about the candidacy of a certain D. J. McCullum for the legislature. When the Captain saw it he snorted with indignation. "A regular old Democrat!" he exclaimed. "Now what was Ed Smith thinking of--putting a piece like that in the paper?" We little knew what consequences were to follow upon a matter so apparently trivial as the omission of these few sticks of type from the _Star_. At last the forms were locked, and Nort and Fergus carried them over to the press. It was an exciting occasion. Fergus at the press! Usually Fergus contents himself by going about wearing his own crown of stiff red hair, but on press days he takes down an antique derby hat, the rim of which long ago disappeared. Small triangular holes have been cut in the crown for ventilators, and the outside is decorated with dabs of vari-coloured printer's ink. This bowl of a helmet Fergus sets upon his head, tilted a little back, so that he looks like a dervish. He now selects a long black cigar--it is only on press days that he discards his precious pipe--and having lighted it holds it in his mouth so that it points upward at an acute angle. He avoids the smoke which would naturally rise into his left eye by inclining his head a little to one side. He tinkers the rollers, he examines the inkwells, he tightens in the forms. He is very dignified, very sententious. It is an important occasion when Fergus goes to press. At last, when all is ready, Fergus stands upright for a moment, a figure of power and authority. "Let 'er go," he says presently. Nort pulls the lever: the fly moves majestically through the air, the rollers clack, and the very floor shakes with the emotion, the pain, of producing a free press in a free country. But it is only for one or two impressions. Fergus suddenly raises his hand. "Stop her, stop her," he commands, and when she has calmed down, Fergus, comparing the imprint with the form, and armed with paste pot and paper, or with block and mallet, adds the final artistic touches. Sometimes, sitting here in my study, if I am a little lonely, I have only to call up the picture I have of Fergus at the press, and I am restored and comforted by the thought that there are still pleasant and amusing things in this world. So we printed off the famous issue containing the poetry of Hempfield--and folded and mailed the papers. Nort, working like a demon, was the soul of the office. He made the work that week seem more interesting and important; he made an adventure and a romance out of the common task of a country printing-office. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII NORT AND ANTHY It was on this night, after the last copy of the edition had been disposed of, that Nort walked home for the first time with Anthy. He carried it off perfectly. When she was ready to go--I remember just how she looked, her slight firm figure pausing with hand on the door, the flush of excitement and interest still in her face. "Good-night, everybody," she was saying. "Well, we've printed a paper this week, anyhow," said Nort. Anthy laughed: she had a fine clear laugh, not loud, but sweet, the kind of a laugh one remembers long afterward. "Hold on, Miss Doane," said Nort, starting up suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "I'm going with you." He jumped for his coat. Anthy remained, still without moving, at the door. I chanced to glance at Fergus and saw him bite down on his pipe-- I saw the scowl that darkened his face. So they went out together. A moment later I went out, too, and as I crossed the street on my way toward home I heard Anthy's voice through the night air, no words, just the inflection I had come to know so well, and then Nort's laugh. I stopped and looked back at the printing-office, half hidden in the shadows of its garden. A dim light still burned in the window. I saw Fergus come out and look down the street in the direction that Nort and Anthy had gone, look thus for some time, and go in again. And so I turned again homeward for my lonely walk under the stars. Life has been good to me, and as I look back upon it no one thing seems more precious than the thought that I have been much trusted with deep things in the lives of other men and women. Next to living great things for one's self (we learn by and by to put that aside) it is wonderful to be _lived through_. It is wonderful to know a human soul, and ask nothing of it, nothing at all, save its utter confidence. I know what took place that night when Nort first walked home with Anthy almost as well as though I had been with them. And I know how Fergus felt, Fergus who had known Anthy's father, who had seen Anthy grow up from a slim, eager, somewhat dreamy child to the woman she was now. What do you suppose Nort and Anthy talked about? About themselves? Not a bit of it! They began by talking about the _Star_ and the poems they had just printed and how Hempfield would like them. And Nort, taking fire from the spontaneous combustion of his own ideas, began to talk as only Nort can talk. He painted a renewed country journalism in glowing language--a powerful engine of public opinion emanating from the country and expressing the mind, the heart, the very soul, of the people of the land. (Nort had never before in his life spent two consecutive months in the country!) Great writers should contribute to its columns--yes, by George, great poets, too!--statesmen would consult its opinions, and its editor (and deep down inside Nort saw himself with incomparable vividness as that very editor), its editor would sway the destinies of the nation. As he talked he began to swing his arms, he increased his pace until he was a step or two ahead of Anthy, walking so quickly at times that she could scarcely keep up with him. Apparently he forgot that she was there--only he didn't quite. Apparently he was talking impersonally to the tree tops and the south wind and the stars--only he wasn't, really. When they came to the gate of Anthy's home, Nort walked straight past it and did not discover for a moment or two that Anthy had stopped. When he came back Anthy was standing, a dim figure, in the gateway. "Well," he said, "I've been doing all the talking----" Anthy's low laugh sounded clear in the night air. "Your picture of a reconstructed country newspaper is irresistible!" "It could be done!" said Nort. "It could be done right here in Hempfield. Brains and energy will count anywhere, Miss Doane. Why, we could make the Hempfield _Star_ one of the most quoted journals in America--or in the world!" They stood silent for a moment there at the gate. Nort was not looking at Anthy, or thought he was not, but long afterward he had only to close his eyes, and the whole scene came back to him: the dim old house rising among its trees, the wide sky and the stars overhead, and the slight figure of Anthy there in the gateway. And the very odour and feel of the night---- Anthy was turning to walk up the pathway. "One week more," said Nort. "One week more," responded Anthy. Now there is nothing either mystical or poetical about any one of these three words-one--week--more--or about all of them together, and yet Nort once repeated them for me as though they had some peculiar or esoteric significance. They merely meant that there was another week before Ed Smith returned. A week is enough for youth! [Illustration] CHAPTER IX A LETTER TO LINCOLN Reaching this point in my narrative I lean back in my chair--the coals are dying down in the fireplace, Harriet long ago went to bed, and the house is silent with a silence that one can hear--I lean back and think again of that moment in Anthy's life. I have before me an open letter, a letter so often opened and so often folded again that the creases are worn thin. I keep it in the drawer of my desk with a packet labelled, "Archives of the _Star_." There are several of the old Captain's editorials, including the one entitled "Fudge," and of course the one about Roosevelt, a number of Nort's early manuscripts, Fergus's version of Mark Twain, and five letters in Anthy's firm handwriting. This is a very curious document, this letter I have before me. The outside of the envelope bears the name of Abraham Lincoln, and the letter itself begins: "Dear Mr. Lincoln." It is in Anthy's hand. Ever since I began writing this narrative I have been impatient to reach this moment, but now that I am here, I hesitate. It is no common matter to put down the secret imaginings of a woman's soul. We all lead double lives: that which our friends and neighbours know, and that which is invisible within us. Acquaintance gives us the outward aspects of our neighbours, with friendship we penetrate a little way into the deeper life, but when we love there is no glen too secret for us, no upland too elusive, and we worship at the altars of the eternal woods. Long before I knew Anthy well I knew something of her deeper life, something more than that which looked out of her still eyes or marked her quiet countenance. The quality of Anthy's silences were a sign: and I surprised once the look she had when walking alone in a country road. People who are shallow, or whose inner lives are harassed by forms of fear ("most men," as Thoreau says, "live lives of quiet desperation") rarely care to be silent, rarely wish to be alone with themselves; but it is the sign of a noble nature that it has made terms with itself. One of the tragedies of life, perhaps the supreme tragedy, is that we should be unable to follow those we love to their serenest heights. I once knew a man who had lived for twenty years with a woman, and never got beyond what he could see with the eyes of the flesh. The gate to the uplands of the soul long stood open to him (and stands open now no more); he passed that way, too, but he never went in. I do not wish to imply that Anthy was a mere dreamer. She was not, decidedly; but she had, always, her places of retirement. From a child she had friends of her own imagining. The first of them I have already referred to, a certain Richard and Rachel who came out through the wall near the stairway in her father's house, to be the confidants of a lonely child. Others came later as she grew older. I know the names of some of them, and just what they meant to Anthy at particular moments in her life. They came to her, as friends come to us in real life, as we are ripe for them. It was some time after her father's death, when she felt very much alone, that Anthy wrote her first letter to Mr. Lincoln. Her father had made Lincoln one of the most vivid characters of her girlhood: a portrait of him hung over the mantel in the living-room, and there was another at the office. One day, almost involuntarily, she began a letter: DEAR MR. LINCOLN: I wish you were here. My father knew you well and trusted you more than he trusted any other man. He used to say that no other American who ever lived had such an understanding of the hearts of people as you had. I think you would understand some of the troubles I am now having with the _Star_, and that you would help me to be sensible and strong. When I was in college I thought I had begun to know something, but since I have come back here I feel like a very small girl again. I don't _know_ enough to run the _Star_, and yet I cannot let it go---- [Illustration: _She turned around quickly--but there was no one there to see_] Once started, she poured out her very heart to Mr. Lincoln: and having completed the letter she folded it, placed it in an envelope, on which she wrote "Abraham Lincoln," and going to the mantel slipped it behind Mr. Lincoln's picture. Then she turned around quickly, looked all about--but there was no one there to see. She told me long afterward that it seemed at first a little absurd to be actually writing letters to Mr. Lincoln, but that it relieved her mind and made her feel more cheerful in her loneliness. After that it became an almost daily practice for her to pour out her thoughts and difficulties to Mr. Lincoln. And the place behind the portrait was the post office. She said that sometimes during the busiest parts of the day the thought would suddenly flash across her mind that she would tell Mr. Lincoln this or that, and it gave her a curious deep sense of comfort. Each evening she destroyed the letter she had written on the day before--destroyed them all, except those which lie here on my desk. I am sure that this practice meant a great deal in Anthy's life. One cannot know much about any great human being, think what he would do under this or that circumstance, or what he would say if he were here, without coming to be something like him. We are strangely influenced in this world by those whom we admire most. Harriet and I know a little old maid--I have written about her elsewhere--who has thought so much about the Carpenter of Nazareth that she has come to be wonderfully like Him. It would be impossible for any one to understand Anthy, or, indeed, the life of the _Star_, or Nort, without knowing of the deep inner forces which were influencing her. I know now why she maintained through all the earlier days, those trying days, the front of quiet courage. And so I come to the letter open here on my desk. It is the one that Anthy wrote on the night that Nort went home with her for the first time. It is not a long letter, and was evidently written hastily at the little table I have so often seen, at which I once sat quietly for a long time, where one may easily glance up at the portrait over the mantel. It is the first letter in which she ever referred at any great length to Nort. And this is the letter: DEAR MR. LINCOLN: Well, we have had a wonderful day! We finished the setting of the poetry, of which I told you, early in the afternoon, but the last paper was not folded until after nine o'clock this evening. I am uncertain whether we have done wisely or not. My father would never have dreamed of anything so _different_, and Ed Smith will probably be horrified. We may have been too easily carried away by our irrepressible Vagabond, but if I had the decision to make again, I should do exactly what I have done. It's a sort of Declaration of Independence! Our Vagabond came home with me this evening. Probably I should not have let him, but there's no harm done: he didn't know, most of the time, whether I was with him or he was alone. What a dreamer he is, anyway! We started talking about the _Star_, but no one heavenly body will long satisfy him. He soon soared away in the blue firmament, touched lightly upon a constellation or two, and was getting ready to settle the problems of the universe--when we arrived at the gate. I had some trouble to get him down to solid earth again. _He is no tramp printer_, of that I am certain. He has completely won over Uncle Newt, and his way with Fergus passeth understanding. Fergus trots around like a collie dog, rather cross, but faithful. David looks at him with that contemplative, humorous, philosophical expression he has, and isn't the least bit fooled. As for me, what _shall_ I do with him and Ed Smith and Uncle Newt all in the office together! One can see that he has some fine qualities and impractical ideas--only he needs some one to take care of him and keep him out of mischief. He deserves the comment which Miss Bacon, our Latin professor, used to make in her dry way about some of the men who called on the girls at college: "Very interesting, very interesting, but very young." What a spectacle he was when he came to us first! It is a pity that a man like that, so full of ideas and enthusiasm, should be so irresponsible! He has a very fine head and really wonderful eyes! To-morrow promises to be an interesting day. I wonder what we shall hear from our poetry! Your friend, A. D. I have always thought that Nort was a little abashed at the way in which he talked to Anthy on that first evening, though he never admitted it in so many words. And an incident occurred the next day that caused him to take a new attitude toward her. Up to this time he had treated her just like any other member of the staff, with easy, off-hand freedom. One of the visitors inquired: "May I see the proprietor of the _Star_?" Fergus replied: "Miss Doane will be here in a few minutes." It struck Nort all in a heap. She _was_ the proprietor, and, therefore, his employer. It gave him a curious, and rather unpleasant, twinge inside somewhere; yes, and it hurt a little, but wound up by being irresistibly funny. She was his "boss," this girl, she actually paid him his wages. She could discharge him, too, by George! He stopped suddenly and went off into a wild shout of laughter. Fergus took his pipe out of his mouth, held it a moment while he looked Nort over, and then, slowly nodding his head but saying never a word, put it back again. Now, if there was anything in this world that irked the Nort of those days it was the feeling of restraint, of being reined in. All that day, in spite of varied excitements which followed the publication of the poetry, Nort was overcome from time to time by the thought of Anthy as his "boss," and, in spite of all he could do, there were other feelings, curious, inexplicable feelings, mingled with the amusement he felt. It was inevitable that Nort should somehow act upon the impulse of this new thought. His eager mind played with it, suggesting a thousand amusing plans. Here was a situation that had possibilities. In the middle of the afternoon Nort suddenly pretended to be out of a job, and walking up to Anthy's desk he stood up very straight and stiff, and pulling at a lock of hair over his forehead, said very respectfully: "What shall I do next, miss?" Anthy glanced up at him. It rather offended his vanity that she seemed so surprised to see him there. Evidently he was very far from her thoughts. His face was as sober and as blank as the face of nature, but Anthy saw the spark in his eyes--and the challenge--though she did not know exactly what he meant. He pulled his forelock again, and in a voice still more subdued and respectful, repeated: "What shall I do next, miss?" There was a slightly higher colour in Anthy's face, but she looked squarely into his eyes and said quietly: "You'd better help Fergus clean up the press." I shall never forget the look of puzzled wonder and chagrin in Nort's face as he turned away. Anthy went back to her work with apparent unconcern. [Illustration] CHAPTER X THE WONDERFUL DAY Though I live to be a hundred and fifty years old, which heaven forbid, I shall never forget the events which followed upon the historic publication of the Poems of Hempfield. I wonder if you have ever awakened in the morning with a curious deep sense of having some peculiar reason for being happy? You lie half awake for a moment wondering what it can all be about, and then it comes suddenly and vividly alive for you. It was so with me on that morning, and I thought of the adventures of the printing-office, and of Anthy and Nort and Fergus and the old Captain. "Surely," I said to myself, "no one ever had such friends as I have!" I thought what an amusing world this was, anyway, how full of captivating people. And I whistled all the way down the stairs, clean forgetting that this was contrary to one of Harriet's most stringent rules; and when I went out it seemed to me that the countryside never looked more beautiful at dawn than it did on that morning. At Barton's Crossing on my way to town I could see the silvery spire of the Congregational Church, and at the hill beyond the bridge all Hempfield lay before me, half hidden in trees, with friendly puffs of breakfast smoke rising from many chimneys; and when I reached the gate of the printing-office the sun was just looking around the corner, and there in the doorway, as fresh and confident as you please, stood that rascal of a Norton Carr, whistling a little tune and looking out with a cocky eye upon the world of Hempfield. "Hello, David!" he called out when he saw me. "Hello, Nort!" I responded; "it's a wonderful morning." He took a quick step forward and clapped me on the shoulder as I came up. "Exactly what I've been thinking," he said eagerly, "and it's going to be a wonderful day." If ever youth and joy-of-life spoke in a human voice, they spoke that morning in Nort's. I cannot convey the sudden sense it gave me of the roseate illusion of adventure. It _was_ going to be a wonderful day! I think Nort confidently expected to see a long line of people gathering in front of the office that morning clamouring to buy extra copies of the _Star_. He had been so positive that the appearance of the poetry would stir Hempfield to its depths that he had urged the publication of a large extra edition. But the Captain assured him that the only thing that ever really produced an extra sale of the _Star_ was a "big obituary." In its palmy days, when the Captain let himself go, and the deceased was really worthy of the Captain's facile and flowery pen, the _Star_ had sold as many as two hundred extra papers. It was as much a part of any properly conducted funeral in Hempfield to buy copies of the Captain's obituaries--the same issue also containing the advertised thanks of the family to the friends who had been with them in their sore bereavement--as it was for the choir to sing "Lead, Kindly Light." Fergus, especially, jeered at the proposal of an extra edition. It was not the money loss that disturbed Fergus, for that would be next to nothing at all, it was the thought of being stampeded by Nort's enthusiasm, and afterward hearing the sarcastic comments of Ed Smith. While this heated controversy was going on, Anthy quietly ordered the paper--and we printed the extra copies. All that morning I saw Nort glancing from time to time out of the window. No line appeared. Nine o'clock--and no line--not even one visitor! Nort fidgeted around the press, emptied the wastebasket, looked at his watch. Ten o'clock---- Steps on the porch--soft, hesitating steps. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Nort stiffen up and his face begin to glow. A little barefooted boy edged his way in at the door. We all looked around at him. I confess that Nort was not the only one who was expectant. When you have fired a big gun you want to know that the shot hit somewhere! The boy was evidently embarrassed by the battery of eyes levelled at him. "Sister wants two papers," said he finally. "She says, the papers with the po'try." I shall never forget the sight of Nort, head in air, marching over to the pile of extras, grandly handing two of them to our customer, and then walking triumphantly across the room and delivering the dime to Anthy. "Who was that now?" asked Nort, when the little chap went out. "That," said Anthy, "was Sophia Rhineheart's brother." Nort clapped his hand dramatically to his head. "The false Sophia!" he exclaimed; "I expected that Sophia would want at least fifty copies of the journal which has made her famous." The next incident was even more disquieting. An old man named Johnson came to put a twenty-cent advertisement in the paper "Ten Cords of Wood for Sale"--and it appeared, after an adroit question by Nort, that, although he had received that week's paper, he did not even know that we had published the Poems of Hempfield. Nort's spirits began to drop, as his face plainly showed. Like many young men who start out to set the world afire, he was finding the kindling wood rather damp. Just before noon, however, answering a telephone call, we saw his eyes brighten perceptibly. "Thank you," he was saying. "Ten, did you say? All right, you shall have them. Glad you called early before they are all gone." He put down the receiver, smiling broadly. "There," he said, "it's started!" "Humph," grunted Fergus, and Anthy, leaning back on her stool, laughed merrily. But Nort refused to be further depressed. If things did not happen of themselves in Hempfield, why he was there to make them happen. When he went out at noon he began asking everybody he met, at the hotel, at the post office, at the livery stable, whether they had seen the _Star_ that week. Nort had then been in Hempfield about four months, and the town had begun to enjoy him--rather nervously, because it was never quite certain what he would do next. In Hempfield almost everybody was working for the approval of everybody else, which no one ever attains; while Nort never seemed to care whether anybody approved him or not. "Seen the _Star_ this week?" he asked Joe Crane, the liveryman, apparently controlling his excitement with difficulty. "No," says Joe. "Why?" "It's the biggest issue we ever had. We are printing the poems of all the poets of Hempfield." Joe paused to consider a moment, while Nort looked at him earnestly. "Didn't know they was any poets in Hempfield," observed Joe finally. "Why," says Nort, "Hempfield has more poets than any town of its size in America." Now, Joe took the _Star_ as a matter of course, and advertised in it, too: JOSEPH CRANE LIVERY, FEED AND SALE STABLE but, rarely expecting to find anything in the paper but the local news, which he knew already, he had unfortunately used the Poems of Hempfield for cleaning harness. After Nort's exciting visit he crossed over and borrowed a somewhat sticky copy which Nathan Collins, the baker, was saving to wrap bread in, and glancing over the Poems of Hempfield, discovered that Addison Bird of Hawleyville had written one of them, a poem entitled "Just Plant One Tree, Boys," which he had once read at the Grange. Joe bought hay of Ad, and the idea that Ad was a poet struck Joe as being an irresistible piece of humour. He told everybody who came in during the day, and even called Ad on the telephone to joke him about it. Ad had not heard of it yet, and immediately hitched up and drove into town, not knowing whether to be pleased or angry. He met Nort at the gate of the printing-office, and was received by that young editor with a warm handshake and congratulations upon appearing in what was undoubtedly the most interesting issue of a newspaper ever published in Westmoreland County. The upshot of it was that Ad paid up his long delinquent subscription, and went away with quite a bundle of extra copies. It is a strange thing in this world how few people recognize a thing as wonderful or beautiful until some poet or prophet comes along to tell them that it is wonderful or beautiful. "Behold that sunset!" cries the poet, quite beside himself with excitement, and the world, which has been accustomed to having sunsets every evening for supper, and thinks nothing of them, suddenly looks up and discovers unknown splendours. "Behold the _Star_," cried Nort, rushing wildly about Hempfield. "See what we've got in the _Star_"--and it spread through the town that something unusual, wonderful, was happening in the hitherto humdrum office in the little old building back from the street. People did not know quite what to make of the publication of the poetry, it was so unprecedented, and the result was that we soon found the whole town discussing the _Star_. The interest cropped up in the most unexpected places, and developed a number of very amusing incidents. We had lifted a little new corner of the veil of life in Hempfield, and we had Nort to tell us how wonderful and amusing it was. Not everybody liked it--for life, everywhere and always, arouses opposition as well as approval--and one man even came in to cancel his subscription because he thought he found unfavourable references to himself in one of the poems; but, on the whole, people were interested and amused. With all his enthusiasm, Nort got no more satisfaction out of the events of the week than the old Captain. On Saturday afternoons, when the farmers came to town, the Captain loved to stroll up the street in a leisurely way, pass a word here and there with his neighbours, and generally enjoy himself. I always loved to see him on such occasions--his fine old face, his long rusty coat, the cane which was at once the sceptre of his dominion and the support of his age. Upon this particular afternoon he had the consciousness of having written a truly scorching editorial on William J. Bryan, as trenchant a thing--the Captain loved "trenchant"--as ever he wrote in his life, and when people began to speak to him about that week's issue of the _Star_, it pleased him greatly. It _was_ a great issue! Mr. Tole, the druggist, for example, who was secretly much gratified with the publication of his favourite poem, which he shrewdly considered excellent free advertising, remarked: "Had a great paper this week, Cap'n." The old Captain responded with dignity: "The _Star_, Mr. Tole, is looking up." How sweet was all this to the old Captain. For so long the current had been setting against him, there had been so little of the feeling of success and power, which he loved. We could distinguish the triumphant notes in the Captain's voice when he returned to the office. He sat down in the editorial chair with a special air of confidence. "Anthy," he said, clearing his throat. "Yes, Uncle Newt." "Anthy, I have hopes of Hempfield. Even in these days, when the people seem to be going off after false gods, the truth will prevail." He paused. "We are beginning to hear from our editorial on William J. Bryan." I recall yet Anthy's laugh--the amusement of it, and yet the deep sympathy. The Captain's eye fell upon Nort. He looked him over affectionately. "Nort, my boy," he said, "we're printing a newspaper." "We are, Cap'n," responded Nort heartily, but with a glint in his eyes. I saw the swift, grateful look that Anthy gave him. But the old Captain's mood suddenly changed. It is in the time of triumph that we sometimes find our sorrows most poignant. He began to shake his big shaggy head. "Ah, Nort," said he, "one thing only takes the heart out of me." "What's that, Cap'n?" asked Nort, though we all knew well enough. "If only the Colonel had not left us, I could put my very soul into the work. I could write wonderful editorials, Nort." If there was one subject besides flying machines and Democrats--and possibly woman suffrage--upon which the old Captain was irreconcilable, it was Colonel Roosevelt. He had never followed or loved any leader since Lincoln as he had followed and loved Roosevelt, and when the Colonel "went astray," as he expressed it, it affected him like some great personal sorrow. It went so deep with him that he had never yet been able to write an editorial upon the subject. "Why," he had said to Anthy, "I loved him like a brother!" "Never mind, Cap'n," said Nort. "Some of these days you'll tell us what you think about the Colonel." The Captain shook his head sadly. "No, Nort," said he, "it goes too deep, it goes too deep." With that he turned to his desk with a heavy sigh and began opening the week's exchanges, and we knew that he would soon fall upon Brother Kendrick of the Sterling _Democrat_ and smite him hip and thigh. If the Colonel were no longer with him, still his head was bloody but unbowed--and he would fight on to the end. But the seed dropped by Nort--"You'll tell us what you think about the Colonel some of these days"--did not fall on wholly barren soil. It produced, indeed, a growth of such luxuriance--but of all that, in its proper place. Well, we disposed of every extra copy of the paper we had printed, and actually had to run off some reprints and slips containing the Poems of Hempfield, of which we also sold quite a number. How we all need just a little success! To the editors of a country newspaper, who publish week after week for months without so much as a ripple of response, all this was most exciting and interesting--yes, intoxicating. Considered as a business venture, of course, or measured in exact financial returns, it may seem small enough. Indeed, Ed Smith said---- But can we ever measure the best things in life by their financial returns? Considered as a human experience, a fresh and charming adventure in life, it glows yet in my memory with a glory all its own. The effect upon Nort was curious enough. At one moment the amusing aspects of the adventure seemed uppermost with him, and I felt that he was laughing at all of us, using us all, using the town of Hempfield, for his lordship's amusement; and at the next moment he seemed seriously entangled in the meshes of his own enthusiasm. It was a time of transition and development for Nort. Part of his reckless spirits at this time I am sure was due to the passage of arms with Anthy, which I have already described. He had been curiously piqued by her attitude, and by the thought that she was actually his employer and could discharge him. It did not correspond with his preconceived views of life nor with his conception of the place that women should occupy in the cosmos. Not that Nort had ever been profoundly interested in women, not he! He had played with them, indeed, for he had belonged to that class, sometimes called the favoured, in which men rarely work with women, or study with them, or think with them. While he did not try to explain his emotions to himself, he had been disconcerted by Anthy's perfectly direct ways, by being treated simply as a human being, a coworker, not as though he were all man and she all woman, and nothing else mattered. It was in this mood of exuberant amusement, combined with challenge to Anthy, that he wrote his absurd report (which was never printed) of the effect of the publication of the poems upon Hempfield, and read it aloud one evening with great dramatic effect--keeping one eye on Anthy where she sat, half in shadow, at her desk. "Poets," wrote Nort, "were seen congratulating or commiserating one another upon the public streets, whole families were electrified by discovering that they had a poet in their midst without knowing it, wives were revealed to husbands and husbands to wives, and even the little children of Hempfield began to lisp in measures." There was much more in the same strain, indicating that Nort was still laughing at us, instead of with us. But Anthy sat there in the shadow, very still, and said nothing. When in repose Anthy's face seemed often to take on a cast of sadness, especially about the eyes, of that sadness and sweetness which so often go with strength and nobility of spirit. She was very beautiful that night, I thought. I did not know as well then as I came to know afterward, what a struggle she was facing to save the _Star_, what she had sacrificed to keep green the memory of her father and to cherish the old Captain. And she had a love for Hempfield and Hempfield folk that Nort could not have guessed. Life might be a huge joke to Nort, who had never, up to this time, in all his life, had to fight or suffer for anything--but Anthy, Anthy was already meeting the great adventure. But there was another and a deeper Nort, which few people at that time had ever seen. This was the Nort who had fled impulsively from New York, and this was the Nort who now strode out along the country roads toward Hawleyville, his head hot with great thoughts. This was the Nort who was tasting the sweets of editorship, who had more than half begun to believe what he had told Anthy, on the spur of the moment, when he walked home with her. Why not a wonderful new country journalism? Why not a paper right in Hempfield which, by virtue of its profound thought, its matchless wit, its charming humour, its saving sympathy, its superb handling of great topics, its--its---- Why not? And why not Norton Carr, editor? "Matchless" was the adjective that Nort had in his mind at the moment, and he imagined a typical comment in the New York _Times_: "We quote this week from the Hempfield _Star_, that matchless exponent of rural thought in America, edited by Mr. Norton Carr----" etc., etc. This would naturally be copied in the _Literary Digest_ and made the subject of an editorial in _Life_. This was the Nort who walked the country roads, neither seeing the stars above nor feeling the clods beneath, but living in a fairer land than this is, the perfect spring weather of the soul of youth. It was thus that Nort lived his deeper life, as the hero of his own hot imaginings. And this, too, was the Nort who returned to Hempfield--without any conscious intention on his part, for how can one think of two things at once--by the road which led past Anthy's home. He did not stop, he scarcely looked around, and yet he had an intense and vivid undersense of a dim light in one of the upper windows of the dark house. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI IN WHICH GREAT PLANS ARE EVOLVED, AND THERE IS A SURPRISING EVENT Since we had come to know the _Star_, Sunday afternoons were important occasions for Harriet and me. Nort was the first to visit us--soon after he came to Hempfield--but the old Captain and Anthy were not many Sundays behind him. They usually drove out with one of Joe Crane's horses (charged against advertising in the _Star_), and on such occasions the Captain was very grand in his long coat and wide hat--and gloves. He always greeted Harriet with chivalrous formality, inquired after her health, and usually had some bit of old-fashioned gallantry to offer her, which always bothered her just a little, especially if she happened at the moment to catch my eye. I had great trouble getting Fergus to come at all; but having once lured him out, Harriet's gingerbread soon finished him. At first there was an amusing struggle between Harriet and Fergus, in which, of course, that Scotchman came off second best--and never knew that he was beaten! You see, Fergus is never entirely happy unless he can tip back in his chair, until you are certain he is going over backward and smash the door of the china closet. Also, he smokes the worst tobacco in the world. On the occasion of his second visit he went prowling around the room for a straight-back chair to sit in, but Harriet shooed him irresistibly toward an effeminate rocker, where he could gratify his instinct for tipping back, and not endanger the family china. During the week that followed Harriet made a scientific study of the drafts in our living-room (that is, I think she did), and on the next Sunday she not only shooed Fergus into a rocker, but that rocker was so placed near the window that the tobacco smoke was drawn straight out of the room. After that, she made Fergus so comfortable within and without--especially within--that he thought her a very wonderful woman. As she is. As for Harriet and me, these Sunday gatherings--which often included the Scotch preacher, or our neighbour Horace, or, rarely, the Starkweathers--these visits were delightful beyond comparison. By Saturday night there was not a speck of dust in the house that was visible to the naked eye, and by three o'clock Sunday (if there was no one in to dinner) Harriet and I began an unacknowledged contest to see which of us would be the first to catch sight of the visitors coming up the town road or across the fields. We both pretended we weren't looking--but we were. It was on the Sunday afternoon following the publication of the poetry, just after I had come in from the barn, that I saw Nort coming down the lane which skirts the edge of the wood. He had a stick in his hand with which he struck at the foliage of the hazel brush or decapitated a milkweed. "There's Nort!" I exclaimed. It was miraculous to see Harriet twitch off her apron and, with two or three deft pats, arrange her hair. When Nort saw us, for we couldn't help going outside to meet him, he raised one hand, shouting: "Hello, there, David!" I remember thinking what a boy he looked. Not large, not very strong, but with a lithe swinging step and an odd tilt of the head, a little backward, as though he were looking up for the joy of it. I felt my heart rising and warming at the very sight of him. "Well, Miss Grayson," said he, coming up the steps, "have you decided yet whether you and David are most indebted to the Macintoshes or the Scribners?" There was laughter in his eyes as he shook Harriet's hand, and I could see the faint flush in her cheeks and the little positive nod of the head she had when she was most pleased, and didn't want it to appear too plainly. Nort had long ago discovered her undying passion for her ancestors, and already knew the complete record of that Macintosh who was an officer in the Colonial army, and who, if one were to judge by Harriet's account, was the origin of all the good traits of the Grayson family. When Harriet is especially pleased with any one, particularly if he is a man, she thinks at once that he must be hungry; and no sooner were the greetings well over than she escaped to the kitchen. Nort at once put on a portentous look of solemn concern, his face changing so quickly that it was almost comical. "David," said he, "here we are right up to another issue, and no ideas." He spoke as though he were the sole proprietor of the _Star_. "Well," I said, "a little thing like that never yet prevented a newspaper from appearing regularly." "No," he laughed, "but think of the perfectly grand opportunity that is going to waste. Ed Smith away for another week!" "We enjoyed printing the poetry, didn't we?" "Didn't we!" he responded. "I thought last Wednesday night that it was pretty nearly the biggest and most interesting work in the world to edit a country newspaper." "And you told Anthy." He glanced around at me quickly. "She told you?" "No," I said, "but I knew." "Yes, I told her," he said. He paused and looked off across our quiet hills; the autumn air was cool and sweet. "I wonder----" he began, but he did not tell me what it was that he wondered. Presently his thoughts returned sharply to the _Star_. "What would you put in the paper, anyhow, David?" he asked. "Hempfield," said I. His eyes kindled. "I get you," he said eagerly. "It's exactly what I say. The very spirit of the town, the soul of the country--make the paper fairly throb with it." He was off! It was the first time I had seen Nort in his serious mood--and he could be dreadfully serious, as serious as only youth knows how to be. "Truth!" he exclaimed fiercely. "We don't print the truth in the _Star_. The most interesting and important things about Hempfield never get into the paper at all. I tell you, David, we never even touch the actual facts about Hempfield. We just fiddle around the outsides of things: 'John Smith came to town on Saturday with his blooded colt. Fine colt, John!' Bah! Think of it--when there is a whole world of real events to write about. Why, David, there are more wonderful and tragic and amusing things right here in this small town than ever I saw in all my life. When we printed the poems last week, we just scratched the surface of the real life of Hempfield." Nort had jumped up, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and was tramping up and down the room, shaking his mane like a young lion. I confess that, for a moment, I was tempted to laugh at him--and then suddenly I did not care at all to laugh. Something in the wild youth of him, the bold thoughts, stirred me to the depths. The magic of youth, waving its flag upon the Hill Formidable! The fresh runner catching up the torch that has fallen from the slack hand of age! I have had my dreams, too, Nort. I dreamed once---- I dreamed once of seeing the very truth of things. As I worked alone here in my fields, with the great world all open and beautiful around me, I said to myself, "I will be simple, I will not dodge or prevaricate or excuse; I will see the whole of life." I confess now with some sadness (and humour, too) that I have not mastered the wonders of this earth, nor seen the truth of it.... I heard a catbird singing in the bush, a friend stopped me by the roadside, there was a star in the far heavens---- And when I looked up I was old, and Truth was vanishing behind the hill. Something of all this I had in my thoughts as Nort talked to me; and it came to me, wistfully, that perhaps this burning youth might really have in him the genius to see the truth of things more clearly than I could, and tell it better than I could. "Yes," I said, "if one could only see this Hempfield of ours as it really is, all the poetry of it, all the passion of it, all the dullness and mediocrity, all the tragedy of failure, all that is in the hearts and souls of these common people--what a thing it would be! How it would stir the world!" I must have said it with my whole soul, as I felt it. I suppose I should not have added fuel to the fire of that youth, I suppose I should have been calm and old and practical. For a moment Nort sat perfectly silent. Then I felt the trembling, eager pressure of his hand on my arm. He leaned over toward me. "David," he said, "you understand things." There was that in his voice that I had never heard before. Usually he had a half-humorous, yes, flippant, way with him, but there was something here that touched bottom. I don't know quite why it is, but after I have been serious about so long, I have an irresistible desire to laugh. I find I can't remain in a rarified atmosphere too long. "Nort," I said suddenly, "you haven't been seeing any terrible truths about Hempfield, have you?" The change in his face was startling. He looked like a boy caught in the jam closet--the colour suddenly flooding his cheeks. "Where is it?" I asked. "Trot it out." "How did you know?" asked that extraordinary young man. I laughed. "Nort," I said, "you aren't the only man in this world who is trying to write--and is ashamed of himself because he can't." With a smile which I can only characterize as sheepish, Nort drew from his breast pocket a packet of paper. He was all eagerness again, and was for reading me his production on the spot; but just at this moment we saw the old Captain driving up to the gate alone. Where was Anthy? A little later Fergus came, and for some time Harriet filled the whole house with the pleasant noises and bustle of hospitality, which she knows best how to do. "Captain," I said as soon as ever I could get in a word, "Nort has brought a manuscript with him to read to us." At that the Captain instinctively lifted one hand to his breast. "The Captain has one, too," I said. "A mere editorial," responded the Captain with dignity. "Where's yours, Fergus?" I asked. Fergus took his pipe out, barked once or twice deep down inside, and put it back again, which, interpreted, meant that Fergus was amused. At this point Harriet broke in. "Before you do anything else," said she, "I want you all to come out and have a bite to eat." That's the way with Harriet. Just at the moment when you've set your scenery, staged your play, and the curtain is about to go up, she appears with--gingerbread--and stampedes the entire company. Why, you couldn't have kept Fergus---- Harriet had put on her choicest tablecloth and the precious napkins left her by our great-aunt Dorcas, and the old thin glass dishes that came from Grandmother Scribner, which are never used except upon high occasions. It was Sunday night and, as Harriet explained, we never have any supper on Sunday night. There was thick yellow gingerbread, with just a hint in it (not a bit too much and not too little) of the delectable molasses of which it was made, and perfect apple sauce from the earliest Red Astrakhans, cooked so that the rosy quarters looked plump, with sugary crystals sparkling upon them, and thin glass tumblers (of Grandmother Scribner's set) full of sweet milk, yellow and almost foamy at the top. There are perfect moments in this life! Nort was in the wildest spirits, the rebound from his unusual mood of seriousness. Nothing escaped him--neither the napkins, nor the spoons, nor the thin old glass, nor the perfect gingerbread, nor the marvellous apple sauce, nor the glow in Harriet's face. She knew that Nort would see it all! Harriet is never so beautiful as when she sits at the head of her own table, her moment of supreme artistry. "I went to church to-day," said Nort finally. "You did!" Harriet was vastly pleased. "Yes," smiled Nort. This was truly a youth after her own heart. "Nothing else to do on Sunday in Hempfield," said Nort; "and it was interesting." He stopped and looked slowly around at me. "The truth about the church in Hempfield, David!" he exclaimed, as though we had a secret between us. I laughed. "That's one thing," I said, "you can't easily tell the truth about--in Hempfield." "Why not?" asked Harriet with astonishment. "Is there anything that should encourage one to truth-telling more than the church?" "Read it, Nort," said I, "read it." "Well," said Nort, again drawing forth his manuscript, "you know what the ordinary church report in the _Star_ is like. 'The usual services were held last Sunday morning at the Congregational Church. An appreciative audience listened to an eloquent sermon by the Rev. Mr. Sargent, his text being John x, 3.' Now, I ask you if that gives you any picture of what the meeting was like? Everybody who was there knew that Mr. Sargent preached, and nobody who was absent could get anything out of such a report. So what's the use of printing it? I thought I'd write a true report of what I saw--and I'll bet it will be read in Hempfield." The old live gleam was in Nort's eyes. Here on my desk I have the very manuscript from which Nort read, and I give it just as it was written, as a documentary evidence of Nort's life. The usual forenoon service was held in the Congregational Church on Sunday. Being a hot day, the Rev. Mr. Sargent wore his black alpaca coat, and preached earnestly for thirty minutes, his text being John x, 3. Miss Daisy Miller played a selection from Mozart, though the piano was unfortunately out of tune. There were in attendance fifteen women, mostly old, seven men, and four children, besides the choir. During the sermon old Mr. Johnson went to sleep and Mrs. Johnson ate four peppermints. Deacon Mitchell took up a collection of fifty-six cents, besides what was in the envelopes. Following is a complete list of those in attendance: --and Nort solemnly read off the names. I wish I could describe the hush which followed Nort's reading, and the horror in Harriet's face. Fergus was the first to break the tension. He seemed to be slowly strangling, and his face contrived to twist itself into the most alarming contortions. The old Captain finally observed indulgently: "Nort will have his little joke." "Joke!" exclaimed Nort. "Isn't every word of it true? I leave it to Miss Grayson if I haven't been absolutely accurate. And I could have said a lot more about the service that would have been equally true--and a great deal funnier." I could see generations of Puritan ancestors marshalling themselves for the fray in Harriet's horrified countenance. I could scarcely keep from laughing. "Yes," I began, "every word is true----" "The piano tuner," broke in Harriet, "couldn't come last week." "But, Nort," I continued; "you may have seen the church in Hempfield, but have you felt it?" "Even if old Mrs. Johnson _does_ eat peppermints----" Harriet was saying. "Then you wouldn't put the truth in the _Star_?" said Nort. I was about to reply, when the old Captain raised a commanding hand. "The trouble is," said he with great deliberation, "that we _do_ print the truth in the _Star_; but this new generation, fed upon luxury and ease, has lost its desire for the truth. We're preaching the same sound doctrine that we've preached for thirty years--but the people refuse the truth. They say to us, 'Prophesy not unto us right things. Speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits.' They are wandering in the wilderness. They have made unto themselves a graven image of free trade, and they are falling down and worshipping before the profane altar of what they are pleased to call the Rights of Women. Rights of Women!" Whenever the old Captain grew most eloquent he always waxed Biblical. Here Nort broke in again: "Well, if you don't like that report--I wrote it more than half in fun anyway--here's another. It's the truth--I felt it, too, David--and I haven't used a single name!" I can see him yet, sitting up there behind the table, quite rigid, reading from his manuscript: "There is a man in this town who quarrels regularly with his wife. He quarrelled with her this morning at breakfast: said the eggs were overdone and the coffee was cold. The sun was shining in at the window, the birds were singing, and the grass was green--but he was quarrelling with his wife----" Well, Nort had a breathless audience! This time he was in deadly earnest. His sketch was not long, but it was as vivid a picture of the torment of domestic unhappiness as ever I have seen in such brief compass. Moreover, it had the very passion, the cut and thrust of the truth of things. No sooner had he finished reading than Harriet leaned forward and asked in a half whisper, all ablaze with shocked interest. "Who is it? Is it the Newtons?" It was Nort's turn to look surprised. "Why, no," said he. "I don't know the Newtons at all." "But you must have had some one in mind." "No," said Nort; "it's just a description of how married people quarrel." "But it's exactly what the Newtons do," said Harriet. Here the old Captain broke in. "Why," said he, "if we printed a thing like that we'd lose all the advertising of Newton's store. We'd lose the whole Newton family, and their cousins, the Maxwells, and _their_ connections, the Mecklins. Why----" "But it's true, it's true!" Nort burst in. "And every one of you was more interested in it, I could see that, than in anything we ever put in the _Star_--since I've been here." With that Nort suddenly jumped up, as though some important thought had just occurred to him, and rushed out of the room. "Well, I never!" exclaimed Harriet. I succeeded in catching him in the hallway. "Hempfield would not see these things as Miss Grayson does," he said. "Nort," said I, "Harriet _is_ Hempfield." He paused just a moment. "I think Anthy--Miss Doane--will understand," he said. With that he rushed out in the dark. He made the distance to town, I think, in record time. It was well past nine o'clock when he arrived at the common, and the town was silent with a silence that broods over it only on Sunday nights. He went past the printing-office without looking around. It was in the neighbourhood of a quarter to ten when he arrived at Anthy's gate. An odd time for a call at Hempfield, you say! It was, indeed. But there was a light in the window. Nort went up the steps and rang the bell. He had never before felt quite as he did at that moment. Anthy herself opened the door. Nort stepped in quickly and, for a moment, was unable to say a word. Anthy retreated a step or two. [Illustration: "I tell you, Miss Doane," said Nort explosively, "the only way to make a success of the _Star_ is to publish the truth about Hempfield----"] "I tell you, Miss Doane," said Nort explosively, "the only way to make a success of the _Star_ is to publish the truth about Hempfield----" At that moment Nort happened to glance through the wide door of the library. It was a comfortable, old-fashioned room, and the evening being a little cool a cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth. In a low chair under the light, seeming perfectly at home, sat Ed Smith. The words died on Nort's lips. He stood for a moment rigid and silent, facing Anthy. Ed had turned his head and was looking at them. No one uttered a sound. Nort was never able afterward to account for what he did at that moment. He turned quickly, still without saying a word, rushed out of the house, ran down the steps, fell over a honeysuckle bush, picked himself up again, bumped into the gate--and found himself in the middle of the road, in the dark, bare-headed. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII THE EXPLOSION When I was younger than I am now--not so very long ago, either!--I thought I should like to make over some of my neighbours. I thought I could improve on the processes of the Creator, who was apparently wobbly in his moral standards and weak in his discipline, for he allowed several people I knew to flourish and be joyful who by good rights ought to be smacked on their refractory pates; but now, it seems to me, I love most of all to see my friends coming every day true to themselves: Harriet illustrating herself, Horace himself. As for the old Captain, I never wanted a hair of him changed. When men act in character, though they be beggars or burglars, and do not pose or imitate, we have a kind of fondness for them. As I look back on it now I would not even make over Ed Smith. I did not understand him as well then as I do now, but he was playing his part in the world as well as ever he knew how to play it. Sometimes I like to think of human beings as cells in the various parts of the huge anatomy of society. In any such consideration Ed Smith would be a stomach cell, and a pretty good one. Whenever the rest of us were soaring too far aloft it was Ed's function to come stealing in upon us like the honest odour of corned beef and cabbage. It was Ed's function to see that we earned every week at least as much as we spent, a tremendous undertaking when you come to think of it. The fact is, whether we like it or not, we are all mixed up together in this world--poets and plumbers, critics and cooks--and the more clearly we recognize it, the firmer, sounder, truer, will be our grip upon the significance of human life. Why, many a time, when I've been sitting here reading in my study, living for the moment in the rarer atmosphere of the poets, the philosophers, the prophets, I have had to get up and go out and feed the pigs. I have always thought it, somehow, good for me. When Ed Smith arrived at the printing-office early on the following morning, the fat, round stove, with legs broadly planted in a box of sand, into which Fergus had poked accumulated scraps and cuttings of the shop, had just broken into a jolly smile. Fergus himself, his early morning temper scarcely less rumpled than his hair, was standing near it, shoulders humped up, like a cold crow. He did not know that Ed Smith had returned to Hempfield, but his face, when he saw him, betrayed not the slightest sign of surprise. Ed was evidently labouring under a considerable pressure of excitement. "What's all this tomfoolery about printing the truth in the _Star_?" he burst out. Fergus began to rumble. "Tired o' printin' lies, I s'pose," he observed. Ed always wore his hat a little cocked back, and when he was excited he put both hands in his pockets and began thrusting out his chest until you were relieved to discover that he was held together by a chain which ran across him from the vest pocket that contained his watch to the pocket where he carried his comb and his toothbrush. Ed had been working himself up into a fine passion. Only ten days away and everything gone to the bow-wows. The Poems of Hempfield! He held up the first page of our precious issue, slapped it smooth with his hand, and glared at it fiercely. "The Poems of Hempfield!" he remarked with concentrated irony. "What this broken-down newspaper has got to learn is that it isn't in business for the fun of it. Poetry! Truth! What we want is cash, hard, cold cash!" At this moment Ed began to glare at the paper still more fiercely. "Where's that reading notice about the electric light company?" he demanded. By an imperceptible motion of a hostile shoulder Fergus indicated the hold-over stone. Ed rushed over and found the precious item, with leads askew and one corner pied down. He also found the notice of the candidacy of D. J. McCullum, Democrat, which the old Captain had so lightly ordered excluded from our issue of the _Star_. If Anthy herself had appeared at that moment I don't know what might not have happened. Poor Ed! He had painfully, by hustle and bustle, pieced together a business which was about to yield a profit, and had scarcely turned his back when a lot of blunderers (and worse) had begun to mix everything up. There wasn't enough business sense in the whole crowd of them---- Ed had still another cause for irritation. He was miserably jealous, and for the first time in his life. The incident of the previous night, when Nort had burst in so unceremoniously upon Anthy, and at sight of him had fled so precipitately, was wholly beyond his comprehension. A tramp printer, at next to nothing a week! What could he mean by calling on Anthy, the proprietor, in such a way, and bursting out with a suggestion about the paper, as though he owned it. Poor Ed! I shall never forget the picture I have of him--I learned about it long afterward--standing rather stiffly at the doorway, awkwardly handling his hat, about to say good-night, and yet not going. "Anthy," he began, "I came back on purpose to--to make a proposition to you to-night----" He published his intention by the very sound of his voice, which trembled a little in spite of the confidence he had felt beforehand. I fancy I can see Anthy, too, as she stood facing him there at the foot of the stairs in the old hallway, with the flower-filled urns on the wall paper. So much of the thing in her eyes as she looked at him whimsically, it must have been, and yet kindly, Ed could never have understood. He could never have understood the other Anthy, the Anthy whose letters to Mr. Lincoln lie here in my desk. I am not clear as to exactly what happened next, and no more, I think, was Ed; but he went out and down the steps without having told Anthy what his "proposition" was, and firmly believing that she did not know how dangerously near he had come to committing himself. Women know how to do these things. Ed did not rush away as Nort had done, nor fall over the honeysuckle bush, nor lose his hat--nor his head. Not Ed! But as he walked back home a faint suspicion began to rankle in his soul that his course might not be as clear as he had supposed. The most irresistible man to women is the one who seems to know least that they are women at all. But Ed Smith was not of this sort. Ed's practical thoughts were ever hanging about the idea of marriage. He fell more or less deeply in love with every pretty girl he met, made elaborately gallant speeches, brought her flowers, pop corn, and chewing gum, tried to hold her hand, and began, warily, to consider her as a prospective Mrs. Smith, weighing her qualifications, quite sensibly, for that responsible position. Oh, Ed had been a good deal of a "lady's man" in his time: knew well his many qualifications, and often congratulated himself that he would never be "caught" until he was "good and ready." There was more than one girl--he had only to "crook his finger." While he was away he began to think of Anthy. She was somehow different from any girl he had ever known. He couldn't quite understand why it was, but there was something about her, even though she might be a little "slow" and "quiet" for a man like him. And the more he thought of her the more excellent reasons occurred to him for yielding to his feelings. She was the owner of the _Star_, which was already beginning to show signs of vigorous life, and she was a "mighty smart girl" into the bargain. She would be an ornament to any man's house. It was the vague glimmer of the new idea that any girl should not wish to become Mrs. Smith when she was given a fair opportunity that now occurred to him painfully, for the first time in his life. The thought of Nort began to grow upon him, the thought, also, that some of his rights were being trodden upon. Had he not come to the _Star_ with the idea that Anthy---- Could he not have made a lot more money by going with the Dexter _Enterprise_? It is astonishing how cunningly life prepares for its explosions, how adroitly it combines the nitre, the charcoal, the sulphur, of human nature. First it grinds the ingredients separately--as Ed Smith was being ground, as the spirit of Norton Carr was ground--and then it mixes them in a mill, say a pleasant country printing-office, with a wren's nest at the gable end, and there it subjects them to the enormous pressure of necessity, of passion, of ambition. And when the mixture is made, though the fuse which life lays may be long, the explosion is sure to follow. A spark, say a stick of pied type, or a vagabond printer absurdly looking for the truth of things, or the look in a girl's eyes, and, bang--the world will never again be exactly what it was before. Events moved swiftly with the _Star_ of Hempfield that forenoon. You would not believe that so much could happen in a drowsy country printing-office, on a drowsy Monday morning, in so short a time. I was there when Nort came in, all unsuspecting. He came in quietly, not at all like himself; he was, in fact, low in his spirits. He glanced at Ed Smith, and began, as usual, to take off his coat in the corner. Ed was sitting at his desk fiercely at work. "Carr," said he, scarcely turning his head, "you needn't take off your coat. Won't need you any longer. Gotta economize. Gotta cut down expenses. I'll pay you what's coming to you right now." There was a moment of absolute silence in the office. Tom, the cat, was asleep by the stove. Fergus and I waited breathlessly. I fully expected to see Nort explode; I didn't know in just what way, but somehow, in Nort's way, whatever that might be. But he merely stood there, coat half off, looking utterly mystified. Ed turned halfway around. "Here's your money," he said. The thing in all its crude reality was still incomprehensible to Nort. He didn't know that such things were ever done in the world. "You mean----" he stammered. Ed was very angry. I excuse him somewhat on that ground, and Nort was only a tramp printer anyway. "You're fired," he said doggedly, "and here's your wages to date." I wish I could describe the effect on Nort. It was as though some light air blew across him. He had looked heavy and depressed when he came in: now his shoulders straightened, his chin lifted, and the old, reckless smile came into his face. He swept us all with a look of amused astonishment, and then, slipping back into his coat, said: "Well, good-bye, Mr. Smith," and turned and went out of the office. Ed jumped from his chair. "Here's your cash," he said. But Nort had gone out. "Well, I'll be hanged!" observed Ed, quickly putting the money back in his pocket. I am slow, slow! I have always wished since then that I had been quick enough to do what Fergus did. It was not that I did not love Nort---- When I looked around Fergus was gone. He had slipped out of the back door. He caught Nort at the gate, and grasped his hand so hard that Nort said it hurt him for a week afterward. He tried to say something, but his face worked so that he couldn't. Then he was suddenly ashamed of himself, and came running back into the office, his hair flying wildly. Tom, the cat, at that moment rising from his favourite spot near the stove, Fergus kicked at him vigorously--without hitting him. Ed now began to stride about the office, head a little lifted, a bold look in the eye. He saw neither Fergus nor me. He was in a grand mood. I always imagined he must have felt at that moment something like Fitz-James when he met Roderick Dhu: Come one, come all! this rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I. He did not have long to wait. We heard the old Captain on the steps, thumping his cane, clearing his throat. I shall never forget how he looked when he came in at the door, his tall, soldierly figure, the long, shabby black coat, the thick silvery hair under the broad-brimmed hat, the beaming eye of him. Ever since the publication of his editorial on William J. Bryan, the Captain had been in great spirits. "Nort!" he called, as he set down his cane. No answer. "Where's Nort?" he boomed. "Fergus, where's Nort? I want to show him my editorial on Theodore Roosevelt." Ominous silence. The old Captain looked up and about him. Fergus was busy at the cases. "Where's Nort?" asked the old Captain sharply, this time directing his question at Ed Smith. "I've fired him," said Ed. "Got to cut down expenses." "You--fired--Nort?" The old Captain's voice sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well. "Yes," said Ed crisply, "I hired him--and now I've fired him." Ed was still much in the mood of Fitz-James. He had always been somewhat contemptuous of the Captain. He not only regarded him as an old fogy, a vain old fogy, but as a dead weight upon the _Star_. Ed thought his editorials worse than nothing at all, and had resolved to get rid of the Captain at the first opportunity. It was too bad, of course, but--business is business. When the Captain did not reply, Ed observed at large: "The trouble with this office is that you all seem to think we are printing a newspaper for our health." "Sold more extra copies of the _Star_ last week than ever before," said Fergus. "Yes," responded Ed bitterly, "and left out reading notices that would have brought in more than all your extras put together. That electric light announcement, and the notice of Dick McCullum's candidacy----" At this the old Captain broke in with ominous deliberation. "I want to know," said he, "if it is now the policy of this newspaper to support Democrats for money, and fool the people of Hempfield with paid news about greedy corporations?" "It's _my_ policy," responded Ed, "to tap shoes for anybody that's got the price. I'm a practical man." I never can hope to do justice by the scene which followed. The old Captain strode a step nearer and rested one hand on the corner of Ed Smith's desk, a majestic figure of wrath. [Illustration: "Practical!" he explained. "You are a blackguard, sir! You are a scoundrel, sir!"] "Practical!" he exploded. "You are a blackguard, sir! You are a scoundrel, sir!" He paused, drawing deep breaths. "You're a traitor--you're a _Democrat_." With all his assurance, Ed was completely taken back. He actually looked frightened. The Captain's tone now changed to one of irony. "I suppose," he said, "you believe in flying machines." Ed hesitated. "And in woman suffrage!" The art of scorn has fallen sadly into disrepute in these later days. Scorn fares hardly in an age of doubt and democracy. I can rarely feel it myself; but as it came rolling out of the old Captain that morning, I'll admit there was something grand about it. By this time Ed had begun to recover himself. "Well, we got to live, haven't we?" he asked. It was very rare that the old Captain swore, for he was a sound Churchman, and when he did swear it was with a sort of reverence. "No, by God," said the Captain, "we haven't got to live, we haven't got to live; but, by God! we've got to stand for the nation--and the Constitution--and the Republican party!" He paused, threw back his beautiful old head, and shook his mane just a little. (How he would have liked to see himself at that moment!) "The _Weekly Star_ of Hempfield," he said, "will remain an incorruptible exponent of American institutions. The people may cease to believe in God and the Constitution, but the _Star_ will remain firm and staunch. We shed our blood upon the field of Antietam: we stand ready to shed it again--for the nation, the Grand Old Party, and the high protective tariff. Though beaten upon by stormy seas, we shall remain impregnable." I cannot describe how impregnable the old Captain looked, standing there by Ed's desk, one clenched fist raised aloft. He was at his best, and his best was better than you will often find in these days. But the old Captain could no more understand Ed Smith than Ed could understand him. He would rather have laid his right hand upon living coals of fire than to have taken what he considered a "dirty dollar" for advertising. And yet in his day, no man in Westmoreland County was a keener political manipulator than he. He had traded his influence quite simply and frankly for the public printing. Was it not the natural reward of the faithful party worker? Had he not stumped the state for Blaine? Had not congressmen come to his door with their hats in their hands offering him favours in exchange for his support? And he had travelled always on railroad passes, as was his due as an influential editor, and voted, when a member of the legislature, with sincere belief in the greatness of all captains of industry, for every railroad bill that came up. But the idea of taking crude money for reading notices favourable to the electric lighting contract in Hempfield, or of publishing for payment the cards of Democrats--it was not in his lexicon. Times change, and the methods of men. When the old Captain once got started on the freedom of the press he was hard to stop; but as he talked Ed's courage began to return, for he could never take the old Captain quite seriously. At the first pause he broke in with a faint attempt at jocularity. "Who's editing this paper, anyway, Captain?" The old Captain looked at him in astonishment. "Why, I am," said he. "I've edited the Hempfield _Star_ for thirty years." I think he really believed it. "And what is more," he continued, "the _Star_ is about to part company with Ed Smith." Ed bounced out of his chair. "What do you mean?" he cried--and there was a sure note of fear in his voice that was not lost upon the Captain. "You're discharged, sir!" Ed caught his breath. "You can't do it!" he cried. "You can't do it: you don't own the paper! I've got a contract----" The old Captain drew himself to his full height and pointed with one long arm at the door: "_Go!_" said he. It was grand. He then turned to Fergus. "Fergus call up my niece on the telephone. I wish to speak to her." He walked up the length of the room and back again, his hands clasped behind him under his coat tails. He did not once look at Ed. "Is this Anthy?" he asked, when Fergus handed him the telephone. "Anthy, I have just discharged Ed Smith. He will no longer cumber this office." He paused. "No, I said I have just discharged him. He was only small potatoes, anyway, and few in the hill." He put down the telephone: Ed made as if to speak, but the old Captain waved him aside. "Fergus," he said, "I have an editorial ready for this week's _Star_. Now let's get down to business." Having delivered himself, he was light, he was gay. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII ANTHY TAKES COMMAND Anthy was always late in reaching the office, if she came at all, on Monday mornings. It was one of the days when old Mrs. Parker came to help her, and it was necessary that the week be properly started in the household of the Doanes. It is said of Goethe that he was prouder of his knowledge of the science of optics--which was mostly wrong--than he was of his poetry. Genius is often like that. It was so in the case of old Mrs. Parker, who considered herself incomparable as a cook (and once--this is town report--baked her spectacles in a custard pie), and held lightly her genius as a journalist. On any bright morning she could go out on her stoop, turn once or twice around, sniff the breezes, and tell you in voluminous language what her neighbours were going to have for dinner, with interesting digressions upon the character, social standing, and economic condition of each of them. Though she often tried Anthy's orderly soul, she was as much of a feature of the household on certain days every week as the what-not in the corner of the parlour. She had been coming almost as long as Anthy could remember. For years she had amused, provoked, and tyrannized over Anthy's father, troubled his digestion with pies, and given him innumerable items for the _Star_. She was as good as any reporter. On this particular autumn morning Mrs. Parker was unusually quiet, for her. She evidently had something on her mind. She had called upstairs only once: "Anthy, where did you put the cinnamon?" Now, Anthy, as usual, upon this intimation, for old Mrs. Parker never deigned to ask directly what she was to do, had come downstairs, and by an adroit, verbal passage-at-arms, in which both of them, I think, delighted, had diverted her intention of making pumpkin pies and centred her interest upon a less ambitious pudding. On this occasion Mrs. Parker did not even offer to tell the story suggested by the catchword "cinnamon," of how a certain Flora Peters--you know, the Peterses of Hawleyville, cousins of the Hewletts--had once used pepper for cinnamon in a pie. Anthy was fond of these mornings at home, especially just such crispy autumn mornings as this one. She loved to go about busily, a white cap over her bright hair, the windows upstairs all wide open to the sunshine, the cool breezes blowing in. She loved to have the beds spread open, and the rugs up, and plenty to do. At such times, and often also in the spring when she was working in her garden, she would break into bits of song, just snatches here and there, or she would whistle. In these moments of unconscious activity one might catch fleeting glimpses of the hidden Anthy. I like, somehow, more than almost anything else, to think of her as I saw her, a very few times, on occasions like these. One song, or part of a song, I once heard her sing in an unguarded moment, a bit of old ballad in a haunting minor key, springs at this moment so clear in my memory that I can hear the very cadences of her voice. I don't know where the words came from, or what the song was, nor yet the music of it: "It is not for a false lover That I go sad to see, But it is for a weary life Beneath the greenwood tree." Bits of poetry were always coming to the surface with Anthy. I remember once, that very fall, as we were walking down the long lane homeward one Sunday afternoon from my farm, how Anthy, who had been silent for some time, suddenly made the whole world of that October day newly beautiful: "The sweet, calm sunshine of October now Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mould The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough Drops its bright spoil like arrow heads of gold." I remember looking at her rapt face as she repeated the words, and seeing the sunlight catch in her hair. In some ways the Anthy, the real Anthy, of those days was only half awake. It is your unimaginative girl who sees in every dusty swain the possible hero of her heart; but she whose eyes are dazzled by the shining armour of a knight-o'-dreams comes reluctantly awake. It is so with some of the finest women: they step lightly through the years, with untouched hearts. There was a great deal of her father in Anthy, a great deal of the old New Englander, treasuring the best jealousy inside. I think sometimes that women are far better natural executives and organizers than men. To keep a great household running smoothly, provisioned, cleaned, made sweet and cheerful always, and to do it incidentally as it were, with a hundred other activities filling her thoughts, is an accomplishment not sufficiently appreciated in this world. Anthy, like the true women of her race, had this capacity highly developed. She had a real genius for orderliness, which is the sanity, if not the religion, of everyday life. "I will say this for Anthy Doane," old Mrs. Parker was accustomed to remark, "she is turrible particular." How often have we been astonished to see gentlewomen (I like the good old word) torn from the harbour of sheltered lives and serenely navigating their ships on the stormiest seas, but without real cause for our astonishment, for they have merely applied in a wider field that genius for command and organization which they have long cultivated in their households. We may yet come to look upon many of the functions of government as only a larger kind of housekeeping, and find that we cannot afford to dispense longer with the executive genius of women in all those activities which deal with the comforts of human kind. (It's true, Harriet.) Mrs. Parker, as I have said, having something on her mind, was in condition of unstable equilibrium. "When you was little, Anthy," she began finally, "I used to tell you to put on your rubbers when you went out in the rain, and to take your umbrella to school, and not forget your 'rithmetic. Didn't I, Anthy?" "Why, yes, Margaret." Anthy was much mystified. Old Mrs. Parker paused: "Well, I don't approve of this Norton Carr." Anthy laughed. "Why, what's the matter with Norton Carr?" Old Mrs. Parker closed her lips and wagged her head with a world of dark significance. "What is it, Margaret?" Mrs. Parker lowered her voice. "He stimmylates," she said. It was about the worst she could have said about poor Nort, except one thing--in Hempfield. Anthy tried to draw her out still further, but not another word would she say. A long time afterward, when Anthy told me of this incident (how I have coveted the knowledge of every least thing in the lives of Nort and Anthy!), when she told me, she said reflectively: "I can't tell you how those words hurt me." And then came the surprising telephone call from the old Captain, with the news that he had discharged Ed Smith! It was characteristic of Anthy that when she put down the telephone receiver she was laughing. The tone of the Captain's voice and the picture she had of him, dramatically discharging Ed, were irresistible. But it was only for a moment, and the old problem of the _Star_ leaped at her again. In the letters to Lincoln here in my desk I find that she referred to it repeatedly: "Ed Smith will not get on much longer with our vagabond, who isn't _really_ a vagabond at all; and as for Uncle Newt, it seems to me that he grows more difficult every day. What _shall_ I do?" Now that the crisis was here, she was very quiet about it. When she had put on her hat she stepped for a moment into the quiet, old-fashioned living-room, where her desk was, and the fireplace before which she and her father had sat together for so many, many evenings, and the picture of Lincoln over the mantel. She had not changed it in the least particular since her father's death, and it had always a soothing effect upon her: the picture of her mother, the familiar, well-thumbed books which her father had delighted in, the very chair where he loved to sit. She did not feel bold or confident, but the moment in the old room gave her a curious sense of calmness, as though there were something strong and sure back of her. She glanced up quickly at the countenance of Mr. Lincoln, and turned and went out of the house. The explosion at the office had been followed by a dead calm. We were all awaiting the arrival of Anthy. After all, she was the owner of the _Star_. What would she do? I saw Ed Smith glancing surreptitiously out of the window, and even the old Captain, in spite of his jauntiness, seemed ill at ease. Only Fergus remained undisturbed. That Scotchman continued working steadily at the cases. "You took it coolly, Fergus," I said to him in a low voice. "Got to print a paper this week," he observed. I verily believe if we had all deserted our jobs Fergus would have brought out the _Star_ as usual on Wednesday, a little curtailed, perhaps, but on the dot. Anthy came in looking perfectly calm. Ed Smith jumped from his seat at once. "See here, Miss Doane," he began excitedly, "what right has the Captain to discharge me?" The old Captain had arisen, too, and very formidable he looked. But my eyes were on Anthy. She stepped over to her uncle's side. She had a deep affection for this old uncle of hers. "Look out for your Uncle Newt," her father had said in the letter she found after his death. She put her arm through his, drew him toward her, and looking up at him, smiled a little. "What right has the Captain to discharge me?" demanded Ed Smith. "No right at all," she said. "There!" exclaimed Ed, exultantly. "But I have the right," said Anthy, "if I choose to exert it." There was a curious finality in her voice--calmness and finality. The old Captain was frowning, but Anthy held him close by the arm. A moment of silence followed. I suppose we must, indeed, have been an absurd group of men standing there helplessly, for Anthy surveyed us with a swift glance. "What _are_ you all so serious about?" she asked. While we were awkwardly bestirring ourselves, Anthy took off her hat, just as usual, put on her apron, just as usual. It was the natural-born genius of Anthy to have the orderly wheels of life running again. And presently, standing near the Captain's littered desk, she exclaimed: "At last, at last, Uncle Newt, you've written your editorial on Roosevelt!" She picked up the manuscript. "Yes, Anthy," rumbled the Captain, "I have written my convictions about the Colonel. It was a duty I had." The Captain was not yet placated, but there was no resisting Anthy very long. "David will never be satisfied until he hears it," she said. She looked over the pages. "Have you said _exactly_ what you think, Uncle?" "Exactly," said the Captain; "I could not do less. But I wanted Nort to hear it." "Well, where is Mr. Carr?" asked Anthy, looking about in surprise. For a moment no one said a word. And then Ed Smith spoke: "We've simply got to cut down expenses. I hired Carr when I thought we needed a cheap man to help Fergus--and now I've let him go." For a moment Anthy stood silent, and just a little rigid, I thought. But it was only for a moment. "We were going to have Uncle's editorial, weren't we? Mr. Carr can see it later." She was now in complete command. She got the Captain down into his chair and put the manuscript in his hand. He cleared his throat, threw back his head, pleased in spite of himself. "It was a hard duty, but here it is," he said, and began reading in a resonant voice: "We have hesitated long and considered deeply before expressing the views of the _Star_ upon the recent sad apostasy of Theodore Roosevelt. We loved him like a son. We gloried in him as in an older brother. We followed that bright figure (in a manner of speaking) when he fought on the bloody slopes of San Juan, we were with him when he marched homeward in his hour of triumph to the plaudits of a grateful nation----" The Captain narrated vividly how the _Star_ had stood staunchly with that peerless leader through every campaign. And then his voice changed suddenly, he drew a deep breath. "But we are with him no longer. We know him now no more----" He mourned him as a son gone astray, as a follower after vain gods. I remember just how Nort looked when he read this part of the editorial some time afterward, glancing up quickly. "Isn't it great! Doesn't it make you think of old King David: 'Oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!'" But the editorial was not all mournful. It closed with a triumphant note. There was no present call to be discouraged about the nation or the Grand Old Party. Leaders might come and go, but the party of Lincoln, the party of Grant, the party of Garfield, with undiminished lustre, would march ever onward to victory. "The _Star_," he writes, "will remain faithful to its allegiance. The _Star_ is old-line Republican, Cooper Union Republican--the unchanging Republicanism of the great-souled McKinley and of Theodore Roosevelt--before his apostasy." It was wonderful! No editorial ever published in the Hempfield _Star_ or, so far as I could learn, in any paper in the county, was ever as widely copied throughout the country as this one--copied, indeed, by some editors who did not know or love the old Captain as we did. After such a stormy morning it was wonderful to see how quickly the troubled atmosphere of the _Star_ began to clear. Four rather sheepish-looking men began to work with a complete show of absorption, while Anthy acted as though nothing had happened. But there was one thing still on her mind. When I started for home, toward noon, she followed me out on the little porch. "David," she said, "I want to speak to you." She hesitated. "I want you to find Norton Carr." She laid her hand on my arm. "He hasn't been quite fairly treated." She smiled, and looked at me wistfully. "We've got to keep the _Star_ going somehow, haven't we?" [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV WE BEGIN THE SUBJUGATION OF NORT Here is a curious and interesting thing often to be noted by any man who looks around him, that we human creatures are all made up into uneven and restless bundles--family bundles, church bundles, political-party bundles, and a thousand amusing kinds of business bundles. It will also be observed that a very large part of us, nearly all of us who are old and most of us who are women, are struggling as hard as ever we can (and without a bit of humour) to hold our small bundles together, while others are struggling with equal ferocity to burst out of their bundles and make new ones. And so on endlessly! If you see any one particular specimen in any one particular bundle who is making himself obnoxious by wriggling and squirming and twisting with an utter disregard for the sensibilities of the bundle-binders, you may conclude that he is affected by the most mysterious influence, or power, or malady--whatever you care to call it--with which we small human beings have to grapple. I mean that he is growing. When you come to think of it, the most incalculable power in the life of men is the power of growth. If you could tell when any given human being was through growing, you could tell what to do with him; but you never can. Some men are ripe at twenty-five, and some are still adding power and knowledge at eighty. It is not inheritance, nor environment, nor wealth, nor position, that measures the difference between human beings, but rather the mysterious faculty of continued growth which resides within them. It is growth that causes the tragedies of this world--and the comedies--and the sheer beauty of life. Here are a husband and wife bound together in the commonest of bundles: one stops growing, the other keeps on growing; consult almost any play, novel, poem, newspaper, or scandalous gossip, for the results. Consider the restless bundle of nations called Europe, one of which recently began to grow tremendously, began to squirm about in the bundle, began to demand room and air. What an almighty pother this has caused! What an altogether serious business for the bundle-binders! These observations may seem to lead entirely around the celebrated barn of Robin Hood, but if you follow them patiently you will find that they bring you back at last (by way of Europe) to the dilapidated door of the quiet old printing-office of the _Star_ of Hempfield. If you venture inside you will discover, besides a cat and a canary, one of the most interesting bundles of human beings I know anything about. And one specimen in this bundle, as you may already suspect, has developed a prodigious power of squirming and wriggling, and otherwise making the bundle-binders of the _Star_ uncomfortable. I refer to Norton Carr. The world, of course, is in a secret conspiracy against youth and growth. Any man who dares to be young, or to grow, or to be original, must expect to have the world set upon him and pound him unmercifully--and if that doesn't finish him off, then the world clings desperately to his coat tails, resolved that if it cannot stop him entirely it will at least go along with him and make travelling as difficult as possible. This latter process is what a friend of mine illuminatively calls the "drag of mediocrity." But this punching and pounding is mostly good for youth and originality--good if it doesn't kill--for it proves the strength of youth, tests faith and enthusiasm, and measures surely the power of originality. And as for the provoking drag upon their coat tails, youth and originality should reflect that this is the only way by which mediocrity ever gets ahead! As I look back upon the history of the _Star_ it seems to me it is a record of Nort's wild plunges within our bundle, and our equally wild efforts to keep him disciplined. I say "our" efforts, but I would, of course, except Ed Smith. Ed had a narrow vision of what that bundle called the _Star_ should be. He wanted it no larger than he was, so that he could dominate it comfortably, and when Nort became obstreperous, he simply cut the familiar cord which bound Nort into the bundle: to wit, his wages. Ed had the very common idea that the only really important relationships between human beings are determined by monetary payments, which can be put on or put off at will. But the fact is that we are bound together in a thousand ways not set down in the books on scientific management. For example, if that rascal of a Norton Carr had not been so interesting to us all, had not so worked his way into the hearts of us, I should never have gone hurrying after him (at Anthy's suggestion) on that November day. And it might--who knows--have been better in dollars and cents for the _Star_, if I had _not_ hurried. No, as an old friend of mine in Hempfield, Howieson, the shoemaker (a wise man), often remarks: "They say business is business. Well, I say business _ain't_ business if it's _all_ business." Business grows not as it eliminates talent or youth, however prickly or irritating to work with, but by making itself big enough to use all kinds of human beings. I recall yet the strange thrill I had when I left the printing-office that day to search for Nort. It had given me an indescribable pleasure to have Anthy ask me to help (her "we" lingered long in my thoughts--lingers still), and I had, moreover, the feeling that it depended somewhat on me to help bind together the now fiercely antagonistic elements of the _Star_. It may appear absurd to some who think that only those things are great which are big and noisy, that anything so apparently unimportant should stir a man as these events stirred me; but the longer I live the more doubtful I am of the distinction between the times and the things upon which the world places the tags "Important" and "Unimportant." As I set forth I remember how very beautiful the streets of Hempfield looked to me. "Have you seen Norton Carr?" I asked here, and, "Have you seen Norton Carr?" I asked there--tracing him from lair to lair, and friend to friend, and thus found myself tramping out along the lower road that leads toward the west and the river. He had sent a telegram, I found in the course of my inquiry, which added a dash of mystery to my quest and stirred in me a curious sense of anxiety. The very feeling of that dull day, etched deep in my memory by the acid of emotion, comes vividly back to me. There had been no snow, and the fields were brown and bare--dead trees, dead hedges of hazel and cherry, crows flying heavily overhead with melancholy cries, and upon the hills beyond the river dull clouds hanging like widows' weeds: a brooding day. At every turn I looked for Nort and, thus looking, came to the bridge. It was the same spot, the same bridge, where, some years before, the Scotch preacher and I, driving late one evening, looked anxiously for the girl Anna. I can see her yet, wading there in the dark water, her skirts all floating about her, hugging her child to her breast and crying piteously, "I don't dare, oh, I don't dare, but I must, I must!" Of all that I have told elsewhere. I stopped a moment and looked down into the water where it reflected the dark mood of the day, and then turned along the road that runs between the alders of the river edge and the beeches and oaks of the hill. It was the way Nort and I had taken more than once, talking great talk. I thought I might find him there. And there, indeed, I did find him--and know how some old chivalric knight must have felt when at last he overtook the quarry which was to be the guerdon of his lady. "I shall take him back a captive," I said to myself. Nort was sitting under a beech tree, looking out upon the cold river. A veritable picture of desolation! He was whistling in a low monotone, a way he had. Poor Nort! Life had opened the door of ambition for him, just a crack, and he had caught glimpses of the glory within, only to have the door slammed in his face. If he had walked upon cerulean heights on Sunday he was grovelling in the depths on Monday. It was all as plain to me as I approached him as if it had been written in a book. "Hello, Nort," said I. He started from his place and looked around at me. "Hello, David," said he carelessly. "What brings you here?" "You do," said I. "I do!" "Yes, I'm about to take you back to Hempfield. The _Star_ finds difficulty in twinkling without you." I told him what Anthy had said, and of what I felt to be a new effort to control the policies of the _Star_. But Nort slowly shook his head. "No, David. This is the end. I have finished with Hempfield." I wish I could convey the air of resigned determination that was in his words; also the cynicism. Pooh! If Hempfield didn't want him, Hempfield could go hang. He was at the age when he thought he could get away from life. He had not learned that the only way to get on with life is not to get out of it, but to get into it. He told me that he had wired for money to go home; he drew his brows down in a hard scowl and stared out over the river. "I've stopped fooling with life," said he tragically. I could have laughed at him, and yet, somehow, I loved him. It was a great moment in his life. I sat down by him under the beech. "I'm going to be free," said Nort. "I'm going to do things yet in this world." "Free of what, Nort?" I asked. "Ed Smith--for one thing." "Have you thought that wherever you go you will be meeting Ed Smiths?" He did not reply. "I'm sorry," I said, "that you've surrendered." "Surrendered?" He winced as though I had cut him. "Yes, surrendered. Haven't you sent for money? Haven't you given up? Aren't you trying to run away?" Nort jumped from his place. "No!" he shouted. "Ed Smith discharged me. I would rather cut off my right hand than work in the same county with him again." "So you have balked at the first hurdle--and are going to run away!" I have thought often since then of that perilous moment, of how much in Nort's future life turned upon it. Nort's eyes, usually so blue and smiling, grew as black as night. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I mean just what I said"--I looked him in the eye--"you are running away before the battle begins." For a moment I thought I had lost him, and my heart began to sink within me, and then--it was beautiful--he stepped impulsively toward me: "Well, what do you think I should do, anyway?" "Nort," I said, "only yesterday you were enthusiastic over the idea of getting the truth about Hempfield, of publishing a really great country newspaper." "What an ass I was!" "Wrong!" I said. "David," he cut in petulantly, "I don't get what you mean." "I'll tell you, Nort: The greatest joy in this world to a man like you is the joy of new ideas, of wonderful plans---- Now, isn't it?" "Yes. I certainly thought for a few days last week that I had found the pot at the end of the rainbow." "It was only the rainbow, Nort: if you want the pot you've got to dig for it." "What do you mean?" "You think that you can stop with enthusiastic dreams and vast ideas. But no vision and no idea is worth a copper cent unless it is brought down to earth, patiently harnessed, painfully trained, and set to work. There is a beautiful analogy that comes often to my mind. We conceive an idea, as a child is conceived, in a transport of joy; but after that there are long months of growth in the close dark warmth of the soul, to which every part of one's personality must contribute, and then there is the painful hour of travail when at last the idea is given to the world. It is a process that cannot be hurried nor borne without suffering. And the punishment of those who stop with the joy of conception, thinking they can skim the delight of life and avoid its pain, is the same in the intellectual and spiritual spheres as it is in the physical--barrenness, Nort, and finally a terrible sense of failure and of loneliness." I said it with all my soul, as I believe it. When I stopped, Nort did not at once respond, but stood looking off across the river, winding a twig of alder about his finger. Suddenly he looked around at me, smiling: "I'm every kind of a fool there is, David." I confess it, my heart gave a bound of triumph. And it seemed to me at that moment that I loved Nort like a son, the son I have never had. I could not help slipping my arm through his, and thus we walked slowly together down the road. "But Ed Smith----" he expostulated presently. "Nort," I said, "you aren't the only person in this world, although you are inclined to think so. There are Ed Smiths everywhere--and old Captains and David Graysons--and you may travel where you like and you'll find just about such people as you find at Hempfield, and they'll treat you just about as you deserve. Ed Smith is the test of you, Nort, and of your enthusiasms. You've got to reconcile your ideas with corned beef and cabbage, Nort, for corned beef and cabbage _is_." I have been ashamed sometimes since when I think how vaingloriously I preached to Nort that day (after having got him down), for I have never believed much in preaching. It usually grows so serious that I want to laugh--but I could not have helped it that November afternoon. * * * * * I see two men, just at evening of a dull day, walking slowly along the road toward Hempfield, two gray figures, half indistinguishable against the barren hillsides. All about them the dead fields and the hedges, and above them the wintry gray of the sky, and crows lifting and calling. Knowing well what is in the hot hearts of those two men--the visions, the love, the pain, the hope, yes, and the evil--I swear I shall never again think of any life as common or unclean. I shall never look to the exceptional events of life for the truth of life. The two men I see are friend and friend, very near together, father and son almost; and you would scarcely think it, but if you look closely and with that Eye which is within the eye you will see that they have just been called to the colours and are going forth to the Great War. You will catch the glint on the scabbards of the swords they carry; you will see the look of courage on the face of the young recruit, and the look, too, on the face of the old reservist. In the distance they see the fortress of Hempfield with its redoubts and entanglements. They are setting forth to take Hempfield, at any cost--their Captain commands it. * * * * * Near the town of Hempfield, as you approach it from the west, the road skirts a little hill. As we drew nearer I saw some one walking upon the road. A woman. She was stepping forth firmly, her figure cut in strong and simple lines against the sky, her head thrown back, showing the clear contour of her throat and the firm chin. A light scarf, caught in the wind, floated behind. Suddenly I felt Nort seize my arm, and exclaim in low, tense voice: "Anthy!" I thought his hand trembled a little, but it may have been my own arm. I remember hearing our steps ring cold on the iron earth, and I had a strange sense of the high things of life. She had not seen us. She was walking with one hand lifted to her breast, the fingers just touching her dress, in a way she sometimes had. I shall not forget the swift, half-startled glance from her dark and glowing eyes when she saw us, nor the smile which suddenly lighted her face. I suppose all of us were charged at that moment with a high voltage of emotion. I know that Anthy, walking thus with her hand raised, was deep in the troubled problems of the _Star_. I know well what was in the heart of Nort, and I know the vain thoughts I was thinking; and yet we three stood there in the gray of the evening looking at one another and exchanging at first only a few commonplace words. Presently Anthy turned to Nort with the direct way she had, and said to him lightly, smiling a little: "I hope you will not desert the _Star_. We must make it go--all of us together." Nort said not a word, but looked Anthy in the eyes. When we moved onward again, however, his mood seemed utterly changed. He walked quickly and began to talk volubly-- Jiminy! If they'd let themselves go! Greatest opportunity in New England! National reputation-- I could scarcely believe that this was the same Nort I had found only an hour before moping by the river. As we came into Hempfield the lights had begun to come out in the houses; a belated farmer in his lumber wagon rattled down the street. Men were going into the post office, for it was the hour of the evening mail; we had a whiff, at the corner, of the good common odour of cooking supper. So we stopped at the gate of the printing-office, and looked at each other, and felt abashed, did not know quite what to say, and were about to part awkwardly without saying anything when Nort seized me suddenly by the arm and rushed me into the office. "Hello, Fergus!" he shouted as we came in at the door. Fergus stood looking at him impassively, saying nothing at all. He had compromised himself once before that day by giving way to his emotions, and did not propose to be stampeded a second time. But the old Captain had no such compunctions, and almost fell on Nort's neck. "The prodigal is returned," he declared. "Nort, my boy, I want to read you my editorial on Theodore Roosevelt." Just at this moment Ed Smith came in. I wondered and trembled at what might happen, but Nort was in his grandest mood. "Hello, Ed!" he remarked carelessly. "Say, I've thought of an idea for making Tole, the druggist, advertise in the _Star_." "You have?" responded Ed in a reasonably natural voice. Thus we were rebundled, at least temporarily. I think of these events as a sort of diplomatic prelude for the real war which was to follow. I was the diplomat who lured Nort back to us with fine words, but old General Fergus was waiting there grimly at the cases, in full preparedness, to play his part. For this was not the final struggle, nor the most necessary for Nort. That was reserved for a simpler man than I am: that was left for Fergus. [Illustration] CHAPTER XV I GET BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH ANTHY As we look backward, those times in our lives which glow brightest, seem most worth while, are by no means those in which we have been happiest or most successful, but rather those in which, though painful and even sorrowful, we have been most necessary, most _desired_. To be needed in other human lives--is there anything greater or more beautiful in this world? It was in the weeks that followed upon these events that I came to know Anthy best, nearest, deepest--to be of most use to her and to the _Star_. A strange thing it was, too; for the nearer I came to her, the farther away I seemed to find myself! She was very wonderful that winter. I saw her grow, strengthen, deepen, under that test of the spirit, and with a curious unconsciousness of her own development, as she shows in the one letter to Lincoln of that period which has been saved. She seemed to think it was all a part of the daily work; that the _Star_ must be preserved, and that it was incumbent upon her to do it. In those days I was often at her home, sometimes walking from the office with her and the old Captain, sometimes with the old Captain, sometimes alone with Anthy. She was not naturally very talkative, especially, as I found, with one she knew well and trusted; but I think I have never known any other human being who seemed so much alive just underneath. It was on one of these never-to-be-forgotten evenings in the old library of her father's house, with the books all around, that I came first into Anthy's deeper life. A draft from an open door stirred the picture of Lincoln on the wall above the mantelpiece, and a letter, slipping from behind it, dropped almost at my feet. I stooped and picked it up and read the writing on the envelope: "_To Abraham Lincoln._" Anthy's attention had been momentarily diverted to the door, and she did not see what had happened. "A letter to Lincoln," I said aloud, turning it over in my hand. I shall never forget how she turned toward me with a quick intake of her breath, the colour in her face, and her hand slowly lifting to her breast. She took a step toward me, and I, knowing that I had somehow touched a deep spring of her life, held out the letter. A moment we stood thus, a moment I can never forget. Then she said in a low voice: "Read it, David." I cut the envelope and read the letter to Lincoln, and knew that Anthy had opened a way into her confidence for me that had never before been opened to any one else. "David," she said, "I wanted you to know. In some ways you have come closer to me than any one else except my father." She said it without embarrassment, straight at me with clear eyes. I was like her father. I understood. [Illustration: _After that she opened her heart more and more to me--a little here, a little there_] I begged that letter of her, and others written both before and after, and keep them in the securest part of my golden treasury. After that she opened her heart more and more to me--a little here, a little there. I waited for those moments, counted on them, tried to avoid the slightest appearance of any jarring emotion, found them incomparably beautiful. She gave me vivid glimpses of her early life, of the books she liked best and the poetry, told me with enthusiasm of her college life and the different girls who were her friends (showing me their pictures), and finally, and choicest of all, she told me, a little here and a little there, of the curious imaginative adventures which had been so much a part of her girlhood. I presume I took all these things more seriously than she did, for she exhibited them in no solemn vein, as though they were important, but always in an amusing or playful light--here with a bit of mock heroics, there with half-wistful laughter. And yet, through it all, I could see that they had meant a great deal to her. I think, I am almost sure, that Anthy had never at this time had a love affair in any ordinary sense. To the true romance and the truly romantic--and by this I do not mean sentimental--the realities of love are often late in coming. To the true romance the idea of marriage is at first repugnant, will not be thought about, for it seeks to square and conventionalize a great burst of the spirit. The inner life is so keen, so vivid, that it satisfies itself, and it must indeed be a prince who would kiss awake the eyes of the dreamer. Some of these things, when I began this narrative, I had no intention of setting down in cold type, for they are among the deepest experiences in my life, and yet if I am to give an idea of what Anthy was and of the events which followed, it is imposed upon me to leave nothing out. I do not wish to indicate, however, that the talks I had with Anthy usually or even often reached these depths of the intimate. These were the rare and beautiful flowers which blossomed upon the slow-growing branches of the tree of intimacy. It was a curious thing, also, that while she let me more and more deeply into her own life she knew less about what was in my life than many other friends, far less even than Nort. Youth is like that, too, and even when essentially unselfish, it is terribly absorbed in the wonders of its own being. I knew what it meant. In a way it was the price I paid for the utter trust she had in me. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI THE OLD CAPTAIN COMES INTO HIS OWN It was a great winter we had in the office of the _Star_. It was in those months that we really made the _Star_. It was curious, indeed, once we began to be knitted together in a new bundle--with Anthy's quiet and strong hand upon us--how the qualities in each of us which had seriously threatened to disrupt the organization, had set us all by the ears, were the very qualities which contributed most to the success which followed. It all seems clear enough now, though vague and uncertain then, that what we really did was to _use_ the obstreperous and irritating traits of each of us instead of trying to repress them. There was the old Captain, for example. Ed thought him a "dodo," and wanted to put him on the shelf, where many a vigorous old man's heart has bitterly rusted out just because his loving friends, lovingly taking his life work out of his hands, have been too stupid to know how to use the treasures of his experience. Nort smiled at the way he tourneyed like Don Quixote with windmills of issues long dead, and I was impatient, the Lord forgive me, with his financial extravagances at a time when the _Star_ was barely making a living. But Anthy loved him. I don't know exactly how it came about, but one evening when we were all in the office together the talk turned on the Civil War. Some one asked the Captain: "You knew General McClellan personally, didn't you, Cap'n?" I remember how the old Captain squared himself up in his chair. "Yes, I knew Little Mac. I knew Little Mac----" It took nothing at all to set the Captain off, and he was soon in full flood. "I said to Little Mac, riding to him at full gallop ... and Little Mac said to me: "'Captain Doane.' "'Yes, sir, General,' said I. "'Do you see that rebel battery down there on the hillside?' "'I do, General.' "'Well, Cap'n Doane,' said he, 'that battery must be taken--at any cost. May I depend on you?' "'General,' said I, 'I will do my duty,' and I wheeled on my horse and rode to the front of my troop. "'Forward--_March!_ Draw--_Sabres!_ Gallop----_Charge!_----'" By this time the old Captain was on his feet, cane in hand for a sabre, the wonderful light of a by-gone conflict shining in his eyes. I could see him charging down the hill with his clattering troop; hear the clash of arms and the roll of musketry; see the flags flying and the men falling--dust and smoke and heat--the cry of wounded horses.... They took the battery. Well, when he finished his story that evening there was a pause, and then I saw Anthy suddenly lean forward, her hands clasped hard and her face glowing. "Such stories as that," she said, "ought not to be lost, Uncle Newt. They are _good_ for people. The coming generation doesn't know what its fathers suffered and struggled for--or what the country owes to them----" And then, wistfully: "I wish those stories might never be lost." Instantly Nort sprung from his chair, for great ideas when they arrived seemed to prick him physically as well as mentally. "Say," he almost shouted, "I have it! Let's have the Cap'n write the story of his life--and, by Jiminy, publish it in the _Star_. Everybody knows the Cap'n--they'd eat it up." It was Nort's genius that he could see, instantly, the greater possibilities of things, and his suggestion quite carried us away. We all began to talk at once: "Print the Captain's picture, a big one on the first page. A story every week. Why, he _knew_ James G. Blaine----" Anthy leaned back in her chair, her eyes like stars, looked at Nort, and looked at him. When we went out that night the old Captain threw a big arm over Nort's shoulder. The tears were running quite unheeded down the old fellow's face. "Nort, my boy," he said, "I love you like a son." He was happier that night than he had been before in years. The next morning Nort appeared at the office with a tremendous announcement, headed: _Captain Doane's Story of His Life_, which would, on a conservative estimate, have filled an entire page of the _Star_. And the old Captain, who need never have taken off his hat to Dickens or Dumas where copiousness was concerned, began to write--enormously. The dear old fellow, looking back into his own past, discovered anew a hero after his own heart, and as the incidents jumped at him out of his memory, he could scarcely put them down fast enough. He filled reams of yellow copy paper. With the first article we published a three-column half-tone portrait of the Captain, his head turned a little to one side to show the full lift of his brow, and one hand thrust carelessly and yet artfully into the bosom of his long coat. Oh, very wonderful! The first article, headed, EARLY MEMORIES OF HEMPFIELD was really excellent, after Anthy had cut out two thirds of the old Captain's copy--which no other one of us would have dared to do. Well, in an old town, in an old country, where the memories of many people reached far back, where many had known Captain Doane all their lives, this article instantly found sympathetic readers, and began to be talked about. We felt it at once in the demand for papers. Later came the stories of early political affairs in Hempfield and, indeed, in New England, and stories of the war which were really thrilling. Other headings were: "_How I Met General McClellan_" and "_Reminiscences of James G. Blaine_." These not only awakened local interest, but they began to be clipped and quoted in outside newspapers, even in Boston and New York. A reporter was sent down from Boston to "write up" the old Captain. It was quite a triumph. The Captain began to have visitors, old friends and old citizens, as he had never had before. They became almost a nuisance in the office. But the Captain was in his element: he thrived on it; his eye brightened; he walked, if possible, still more erect. His very mood, indeed, for his fighting blood was up, gave us some difficult problems. Nearly every week he would pause in the course of his narrative to smite the Democratic party, to cry "Fudge" at flying machines, or to visit his scorn upon the "initiative, referendum and recall." And one week he cut loose grandly upon woman suffrage, after he had first expressed his chivalric admiration for the "gentle sex" and quoted Sir Walter Scott: "Oh, woman, in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please," etc., etc. Nort brought me the copy, laughing. "I asked the Captain," he said, "if he thought Anthy was uncertain, coy, and hard to please." "What did he say?" "He waved me aside. 'Oh, Anthy!' he said, as if she did not count at all. You know how the Captain lays down the eternal laws of life and then lets all his personal friends break 'em!... What would you do about the passage, anyway?" "Why print it," I said. "It's the old Captain himself." And print it we did. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH CERTAIN DEEP MATTERS OF THE HEART ARE PRESENTED Ed Smith and Nort must have tried Anthy terribly in these days, Nort probably far more than Ed, because he was a more complicated human being, less broken to any sort of harness, and blest (or cursed) with an amazing gift of intimacy. Like many people who live most vividly within, he never seemed to have any proper idea of the lines which separate human beings. To some conventional natures the most refined meanings attach to their "Good mornings" and "How-d'ye does," and their confidences, shut away in a close inner sanctum, like the high court of a secret society, are only to be approached ceremonially by those who have the insignia and the password; and where, having arrived and expecting hidden wonders and beauties, you discover only still more ceremonial. A truly conventional person cuts the same at the core as at the rind. Nort never seemed to remember that most people one meets love to fence politely about the weather or the state of their health, but incontinently whacked them at once on their raw souls with whatever poker he might then be mending the fires of his heart. And he did it all, never crudely, but with such irrepressible and beguiling spirits, with such confidence that whatever interested him most at the moment must also interest you--as it usually did--that he was not to be resisted. Now I do not believe that Nort at this time had any conscious idea of making love to Anthy, certainly not of falling in love with her. He was entirely too much absorbed in Nort. But he turned toward her as instinctively as a flower turns to the sun, and was a hundred times more dangerous to a girl like Anthy for being just what he was. He liked to be with her, felt comfortable with her, thought of his place in the office as her employee, when he thought of it at all, as a rather uncomfortable joke, and stepped irresistibly within the defences of her reserve, and in spite of everything remained there. He told her what he thought about newspapers, baseball, the immortality of the soul, dress clothes, and the novels of H. G. Wells, looking at her sometimes with a little wrinkle of earnestness between his eyes, but oftener with a look of amusement--yes, of deviltry--which said to her as plainly as words could have framed it: "You and I have a wonderful secret between us, haven't we?" He was apparently oblivious to the fact that she was a woman at all, and yet away down within him, as the ocean knows of the primeval monsters hidden in its depths, he knew that Anthy was a woman: knew it with a dumb and swelling strength he himself had never fathomed; and he knew, too, with that instinctive knowledge which is the deepest of all--such is the trickiness of the human spirit--that this was the way of all ways to reach Anthy. When I think of the Nort of those days, all the lawless possibilities of his ardent temperament, I wonder and I tremble! I wonder sometimes at the miracle by which youth _ever_ escapes destruction. And in Nort's case, as in Anthy's, it was a narrow, narrow margin, as I know better than any one else. Poor Nort! Happy Nort! No such close confidences existed between Anthy and him as between Anthy and me. Nort knew nothing of the deep and beautiful life within which she had shown to me--and me alone--could not at that time have understood it, if he had known of it (so I think), and yet there he was, a mere boy, a stranger almost, closer to her than I was. A strange thing, life! [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII NORT SNIFFS I had thought the life in the office of the _Star_ exciting enough before the explosion which resulted in the discharge of Norton Carr, as indeed it was, but it was really not to be compared with that which followed. No sooner had Nort returned than his spirits again began to soar. He felt that he now had Anthy's influence strongly behind him, and that, no matter what happened, Ed Smith could not interfere with him. Ed himself accepted the situation as gracefully as he could, and comforted himself with the reflection that Nort was, after all, receiving no more wages than before. Nort had at least one clear characteristic that must belong to genius--he dared let himself go. He had supreme confidence in himself. Most men when they spread their wings and sail off into the blue empyrean more than half expect to fall, but Nort never cast his eye downward nor doubted the strength of his wings. I have only to close my eyes to see him, his whole slim, strong body suddenly stiffening, quivering under the impact of an idea--a "great idea" it always was with him--his eyes suddenly growing dark with excitement, his legs nervously bestirring themselves to carry him up and down the room, while he thrust one hand through his hair and with the other emphasized the torrent of exclamations which poured out of him. At these moments he was one of the most beautiful human beings that ever I have seen. And in the midst of his wild enthusiasms he was as likely as not, at any moment, to see some absurd or humorous angle of the subject he was talking about, and to burst suddenly into laughter, laughter at himself and at us for listening soberly to him. He never let us laugh first! One of his early suggestions after he came back was the autobiography of the old Captain, of which I have already spoken. He knew it would be a success, as indeed it was, a very great success; but it was only one of a hundred things which Nort suggested during that winter. "Say, Ed," he said one day, "why can't we get a new turn on our advertisements, make 'em interesting!" Ed looked at him incredulously. "What do you mean?" Ed considered himself a pastmaster in the art of getting, writing, and composing advertisements, and he rather resented Nort's suggestion. "Why," said Nort, "look at 'em! They're all just alike, and nobody cares to read 'em: 'Respectfully informs,' 'Most reasonable terms,' 'Solicits continuance!'" Nort spread open the paper with growing glee. Anthy was already laughing. "And look here," he snorted, "'guarantees satisfaction,' 'large and elegant assortment,' 'lowest prices.'" "Well," said Ed, "what would you have? They pay their good money for these ads. It shows that they're satisfied." "No," said Nort, "it only shows that they don't know any better." He walked quickly down the room and back again, all our eyes upon him. "I'll tell you what! Let's publish the picture of every business man who advertises with us right in the middle of his advertisement, and then invite our readers to watch for the 'Hempfield Gallery of Business Success.'" To this plan Ed had a thousand objections, and the old Captain, much as he liked Nort, frowned upon it, and even Fergus scowled; but Anthy said: "Let's see what can be done." So Nort confidently sallied forth, and went first to John G. Graham, groceryman, whose advertisements had been a feature of the _Star_ for twenty years, and who always renewed his agreement with the observation that he s'posed he'd have to, but he never seen the good it was to him. He was a large man, as flaccid as a bag of meal, with a rather serious countenance, hair smoothly reached back, and a big gray moustache. He was one of the selectmen of the town, and secretly not a little vain of his position and of his success. "Your store is one of the best-smelling places in this town," said Nort. "I always stop when I go by to take a sniff of it. I should think it would make people who come in here want to buy." He began to sniff, turning his head first this way and then that. To Mr. Graham this was a novel and interesting suggestion, and in a moment's time he also began sniffing in a solemn and dignified way. "It does smell good," he admitted. "Never thought of it before." This was the opening that Nort wanted. He began explaining, with an air of repressed enthusiasm which conveyed a wonderful conviction of the importance of what he was saying, the new plans of the _Star_. He quite took Mr. Graham into his confidence. "We're now going to get the business men of Hempfield talked about, Mr. Graham," said Nort, bringing down his fist upon the top of a cracker box. "We're going to make people trade here instead of sending away for their groceries!" This was an important point with Mr. Graham. If there was one thing he hated above any other it was the invasion of Hempfield by the mail-order houses. So he turned his head to one side, frowning a little, and listened to Nort. "Trouble is," said Nort, "your ad isn't interesting. Same thing you've had for ten years, and people have got so used to seeing it they don't read it any more. Now those fellows out in Chicago are succeeding because they know how to advertise. If you keep up with them, you've got to change your methods. Bring your advertising up to date! I say, let's _make_ the people read what the business people of Hempfield have got to say to them." Mr. Graham frowned still more deeply, wondering what all this meant and at just what point Nort would ask him to pay something. Mr. Graham was cynically sure that it would all boil down sooner or later to a question of money, and he had not lived an entire lifetime in Hempfield without being equally sure that no one would get a dime out of him without earning every last cent of it. Nort tore a sheet of wrapping paper from the roll and put it on the counter. "See here now: This is how I'd do it--just for a suggestion." And he began to write on the paper: Some of the Good Things one may smell upon stepping into JOHN G. GRAHAM'S STORE Delicious Coffee from Brazil Molasses from New Orleans Spices from Araby "What's Araby?" asked Mr. Graham. "My spices are all from Boston." "Araby," said Nort, "is where they grow 'em." "Oh!" said Mr. Graham. Cookies from Buffalo Fragrant New Cheese "What else is it that smells?" asked Nort, lifting up his nose and sniffing discriminatively. Mr. Graham also lifted up his nose and sniffed, and then, looking at Nort, solemnly remarked: "Kerosene and codfish." "Wouldn't make the list _too_ long, would you, Mr. Graham?" "S'pose not, s'pose not," said Mr. Graham. When you come into our Store SNIFF--Then BUY. Our prices are the lowest "How's that, now?" exclaimed Nort, stepping back and observing his work with delight. "Try that experiment, Mr. Graham, and then watch the people as they come into the store. Just watch 'em. They will all be sniffing like pointer dogs! You'll _know_ then that they have read your advertisement." A smile broke gradually over Mr. Graham's countenance. Nort's picture touched his slow imagination, and he could actually see old Mrs. Dexter coming in with her basket, sniffing like a pointer dog. Nort had given him something brand new in a humdrum world--and funny. In the country there is always such a consuming and ungratified need of something to laugh at. Any one who can make the country laugh can have his way with it. Nort saw that he was winning, and pursued his advantage closely. He explained with perfect assurance his plan of publishing what he called the "Hempfield Gallery of Business Success," a portrait with each advertisement; and, having already opened Mr. Graham's imagination just a crack, was able now to enter with his larger plans. Having got a tentative promise to try this extraordinary innovation, and innovations were like earthquakes in Hempfield, Nort rushed over to see Mr. Tole, the druggist, and using Mr. Graham as an opening wedge, got Mr. Tole to the point of saying, "I'll see." Then he went into Henderson's drygoods store and, using the promises of both Mr. Graham and Mr. Tole, worked Mr. Henderson into what might be called a state of reluctant preparedness. Every time he got a new man he went back to all the others with the news, until they began to think themselves a part of the conspiracy--and Mr. Graham afterward considered himself the real originator of this daring scheme for the uplift of Hempfield. From the way Nort worked at this scheme, coming back after each assault to tell us with glee of his experiences, one would have thought he was having the time of his life, as, indeed, he was. It was still a great joke to him; and yet I saw his eyes often turn toward Anthy, eagerly seeking her approval. And Anthy would sit very quiet in her chair, looking at Nort with level eyes, smiling just a little, and once or twice after he had turned away, I saw that she still kept her eyes upon him with a curious, questioning, wistful look. Fergus saw it, too, always watching silently from the cases. Well, we launched the "Hempfield Gallery" with tremendous effect. Nort had not only increased the number of advertisements but had actually succeeded in getting all the advertisers to pay for making the cuts of themselves. It was really very effective; and Ed, now that the plan was launched, was able to sell many extra copies of the paper. As for Nort, that irrepressible young rapscallion was in the highest of spirits. And every day when he came down the street he would look in at Mr. Graham's store: "Sniffin', are they, Mr. Graham?" "They certainly _are_ sniffin'," that ponderous grocery man would respond. Both would then sniff solemnly in unison, and Nort would go on down the street laughing. A new joke in Hempfield! I do not wonder that he got them. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIX FERGUS'S FAVOURITE POEM I recall now vividly the growing excitement of those winter days, the interest we all had. Each day brought something new, some surprised comment in a "contemporary," some quotation from a city paper, some curious visitor to see the old Captain, some new subscriber or advertiser, some necessity for adding to our order for "insides." One of the best ways to attract and interest other people is by going about one's own business as though it were the most wonderful and fascinating thing in the world. People soon begin to look on wistfully, begin to wonder what all this activity and triumphant joyousness is about, and are presently drawn to it as bees are drawn by a blooming clover field. So the printing-office began to be a place of importance and curiosity in Hempfield. The news spread that almost any surprise might be expected in the _Star_. "It's that fellow Carr that's doing it," said old Mr. Kenton, voicing the hopeless philosophy of the country when facing competition with the city. "One o' these days, you'll see, he'll get a better job in Bosting, and that'll be the end of _him_." In the meantime, however, we were too busy to indulge in any forebodings, and as for Nort the whole great golden world of real life was opening to him for the first time. No sooner had the interest in the old Captain's autobiography somewhat subsided, and the advertising scheme, with several lesser matters, been disposed of, than Nort's fertile brain began to devise new schemes. "Say," he exclaimed one winter day, coming in from one of his expeditions and looking us all over as though we were specimens of a curious sort, "this office is a pretty interesting place." "Just found it out?" grunted Fergus. "Well," said Nort, "I've suspected it all along, and now I know it. There's the Cap'n, for example. We didn't know we had a gold mine in the Cap'n, now, did we? But we had! Great thing, the Cap'n's story! Finest thing done in country journalism anywhere, at any time, I suppose." I exchanged an amused glance with Anthy, and we both looked at the old Captain. As Nort talked the Captain grew more and more erect in his chair, wagged his head, and, finally, arising from his seat, took two or three steps down the room looking very grand. Nort went on talking, glancing at the old Captain out of the corner of his eye, and evidently enjoying himself hugely. "Now, I say, we've got other gold mines here, if we only knew how to work 'em. There's David! Let's have a column from him--wise saws and modern instances. David will become the official Hempfield philosopher. And then there's Fergus----" "Humph!" observed Fergus. "There's Fergus. Everybody in town knows Fergus, and I'll stake my reputation that anything that Fergus writes over his own name will be read." Nort was riding his highest horse. "Miss Doane, let's announce it in big type this very week, something like this: 'The _Star_ of Hempfield has arranged a new treat for its readers. We shall soon present a column containing the ripe observations of our esteemed printer, fellow citizen, and spotless Scotchman, Mr. Fergus MacGregor. We shall also have contributions in a philosophical vein by Mr. David Grayson, and a column by that paragon of country journalism'"--here he paused and looked solemnly at the old Captain, and then resumed--"'that paragon of country journalism, Mr. Norton Carr.'" We all thought that Nort was joking, but he wasn't. He was in dead earnest. That afternoon he walked home with me down the wintry road. It was a cold, blustery day with a fine snow sifting through the air, but Nort's head was so hot with his plans that I am sure, if his feet were chilled, he never knew it. He laboured hard with me to write something each week for the _Star_, and the upshot of the matter was that I began to contribute short paragraphs and bits of description and narrative which we headed DAVID GRAYSON'S COLUMN It was made up of the very simplest and commonest elements, mostly little scraps of news from my farm--the description of a calf drinking, the sound of pigeons in the hay loft. I told also about the various country odours in spring, peach leaves, strawberry leaves, and new hay, and of the curious music of the rain in the corn. I inquired what was the finest hour of the day in Hempfield, and tried to answer my own question. I put in a hundred and one inconsequential things that I love to observe and think about, and added here and there, for seasoning, a bit of common country philosophy. It was very enjoyable to do, and a number of people said they liked to read it, because I told them some of the things they often thought about, but had never been able to express. Nort found Fergus far harder to influence than he found me. A curious change had been going on in Fergus which I did not at first understand. At times he was more garrulous than ever I had known him to be, and at times he was a very sphinx for silence. It is a curious thing how people surprise us. In our vanity we begin to think we know them to the uttermost, and then one day, possibly by accident, possibly in a moment of emotion, a little secret door springs open in the smooth panel of their visible lives, and we see within a long, long corridor with other doors and passages opening away from it in every direction--the vast secret chambers of their lives. I had some such experience with that prickly Scotchman, Fergus MacGregor. It began one evening when I found him alone by the office fire. He was sitting smoking his impossible pipe and gazing into the glowing open draft of the corpulent stove. He did not even look around when I came in, but reaching out one foot kicked a chair over toward me. Suddenly he fetched a big sigh, and said in a tone of voice I had not before heard: "Night is the mither o' thoughts." He relapsed into silence again. After some moments he took his pipe out and remarked to the stove: "Oaks fall when reeds stand." "Fergus," I said, "you're cryptic to-night. What do you consider yourself, an oak or a reed?" "Well, David, I'm the oak that falls, while the reed stands." I tried to draw him out still further on this interesting point, but not another explanatory word would he say. It was the beginning, however, of a new understanding of Fergus. A little later, that very evening, Anthy and her uncle came in for a moment on their way home from some call or entertainment, and not a minute behind them, Nort. I saw Fergus's eyes dwell a moment on Anthy and then return to his moody observation of the fire. And Anthy was well worth a second glance that evening. The sharp winter wind had touched her cheeks with an unaccustomed radiance, and had blown her hair, where the scarf did not quite protect it, wavily about her temples. She was in great spirits. "Fergus," she cried out, "what do you mean sitting here all humped up over the fire on a wonderful night like this!" Here Nort broke in: "Fergus is thinking about what he will put into his issue of the _Star_." "They're all my issues, so far's I can see," growled Fergus. "But now, Fergus," persisted Nort, "if you were editing a column in the newspaper what would you put in it?" Fergus began to liven up a little. "Tell us, Fergus," said Anthy. Fergus took his pipe out of his mouth and rubbed the bowl of it along his cheek, screwing up his face as though he were thinking hard. We all watched him. No one could ever tell quite where Fergus would break out. "What is most interesting to you?" prompted Nort. "That's easy," said Fergus, and turning in his chair he reached across to the shelf and produced his battered volume of "Tom Sawyer." This he opened gravely and began to read the passage in which Tom beguiles the other boys in the village to do his white-washing for him: "Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life seemed to him hollow and existence but a burden." Fergus read it with a deliciously humorous Scotch twist in the words, a twist impossible to represent in print. Occasionally he would pause and bark two or three times, his excuse for laughter. When he had reached the end of the passage, Nort said: "I've got it! This is the very thing: let's put it in the _Star_. Where's a pencil and paper? _Fergus MacGregor's Favourite Passage from 'Tom Sawyer.'_ Everybody in town knows that Fergus likes 'Tom Sawyer.'" "Humph!" said Fergus, but it was evident that he was not a little pleased. Do what he would, he could not help liking Nort. "I know something that represents Fergus still better," said Anthy. Fergus looked across at her, and then began thumbing his pipe. "What's that?" asked Nort. "'The Twa Dogs.' Isn't that your favourite poem, Fergus?" "Whur'll you find a better one?" asked Fergus, putting his pipe back in his mouth. "That's Number Two," said the irrepressible Nort. "We'll put that in some other issue headed _'Fergus MacGregor's Favourite Poem.'_" [Illustration] CHAPTER XX THE CELEBRATION Nothing, finally, continues long in this world. At moments of high happiness and grand endeavour we are tempted to think that the world is solid happiness all the way through. But in reality the interior of the planet of life is molten and the crust terribly thin: we never know at what moment an earthquake may rend what has seemed to us the indestructible foundations of our existence. The _Star_ had been wonderfully successful, and Nort had been going from glory to dazzling glory, having everything his own way, and coming, I have no doubt, to think himself something of an exception to the common lot of poor human nature. He was in the first bloom of his genius (you will yet hear from Norton Carr, mark my word), and like many another ardent young man he thought the world was made for him, not he for the world. He liked people, and he knew that people liked him--and presumed upon it. And more and more he loved to toss off his glittering ideas and his wonderful plans, enjoying the bedazzlement which they aroused and ready to laugh at those who were too easily taken in. At first he was willing to sit down and work hard to bring his dreams to pass, but he had never been trained to steady effort, and unless he was forced it was irksome to him. He liked to explain his ideas and let any one else work them out, or drop them. He was like that vagabond of birds, the cuckoo, always laying eggs in the nests of other birds, knowing with a sort of sardonic humour that if they _did_ hatch the young birds would and could be nothing but cuckoos. As spring advanced Nort grew still more undependable. It seemed to get into his very blood. I would catch him looking out of the open window of our office into the mass of lilac leaves, or lifting his chin to take in a full breath of the good outdoors, and when he whistled, and he was often whistling, the low monotonous note had a curious lift and stir in it. He was frequently moody, and when he did burst out it was almost never to Anthy. He seemed actually to avoid Anthy, and yet without any set purpose of doing so. And of all of us he liked best to talk with Fergus, who treated him very much as a she-bear treats her cub, with evidences of burly affection which usually left claw marks. I could see that all this was getting to be very distressing to Anthy. Perhaps she felt that the pace the _Star_ was setting was far too great to keep; perhaps she felt that too much rested upon the uncertain quantity which was Nort--and perhaps, down deep, she had begun to have a more than ordinary interest in Nort. She was not one of those women who are quickly awakened, and she was absorbed in her enterprise, and, besides, to all outward appearances, Nort was a mere tramp printer and her own employee. One bright forenoon in April, one of those utterly perfect spring days in which April appears in the coquettish garb of June, I saw Nort suddenly start up from his work, seize his coat, and shoot out of the door. In the afternoon, as I was going homeward along the lanes and across the fields, I came upon him in a grove of young maple trees. He was lying flat on his back in the leaves, all flecked with sunshine, his arms opened wide, one leg lifted high over the other. He was looking up into the green wonder of the vegetation. Such a look of sheer pagan joy of life I have rarely seen on a human face. When he saw me he sprang to his feet. "Isn't it wonderful--all of it?" he said. "Why, David, I could write poetry, if I knew how!" "Or paint pictures--or carve statues, or compose music," I put in. "Anything is possible on a day like this!" "Except printing a country newspaper." He laughed ruefully, threw back his head impatiently and utterly refused to discuss that subject. I took the rascal home with me, to Harriet's delight, and he followed me around afterward, while I did my chores. The next morning, just as he was starting for town, he began telling Harriet how much he had enjoyed coming to see us--so many times during the past months. "I wish," he said, "there was some way of showing you and David how much I appreciate it." Here he stopped abruptly and his eyes began to glow. "I have it. A great idea! You're in it, Miss Grayson!" Harriet stood watching his slight active figure until it quite disappeared beyond the hill. Then she came in, looking absent-minded, a very rare expression for her, and I even thought I heard her sigh softly. "What's the matter, Harriet?" "That boy! That perfectly irresponsible boy! He needs some one to look after him." Nort's idea was not long in bearing fruit. Harriet found the letter in the mail box addressed to both of us in Nort's handwriting. She brought it in, tearing it open curiously. "I can't _conceive_--addressed to both of us." She finally opened it and produced a card neatly printed with these words: _Fergus MacGregor and Norton Carr request the pleasure of your company at dinner Friday evening, April twenty-third, at the office of The Hempfield Star to meet Tom, Dick, and Old Harry_ R. S. V. P. "What in the world!" exclaimed Harriet. It was as much of a surprise to Anthy and the old Captain as it was to us. As for Ed Smith, he had so far lost his breath trying to keep up with Nort that he no longer had the capacity for being surprised at anything. I cannot attempt an adequate description of that evening's celebration. Though we did not know it at the time it brought us to the very climax and crisis of that period of our lives. It was the glorious end of an epoch in the history of the _Star_ of Hempfield. Nort and Fergus had cleaned out the back room of the shop, and a table was set up in the middle of it with just chairs enough for our own company, including one stool upon which Tom, the cat, was intermittently induced to sit by Nort. Dick's cage was hung from the ceiling over the table, where for a time he seemed quite alive to the importance of the occasion, but soon went off to sleep on his perch with his head drawn down among his yellow feathers. The meal itself came mostly by the hands of Joe Miller, coloured, of the Hempfield House, who smiled broadly during the entire evening, but the _pièce de resistance_, the crowning glory of the evening, was an enormous steak which Nort and Fergus, with much discussion and more perspiration, and not a few smudges and scratches, broiled over the coals in our office stove. I may say that in the effort to produce these coals the office was heated all the afternoon to such a temperature that it drove us all out. I shall not forget the sight of Nort coming in at the door carrying the triumphant steak, still in the broiler, with Fergus crouching and dodging along beside him, holding a part of an old press fly under it to catch any drippings. I remember the look on his glowing face and the smile he wore! He let the steak slide out of the broiler, to Harriet's horror, upon the huge hotel platter. "There!" he exclaimed. We all cheered wildly, and Joe Miller, with a carving knife in one hand and a fork in the other, hovered behind, his black face one great smile. Fergus was quite wonderfully dressed up for the occasion with a very tall collar and a red necktie, and cuffs that positively would not stay up, and his attempt to brush his hair had produced the most astounding storm effects. But he appeared happy, if uncomfortable. As for Harriet, I have not seen her look so young and pretty for years. It was altogether a little irregular and shocking to her, but she met it with a sort of fearful joy. [Illustration: The old Captain was perfect. He was a very pattern of gallantry] The old Captain was perfect. He was dressed in his very best clothes--his longest-tailed coat--and wore a flower in his buttonhole, and he told us the most surprising stories of his early life. He was also a very pattern of gallantry, and in several passages with Harriet decidedly got the worst of it. How I love such moments--as perfect as anything in this life of ours; friends all about, and good comradeship, and jolly stories, and lively talk, and good things to eat. And surely never was there a finer evening for just such a celebration. The cool spring air coming in across the lilacs and heavy with the scent of them, the shaded lamp, the occasional friendly sounds from the street, and finally, and to the amazement of us all, the town clock striking twelve. What a beautiful and wonderful thing life is! [Illustration] CHAPTER XXI STARLIGHT I scarcely know how he managed it--how does youth manage such things--but almost before I knew what was going on, and while the Captain and I were still in the tail-end of a discussion of the administration of William McKinley, and Harriet was putting on her wraps, Nort had gone out of the office with Anthy. We heard Nort laugh as they were going down the steps. "Never mind," said the old Captain, "let 'em go." A few minutes later Fergus disappeared by way of the back door which led from his room into the yard. I did not at the time connect the two departures, did not, indeed, think of the matter at all, save to wonder vaguely why the dependable Fergus should be leaving his home, which was the printing-office, at that time of the night. It was a wonderful night, starlit and very clear, with the cool, fresh air full of the sweet prescience of spring. It was still, too, in the town, and once a little outside the fields and hills and groves took upon themselves a haunting mystery and beauty. So often and wistfully has my memory dwelt upon the incidents of that night that I seem now to live more vividly in the lives of Nort and Anthy--with Fergus crouching in the meadows behind--than I do in my own barren thoughts. Exaltation of mood affected Nort and Anthy quite differently. It set Nort off, made him restless, eager, talkative, but it made Anthy the more silent. It glowed from her eyes and expressed itself in the odd tense little gesture she had--of one hand lifted to her breast. "Most wonderful time that ever I had in my life," said Nort. "It _was_ fine," returned Anthy. Her low voice vibrated. "It seems to me, Miss Doane, that it is only since I came to Hempfield that I have begun to live. I was only existing before: it seems to me now as though I could do anything." He paused. When he spoke again it was in a deeper tone, and his voice shook: "I feel to-night as though I could be great--and _good_." She had never heard that tone before: she saw him in a new light, and suddenly began to tremble without knowing why. But she walked quietly at his side along the shadowy road. They seemed in a world all by themselves, with the wonderful stars above, and the fragrant night air all about them. At the corner where the sidewalk ends they came to the first outlook upon the open country. Anthy stopped suddenly and looked around her. "Oh, isn't it beautiful," she whispered. This time it was Nort who made no reply. They stood a moment side by side, and it was thus that Fergus, a hundred paces behind in the shadows of the trees, first saw them--with misery in his soul. They walked on slowly again, feeling each other's presence with such poignant consciousness that neither dared speak. Thus they came to Anthy's gate: and there they paused a moment. "Good-night," said Nort. "Good-night," responded Anthy faintly. She looked up at him with the starlight on her face. It seemed to him that he saw her for the first time. He had never really known her before. He was dizzily conscious of flashing lights and something in his throat that hurt him. "Anthy," he said huskily, "you are the most beautiful woman in the world." She still stood, close to him, looking up into his face. She tried to move, but could not. "Anthy," he said again, with shaking voice, and stooping over kissed her upon her lips. She uttered a little low cry and, turning quickly, with her hand lifted to her face, ran up the walk to the house. "Anthy," he called after her--such a call as she will not forget to her dying day. And she was gone. Nort stood by the gate, clasping the wood until his fingers hurt him, in a wild tumult of emotion. And behind him in the shadows, not a hundred paces away, Fergus, with clenched hands. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXII FERGUS AND NORT Fergus MacGregor was approaching the supreme moment of his life. As I have said before, it was a long time before I began to understand that roseate Scotchman. His husk was so thick and prickly that one approached him at his peril. I knew that he was as hard as nails and as real as boiled cabbage; I knew, also, that just within his rough exterior there were unusual qualities of strength and warmth, and I had grown strangely to like him and trust him; but there were reaches and depths in his character that I was long in discovering. I remember his telling me with some pride that he was a skeptic in religion, "an infidel if ye like," and that the "Address to the Unco Guid," about expressed his views. He could also repeat "Holy Willie's Prayer" to perfection. But I soon found that he was an infidel in much the same terms that his forefathers had been Covenanters--a terribly orthodox infidel, if that can be imagined. Skepticism meant no mushy liberalism with him; it only meant that he had adopted a new creed, and that he would fight as hard for his skepticism as other men fight for their more positive beliefs. But if he had changed his religious views, the moral standards which lay beneath them like the primordial rocks had not been in the least shaken. There remained something deep within him of the old spirit of clan loyalty. Anthy's father had almost brought him up; he had been in the office of the _Star_ for more years than he cared to remember; he had watched Anthy through her unconscious and dreamy girlhood; had seen her blossom into youth and come to the full glory of womanhood. I never found out how old he was, for he was one of those hard-knit, red-favoured men who live sometimes from the age of twenty-five to fifty with scarcely more evidences of change than a granite boulder. He thought himself ugly, and he was, indeed, rough, uncouth, and uneducated in the schools, though in many ways as thoroughly educated a man, if education means the ability to command instantly and for any purpose the full powers of one's mind and body, as one often finds. I do not know to this day whether Fergus loved Anthy in the sense in which a man loves a woman. Certainly it was no selfish love, but rather a great passionate fidelity to one who, he thought, was infinitely above him, the sort of devotion which asks only to serve, and expects no reward. There are few such people in this world, and they usually get what they expect. I saw afterward, as I did not see so clearly at the time, how faithfully, jealously, completely, Fergus had served and watched over Anthy, particularly since the death of her father. He lived in the poor back room of the printing-office, worked hard at absurdly low wages, had few pleasures in life beyond his pipe and his beloved books--and watched over Anthy. He had seen, far more clearly than Anthy and Nort themselves had seen it, the growing attachment between them, had seen it with what misery of soul I can only guess. He had begun by liking Nort in his rough way, partly because Nort had come friendless to our office and needed a friend, and partly because he could not resist Nort; and his knowledge of the true drift of affairs had not led him to hate Nort. But he saw with the clear eyes of perfect devotion just what Nort was--undisciplined, erratic, uncontrolled. He had himself felt Nort's irresistible charm and he dreaded the effect of it upon Anthy. Nort was likely to tire of Hempfield at any time, he might even tire of Anthy, having won her, and break her heart. Moreover, in Fergus's eyes, not Sir Galahad himself would have been good enough for Anthy. It was not because Nort appeared penniless, not because he was a tramp printer, that Fergus began to set so indomitably against him, but because he was not a _man_. Fergus had that terrible sense of justice, duty, loyalty, that would have caused him to sacrifice his greatest friend to serve Anthy as quickly and completely as he would have sacrificed himself. Quite unknown to me, Fergus had been watching the situation for some time, and it was his anxiety which had caused his changeableness of mood. He was not a quick thinker, and, like many men of strong character, moved to his resolutions with geologic slowness--and geologic irresistibility. For a long time he debated in his own mind what he should do. He finally concluded to take the whole matter into his own hands. He would deal directly with Nort. It was worse than he had expected. He had seen the episode in the starlight at the gate--it burned itself into his very soul--and he had seen Anthy running toward the house with her face hidden in her hands. To a certain extent he misconstrued this incident. He could not see what happened afterward: he could not see Anthy running up the dark stairway in her home, could not see her turn on the full light in her room and look into the mirror at her own glowing face, her own brilliant eyes. She had never before even seen herself! And Nort's words, the very tone and thrill of them--"You are the most beautiful woman in the world"--singing themselves wildly within her, were changing the world for her. Through all the future years, she did not know it then, she was to see herself as some other person, the person who had sprung into glorious being when Nort had called her Anthy. She looked only once at her face--she could not bear more of it--and then threw herself on her bed, burying her burning cheeks in her pillow, and lay thus for a long, long time. All of this Fergus could not know about, and it is possible that if he had known about it he would still have misinterpreted it. Like many an excellent older person he suspected that youth was not sufficient to its own problems. Nort never knew, while he stood there at the gate looking up at the dark house into which Anthy had disappeared, how near he was to feeling Fergus's wiry hands upon his throat. But Fergus held himself in, his grim mind made up, considering how best he should do what he had to do. I suppose life is tragic, or comic, or merely humdrum, as you happen to look at it. If you are old and sour, you will see little in the rages of youth, they will appear to you excessively absurd and enormously distant. You will probably not recall that you yourself, in your time, were a moderately great fool, or, if you were not a fool, you have missed----What have you _not_ missed? Nort could never remember exactly what he did next. He recalls rushing through shadowy roads, with the cool, sharp air of the night biting his hot face. He remembers standing somewhere on a hilltop and looking up at the wonderful blue bowl of the sky all lit with stars. He could remember talking aloud, but not what it was that he said, only that it came out of the vast tumult within him. From time to time he would see with incomparable vividness Anthy's face looking up at him, he would hear, actually _hear_, his own thick voice speaking; every minute detail of the moment, every sight, sound, odour, would pass before him in flashes of consciousness. He would live over the entire evening, as it seemed to him, in a moment of time. He did not know that the world could be so beautiful; he did not imagine that he himself was like that! At its height emotion seems endless and indestructible, but it is, in its very nature, brief and elusive--else men might die of it. Nort's mood began finally to quiet down, the impressions and memories of the night rushed less wildly through his mind. And suddenly--he said it came to him with a shock--he thought of the future. He stopped still in the road. He had been so intoxicated with the experiences he had just passed through that it had actually never occurred to him what they might mean; and according to Nort's temperament the new vision instantly swallowed up the old, and, as it was cooler and clearer, seemed even more wonderful. He remembered saying very deliberately and aloud: "I must work for Anthy all my life." It came to him as a very wonderful thing that he could do this! Why, he could do anything for her: he could slave and dig and die! He could be _great_ for her--and let no one else know how great he was! He could win a battle, he could command men, he could write the greatest book in the world, and no one should know it but Anthy! Oh, youth, youth! His mind again became inordinately active: the whole wonderful future opened before him. He began to plan a thousand things that he might do. He would imagine himself walking home with Anthy, just as he had done that night, thrilling with the thought of her at his side, and he would be telling her his plans, and always she would be looking up into his face just as she had been doing at that last moment! All these things seem long in the telling--and they lasted for ages in Nort's soul--but as a matter of fact they were brief enough in time. Fergus, stumbling along behind in the cold road, his hard-set spirit suffering dumbly, was only waiting the choice of a moment to lay his hand upon Nort's shoulder. And thus the two of them came, by no forethought, to the little hill just north of my farm, and I entered for a moment, all unconsciously, upon the comedy, or the tragedy, of that historic night. I can't tell exactly what time it was, but I had been asleep for some time when I heard knocking on the outer door. As I started up in bed I heard some one calling my name, "David! David!" I ran downstairs quickly, wondering why Harriet was not before me, for she is a light sleeper. As I opened the door I saw a man on the porch. "David!" "Nort! What are you doing here at this time of the night?" "Let me come in!" he said in a tense voice. "I've got something I must tell you." I got him into my study and shut the door so that Harriet would not be disturbed. Then I struck a light and looked at Nort. His face was uncommonly pale; but his eyes, usually blue and smiling, were black with excitement. I could not fathom it at all. I had seen him before in a mood of exaltation, but nothing like this. "David," said he, "I'm going to write a novel--a great novel." He paused and looked at me with tremendous seriousness. The whole thing struck me all at once, partly in revulsion from the alarm I had felt when he first came in, as being the most absurd and humorous proceeding I had ever known. I laughed outright. "Is this what you came to tell me at three o'clock in the morning?" But Nort's mood was beyond ridicule. He did not seem to notice my laughter at all, but plunged at once into an account, a more or less jumbled account I am forced to admit, of all the things he would put into his novel. As nearly as I could make out he proposed to leave nothing out, nothing whatever that was in any way related to American life--politics, religion, business, love, art, city life, country life--everything. He didn't seem to be quite sure yet whether he could get it all into one large volume, like one of Scott's novels, or whether he would make a trilogy of volumes, like Frank Norris, or a whole _comédie humaine_ after the manner of Balzac. I gathered that it was not only to be the great American novel, but the greatest that would ever be written. It was so preposterous, so extraordinary! But it was Nort. I can see him now, vividly, pacing up and down the room, head thrown back, hair flying wild, telling me of his visions. I slipped into my overcoat, for it was cold, and still he talked on, and at moments I actually thought the rascal had lost control of himself. This impression was increased by a startling incident which was wholly unexplainable to me at the time. Just as Nort was walking down the study toward the east window he stopped suddenly, looked around at me, and said in a low voice: [Illustration: "_David, I saw a face looking in at that window_"] "David, I saw a face looking in at that window." I followed his glance quickly, but could see nothing. "You're dreaming, Nort," said I. "No, I saw it." "See here, Nort," I said, "this is not reasonable. I want you to stop talking and go to bed. Can't you see how foolish it is?" For the first time Nort laughed his old laugh. "I suppose, David, it is--but it seems to me I never lived before to-night." He seemed on the point of telling me something more. I wish he had, though it probably would not have changed the course of events which followed. "Well," he said, "I'll go home and be decent. I never thought until this moment what you must think of me for routing you out in the middle of the night! And Harriet, too! What will she say?" He looked at me ruefully, whimsically. It was just as he had said: he had never thought of it. "David, I'm awfully sorry and ashamed of myself. I'm a selfish devil." What a boy he was: and how could any one hold a grudge against him! He was now all contrition, feared he'd wake up Harriet, and promised to creep out without making a sound. I asked him to stay with us, but he insisted that he couldn't, that he must get home. So he opened the door of the study, and tiptoed with exaggerated caution down the hall. At the door he paused and said in a whisper: "David, there _was_ some one at that window." "Nonsense." "Well, good-night." "Good-night, Nort, and God bless you." He closed the door with infinite caution, and I thought I had seen the last of him, but a moment later he stuck his head in again. "David," he said in a stage whisper, "the great trouble is, I can't think of any heroine, any really _great_ heroine, for my novel that isn't exactly like Anthy----" "Nort, get out!" I laughed, not catching the significance of his remark until after he had gone. "Well, good-night, anyhow, David," he said, "or good-morning. You're a downright good fellow, David." And good morning it was: for when Nort went down the steps the dawn was already breaking. As I went upstairs I heard Harriet, in a frightened whisper: "What in the world is the matter, David?" But I refused to explain, at least until morning. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIII THE BATTLE It was gray dawn, with a reddening sky in the east, when Nort walked up the town road. The fire within him had somewhat died down, and he began to feel tired and, yes, hungry. At the brook at the foot of the hill he stopped and threw himself down on the stones to drink, and as he lifted his head he looked at himself curiously in the pool. The robins were beginning to sing, and all the world was very still and beautiful. When he got up Fergus touched him on his shoulder. He was startled, and glanced around suddenly, and the two men stood for a moment looking into each other's eyes. And Nort knew as well as though some one had told him, that it had come to an unescapable issue between him and this grim Scotchman. "Well, Fergus, where did you drop from?" He tried to carry it off jauntily: he had always played with Fergus. "I've been waitin' fer ye," said Fergus. "I want ye to come in the wood wi' me. I have a bone to pick wi' ye." Fergus seemed perfectly cool; whatever agitation he felt showed itself only in the increasing Scotchiness of his speech. Nort objected faintly, but was borne along by a will stronger than his own. They stepped into the woods and walked silently side by side until they came to an opening near the edge of a field. Here there were beech trees with spaces around them, and the ground was softly clad in new green bracken and carpeted with leaves. Nort felt a kind of cold horror which he could not understand. "Fergus," he said, again trying to speak lightly, "it was you I saw looking in at David's window." "It was," said Fergus. "I couldna let ye escape me." They had now paused, and in spite of himself Nort was facing Fergus. "We must ha' it oot between us, Nort," said Fergus. "What do you mean? I don't understand." "Yes, ye do." Nort looked up at him suddenly. "Anthy?" "You've said it; ye ain't fit fer her, an' ye know it." Nort turned deadly pale. "Fergus," he said, "do you--have you----" "I promised Anthy's father I'd look after her, an' I wull." "But, Fergus, what have you got against me? I thought we were friends." "What's friendship to do wi' it? Ye ain't good enough for Anthy: an' I wull na' ha' ye breakin' her heart. Who are ye that ye should be lookin' upon a girl like that?" Fergus's voice was shaking with emotion. "Well, I know I'm not good enough, Fergus, you're right about that. No one is, I think. But I--I love her, Fergus." "Ye love her: ye think ye do: next week ye'll think ye don't." At this a flame of swift anger swept over Nort. "If I love her and she loves me, who else has got anything to say about it I'd like to know?" "Wull, I have," said Fergus grimly. Nort laughed, a nervous, fevered laugh, and threw out his arms in a gesture of impatience. "Well, what do you want me to do?" "Go away," said Fergus, "go away and let her alone. Go back whur ye come from, an' break no hearts." Although the words were gruff and short, there was a world of pleading in them, too. Fergus had no desire to hurt Nort, but he wanted to get him away forever from Hempfield. It was only Anthy that he had in mind. He must save Anthy. Nort felt this note of appeal, and answered in kind: "I can't do it, Fergus, and you have no right to ask me. If Anthy tells me to go, I will go. It is between us. Can't you see it?" "Wull," said Fergus, hopelessly, "you an' me must ha' it oot." With this, Fergus turned about and began to take off his coat. Nort remembered long afterward the look of Fergus deliberately taking off his coat--his angular, bony form, his wiry, freckled neck, his rough, red hair, his loose sleeves held up by gayly embroidered armlets, the trousers bagging in extremity at his knees. Even in that moment he felt a curious deep sense of pity, pity mingled with understanding, sweep over him. He had come some distance in the few short hours since Anthy's face had looked up into his. Fergus laid his coat and hat at the trunk of a beech tree and began slowly to roll up his sleeves. "Will ye fight wi' yer coat on or off?" Nort suddenly laughed aloud. It was unbelievable, ridiculous! Why, it was uncivilized! It simply wasn't done in the world he had known. Nort had never in his life been held down to an irrevocable law or principle, never been confronted by an unescapable fact of life. Some men go through their whole lives that way. He had never met anything from which there was not some easy, safe, pleasant, polite way out--his wit, his family connections, his money. But now he was looking into the implacable, steel-blue eyes of Fergus MacGregor. "But, Fergus," he said, "I don't want to fight. I like you." "There's them that _has_ to fight," responded Fergus. "I never fought anybody in my life," said Nort, as though partly to himself. "That may be the trouble wi' ye." Fergus continued, like some implacable fate, getting ready. He was now hitching up his belt. Every artistic nature sooner or later meets some such irretrievable human experience. It asks only to see life, to look on, to enjoy. But one day this artistic nature makes the astonishing discovery that nature plays no favourites, that life is, after all, horribly concrete, democratic, little given to polite discrimination, and it gets itself suddenly taken seriously, literally, and dragged by the heels into the grime and common coarseness of things. Nort was still inclined to argue, for it did not seem real to him. "It won't prove anything, Fergus, fighting never does." "'Fraid, are ye?" "Yes," said Nort, "horribly." And yet at the very moment that Nort was saying that he was horribly afraid, and he spoke the literal truth, a very strange procession of thoughts was passing swiftly through the back of his mind. He was somehow standing aside and seeing himself as he was at that moment, seeing, indeed, every detail of the scene before him like a picture, every tree and leaf, the carpet of leaves and bracken, seeing Fergus moving about. Yes, and he was laughing, away back there, at the picture he saw, and wondering at it, and thrilling over it, at the very moment that he was so horribly afraid. He was even speculating, back there, a little cynically, whether he, Nort, would finally stay to fight or run away. He actually did not know! Fergus's dull, direct, geologic mind could not possibly have imagined what was passing nimbly behind those frightened, boyish blue eyes. Fergus was moving straight ahead in the path he had planned, and, on the whole, placidly. What a blessing in this world is a reasonable amount of dulness! Having prepared himself, Fergus now stepped forward. Nort stood perfectly still, his arms hanging slack at his sides, his face as pale as marble, his eyes widening as Fergus approached. "I can't see any reason for fighting," he was saying. "Why should you fight me?" "Wull, we needna fight--if ye'll go away." For one immense moment Nort saw himself running away, and with an incredible inner sense of relief and comfort. He wanted to run, intended to run, but somehow he could not. He was afraid to fight, but somehow he was still more afraid to run. And then, with a blinding flash he thought of Anthy. What would she say if she saw him running? At that moment Fergus struck him lightly on the cheek. It was like an electric shock to Nort. He stiffened in every muscle, red flashes passed before his eyes, his throat twisted hard and dry, and the tears came up to his eyes. In another moment he was grappling with Fergus, striking wildly, blindly. And he was, curiously, no longer confused. An incredible clearness of purpose swept over him. This purpose was to _kill_ Fergus. There was to be no longer any foolery about it; he was going to kill him. If Fergus had known what Nort was thinking at that moment he would have been horrified and shocked beyond measure. Fergus had not the most distant intent of injuring Nort seriously. He did not even hate him, but, I fully believe, really loved him, and was going through this disagreeable business quite coldly. As he received Nort's impetuous assault, he smiled with a sort of high exultation and found words to remark: "The mair haste, Nort, the waur speed." With that he hit out squarely with his wiry, muscular arm--just once--and Nort went down in the bracken and lay quite still. Fergus stood looking down at him: the silent face upturned, very white, very boyish, very beautiful, the soft hair tumbling about his temples, the lax arms spread out among the leaves. And all around the still woods, and quiet fields, and the robins singing, and the sun coming up over the hill. As Fergus looked down his breast began to heave and the tears came into his eyes. "The bonnie, bonnie lad," he said; "he wadna run awa'." Presently Nort stirred uneasily. "Where am I?" he asked. "Come, now," said Fergus tenderly, "we'll get down ta the brook." With one arm around him, Fergus helped him through the woods, and knelt beside him while he dashed the cold water over his face and head. "I hit ye hard," said Fergus, "and it's likely yer eye'll be blackened." Nort sat down with his back to a tree trunk. He was sick and dizzy. It seemed to him that the thing he wanted most in all the world was to be left alone. "I'm going away, Fergus. Leave me here. I shall not go back to Hempfield." Fergus offered no excuses, suggested no change in plan. It was working out exactly as he intended: he was sorry for Nort, but this was his duty. He made Nort as comfortable as he could, and then set off toward town. As he proceeded, he stepped faster and faster. He began to feel a curious exaltation of spirit. It was the greatest moment of his whole life. If you had seen him at that moment, with his head lifted high, you would scarcely have known him. As the town came into view, with the eastern sun upon it, Fergus burst out in a voice as wild and harsh as a bagpipe: "Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha will fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee!" For that which followed I make no excuse, nor think I need to, but I must tell it, for it is a part of the history of Hempfield and of the life of Fergus MacGregor. Ours is a temperance town, and Fergus MacGregor a temperate man; but that morning Fergus was seen going over the hill beyond the town, unsteady in the legs, and still singing. He did not appear at the office of the _Star_ all that day. As for Nort, he lay for a long time there at the foot of the beech tree, miserably sick in body and soul--dozing off from time to time, and trying to think, dumbly, what was left to him in the world. He was as deep in the depths that morning as he had been high in the heavens the evening before. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIV TWO LETTERS I can imagine just how Nort looked, sitting in the bare room of the Bedlow Hotel of Hewlett, biting the end of his pen and struggling furiously with his letter to Anthy. In one moment he would let himself go the limit: "My dearest Anthy, I shall never see you again, and I can therefore tell you with the more freedom of my undying love----" and at the next moment he would hold himself to the strictest restraint: "My dear Miss Doane" or "Dear Miss Doane." Half the letters he wrote were too long, or too wild, or too passionate, and the other half were too short or too cold. Before he got through, the table and floor all about him were drifted white with torn scraps of his correspondence. His face was pale and his hair was rumpled. For almost the first time in his life he was in such deadly earnest, so altogether miserable, that he could not even stand aside and see himself with any degree of interest or satisfaction. This was the real thing. He had firmly made up his mind as to his course. He would no longer think and talk about doing something great and heroic for Anthy. He would really do it. And he had settled upon quite the most heroic thing he could think of--this extraordinary young man--and this was to leave Hempfield, and to see no more of Anthy. Fergus was undoubtedly right. He was not worthy of Anthy, and his presence and his love would be a hindrance rather than a help to her. Whatever Nort did in those days he did to the utter extremity. And this was the letter he finally sent: MY DEAR MISS DOANE: I am hopelessly unfortunate in everything I do. I do nothing but blunder. I hope you will not think ill of me. Fergus is right. In leaving Hempfield, not to return, I am leaving everything in the world that means anything to me. I hope you will at least set this down to the credit of NORTON CARR. I was in the office of the _Star_ when Nort's letter arrived. I saw Anthy pause a moment, standing very still by her desk. I saw her open the letter slowly, and then, after reading it, hold it hard in her hand, which she unconsciously lifted to her breast. I saw her turn and walk out of the office, a curious rapt expression upon her face. As she entered the familiar hallway of her home, she told me afterward, everything seemed strange to her and terribly lonely. A day's time had changed the aspect of the world. She sat down in the study at the little desk where she had found solace so often in writing letters to Mr. Lincoln. But she was not thinking now of writing any such letter: indeed, the door had already closed upon this phase of her imaginative life, as it had closed on other and earlier phases. She never wrote another letter to Mr. Lincoln. She was not outwardly excited, nor did she tear up a single sheet of notepaper, nor give any attention to the form of address. Her letter was exactly like herself--simple, direct, and straight out of her heart. She had no need of making any changes, for this was all she had to say: DEAR NORT: Why have you gone away from Hempfield, and where are you? Just at the moment I found you, and found myself, you have gone away. Is it anything I have done, or have not done? It seems to me, as I look back, that I have been fast asleep all the years, until last night when you wakened me. I know I am awake, because everything I see to-day is changed from what it was yesterday; everything is more beautiful and nobler--and sadder. When I went down this morning I seemed to see a new Hempfield. I loved it even more than I loved the old Hempfield, and as I met the children on their way to school I had a new feeling for them, too. They seemed very dear to me. I did not find you at the office, but my heart kept saying to me, "Nort will soon be here.... In a moment Nort will be coming in." Whenever I heard a step on the porch I said, "It is surely Nort," but you did not come. I think the office never seemed so wonderful to me as it did to-day, for the thought that you had been there, and would be there again. Everything reminded me of you, of the way you looked, and of what you did, and how your voice sounded. And then your letter came. Why have you gone away from Hempfield? I could not make it any plainer last night, Nort. I did not understand it fully myself, until afterward. Don't you see? I have nothing to give that is not yours for the asking. Come back, for I love you, Nort. ANTHY. This letter, which I did not know about until long afterward, was never sent, for Anthy had no way of addressing it. That evening, rereading Nort's letter, she said aloud: "What does he mean by saying Fergus is right? What has Fergus to do with it? Where _is_ Fergus?" [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV THE FLYING-MACHINE If it had not been for a surprising and amusing event which somewhat relieved the depression in the office of the _Star_ of Hempfield, the following weeks would certainly have been among the most dismal of my life. All the elasticity and interest and illusion seemed to have departed from us when Nort disappeared. Every one, except the old Captain, who was like a raging lion, was constrained and mysterious. It would have been amusing if it had not been so serious. Each of us was nursing a mystery, each was speculating, suspicious. The only one of us who seemed to get any satisfaction out of the situation was Ed Smith. I think he was unaffectedly glad that Nort was gone. It left the field clear for him, and on the Saturday night after Nort left, Ed put on his hat just as Anthy was leaving the office and quite casually walked home with her. He ran on exactly as he had always done--chat about the business, and town gossip, which always gravitated toward the personal and intimate, and, finally, if there was half an opportunity, descended to the little soft jokes and purrings of sentimentality. He followed Anthy up the steps of her home, and stood, hat in hand, still talking, and half expecting to be invited in to supper. He did observe that she was silent--but then she was never very talkative. He saw nothing in her face, nothing in her eye, that he had not seen before. But to Anthy, Ed Smith appeared in a wholly new light. Through all the experiences and turmoil in the office of the _Star_ Ed had not changed in the least, and never would change. He was the sort of person, and the world is full of them, who is made all of a piece and once for all, who is not changed by contact with life, and who, if he possesses any marks of personality at all, takes on in time a somewhat comical aspect. One comes to grin when he sees him wandering among immortal events with such perfect aplomb, such unchangeable satisfaction. As Anthy looked now at Ed Smith, it seemed to her that she had travelled an immeasurable distance since she had left college, since she took hold of the _Star_, since she first knew Ed Smith and had even been mildly interested in having him call upon her. She saw everything about her life, the career of the old Captain, the recent events in the history of the _Star_, with incredible clearness. Everything before had been hazy, unreal, dreamlike. Fergus was by turns depressed and exultant, extremely silent or extremely loquacious (for him). Anthy felt certain that he had some knowledge concerning Nort that he was concealing, but she shrank curiously from asking him. It was in this moment of strain and depression that Hempfield passed through one of its most notable experiences, and the old Captain established himself still more firmly upon the pinnacle of his faith in what he loved to call "immutable laws." Imagine what it must have meant to a tranquil old village, settled in its habits, with a due sense of its own dignity and of the proprieties of life, unaccustomed to surprises of any kind, to behold, upon looking up into the sky on a pleasant spring afternoon, a sight which not even the oldest inhabitant, not even the oldest hills, had ever beheld, to wit, a flying-machine soaring through the air. With the sunlight flashing upon its wings it was as beautiful and light as some great bird, and it purred as it flew like a live thing. All Hempfield ran into the streets and opened its mouth to the heavens. Even old Mrs. Dana, who could not leave her chair, threw open the window and craned her head outward to catch a glimpse of the miracle. Marvel of marvels, the flyer circled gracefully in two great spirals above the town, and then disappeared across the hills toward Hewlett. We held our breath until we could not even see the black speck in the sky, and then we all began to talk at once. We told one another in detail about our impressions and emotions. We described our feeling when we first saw the wonder, we told exactly what we were doing and thinking about, we explained what we said to George Andrews, and how comical Ned Boston looked. It was Joe Crane, the liveryman, who rushed into the office of the _Star_ with the great news. In the simplicity and credulity of our faith we all turned out instantly to see the wonder in the sky, all except the old Captain. The old Captain was deep in the preparation of an editorial demolishing the Democratic party, and expressing his undying allegiance to the high protective tariff. When Joe Crane stuck his head in at the door, he merely glanced around with an aspect of large compassion. Had he not, again and again in the columns of the _Star_, proved the utter absurdity of attempting to fly? Had he not shown that human flight was contrary, not only to immutable natural laws, but to the moral law as well? For over five thousand years men had lived upon this planet, and if the Creator had intended his children to fly, would he not have provided wings for them? [Illustration: "Toys!" "Mere circus tricks to take in fools!"] It did not shake the old Captain in the least when accounts of flying-machines--with pictures--began to appear in the newspapers and magazines. He passed grandly over them with a snort. "Toys!" "Mere circus tricks to take in fools!" And if pressed a little too hard, and there were those who delighted in slyly prodding the Captain with innocent remarks about flying-machines, until it had become not a little of a town joke, he would clear the air with an explosive "Fudge!" and go calmly about his business. When the supreme test came, and we credulous ones all rushed out of the office, and craned our necks, and searched the ancient sky for the miracle, the old Captain stood staunchly by his faith. It couldn't be so, therefore it wasn't--a doctrine which, I am convinced, leads to much satisfaction and comfort in this world. The old Captain was, upon the whole, a happy man. The _Star_, therefore, remained oblivious to the most interesting event that had taken place in Hempfield for many a day. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVI THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL Nevertheless, the flying-machine episode played its part in the history of the _Star_. Facts are like that. We refuse quite disdainfully to recognize them, even crying "Fudge!" and "Nonsense!" and decline to put them in the _Star_, or the _Sun_, or the _World_, or even in the sober _Journal of the Society for the Enlargement of Human Heads_, but they don't mind. They circle around us, with the sunshine flashing on their wings, and all the simple and credulous people gaping up at them, and they don't in the least care for our excellent platforms, constitutions, and Bibles. It was the flying-machine incident which was the immediate cause of the return of Norton Carr. It was foreordained and likewise predestined that he should return, but there had to be some proximate event. And what better than a wandering flying-machine? It was on a Sunday in May, such a perfect still morning as seems to come only at that moment of the spring, and upon Sunday. I was sitting here at my desk at the open window, busily writing. I could feel the warm, sweet air of spring blowing in, I could hear the pleasant, subdued noises from the barnyard, and by leaning just a little back I could see the hens lazily fluffing their feathers in the sunny doorway of the barn. I love such mornings. The tender new shoots of the Virginia creeper were uncurling themselves at the window ledge and feeling their way upward toward freedom--and Nort put his head in among them. "Hello, David!" Though I had just been thinking of him, the sound of his voice startled me. I looked around and saw him smiling very much in his old way. "Nort, you rascal!" said I. [Illustration: "I couldn't stay away another minute. I had to know what the old Captain said and did when the flying-machine came to Hempfield"] "David," he said, "I couldn't stay away another minute. I had to know what the old Captain said and did when the flying-machine came to Hempfield." "Is that all you came back for?" "May I come in?" And with that he climbed in at the window. I took him by both his shoulders and looked him in the eye. I had a curious sense of gladness in having him once more under my hand. "You look thin, Nort, but I haven't any pity or sympathy for you. What have you been up to now?" We both forgot all about the flying-machine. "Well, David," said he, "I've been finding out some things I didn't know before--some things I can't do." He was in a mood wholly unfamiliar to me, a sort of restrained, sad, philosophical mood. "You know," he continued, "I had a great idea for a novel----" He paused and looked up at me, smiling rather sheepishly. "Well, I started it----" "You have!" "Yes, I got the first two paragraphs written. And there I stuck. You see I didn't know where to get hold; and then I thought I'd jump right into the middle of the action, where it was hottest and most interesting--but I found that my hero insisted on explaining everything to the heroine, and wouldn't _do_ anything, and then, when I tried to think how I should have it all come out, I found it didn't have any end, either. I leave it to you, David, how any man is going to write a novel which he can neither get into nor get out of?" His face wore such a rueful, humorous look that I laughed aloud. "It looks funny, I know," he said, "but it's really no laughing matter. It seems to me I'm a complete fizzle." "At twenty-five, Nort! And all this beautiful world around you! Why, you've only to reach out your hand and take what you want." I shall never forget the look on Nort's face as he leaned forward in his chair, nor the words that seemed to be wrung out of his very soul: "That's all right as philosophy, David, but I--want--Anthy." I suppose I had known it all along, and should not have been surprised or pained, and yet it was a moment before I could reply. "Take her then, Nort," I said, "if you're big enough. But you can't steal her, as they once stole their women; and you can't buy her, as they do still." Nort looked at me steadily. "How, then?" "You've got to win her, earn her. She's as able to take care of herself as you are." "I guess it's hopeless enough. There isn't much chance that a girl like Anthy will see anything in a perfectly useless chap like me." We sat for some time silent, Nort there in the chair at the end of the table, I here by the window, and the warm air of spring coming in laden with the heavy sweet odour of lilac blossoms. And I had a feeling at the moment as though my hand were upon the destinies of two lives. I don't know yet quite why I did it, but I leaned over presently and opened the drawer in my desk where I keep my greatest treasures, and took out a small package of letters. It was my prize possession, the knowledge I had of the deep things in Anthy's life, a possession that I had never thought I could share with any one, and yet at that moment it seemed to me I wanted most of all to have Nort know with what a high and precious thing he was dealing--the noble heart of a good woman. So I gave him a glimpse of the Anthy I knew, told him about the secret post-office box behind the portrait of Lincoln in the study of her father's home, and of the letters she wrote and posted there. Then I opened one of the letters and handed it to him. I watched him as he read it, his hand trembling just a little. At last he looked up at me--with his bare soul in his eyes. He got up slowly from his chair and looked all about him, and then he said in a low voice, as if to himself: "She was in here once, in this room, in this chair." I have never been quite sure what Nort's mental processes were at that moment, but at least they were swift, and as terribly serious as only youth knows how to be. And absurd? Probably. "David," he said, "I'm going away." "Going away? Why?" "David," said he, "I don't suppose there was ever in this world such a great character as Anthy--I mean such a _truly_ great character." He paused, looking at me intensely. If I had known that the next moment was to be my last I should still have laughed, laughed irresistibly. It was the moment when the high mood became unbearable. Moreover, I had a sudden vision of Anthy herself, in her long gingham apron, going sensibly, cheerfully, about the printing-office, a stick of type in her hand, and, very likely, a smudge of printer's ink on her nose! Why do such visions smite us at our most solemn moments? Nort was taken aback at my laughter, and evidently provoked. "I couldn't help it, Nort," I said. "I wonder if Anthy herself wouldn't laugh if she were to hear you say such things." "That's so," said Nort. "She _would_. I've never known any one, man or woman, who had such a keen sense of humour as Anthy has." "Sensible, too, Nort----" "Sensible!" he exclaimed. "I should rather say so! I have never seen any one in my life who was as sensible--I mean _sound_ and _wise_--as Anthy is." Two months before, Nort himself would have been the first to laugh at such a situation as this: he would have laughed at himself, at me, and even at Anthy, but now he was in no such mood. I prize the memory of that moment; it was one of those rare times in life when it is given us to see a human spirit at the moment of its greatest truth, simplicity, passion. And is it not a worthy moment when everything that is selfish in a human heart is consumed in the white heat of a great emotion? Toward noon, when Harriet came in, greatly astonished to find a visitor with me, Nort quite shocked her by jumping up from his chair and seizing her by both hands. "I'm terribly glad to see you, Miss Grayson," he said. During dinner he seemed unable to tell whether he was eating chicken or pie, and no sooner were we through than he insisted upon hurrying away. He pledged me to secrecy concerning his whereabouts, but left his address. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVII FERGUS MACGREGOR GOES TO THE HILLS I think of no act in all the drama of the _Star_ of Hempfield with greater affection, return in memory to none with deeper pleasure, than that which now opened upon the narrow stage of our village life. It centred around Nort and Anthy, of course, but it began with the old Captain, and about a week after Nort's visit at the farm. The old Captain was sick in bed with one of his periodical "attacks." The old Captain was a man of great robustity and activity of both body and mind, and he made no docile invalid. At one moment he seemed to be greatly depressed, groaned a good deal, and considered that he had not long to live; but at the next moment he would become impatient, and want to be up immediately and save the nation from the ravages of the Democratic party. I went over to see him on the second day of his illness, and the first thing he said when I came in was this: "Where's Nort? I'd like to know what's become of the boy. I never thought he'd leave Hempfield without at least saying good-bye. It isn't like him." In writing to Nort that night, I told him of my visit to the old Captain and what the Captain said, and on the second morning, when I walked into the office of the _Star_, what was my astonishment to see Nort down on his knees tinkering the gasoline engine. Fergus was sitting stiffly on his stool, with his old green shade over his eyes. I learned afterward the exact circumstances of the meeting between the two men. Nort had walked in quite as usual, and hung his coat on the customary hook. "Hello, Fergus!" he said, also quite as usual. Fergus looked around at him, and said nothing at all. Nort walked over to the stone, took up a stickful of type, and began to distribute it in the cases. Presently he looked around at Fergus with a broad smile on his face. "Fergus, where's the fatted calf?" "Humph!" remarked Fergus. When Nort got down for another take of the type, Fergus observed to the general atmosphere: "The old engine's out of order." Nort stepped impulsively toward Fergus's case, and said with wistful affection in his voice: "I knew, Fergus, that you'd kill the fatted calf for me!" "Humph!" observed Fergus. And that was why I found Nort bending over the engine when I came in, whistling quite in his old way. The moment he saw me, he forestalled any remark by inquiring: "How's the Cap'n to-day?" Anthy did not come to the office at all that morning, and toward noon I saw Nort rummaging among the exchanges and, having found what he wanted, he put on his hat and went out. He walked straight up the street to the homestead of the Doanes--his legs shaking under him. At the gate he paused and looked up, seriously considered running away, and went in and knocked at the door. By some fortunate circumstance Anthy had seen him at the gate, and now came to the door quite calmly. "How's the Captain?" asked Nort, controlling his voice with difficulty. "David wrote me that he was sick. I thought I might cheer him up." "Won't you come in?" At that moment the old Captain's voice was heard from upstairs, booming vigorously: "Is that Nort? Come up, Nort!" Anthy smiled. She was now perfectly self-possessed, and it was Nort, the assured, the self-confident, who had become hopelessly awkward and uncertain. "Come up, Nort!" called the old Captain. When he entered the bedroom, the old Captain was propped up on the pillows, his thick white hair brushed back from his noble head. He was evidently very much better. "Captain," said Nort, instantly, before the old Captain had a moment to express his surprise, "have you seen the Sterling _Democrat_ this week?" "No," said the Captain, starting up in bed. "What's that man Kendrick been doing now?" "Listen to this," said Nort, pulling the paper out of his pocket and opening it with a vast simulation of excitement, and reading the heading aloud: "_Where was Captain Doane when the flying-machine visited Hempfield?_" "Why, the scoundrel!" exclaimed the old Captain, this time sitting straight up in bed, "the arrant scoundrel!" As Nort read the paragraph the old Captain sank back on the pillows, and when it was over he remarked in a tone of broad tolerance: "Nort, what can you expect of a Democrat, anyway?" He lay musing for a minute or two, and then called out in a loud voice: "Anthy, I'm going to get up." The old war horse had sniffed the breeze of battle. When Nort went out, he saw nothing of Anthy. Never were there such puzzling days as those which followed. To all outward appearance the life in the office of the _Star_ had been restored to its former humdrum. The incident of Nort's disappearance was as if it had not happened. The business of printing a country newspaper proceeded with the utmost decorum. And yet there was a difference--a difference in Nort. He was in a mood unlike anything we had seen before. He was much less boyish, more dignified, dignified at times to the point of being almost amusing. Once or twice he thoughtlessly broke out with some remark that suggested his old enthusiasm--but caught himself instantly. Also, he had very little to say to Anthy, did not once offer to walk home with her, and seemed to be most friendly of all with the old Captain. Also, I found that he was often in the office at night, sometimes writing furiously, and sometimes reading from a big solid book--which he seemed so unwilling for us to see that he carried it home with him every night. I was greatly puzzled, but not more puzzled and disturbed than Anthy was. To her simple, direct nature Nort's moods were inexplicable; and after what had happened, his mysterious attitude toward her troubled and hurt her deeply. Two or three times when we happened to be alone together I felt certain that she was leading up to the subject, and, finally, one evening when I had gone out with the old Captain to supper, and Anthy and I were walking afterward in the little garden behind the house, it came to the surface. There was an old garden seat at the end of the path, with clambering rose vines, now in full leaf, but not in blossom, upon it. It was a charming spot, with an ancient apple tree not far away, and all around it a garden of old-fashioned flowers. We sat down on the seat. "David," she said, evidently with some effort, "I'm puzzled about Norton Carr. What has come over him? He's so different." "I'm puzzled, too," I said, "but probably not so much as you are. I think I know the real cause of the trouble." Anthy looked around at me, but I did not turn my head. The evening shadows were falling. I felt again that I was in the presence of high events. "He seems so preoccupied," she continued finally. "Yes, I've wondered what book it is he is reading so industriously." "Oh, I saw that," she said. "What was it?" I asked eagerly. "Nicolay and Hay's 'Life of Abraham Lincoln.'" It struck me all in a heap, and I laughed aloud--and yet I heard of Nort's reading not without a thrill. "What _is_ the matter?" asked Anthy. "What does it all mean?" I had very much the feeling at that moment that I had when I took Anthy's letters from my desk to show to Nort, as though I was about to share a great and precious treasure with Anthy. So I told her, very quietly, about Nort's visit to me and some of the things he said. She sat very still, her hands lying in her lap, her eyes on some shadowy spot far across the garden. I paused, wondering how much I dared tell. "I don't know, Anthy, that I was doing right," I said, "but I wanted him to know something of you as you really are. So I told him about your letters to Lincoln, and showed him one of them." She flushed deeply. "You _couldn't_, David!" "Yes, I did--and that may explain why he's reading the life of Lincoln. Maybe he's trying to imitate Lincoln." "Imitate Lincoln----" The sound of her voice as she said these words I think will never go quite out of my memory: it was so soft and deep, so tremulous. And then something happened that I cannot fully explain, nor think of without a thrill. Anthy turned quickly toward me, looked at me through shiny tears, and put her head quickly and impulsively down upon my shoulder. "Oh, David," she said, "I love you!" But I knew well what she meant. It was that great moment in a woman's life when in loving the loved one she loves all the world. She was not thinking that moment of me, dear though I might have been to her as a friend, but of Nort--of Nort. It was only a moment, and then she leaned quickly back, looking at me with starry eyes and a curious trembling lift of the lips. "But David," she said, "I don't _want_ him like Lincoln." The thought must have raised in her mind some vision of the sober-sided Nort of the last few weeks, for she began to laugh again. I cannot describe it, for it was a laughter so compounded of tenderness, joy, sympathy, amusement, that it fairly set one's heart to vibrating. There was no part of Anthy--sweet, strong, loving--that was not in that laugh. "I don't _want_ him like Lincoln," she said. "What do you want him like?" I asked. "Why exactly like himself, like Nort." "But I thought you rather distrusted his flightiness." She was hugging herself with her arms, and rocking a little back and forth. An odd wrinkle came in her forehead. "David, I did--I do--but somehow I like it--I love it." She paused. "It seems to me I like _everything_ about Nort." Do you realize that such beautiful things as these are going on all around us, in an evil and trouble-ridden old world? That in nearly all lives there are such perfect moments? Only we don't remember them. We grow old and wrinkled and sick; we bicker with those we love; it grows harder to remember, easier to forget. I was going to say that this was the end of the story of the _Star_ of Hempfield, but I know better, of course. It was only the beginning. "Nort, my boy, I knew it, I knew it!" said the old Captain, when Anthy and Nort told him, though as a matter of fact he had never dreamed of such a thing until two minutes before. [Illustration: Fergus stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's poems in his pocket--and going out of the back door struck out for the hills] Fergus saw Nort and Anthy come in together, and knew without being told. He sat firmly on his stool until they went out again, so absorbed in their own happiness that they never noticed him at all, and then he climbed down and took off his apron deliberately. He felt about absently for his friendly pipe, put it slowly in his mouth, but did not light it. He stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's poems in his pocket--and going out of the back door struck out for the hills. The next morning he was back on his stool again just as usual. It would have been impossible to print the _Star_ of Hempfield without Fergus MacGregor. * * * * * On a June day I finish this narrative and lay down my pen. An hour ago I walked along the lane to the top of my pasture to take a look at the distant town. In the meadows the red clover is in full blossom, the bobolinks are hovering and singing over the low spots, and the cattle are feeding contentedly in all the pastures. I have never seen the wild raspberry bushes setting such a wealth of fruit, nor the blackberries so full of bloom. The grass is nearly ripe for the cutting. At the top of the hill I stood for a long time looking off across the still countryside toward the town.... It is here, after all, that I belong! I come to the end of the narrative of the _Star_ of Hempfield with an indescribable sadness of regret. So much I proposed myself when I set out to write the story of my friends; and so very little have I accomplished! I can see now that I have not taken all of Hempfield--no, not the half of it--nor even all of my friends; but perhaps I have taken all that I could, all that was mine. As I came down the hill my mind went out warmly toward the printing-office of the _Star_ of Hempfield, and I thought of the pleasant old garden in front of it, of the curious bird house, built like a miniature Parthenon at the gable end, where the wrens were now rearing their broods, I thought of Dick, the canary, and of Tom, the cat, sleeping comfortably, as I so often saw him, in a patch of sunlight on the floor--and then, like a great wave of friendly warmth, came the full realization of my friends there in the office of the _Star_ of Hempfield, so that I seemed to see them living before my eyes. I thought of how we had worked together for so many months, how we had enjoyed one another, had been thrust apart and drawn together again, had changed, indelibly, one another's inmost lives, and so played our little parts for a brief time upon the stage of life in a country town. As I came down the hill, reflecting upon all these things, I found myself repeating aloud the words of Miranda: "Oh wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't." And so my narrative must close. Friendly town of Hempfield! Even if I write no more about you I shall still feel your presence just beyond the hills. On calm mornings from the top of my pasture I shall see the smoke of your friendly fires, and when the wind favours on sunny Sabbath mornings I shall hear the distant and drowsy sweet sound of your bells. And Anthy and Nort, Fergus MacGregor, and Captain Doane, and Ed Smith--how I have enjoyed you all and all I have known of you! As I look back to the time before I knew you the world seems small and cold, and even the hills and the fields and the town somehow less admirable. I shall not easily let you go out of my life! And twinkling _Star_ of Hempfield--may you long continue to illuminate this small corner of the world! THE END 
55535	----	MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6/- THE SACRIFICE. (Also a SIXPENNY EDITION.) EVE'S APPLE. HENRY IN SEARCH OF A WIFE. UNCLE POLPERRO. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD BY ALPHONSE COURLANDER [Illustration] LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN ADELPHI TERRACE 1913 _First Edition_ _May 1912_ _Second Impression_ _July 1912_ _Third Impression_ _October 1913_ [_All Rights Reserved_] CONTENTS PART I EASTERHAM 9 PART II LILIAN 71 PART III ELIZABETH 199 PART IV PARIS 281 PART I EASTERHAM MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD I If you had been standing on a certain cold night in January opposite the great building where _The Day_ is jewelled in electric lights across the dark sky, you would have seen a little, stout man run down the steps of the entrance at the side, three at a time, land on the pavement as if he were preparing to leap the roadway, with the sheer impetus of the flight of steps behind him, and had suddenly thought better of it, glance hurriedly at the big, lighted clock whose hands, formed of the letters _T-H-E D-A-Y_, in red and green electric lights, showed that it was nearly half-past twelve, and suddenly start off in a terrible hurry towards Chancery Lane, as though pursued by some awful thing. Considering the bulkiness of the little man, he ran remarkably well. He dodged a light newspaper van that was coming recklessly round Fetter Lane, for there was none of the crowded traffic of daylight to be negotiated, and then, he turned the corner of Chancery Lane--and there you would have seen the last of him. He would have vanished from your life, a stumpy little man, with an umbrella popped under one arm, a bundle of papers grasped in his hand, a hat jammed down on his head, and the ends of a striped muffler floating in the breeze of his own making. The sight of a man running, even in these days when life itself goes with a rush, is sufficient to awaken comment in the mind of the onlooker. It suggests pursuit, the recklessness of other days; it impels, instinctively, the cry of "Stop, thief," for no man runs unless he is hunted by a powerful motive. Therefore it may be assumed that since I have sent a man bolting hard out of your sight up the lamp-lit avenue of Chancery Lane, you are wondering why the devil he's in such a hurry. Well, he was hurrying because the last train to Shepherd's Bush goes at 12.35, and, as he had been away from home since ten o'clock that morning, he was rather anxious to get back. He could not afford a cab fare, though only a few hours ago he had been eating oysters, bisque soup, turbot, pheasant, asparagus out of season and pêche Melba at the Savoy Hotel with eighteenpence in his pocket--and the odd pence had gone to the waiter and the cloakroom man. So that by the time he had reached the top of Chancery Lane, dashed across the road and through the door of the station, where a porter would have slammed the grille in another second, and bought his ticket with an explosive, panting "Bush," he had just tenpence left. The lift-man knew him, nodded affably and said: "Just in time, Mr Pride." "A hard run," said Mr Pride; and then with a cheery smile, "never mind; good for the liver." There were only a few people in the lift--four men and a woman to be precise. He knew the men as casual acquaintances of the last tube train. There was Denning, a sporting sub-editor on _The Lantern_; another was a proof-reader on one of the afternoon papers, who finished work in the evening but never went home before the last tube; then there was Harlem, the librarian of _The Day_, an amazing man who spoke all the European languages, and some of the Asiatic ones after his fifth glass of beer; the fourth was a friend of Harlem, a moody young man who wore his hair long, smoked an evil-looking pipe, and seemed to be a little unsteady on his feet. As for the woman, Pride knew her well by sight. She had hair that was of an unreal yellow, and a latch-key dangled from her little finger as though it were a new kind of ring. She always got out at Tottenham Court Road. As the lift went down, its high complaining noise falling to a low buzzing sound seemed like the tired murmur of a weary human being glad that rest had come at last. The sound of the approaching train came rolling through the tunnel. They all rushed desperately down the short flight of steps that led to the platform, as the train came in with a rattle of doors opening and slamming, and scrambled for seats, while the uniformed men, who appeared to be the only thoroughly wide-awake people in the neighbourhood, said in the most contradictory fashion: "Stand clear of the gates," "Hurry on, please," and "Passengers off first." Pride found himself in the smoking carriage, opposite Harlem, with his young friend at his side. It never occurred to him that there was anything exceptional in his dash for the last train. He did it four nights out of the week, as a matter of course. He was fifty years old, though he pretended he was ten years younger, and shaved his face clean to keep up the illusion. He used to explain to his friends that he came of a family famous for baldness in early years. "Been busy?" asked Harlem, filling his pipe. "Nothing to speak of," said Pride. "Turned up at the office at eleven, but there was nothing doing until after lunch. Then I had to go and see Sir William Darton--they're going to start the Thames Steamboats again. He wasn't at home, and he wasn't in his office, but I found him at six o'clock in the Constitutional. Got back and found they'd sent home for my dress clothes, and left a nice little envelope with the ticket of the Canadian Dinner.... That's why I'm so late to-night...." Pride filled his own pipe, and sighed. "The old days are over!" he said. "They used to post our assignments overnight--'Dear Mr Pride, kindly do a quarter of a column of the enclosed meeting.' Why, _The Sentinel_ used to allow us five shillings every time we put on evening dress." "Well, _The Sentinel_ was a pretty dull paper before the Kelmscotts bought it and turned it into a halfpenny," said Harlem. "Look at it now, a nice, bright paper--oh, by the way, do you know Cannock," he jerked his head to the man at his side. "He's _The Sentinel's_ latest acquisition. This is Tommy Pride, one of the ancient bulwarks of _The Sentinel_, until they fired him. Now he's learning to be a halfpenny journalist." Pride looked at the young man. "I don't know about being the latest acquisition," Cannock said. "As a matter of fact, they've fired _me_ to-day." "It's a hobby of theirs now," Harlem remarked. "You'll get a job on _The Day_ if you ask for one. There's always room with us, ain't there, Tommy?" Pride looked wistfully at the clouds of blue smoke that rose from his lips.... Yes, he thought, there was always room on _The Day_--at any moment they might decide to make alterations in the staff. The fact of Cannock's being sacked mattered nothing; he was a young man, and for young men, knocking at the door of Fleet Street, there was always an open pathway. Think of the papers there were left to work for--the evenings and the dailies, and even when they were exhausted, perhaps a job on a weekly paper, or the editorship of one of the scores of penny and sixpenny magazines. And, after that, the provinces and the suburbs had their papers. Pride knew: in his long experience he had wandered from one paper to another, two years here, three years here, until the halfpenny papers had brought a new type of journalist into the street. "Married?" asked Pride. "Not me!" replied Cannock, with a slight hiccough. "Well, you're all right. You can free-lance if you want to." "Oh, it's no good to me," Cannock said. "It's a dog's life anyhow, and I've only had two months of it. I'm going back to my guv'nor's business." "Ah," said Pride, "there's no use wasting sympathy on you. Why did you ever leave it? What's his business?" "That," Cannock laughed gaily and pointed to a poster as the train stopped at Tottenham Court Road Station. It was a great picture of barrels and barrels of beer, piled one above the other, reaching away into the far distance. Thousands of barrels under a vaulted roof. And in the foreground were little figures of men in white aprons with red jersey caps on their heads, rolling in more barrels, with their arms bared to the elbows. Across the picture in large letters Pride could read: "Cannock Brothers, Holloway. Cannock's Entire." "Why, your people are worth millions!" Pride said. "What on earth are you doing in journalism." "I know they are. That's what I was thinking of yesterday. I wondered how on earth they got anybody to do the work." "Well, you won't mind me, I'm sure," Pride said, leaning over to Cannock. "I'm older than you, and I belong to what they call the old school of journalism. This isn't the lovely life some people think it must be, and it's going to get worse each year. We've got to fight for our jobs every day of our life. 'Making good,' they call it. I'm used to it," he said defiantly, looking at Harlem, "I like it.... I couldn't do anything else. I'm not fit for anything else. It has its lazy moments, too, and its moments of excitement and thrills. No, my son, you go back to the brewery, there's more money in it for you and all the glory you want with your name plastered over every bottle and on all the walls. Ask five hundred men in the street if they've ever heard of Tommy Pride. They've been reading things I've written every day, but they don't know who's written them. Ask 'em who's Cannock? Why, they'll turn mechanically into the nearest public-house and call for a bottle of you." "I used to think it would be jolly to be on a newspaper," Cannock said. "My guv'nor got me the job. He's something to do with the Kelmscotts." "So it is if you're meant to be on a newspaper. That's the trouble of fellows like you. You come out of nowhere, or from the 'Varsity, and get plunked right down in the heart of a London newspaper office--probably someone's fired to make room for you. You're friends of the editor and you think you're great men, until you find you're expected to take your turn with the rest. Then you grouse, because you're not meant for it. You've got appointments to keep at dinner-time, and you must get your meals regularly. Or you want to write fine stuff and be great star descriptive men at once, or go to Persia and Timbuctoo, and live on flam and signed articles. But, if you were meant to be a reporter, you'd hang round the news editor's room for any job that came along, you'd take any old thing that was given you, and do it without a murmur, and when you've done that for thirty years you might meet success, and stay on until they shoved you out of the office." He saw that Cannock was smiling, and seemed to read his thoughts. "Me?" he said. "Oh, you mustn't judge by me. I belong to the old school, you know. I'm the son of my father--he was a Gallery man, and died worth three hundred pounds, and that's more than I am. I'm one of the products of the last generation, and all I want is £2 a week and a cottage in the country." The little man relit his pipe, and puffed contentedly. "Lord! I should like that!" he said. "You're always frightened of being fired, Tommy," said Harlem. "You know well enough you're what we call a thoroughly reliable and experienced man, and Ferrol wouldn't have you sacked." "There's always that bogy," Pride answered with a laugh. "You never know what may happen. The only thing is to join the Newspaper Press Fund and trust in the Lord. None of the youngsters do either of these things to-day." Cannock and Harlem prepared to leave as the train slowed down before Marble Arch. "It's a rotten game," said Cannock. "I'm glad I'm out of it. Good-bye." Pride took his hand. "Good-bye." He saw them pass the window, and wave to him as they went under the lighted "Way Out" sign, and then he turned to his papers with a sigh. But somehow or other he did not read. He always carried papers about with him, through sheer force of habit, much as the under side of a tailor's coat lapel is bristling with pins. He had been with news all day; he had written some of it; he had read the same things in the different editions of the newspapers; he had left the street when they were printing more news; and the first thing he would do on waking up in the morning would be to reach out for a copy of _The Day_ which was brought with the morning tea. He did not read news as the average man does--he regarded it objectively, reading it without emotion. The march of the world, the daily happenings moved him as much as a packet of loose diamonds moves the jeweller who handles them daily, and weighs them to see their worth. He was thinking of Cannock, with his future all clear before him: Cannock, with beer woven into the fibre of his being, as news was in his. It must be rather fine to be independent like that.... Idly, he wondered what Cannock's guv'nor was like: did he admire these pictures of the vast hall crowded with beer barrels, enough to last London for a whole Saturday night, and ready to be filled up again for all the nights in the week.... He looked round the carriage at the faces of those who were travelling with him. Five boisterous young people were making themselves a noisy nuisance at one end of the carriage. Opposite him, in the seat lately occupied by Harlem, a working man was staring ahead of him with an empty wide stare as if, in a moment of absent-mindedness, his actual self had slipped away, and left a hulk of shabbily-clothed body, without a spark of intelligence. Others were nodding, half asleep, and there was one man, with closed eyes, and parted lips, breathing stertorously, whose head bobbled from side to side with the rocking of the train.... He woke up, suddenly, as the train stopped with a jerk, and the conductor called out "'Perd's Bush." Tommy Pride always gave his papers to the lift-man. They waited for the last passenger, who came lurching round the corner with his head still bobbling and his eyes half lost below the drooping eyelids. He steadied himself against the wall--and his hand spread over another of those glorious posters. What a picture for Cannock!... Somehow, Pride rejoiced to think that he was not Cannock. He went past the Green to one of the small houses in a turning off the Uxbridge Road. The moon shone out of the wintry sky, white and placid, above his home. He let himself in, and turned out the flicker of gas in the hall. He walked on tiptoe into the sitting-room, and having taken off his boots went to the fireplace. Here on a trivet he found a cup of cocoa, and his slippers warming before the fire. There were three slices of thin bread and butter on the table. He never went to bed without his bread and butter. During his meal he saw a copy of _The Day_ on a chair, and he read bits of it mechanically, for he had read it all before. The clock struck one, and he bolted the front door and went softly upstairs. As he turned on the light his wife stirred uneasily, and he came to the bedside. She opened her eyes at his kiss, and smiled tenderly at him. "Is it very late, dear?" she asked. "One o'clock." "Poor sweetheart!" she murmured. "Did you have your cocoa?" "Yes," he said. "Tired?" He laughed. "Not very. I'm a bit cheerful, to tell you the truth. Tell you about it in the morning. Ferrol spoke to me to-day. He's a fine chap." II That was the magic of it! Ferrol had spoken to him. The conversation had been quite ordinary. "Well, Pride, I hope things are going all right?" And Ferrol had nodded cheerfully and smiled as he passed into his room. Perhaps, he had asked Pride to come and see him.... It was not what Ferrol said that mattered: it was the Idea behind it--that Ferrol knew and remembered his men individually. Out of the insensate tangle of machines and lives, high above the thunderous clamour of the printing-presses, the rolling of heavy vans stacked high with cylinders of paper, the ringing of telephone bells, the ticking and clicking and buzzing, floor above floor, of the great grey building in which they all lived, Ferrol rises with his masterful personality and calm voice, carving the chaos of it all into discipline and order. He looms, in the imagination, powerful and omnipresent, making his desires felt in the far corners of the continents. Ferrol whispered, and Berlin, Vienna or San Francisco gave him his needs. He was the brain and the heart of the body he had created, and his nerves and his arteries were spread over the earth. He placed his fingers on the pulse of mankind, and knew what was ailing--knew what it wanted, and found the specialist to attend to it. His influence lay over the narrow street of tall buildings, urging men onwards and upwards with the gospel of great endeavour. Some men, as their pagan ancestors worshipped the Sun as the God of Light, placed him on a pedestal in their hearts, and bowed down to him as the God of Success, for the energy of his spirit was everywhere. If you searched behind the ponderous double octuple machines, rattling and thudding, and driving the work of their world forward, you would have found it there--the motive power of the whole. It lurked in the tap-tap of the telegraph transmitter, in the quick click of the type in the slots of the linotype machines as the aproned operators touched the keyboard; it was in the heart of the reporter groping through the day for facts, and writing them with the shadow of Ferrol falling across the paper. The clerks in the counting-house, the advertising men, the grimy printers' boys in the basement, the type-setters and the block-makers on the top floors near the skylights, messengers, typists--they were all bricks in the edifice which was built up for the men who wrote the paper--the edifice of which Ferrol was the keystone. His enemies distorted the vision of him; they saw him, an inhuman, incredible monster, with neither soul nor heart, grimly eager for one end--the making of money. They wrote of him as an evil thing, brooding over sensationalism.... One must see him as Tommy Pride and all those who worked for him on _The Day_ saw him, eager, keen, and large-hearted, a wonderful blend of sentiment and business, torn, sometimes, between expediency and the hidden desires of his heart. One must see him reckless and, since he was only human, making mistakes, creating, destroying, living only for what the day brought forth.... The spirit of Fleet Street, itself. * * * * * Like a silver thread woven into the texture of his character, in which good and evil were patterned as they are in most men, a streak of the sentimental was there, shining untarnished, a survival of his days of young romance. Very few people knew of this trait; Ferrol hugged it to himself secretly, as though it were a weakness of which he was ashamed. It came upon him at odd, unexpected moments when he was hemmed in by the gross materialism of every day, this passionate, sudden yearning for poetry and ideals. He would try to lift the latch of the door that had locked the world of beauty and art from him. Swift desires would seize him to be carried away in his motor-car, as if it were a magic carpet, to some Arcadia of dreaming shadows, with the sunlight splashing through the green roofs of the forests. The sentimental in him would, at such times, find expression in many ways. He made extravagant gifts to people; he would take a sudden interest in the career of one man, and bring all that man's longings to realization by lifting him up and making his name. How glorious that power was to Ferrol! The power of singling men out, finding the spark of genius that he could raise to a steady flame, fanning it with opportunity; he could make a man suddenly rich with a stroke of his pen; pack him off to Arabia or South America and bid him write his best. Sometimes they failed, because it was not in them to succeed, and Ferrol was as merciless to failures as he was generous to those who won through. The men he made!... Sometimes, when the waves of sentiment swept over him, he would try and materialize his ideals for a time. He would commission a great poet to contribute to _The Day_; he would open his columns to the cult of the beautiful, and then a grisly murder or a railway disaster would happen, crushing Ferrol's sentiment. Away with the ideal, for, after all, the world does not want it! Three columns of the murder or the railway disaster, with photographs, leaders, special articles, all turning round the news itself. That was how it was done. And now the fit was on Ferrol as he sat in his room with the crimson carpet and the dark red walls, hung with contents bills of _The Day_. He had been going over the morning letters with his secretary, listening to the applications for employment. He made a point of hearing them, now and again. There was one letter there that suddenly awoke his interest; the name touched a chord in his memory, a chord that responded with a low, tender note.... And, his mind marched back through the corridors of the past, until he came out upon the old, quiet, cathedral town of the days of his youth. He saw himself, a slight, eager young man, long, long before his dreams of greatness came to pass, yet feeling in his heart that the plans he was making would be followed. A young Ferrol plotting within himself to wrest spoils from the world, longing intolerably for power and the wealth that could give it. Well did he know, even in those far-off days, that destiny was holding out her hands, laden with roses and prizes for him.... Those were the days of the young heart; the days of nineteen and twenty, and the first love, scarce understood, that comes to us, mysterious and beautiful. He saw a very different Ferrol then. The lip unshaven, that was now hidden with a bushy moustache turning grey; the hair, now also grey under the touch of Time, silky and black. He saw this boy walking the lanes that led out of Easterham town, in the spring-time, with a girl at his side. Over the abyss of the years the boy beckoned to him, and Ferrol looked back on a yesterday of thirty years. Her name was Margaret, and she was for him the beginning of things. From her he learned much of the tenderness of life, and the love of Nature that had remained with him. He was a clerk in an auctioneer's office then, with most of his dreams still undreamt. He and Margaret had been children together. They were children now, laughing, and walking over the fields with the spire of the cathedral, pointing like a finger to the skies, in the distant haze of the afternoon. There was more purity in that first romance of his than in anything he had found in after years. Oh! wonderful days of young unsullied hearts, and the white innocence of life. The memory of evenings came to him, of kisses in the starlight, when incomprehensible emotions surged through him, vague imaginings of what life must really be, and the torture of unrest, of something that he did not understand. Her eyes were tearful, and yet she smiled, and at her smile they both laughed. And so the spell was broken, and they trudged, side by side, homeward in the silent night. She inspired him, and in that, perhaps, she fulfilled her destiny. She sowed the seeds of ambition in his soul: he would dare anything for her, yea, reach his hand upwards, and pluck the very stars from Heaven to lay at her feet. And, very gradually, a dreadful nausea of Easterham came over him. His desk was by the window that looked upon the High Street: he almost remembered, now, the day when it first dawned on him that the place was no longer tolerable. It was mid-day and the heat quivered above the cobble-stones: two dogs were fighting with jarring yelps that could be heard all down the street; the baker's cart went by with an empty rattle, and Miss Martin of Willow Hall drove in as usual to the bank next door. An old man was herding a flock of sheep towards the market-place, and the sheep-dog ran this way and that way, barking as he ran. Three sandwich-men, grotesquely hidden in boards, slouched past in frayed clothes and battered hats, with pipes in their mouths. He read their boards mechanically.... "Sale at Wilcox's.... Ladies' Undergarments.... Ribbons." He had read the same thing every day in the week; he had looked out upon the same scene, every day, it seemed; the dogs had been quarrelling eternally, the shepherd passed and repassed like a never-ending silent dream; grocer, and baker, and banker, and Hargrave, the farmer ... there he was again touching his hat to Miss Martin as she stepped from her trap.... O God! the heavy monotony of it all fell like a weight on his heart. The nostalgia grew. The chimes of the cathedral lost their music, the stillness of the town became more unbearable than the turmoil and clatter of cities. There was something to be wrought for and fought for in the world outside. This was not life; this was a mausoleum! The arguments with his father--his mother was dead--and the long time it took to persuade him.... The parting with Margaret, and the whispered vows and promises, spoken breathlessly from their earnest young hearts. It seemed they could never be broken. He came to London. It was in the late seventies, at the beginning of the spread of education that has resulted in the amazing flood of periodicals: it was a flood that led Ferrol on to fortune. His scope widened; he grew in his outlook, and saw that here was a way to power indeed. He shone like a new star over London, gathering lesser lights around him, developing that marvellous power of organization, that astonishing personality that drew men to him, until he seized his opportunity and bought the moribund _Day_ when it was a penny paper on its last legs. In ten years' time he had become wealthy and powerful, and since then he had gone on and on until no triumph was denied him. And Margaret...? The years passed, and with the passing of time, they both developed. That young love, once so irrefrangible, grew warped and misshapen, until it finally snapped. There was no quarrel; neither could reproach the other; they simply grew out of their love, as so many young people do. There was a correspondence for a time, but it slackened and presently ceased altogether. She must have felt her hold loosening on Ferrol, as with a thousand new interests he came upon the wide horizon of life. She must have noticed this in his letters, and instead of seeking to bind him to her against his will, she just let him go. And Ferrol must have weighed the impossibility of asking her to marry him at this point of his career, when he was striving and struggling upwards; not all men travel the fastest when they travel alone, but Ferrol was one of those who could run no risk of being delayed. They had none of the pang of parting ... but years afterwards, when Ferrol was a childless widower (for he married when he was thirty-five, and walked behind his wife's coffin two years afterwards), he wondered what had become of Margaret, and always he cherished that memory of his one romance that had tapered away out of his life. He could never forget the sweet simplicity of Margaret's face, the tears on her eyelashes, and the yielding softness of her youth when he pressed her to his heart and lips with wonderful thoughts quivering through his soul. He remembered one day in his life, a few years after the death of his wife, when a wild desire had seized him to handle his past again, as an antiquarian turns over his treasures and rejoices in some ancient relic. It was a day in summer, when the heat was heavy over London, and the city smelt of hot asphalt and tar: without a word to anybody he had left his work and taken the train, back to Easterham and his youth. The old familiar landmarks rose up before him, bringing a strange feeling of age to him. So much had happened in the interval that it seemed that year upon year had piled up a wall before him, separating him for evermore from this old world that had been. The ivy still clung to the castellated walls of the Cathedral close; the clock chimed as he went by, just as he had heard it chime in the long days that were gone. The very rooks seemed unchanged as they clamoured huskily in the old beeches. And yet, with it all, there was something different, and he knew that the difference lay not so much with the place as with himself. His entire perception had altered. He saw things through eyes that had grown older. The High Street, with its brooding air of stillness, that had once seemed so stale and intolerable to him, now appealed to him with its wondrous peace, a magical spot far away from the turmoil of things. There were the same names over the grocers' and the drapers' and the ironmongers' shops, but old Matthew Bethell's quaint bookshop had gone, and in its place there stood a large green, flat-fronted establishment, with an open window stacked high with magazines and newspapers, and a great poster above it, thus: The Day. ONE HALFPENNY HOWARD SLANDER CASE. FULL REPORT. The sentimental in him winced, but the material business man glowed with pride as he saw the great poster, proclaiming _The Day_ paramount over its rivals. There was always a conflict between the two men that made up that complex personality known as Ferrol. He went to the house where he had once lived; his father was dead now, and as he looked up at the open window and saw a strange woman doing some needle-work, it seemed to him as if the people that were living there had laid sacrilegious hands upon the holy fragrance of the past; as if their prying eyes had peered into all the hidden secrets that belonged to him. He turned away resentfully towards the old inn, the Red Lion, whose proprietor, old Hamblin, remembered him from other days when he revealed himself, and was inclined to be overcome with the importance of the visit, until Ferrol put him at his ease. They chatted together, the old man, with his back to the fireplace, coat-tails lifted from habit, for the grate was empty on this hot day, Ferrol sitting astride a chair, watching the blue stream of smoke that came from Hamblin's lips as he puffed at his long white churchwarden.... Hamblin must have stood like that during all the years that Ferrol had been in London. The only change that came to the people of Easterham was death. They talked of people they had known, and so the talk came naturally to Margaret. He listened unmoved to the news of her marriage, and found that nothing more than conventional phrases came from his lips when Hamblin told him of her death. Somehow, it seemed to him so natural. He had been away seventeen years, and Easterham had lost its hold upon him now. The death of his father ... the new face at the window of their house.... The death of Margaret seemed to come as a natural sequence to things. Hamblin went on talking about people. "She married Mr Quain, one of the College schoolmasters.... I expect he was after your time ... a good deal older than you, Mr Ferrol.... They had one child, a boy ... living with his aunt now. All her people left Easterham years ago...." And so on. It was in the afternoon that Ferrol came back to London, feeling that he had been prodding at wet moss-grown stones in some old decayed ruin, turning them over to see what he could find, and having them crumble apart in his hands. He never went back again. * * * * * That was thirteen years ago. Ferrol's memories ended abruptly. He touched a button, and a young man, with a shiny, pink face and fair hair parted in the middle, came in with a notebook and pencil in his hand. He looked as if he spent every moment of his spare time in washing his face. There was a quiet, nervous air about him--the air of one who is never certain of what is going to happen next. Ferrol's abrupt sentences always unnerved him. "Trinder," he said, "there was a letter among the lot to-day. Quain. Written on _Easterham Gazette_ notepaper. Asking for editorial employment." "Yes, sir." Trinder had long ceased to marvel at Ferrol's memory for details. "Write to him the usual letter asking him to call. Wednesday at twelve." Trinder made a note and withdrew. Ferrol wondered what Margaret's boy was like. III At the age of twenty Humphrey Quain found himself on the threshold of a world of promise. It seemed to him that if, out of all the years of time, he could have chosen the period in which he would live, he would have picked out the dawn of this twentieth century of grace. England was just then in the throes of casting from herself the burden of old traditions. The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development--years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century--the wonderful century. People, you remember, played with the fantasy of beginning a brand-new century as if it were a new toy. Nobody who was living could remember the birth of the last century. It was a new emotion for everyone. There was the oddity of writing dates, discarding for ever the 189-- and beginning with 19--; old phrases, such as _fin-de-siècle_, became suddenly obsolete; new phrases were coined, among which "Twencent" (an abbreviation for twentieth century, and a tribute to the snap and hustle with which the world was now expected to go) survived the longest; songs were sung at music-halls; there was a burst of cartoons on the subject; people referred jokingly to the last century, parodying the recollections of boresome centenarians; while the unhappy _Nineteenth Century_, as though the calendar had taken a mean advantage of its mid-Victorian dignity, determined never again to risk being so hopelessly out of date, and added to its title the words "and After," thereby enabling future centuries to go for ever without ruffling its title. In the midst of this change, when the death of Queen Victoria seemed to snap the present from the past irrevocably, and the novelty of a king came to England again; when the first of the tubes that now honeycomb London was a twopenny wonder, and people were talking of Shepherd's Bush, and Notting Hill Gate, and marvelling curiously why they had never talked of them before; when Socialism was burrowing and gnawing like a rat at the old, worn fabric of Society, urging the working-man to stand equal in Parliament with the noblest lords in the land. In the midst of all this there arose suddenly, born with the twentieth century, the Young Man. He had already come, answering the call of the country in the dark disillusioning days of the Boer War. People had seen the young clerks and workmen of England marching shoulder to shoulder down the streets of London, like the train-bands of Elizabethan days. When the country was in peril the flower and the youth of England came to its aid, and the older men could do nothing but stay at home and look on. The young man, scorned by his elders in all the periods of the nineteenth century except those last years of development, found himself suddenly caught up on the high wave that was sweeping away the rubbish and the sentiment and the lumber of the old customs, and borne above them all. He was set on a pinnacle, as the new type; the future of the world was said to be in the hands of the young men; the old men--even forty was too old, you remember--had had their day. They were now like so much old furniture, shabby and undesirable, second-hand goods, better replaced by strong, well-made, up-to-date things. It really was a wonderful time for the Young Man. In the old days it had been customary for him to show respect to his elders, to call them "sir," to stand up when they came into a room, or raise his hat if they met in the streets, to offer his seat to them if there was none vacant, and generally to treat them as old ladies, with polite reverence mingled with awe. The worship of age had become a fetish; it was improper to criticize the opinions of a man older than yourself; it was heresy to think that you were as capable as the old men; youth had to wait and grow old for its chances in life; youth was ridiculed, snubbed and held in the leash. And then, quite suddenly it seemed, though Ibsen had heard it knocking at the door long before, the younger generation burst upon us with an astonishing vigour, taking possession of the new century, trampling down the false gods of age and bringing in its train, like boys trooping from a nursery, hosts of new toys and new ideas in everything. It was, I think, _The Day_ that finally discovered the Young Man. Ferrol had known the bitter opposition which he had fought in his own twenties and thirties, and he shone as the apostle of youth. The Young Man, from a neglected embryo, became a national asset; all hands were uplifted to him in the dawn of the new century. He was enthroned in the seats from which his elders were deposed. People seeking for a symbol of the new life that was beginning, looked westwards and found a whole nation that typified the Young Man who was to be their salvation. They found America, eager, with strident voice, forceful and straining its muscles to the game of life--a whole nation of young men. It became the fashion to take America as a model. There was an invasion of boots and bicycles and cameras. "Look," every one cried, "see how they do things better than we do. Look at their magazines--how wonderful they are." Phonographs, kinetoscopes, the first jumpy cinematographs, photo-buttons, chewing-gum, they came to the country, and were hailed gladly as from the land of Young Men. Presently the young men themselves came. They came with their hair parted in the middle, and keen, clean-shaven faces with very predominant chins. They were mere boys, and they had a bounce and a boisterous assurance that took one's breath away. With them came loudly-striped shirts, multi-coloured socks, felt hats and lounge suits in city offices, and, later, soft-fronted shirts and black silk bows for evening wear. They opened London offices for New York firms, and showed us card-indexing systems, roll-top desks, dictaphones and loose-leaf ledgers. All letters were typewritten, and the firm who sent out a letter in the crabbed handwriting of its senior clerk was accounted disgracefully behind the times. The Young Man set the pace with a vengeance, and it was a panting business to keep abreast of him. Cock-tails and quick-lunch restaurants appeared next; griddle-cakes, clam-chowder and club sandwiches were shown to us; and finally, as though having absorbed their nutriment, we had assimilated their habits, a fierce desire to speak with a nasal accent took hold of us. The man who wanted to get a job spoke with as much American accent as he could muster up; he looked American, and he affected American ways; his affirmative was "sure," and he wore his hair long and sleek, divided evenly in the middle. He was the Young Man, cocksure, enthusiastic and determined--the most remarkable product of his time. Ferrol found him, a year or so before he arrived, with that instinct of his, almost second-sight, which never failed. He boomed him as a Type; he glorified him, and gave him high posts in the office of _The Day_. With the exception of Neckinger, the editor, who came straight from New York, he was the native product, and Ferrol was always on the look-out for more of him. And so, in the midst of all this, when the cry for the Young Man was at its hungriest, when "hustle" and "strenuous" were added to the vocabulary, we see Humphrey Quain, waiting on the outskirts, watching his opportunity, and meanwhile bending over the counter of the _Easterham Gazette_ office, coat off and shirt sleeves turned back to the elbow, folding up copies of the _Easterham Gazette_ as they came damp, with the ink wet on them, from the printing-press in the basement. * * * * * The _Easterham Gazette_ was, unhesitatingly, the worst paper in Easterham. It was an eight-page weekly journal, with a staff of one editor, one reporter and Humphrey Quain. When things were slack in the reporting line, the reporter (an extraordinarily shaggy person called Beaver, whose thumbs were always covered with ink) was expected to "fill up time at case"--which means that he was to assist in setting up the paper in type. The editor, whose name was Worthing, walked about in a knickerbocker suit and a soft grey hat, and it was part of his business to obtain advertisements for the _Gazette_. The leading articles he wrote were always composed with one eye on the advertiser. In praising the laudable action of Councillor Bilson in opposing the introduction of trams into the town, there was a pleasant parenthesis, something in this manner: "It needs no words of ours to echo the praise bestowed on that gallant champion of our town, our much-respected Councillor Bilson (in whose windows, by the way, there is a remarkable exhibit of Oriental coffee-making) ..." and so on. It was Beaver's duty to make the "calls" during the week. How he managed them all, I don't know; but in the intervals of attending the police-court, the council meetings, and all the meetings of local organizations, he would call at the hospital, at the mayor's parlour, on the town clerk, on the churches and cathedrals, snapping up unconsidered trifles in the shape of accidents, civic news, church services, and all the other activities of Easterham life. Sometimes during the week Beaver would swing himself astride a bicycle, as frayed and as shabby as himself, and pedal to Wimberly, or Pooleham, or further afield to Great Huxton for local meetings, all of which were of vast interest to the _Easterham Gazette_, since its copies went weekly--or were supposed to go--over the whole of the county, and it had annexed to its title the names of all the best villages. Its full title, by the way, was: _Easterham Gazette, and Wimberly, Pooleham, Great Huxton, Middle Huxton and Little Huxton Chronicle; Coomber, Melsdom and Upper Thornton Journal_, largest circulation in any district, weekly one penny. It was nigh upon sixty years of age, and therefore its tottering infirmity may be excused. Humphrey Quain came into the office ostensibly as a clerk. In the beginning he thought it was a fascinating game seeing the things that one wrote in print. Therefore, all unconsciously, he started to write. He began with "Cycle Notes" and "Theatre Notes," and presently he found himself with sufficient interest to fill a whole column, which dealt mainly with local gossip, and was called "The Easterham Letter." It was addressed always to the editor and was signed "P and Q." When he was not writing, he was addressing wrappers or making out the weekly bills for the newsagents; and every Friday evening he stood by the counter, folding up the papers as they came to him, and handing them to grubby little children who were sent by the newsagents, or sold the papers for themselves in the streets. It really was a remarkable paper for the twentieth century. Its advertisement space was one shilling an inch, or less if you promised not to tell any one; three men, of course, could not fill the whole of these eight great sheets, and therefore the carrier's wagon delivered every Thursday to the _Easterham Gazette_ office, mysterious thin brown parcels the size of a column, and rather heavy. Simultaneously, all over the country, like parcels were being delivered, and, if by chance you compared an issue of the _Easterham Gazette_ with any thirty local papers in the North, South, or East of England, you would have been amazed at the remarkable similarity of their contents. They had the same serial story of thrilling adventure, the same "Cookery Notes and Kitchen Recipes," the same "Home Hints to Household Happiness," word for word, and the same column of jokes. For these long parcels that arrived every Thursday at the _Easterham Gazette_ office were columns of type cast from moulds, sent down from a London Agency which has made a mighty business of supplying general matter, from foreign intelligence to fashion notes, ready for the printing-press, at so much a column. They call it "stereo." Humphrey Quain had been in the office for three years. His aunt was a friend of Mr Worthing, the editor, and his father thought it would be a good thing for the boy to have some association with the world of letters, however distant. Shortly afterwards, Quain senior had taken a master's appointment in a private boarding-school at Southsea, and Humphrey remained with his aunt. A year later his father died. He parted with his father with a straining heart, for Daniel Quain was a tremendous success as a father, though he was a failure as a man. Of course this was only Humphrey's point of view: what more could a boy want than a father who could fashion any kind of toy, from whistles to steamboats, out of a block of wood; who knew enough of elementary science to make a pin sail on water, by letting it rest on a cigarette paper which soaked and sank away, leaving the pin afloat; who could blow a halfpenny from one wine-glass to another, and produce whooing sounds from a hollow tube by placing it over a gas flame. Wonderful father! It was Daniel who fostered in Humphrey's heart the love of reading: those early books were adventure stories by Fenimore Cooper, Kingston and Ballantyne. He read Harrison Ainsworth, too, and Henty, and took in the _Boy's Own Paper_, and, in short, did everything in the way of reading that a normal, happy, healthy-minded boy should do. "Keep clear of philosophy until you are thirty," Daniel said one day, as he was showing him how three matches can be made to stand upright; "then you won't understand enough of life to be miserable." Later, he came to the Dickens and Thackeray stage, but he was pained to find he could not enjoy Scott. He confided his distaste to his father, as though it were a guilty failing of which to be ashamed. "Form your own likes and dislikes in reading as in everything else," said Daniel. "Don't be a literary snob, and pretend you enjoy the acquaintance of books merely because they belong so to speak to the 'upper ten' of the book-world." When his father died, Humphrey was first brought face to face with the stern things of life. It was a chance remark of his aunt that gave him the first glimpse. "You'll have to do something for yourself, Humphrey," she said one day. "That father of yours did nothing for you." She always spoke bitterly of his father. Humphrey had never thought of it before. It had seemed to him that things came naturally to people from father to son: that, in some mysterious, unthought-of way, when he was about twenty or so, he would find himself with an income of sorts, or some settled employment. "You must Get On," said his aunt, looking at him through her spectacles. "Young men Get On quickly to-day. You must grasp your opportunities." So here came a new and delightful interest into Humphrey's existence. He perceived something fine in it all. From that day he had one creed in life: the creed of Getting On. This determination swamped every other interest in life. It was as if his aunt had suddenly touched upon some internal button that had started off a driving-wheel within him, and set all the machinery of energy into movement. How did one "Get On" in the world? He began to take an enormous interest in everything, to follow the doings of men and cities outside Easterham; his knowledge widened slowly, for he had no brothers and was singularly innocent in the everyday sense of the word. And all the time, during those Easterham days, he was beginning to understand things. He saw that Beaver and Worthing, with their small salaries and narrow capacities, had not "Got On"--would never "Get On." He realized too, that his father, well through life, had been little better than a man in the beginning of it. On the other hand, Bilson, with his large, shining shop, might be said to have "Got On," and just when he was half deciding that Bilson held the secret, Bilson suddenly went bankrupt, owing to the failure of some coffee plantations in Ceylon. It seemed a perplexing business, this getting on. Easier to talk about than to do. And, after all, the getting on-ness of Bilson had been circumscribed by the narrow area of Easterham. The real success meant power, and the ability to use it: wide power over the affairs of other people. These were not the thoughts of a moment: they were lingering thoughts that spread over three years, from seventeen to twenty, those three years when he was at the _Easterham Gazette_ office, with only Beaver and Worthing for his models in life. They were thoughts in the intervals of writing "notes" on local subjects--indeed, the notes were the outcome of the thoughts--of reading, and of cycling, and going to the theatre. And then one day a most amazing thing happened. Beaver Got On! Yes, it was really incredible, but the fact was there indisputable and glaring. Beaver, shaggy and unkempt, who seemed to have settled down for ever to the meetings and the calls and the police-courts ("Harriet Higgins, 30, no fixed abode, charged with being drunk and disorderly, etc."), broke through the cobwebs that had settled on him, in an unexpected and definite manner. He came to Humphrey one day and remarked quite casually, "I've given old Worthing the push." Humphrey looked at him: he wore a Norfolk jacket, with old trousers, and a tweed hat of no shape at all. Beaver took his pipe out of his mouth, and Humphrey noticed the short nails on his stumpy, fat fingers. Beaver always bit his nails. "I've given old Worthing the push," said Beaver. "Look at this." He showed a letter to Humphrey, who saw that it was from the "Special News Agency" of London, employing Beaver in their service at £2, 10s. a week. "How did you get it?" Humphrey asked. "Wrote in," said Beaver, gnawing a finger-tip. "Been writing in on the quiet for the last year. Fed up with old Worthing and filling up time at case." "I thought you had to know how to write well if you wanted to work in London," Humphrey said. There were no illusions about Beaver's style. "Oh! the Agency doesn't want writing--it wants a man who can take down shorthand verbatim.... I'm off next week," said Beaver. Humphrey looked longingly at him and his letter, and then round at the whitewashed walls of the office, with its Calendars and local Directories for years past on the shelf, and the pile of _Gazettes_ on the corner of the counter. Mr Worthing passed through the office, stopped, and scowled at Beaver. "Kindly remove your head-gear in the front office," he said, and Beaver, with the unmurmuring discipline of years which nothing could break, took off the crumpled tweed thing he called a hat. "Nice pig, isn't he?" Beaver said to Humphrey, as Worthing went out. "We had an awful row. Said I ought to have given him a month's notice. A week would have been good enough for me if he was doing the sacking. Pig in knickers, that's what he is," said Beaver, defiantly. "This is a Hole." "Oh, Beaver!" cried Humphrey, hopelessly. "It is a Hole. He _is_ a Pig.... But what's going to happen to me?" "You'll do my work," Beaver remarked. "I can't write shorthand. Besides, I don't want to. How old are you, Beaver?" "Just turned thirty. Why?" "Thirty!" thought Humphrey; fancy Beaver having wasted all these years in doing nothing but local reporting. Would he have to work ten years more and still achieve nothing further than Beaver. There must be some way out of it. Beaver had found it, and surely he could. "It's fine for you," Humphrey said, admiringly now, for, in the blankness of Beaver leaving the office where they had worked, he had forgotten to congratulate him. "The Special News Agency is the biggest in London, isn't it." "Rather," said Beaver, comfortably. "It's a life job." That was his ambition. "Look here, young Quain, I think you're too good for Easterham, too. Those notes of yours, you know.... I used to read 'em every week. Not at all bad.... You take my tip, and do a turn at reporting for a while, and then when you've got the hang of things write in. Write in to all the London papers. Say you've had good provincial experience--'provincial' sounds better than local. You'll see. You're bound to get replies. Say you're a good all-round man. Enclose a stamped envelope." Beaver sauntered to and fro, nibbling at a nail between excited sentences. "Oh, and don't you forget it. Write on _Easterham Gazette_ notepaper." And when, a week later, Beaver left, Worthing asked Humphrey to try his hand at the police-court, Humphrey accepted the inevitable, and tried to improve on the style of the police reports. Worthing swore at him and rewrote them all, and told him to model his style on that of the late Mr Beaver. Whereupon Humphrey, seeing that he would never Get On if he were to live in the shadow of Beaver, sat down, and "wrote in." He wrote to _The Day_, because he bought the paper every morning, and thought it was wonderful. The day that Ferrol's reply arrived was a day of triumph for Humphrey. The letter came to him with unbelievable promptness, asking him to call at the office.... Never again did Humphrey recapture the fine emotion that thrilled him as he read and re-read the letter. Looking back on it, he saw that those moments were among the most glorious in his life; he stood on the threshold of a world of promise and enchantment, suddenly revealed to him by this scrap of paper with _The Day_ in embossed blue letters, surrounded by telephone numbers and telegraphic addresses of the great newspaper. When he showed the letter to his aunt, she sighed in a tired way, and said unexpectedly: "I'm afraid you will never get on, Humphrey. You are too restless. I'm sure you would do better to remain with Mr Worthing. However...." She very rarely finished her sentences. Humphrey smiled. He saw himself marching to fortune; he was twenty, and it never occurred to him that he could fail. IV You may call Fleet Street what you like, but the secret of it eludes you always. It has as many moods as a woman: it is the street of laughter and of tears, of adventure and dullness, of romance and reality, of promise and lost hopes, of conquest and broken men. Into its narrow neck are crammed all the hurrying life, the passions, the eager, beating hearts, the happiness and the sorrow of the broad streets East and West that lead to it. There is something in this thin, crooked street, holding in its body the essence of the world, that clutches at the imagination, something in the very atmosphere surrounding it which makes it different from all the other streets that are walked by men. The stones and the old timber of some of its buildings are like the yellow parchment of some ancient manuscript, scribbled with faded history. There are chop-houses, and taverns, where the wigged and knee-breeched Puffs sat writing their tit-bits of scandal for the fashionable intelligence of the day; where Addison and Steele tapped their snuff-boxes and planned their letters to Mr Spectator; or, further back in the years, Shakespeare himself went Strandwards from Blackfriars up the narrow street where the gabled houses leaned to one another. Look, you can almost see the ghosts of Fleet Street pacing out of the little courts and alleys that lie athwart the street: you know that massive bulk of a man, walking ponderously, in drab-coloured coat and knee-breeches, and rather untidy stockings above his heavy, buckled shoes. He is in the street of a million words; other ghosts jostle him, and in the gallant company one sees Charles Dickens, dropping his manuscript stealthily into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court; and all the dead men who have given their lives to the street, some of them foolishly wanton in wine--dead men shot in the wars, or burnt with fever, or wrecked with the struggle, come back ... come back to Fleet Street, to look wistfully at the lit windows, and listen to the throbbing music of the presses. It lures you like a siren, coaxing with soft promises of prizes to be wrested from it: you shall be the favoured of the gods, and you become Sisyphus, rolling his stone eternally, day after day. Here are the things of life that you covet, they shall be yours, says the Street: and you are Tantalus, reaching out everlastingly, and grasping nothing, until your heart is parched within you. You shall be strong and mighty, it says, sapping your strength like Delilah, until you pull down the pillars of hope, and fall buried beneath the reckless ruins of your career. Once you have answered the voice of the siren, you are taken in the magic spell. Beat your breast, and exclaim in agony, but nothing will avail, for if you leave the Street, the quiet world will seem void for ever, and, as the ghosts burn backwards through space, so shall you return to the old agitations and longings. * * * * * This was the Street to which young Humphrey Quain came on a January morning, riding triumphantly on the top of an omnibus. As he passed the fantastic Griffin, with its open jaws and monstrous scaly wings, like a warder guarding those who would escape, Fleet Street seemed to be the Street of Conquest. It was a rare, crisp day, with a touch of frost in the air, and the sun clear and high in the heavens, above the tangle of wires and cables that almost roofed the Street. The traffic was beating up and down, with frequent blocks, here and there, as a heavy hooded van staggered up from Whitefriars or Bouverie Street. It was nearly mid-day, and the light two-wheeled carts were pouring out of Shoe Lane, or coming from Salisbury Square with the early editions of the afternoon papers. Newsboys on bicycles, with sacks of papers swung over their backs, seemed to be risking their lives every moment as they flashed into the thick of the traffic, clinging to hansoms, and sliding between drays and omnibuses, out of the press, until they could get through the narrow neck of Fleet Street towards the West. Humphrey breathed deeply as he looked about him: the names of the newspapers were blazoned everywhere. Heavens! what a world of paper and ink this was, to be sure. The doors, the windows and the letter-boxes bore the titles of newspapers--all the newspapers that were. Every room, on every floor, was inhabited by the representatives of some paper or other: on the musty top windows he could read the titles of journals in Canada and Australia; great golden letters bulged across the buildings telling of familiar newspapers. The houses were an odd mixture of modernity and antiquity, they jostled each other in their cramped space; narrow buildings squeezed between high, red offices with plate-glass windows, and over and above the irregular roofs the wires spread thin threads against the sky, wires that gave and received news from the uttermost ends of the earth. The letters in white enamel or gold on the windows told of Paris and Berlin, of Rotterdam and Vienna; here they marked the home of a religious paper, there the office of a trade paper, and hard by it _The Sportsman_, with its windows full of prize-fighters' photographs and a massive silver belt in a plush case, for the possession of which Porky Smith and Jewey Brown were coming to blows. Every branch of human activity, all the intricate complexities of modern life seemed to be represented either by a room or the fifth part of a room in Fleet Street. And, rising out of the riot of narrow buildings, huddled closely to each other, the great homes of the daily papers stood up as landmarks. Here were the London offices of the important provincial papers, which spoke nightly with Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool--plate-glass windows and large letters gave them a handsome enough appearance, but they looked comparatively insignificant beside the tall red building of _The Sentinel_, and the new green-glazed establishment of _The Wire_, while the grey, enormous offices of _The Day_ dwarfed them all. There was something solid about _The Day_ as it stood four-square firmly in the Street, with its great letters sprawled across the front, golden by day, and golden with electric light in the night-time. It seemed almost as if _The Day_ had nudged the other great papers out of Fleet Street, for in the side streets, in Bouverie Street, and Whitefriars Street, and in Shoe Lane, the remainder of the London papers found their homes, with the exception of the high-toned _Morning Courier_, which found itself at the western end of the Street past the Law Courts. But _The Day_, with its arrogant dome-tower (lit up at nights), its swinging glass doors and braided commissionaires, was the most typical of the modern newspaper world. It was just such a place as Humphrey Quain had dreamed. The swing doors were always on the move; the people were coming and going quickly--here was action, and all the movement and the business of life. For a few moments Humphrey hesitated a little nervously. He was a minute or two in advance of the time appointed for the interview, and he stood there, irresolute, filled with a wondrous sense of expectancy, among the crowd that hurried to and fro. He noticed on the other side of the road a bearded man, in a silk hat and a frayed overcoat, sitting on a doorstep at the top of Whitefriars Street. The man had a keen, intelligent face with blue eyes. It was the shiny silk hat that leapt to Humphrey's notice, it seemed so out of keeping with the rest of the man's clothes. Besides, why should a man in a silk hat sit on a doorstep.... Years later the man was still there, every day, sitting sphinx-like, surveying those who passed him ... he must have marked their faces grow older. The commissionaire regarded Humphrey critically. It was the business of the commissionaire in _The Day_ office, especially, to be a judge of character. He divided callers into two main classes--those who wanted to see the editor, and those whom the editor wanted to see. The two classes were quite distinct, and there were few who, like Humphrey Quain, belonged to both. "Yes, by appointment," said Humphrey, a little proudly, to the commissionaire's cold question that rose like a wall to so many callers. He was shown into a little room, and made to fill up a form--name, address and business. The next minute a boy in a green uniform led him up a flight of stairs, through the ante-room where the pink-cheeked Trinder sat typewriting diligently, and so to Ferrol's room. Humphrey had a confused impression of a broad, high room, of a man sitting at a desk miles away at the farther end of the room by the half-curtained window; of red walls hung with files of newspapers, and the contents bills of that day; of a Louis XVI. clock, all scrolls and cupids, bringing a queer touch of drawing-room leisure with it; and of telephones and buttons that surrounded the man at the desk. The buttons fascinated him: he saw that thin slips of ivory labelled them with the names of the different departments--Editor, News-Editor, Reporters, Sub-Editors, Advertisement Manager, Business Manager, Literary Editor, Sporting Editor, City Editor, Foreign Editor--the whole of the building, with all its workers, seemed to be within the reach of Ferrol's fingers. He was like the captain of a great ship, navigating the paper from this room, steering daily through the perilous journey. Humphrey remembered afterwards how he was possessed with an odd longing; he wanted to see Ferrol press all the buttons at once, to hear the bones of the paper, the framework on which it was built up each day, come clattering and rattling into the room. Ferrol looked up from his papers, pushed back his round, upholstered chair that tipped slightly on its axis, and the room with its red walls and carpet suddenly faded from Humphrey, and he became aware only of a face that looked at him ... a masterful, powerful face, strong in every feature, from the thick, closely-knit eyebrows below the broad forehead, to the round, large chin. There was something insistent in this face of Ferrol, with its steel-coloured eyes, that hardened or softened with his moods, and its black moustache, that bulged heavily over his upper lip and gave him an appearance of rugged ferocity. Humphrey felt as if he were a squirming thing under the microscope.... That was the way of Ferrol--everything depended on the first impression that he received; all his being was tautened to receive that first impression. It was a narrow system of judging character, but he made few mistakes.... They were quickly corrected. He never forgave those who deceived him by wearing a mask over their true selves. There is not the slightest doubt that Humphrey felt a little nervous--who would not, with Ferrol's eyes boring through one?--but he knew that great issues were at stake. He carried his head high, and his eyes met Ferrol's without a quiver. Thus he stood by the table for five seconds, though it seemed as many minutes to him, until Ferrol told him to sit down. "So you want to come on _The Day_," was the way Ferrol began. They were eye to eye all the while. "Yes, sir," said Humphrey, briskly. Somehow or other, with the sound of Ferrol's voice all his nervousness departed. It was the silence that had made him feel awkward. "Let's see.... Ah! yes; you've been on an Easterham paper, haven't you?" "Three years," Humphrey replied. "That all the experience you've had?" Humphrey smiled faintly. "That's all," he said. "What do you want to do?" Here was an amazing question for which he was totally unprepared. It had never occurred to him that he would be asked to make his choice. His eyes wandered to the buttons.... What _did_ he want to do? He made an answer that sounded futile and foolish to him. "I want to get on," he stammered, hesitatingly, with a picture of his aunt rising mentally before him. Ferrol's eyes twinkled. It was a magic answer if Humphrey had but known. Most of the others he saw wanted to do descriptive writing, they had literary kinks in them, or wanted to have roving commissions abroad.... None of them wanted to start at the bottom. "Well, this is the place for young men who want to get on, you know," said Ferrol. "It's hard work...." He turned away and consulted some papers. "I think I'll give you a chance," he said. The clock struck twelve, and it sounded to Humphrey that a chime of joy-bells had flooded the room with triumphant music. "When can you start?" Ferrol asked. "Next week," Humphrey said. "You can start at three pounds a week." Ferrol pressed a button. Trinder appeared. "Ask Mr Rivers if he can come," said Ferrol. Humphrey thought only of three pounds a week ... three pounds! "I'll put you on the reporting staff," Ferrol remarked. Then he smiled. "We'll see how you get on...." There was a pause. (Three pounds a week! Three pounds a week!) He looked up as the door opened and saw an extraordinarily virile-looking person come into the room--a man with the face of a refined pugilist, with large square-shaped hands and an expression of impish perkiness in his eyes. "Come in, Rivers," said Ferrol. "This is Mr Quain." Mr Rivers shook his hand with an air of polite restraint. "Mr Rivers is our News Editor," explained Ferrol, and then to Rivers, "I have engaged Mr Quain for a trial month, Rivers." Rivers smiled whimsically. "You're not a genius, I hope," he said to Humphrey. The spirit of humour that flashed across Rivers's face, twinkling his eyes and the corners of his mouth and dimpling his cheeks, made Humphrey laugh a negative reply. "That's all right," said Rivers, his face so creased in smiles until his beady eyes threatened to disappear altogether. "The last genius we had," he said, with a nod to Ferrol, "let us down horribly on the Bermondsey murder story." The telephone bell rang. "I'll see him now," said Ferrol through the telephone, and Humphrey took that as a signal that the interview was ended. Ferrol shook hands with him, and once more he felt himself the target of those steel-grey eyes that held in them the stern remorselessness of strength. * * * * * "Good-looking young man," said Rivers, as the door closed behind Humphrey. "Hope he'll shape all right." "I hope so," Ferrol echoed.... And he was glad that Rivers had praised Humphrey, for he was pleased with the upright, manly bearing of the lad, the quick intelligence of the face, and he had noticed the frank eyes, the smooth skin and the dark hair that had belonged in the lost years to Margaret. V Humphrey came downstairs and out into the street again walking like one in a dream. His interview with Ferrol had lasted barely five minutes, and in those few minutes the whole course of his future life had been determined. His mind was whirling with the suddenness of it all; whirling and whirling round one thought, the thought of three pounds a week. Round this pivot, as a catharine-wheel spins round its pin, the thing of the greatest import revolved brilliantly, shedding its luminous light far into the dark recesses of the future ... he was on _The Day_. Fleet Street was at his feet. In that moment a new Humphrey Quain was born, different from the youth who had walked a little timorously into Ferrol's room; he was no longer a lost cipher in the world, he was a unit in the army that marched forwards, with Progress and To-morrow for their watchwords. He felt, suddenly, a great man--Humphrey Quain of _The Day_, cocksure, self-confident, with ambitions that appalled him when he thought of them in after years. What would Beaver say? What would old Worthing say...? And there was his aunt, too. That man in the silk hat, with the shabby overcoat, was still sitting on the doorstep. As Humphrey passed him, his lips twisted in a haunting ironical smile. Perhaps he knew of Humphrey's thoughts. He went back to Easterham. After all, Worthing took it very well, and his aunt agreed that three pounds a week certainly showed that he was Getting On, and Beaver, to whom he wrote the glad news, recommended him rooms in Guilford Street, in the house where he was living. And there followed days of tremendous dreams. VI A week later a four-wheeler brought up outside No. 5A Guilford Street, and there, on the doorstep, was Beaver, with his thumbs inkier than ever, waiting to welcome Humphrey to London. The cabman, one of those red-faced, truculent individuals whom a petrol-driven Nemesis has now overtaken and rendered humble, demanded two shillings more than his fare, firstly, because it was obvious that Humphrey came from the country, and secondly, because he had gone by mistake to 550A, which was at the far end of the street. "Why didn't you speak the number plainly," he growled. They compromised with an extra sixpence, on the condition that the cabman should assist in carrying Humphrey's two trunks into the house, as far as the second-floor landing. "There are your rooms," Beaver said, throwing open the door; "you've got a sitting-room, with a little bed-room at the side. Twelve shillings a week," he said, anxiously. "Not too much, I hope. Breakfasts, one shilling a day." He lowered his voice mysteriously. "Take my tip, Quain, and open the eggs and the window at the same time." Humphrey laughed. It was jolly to have Beaver in the loneliness of London. This was quite another Beaver, a better-groomed Beaver, with a clean collar, and only one day's stubble on his chin. He made swift calculations--twelve and seven--nineteen, and coals--what of coals? Coals were a shilling a scuttle. Beaver confided to him that he had a regular system for checking the coal supply. It seems he made an inventory of every lump of coal in every fresh scuttleful. He kept a kind of day-book and ledger system of coal, debiting against the credit supply the lumps that he put on the fire, and balancing his books at night. In this way Mrs Wayzgoose, the landlady, found no opportunity for making extra capital out of the coal business. "You're better off than I am," Beaver said. "I've only got the top room at eight shillings a week--a bed-sitting room. But then, I send ten shillings a week to my sister. It doesn't leave@ very much by the time I've had my meals and paid the rent." Humphrey begged him to consider the sitting-room as his own, so long as he lived in the house. They began to unpack together, Beaver making exclamations of surprise at the turn of things. "Fancy you being on _The Day_!" he said, pausing with a volume in each hand. "It all happened so quickly. I took your advice. Ferrol seems a wonderful chap." "Oh! I daresay Ferrol's all right ... but _The Day's_ got an awful reputation. They're always sacking somebody.... I'd rather be where I am. They've got to keep firing, you know. New blood, and new ideas. That's what they want." Humphrey laughed. "I'm not afraid," he said. "Once I get my teeth into the place, they won't shake me off." All the same, it must be confessed that Beaver's words awoke a slight feeling of alarm in his heart. A king might arise who knew not Humphrey, and he might go down with the rest. "We'll put the books on the mantelpiece; I'll have to get a book-shelf to-morrow." Humphrey had brought up a few of his favourites--an odd collection: _The Fifth Form at St Dominic's_; _The Time Machine_; _An Easy Outline of Evolution_; _Gulliver's Travels_, and _Captain Singleton_; the poems of Browning and Robert Buchanan, and Carlyle's _French Revolution_. The pictures they agreed to hang to-morrow. They were only heliogravure prints of the kind that were sold in shilling parts. Watts' "Hope" and "Life and Death," and other popular pictures, together with photographic reproductions of authors, ancient and modern, from _The Bookman_. When they had finished, Humphrey surveyed his new home. It looked comfortable enough in the fire-light, with the green curtains drawn over the windows. The furniture was of the heavy mahogany, mid-Victorian fashion, blended with a horsehair sofa and bent-wood arm-chair, that struck a jarring note of ultra-modernity. There was a flat-topped desk in one corner by the fireplace. The mantelpiece was hideous with pink and blue vases that held dried grass and clipped bulrushes. Looking round more carefully, he saw that Moses himself could not have had more bulrushes to screen him than Mrs Wayzgoose had put for the delight of her lodgers. There were bulrushes in the mirror over the sideboard, bulrushes in a gaily-decorated stand whose paint hid its drain-pipe pedigree, bulrushes in another bloated vase on a fretted ebony stand by the window. Who shall explain this extraordinary passion for bulrushes that still holds in its thrall the respectable landladies of England? "I must have them cleared away," said Humphrey. Beaver smiled. "You just try!" he said meaningly. "Anyhow, you're better off than I am, mine's paper fans." He rang the bell, and a stout, placid-faced woman appeared at the door. She wore at her neck a large topaz-coloured stone, as large as a saucer, set in a circle of filigree gold, and heavy-looking lumps of gold dangled from her ears. Her hands, with their fingers interlocked, rested on the ends of the shawl that made her appear even more ample than she was. "This is Mr Quain, Mrs Wayzgoose," said Beaver. Mrs Wayzgoose's face fell apart in her welcoming smile--the smile that her lodgers saw only once. It was a wonderful, carefully-studied smile, beginning with the gradual creasing of the mouth, extending earwards, joyfully, and finally spreading until the nose and the eyes were brought into the scheme. "I hope you find everything you want, Mr Quain," she said. "Everything's very comfortable," Humphrey answered. "Do you take tea or coffee with your breakfasts, Mr Quain?" Humphrey was about to reply coffee, when the guardian Beaver winked enormously at him, and shook his head in a manner that was quite perplexing. He had not a notion of what Beaver was trying to convey--there was evidently something to beware of in the question. Then, he had an inspiration. "What do I take, Beaver?" he asked. "Oh, tea--undoubtedly tea," Beaver answered hastily. "Very good." Mrs Wayzgoose turned to go. "Oh! by the way, Mrs Wayzgoose," Humphrey said. "These ... these bulrushes...." "_Bulrushes!_" echoed Mrs Wayzgoose, losing her placidity all of a sudden. There was an icy silence. Beaver seemed to be enjoying it. "Pray, what of my bulrushes?" demanded the masterful Mrs Wayzgoose. "Don't you think ... I mean ... wouldn't the room be lighter without them?" "Without them?" The way she echoed his words, her voice rising in its scale, reminded him of the wolf's replies to Red Riding Hood before making a meal of her. "Are you aware, Mr Quain, that those bulrushes have been there for the last thirty years." "I was not aware of it, but I am not surprised to hear it," Humphrey answered politely. "And that never a complaint has been made about them." "I _am_ surprised to hear that," he murmured. "The last gentleman who had these rooms," continued Mrs Wayzgoose, "he _was_ a gentleman, in spite of being coffee-coloured, was a law student. Mr Hilfi Abbas. He took the rooms _because_ of the bulrushes. Said they reminded him of the Nile. I could let these rooms over and over again to Egyptian gentlemen while these bulrushes are there...." And with that she flounced out of the room in a whirl of skirts, with her ear-rings rocking to the headshakes which punctuated her remarks. "There you are," said Beaver, as the door closed behind her. "What did I tell you?" Humphrey laughed, and shook his fist at the offending bulrushes. "They'll go somehow, you see." When all the unpacking was finished, the pipes put in the pipe-rack, the tobacco-jar on the table, and the photographs of his mother, his father and his aunt placed on the mantelpiece, the question of food came uppermost in his mind. Beaver told him that he had accepted an invitation to supper. "I met a chap on a job whom I knew years ago. We were both reporters together in Hull, on a weekly there. I didn't know you'd be coming up this evening or I wouldn't have arranged to go there." "Well, it doesn't matter," said Humphrey. "I can manage for myself. Don't let me upset your arrangements." "Look here," Beaver said suddenly. "Why shouldn't you come with me. It's only cold supper and they won't mind a bit. I'll explain things. Besides," he added, as he noticed Humphrey was hesitating, "Tommy Pride will be one of your new colleagues. He's on _The Day_. You might be able to pick up a few tips from him." So Humphrey agreed, and they went up into Holborn. It was Sunday evening and every shop was shut, except an isolated restaurant and a tobacconist here and there. The public-houses alone were wholly open, and their windows radiated brilliance into the night. The East had invaded the West for its Sunday parade, and the streets were a restless procession of young people; sex called to sex without anything more evil in intention than a walk through the streets, a hand-clasp and, perhaps, a kiss in some by-way, and then to part with the memory of a gay adventure that would linger during the dull routine of the week to come, to be forgotten and replaced by another. Beaver was for taking the "tube" to Shepherd's Bush--it was a new luxury for London then, making people wonder how they could have borne so long with the sulphurous smoke and gloom of the old underground railway--but the movement of the streets fascinated Humphrey, and, though the journey took much longer, they went out by omnibus. Ah! that ride.... The first ride through London, when Humphrey felt the great buildings all around him, and above him, rising enormously in a long chain that seemed to stretch for miles and miles, below the sky that was copper-tinted with the glare of thousands of lamps. What did London mean to him, then? He found his mind groping forwards and backwards, and this way and that way, puzzling for the secret of the real London that was hidden in the stones of it. He was a little afraid of it all, it seemed so vast and complicated. In Easterham, one knew every one, and to walk the streets was like walking the rooms of one's house--but here no man noticed another, one felt strange and outcast at first, intensely lonely, and minutely insignificant. Idly, as he looked down from this omnibus, at the people as they strolled up and down, he wondered of what they were thinking. Did they ever think at all, these people of the streets--did they ever have moments of meditation when they pondered the why and the wherefore of anything? It seemed so odd to Humphrey, as he thought of it--here was the centre of a great civilization, here were men and women, well and decently dressed, here was London broad and mighty, and yet the minds of those who walked below him were, he felt, narrow and pinched. They might have been living in Easterham for all their lives. And, now, he felt afraid for the first time, knowing that he could never conquer these people by the path he had chosen. What mattered anything to them, except that it touched the root of their lives? They cared nothing, he knew, for the greatness of things. They talked vaguely of the greatness of Empire, but they never thought about it, nor understood it. They lived in a world of names--the world itself was nothing but a string of names which they had been taught. The very stars above them were just "Stars," and the word meant no more to them: if you had talked to them of infinite worlds beyond worlds, of other planets with suns and moons and stars of their own, they would have winked an eye ... and how, when they could not be conquered with the mightiness of everything about them, could Humphrey Quain hope to conquer them. For he had nothing beyond the desire to conquer them--a desire so strong, smouldering somewhere within him, that it had burnt up almost every other interest; he could think perhaps more deeply than they could, but for the rest, he was limited by lack of great knowledge, lack of everything, except an innate gift of shrewd observation and a power of intuitive reasoning. Out of the mists of his thoughts, Beaver's voice came to him. "There's the Marble Arch," said Beaver. "What have you been dreaming about? You haven't said a word all the time." Humphrey laughed. "I was looking at the people," he said. "I always like looking at people." They went past Hyde Park, with its naked trees showing like skeletons in the moonlight. The night seemed to deepen the spaciousness of the Park, with its shadows and silence; it held all the mystery and beauty of a forest. And later they passed the blue, far-reaching depths of Kensington Gardens, with the scent of trees and the smell of earth after rain coming to them. It was all new to Humphrey, new and delightful. He promised himself glorious days and nights probing this city to its heart, and listening to the beat of its pulses. Already, for so was he fashioned, he began to note his emotions, and to watch his inner self, and the impressions he was receiving, so that he could write about them. This was the journalist's sense--a sixth sense--which urges its possessor to set down everything he observes, and adds an infinite zest to life, since every experience, every thought, every new feeling, means something to write about. Nor did he think of the things he saw, in the way of the average man. He thought in phrases. It did not content him to feel that a street lamp was merely a lamp. He would ask himself, almost unconsciously, "What does it look like?" and search for a simile. His thoughts ran in metaphors and symbols. They swung into Notting Hill High Street, and here the streets were almost as crowded as those at Holborn, and the lights of the public-houses flared, oases of brilliance in the desert of dark, shuttered shops. And so down the hill to Shepherd's Bush, with its lamps twinkling round the green, and its throng of people--more men and women thinking of nothing at all, and going up and down in herds, like cattle. VII The memory of that evening at the Prides remained with Humphrey. It was his first glimpse into the social life, and he saw a home that was wholly delightful. Beaver had not under-estimated the hospitality of the Prides. They gave him a hearty welcome that made him feel at home at once. Tommy Pride met them in the passage, and after the first introductions he led the way to the sitting-room, where Mrs Pride was waiting. She was a woman of forty, buxom and charming. He saw, within a very few minutes, that her admiration of Tommy Pride knew no bounds, that she thought him splendid and flawless--that much he read from the way her brown eyes lit up when she gazed upon him, and the fond smile that marked her lips when she spoke to him. The sitting-room was not a very large apartment, but it was furnished with unusual taste. There were books set in white enamelled bookcases--books that are permanent on the shelf, and not novels of a moment. There was chintz on the arm-chairs and green curtains hung over the window, and a few original black-and-white drawings and water-colours on the walls, papered in dark blue. The impression that the room gave to the visitor was one of peace and rest. Humphrey was frankly disappointed in Tommy Pride. He had had a vague notion that everybody connected with a London newspaper was, of necessity, a person of fame. He knew the names of those who signed the articles in _The Day_, and he imagined he would find himself in the company of the great immortals. Somehow or other it had never crossed his mind that there were patient, toiling men--hundreds of them--who put out their best work day after day, year after year, without any hope of glory or fame, but simply for the necessities of life, as a bricklayer lays bricks--hundreds of men quite unknown outside the bounds of Fleet Street and the inner newspaper world. "Well," Mrs Pride said to him; "so you're going to try your luck in London, Mr Quain?" Humphrey nodded, and the conversation went into the channels of small talk. Beaver and he amused the Prides with recollections of Easterham and Mr Worthing, and Tommy Pride capped their recollections with some of his own. "When I was on a little local paper once, we had a fellow named Smee, who thought he could write," said Tommy. "The editor was a hard, cruel sort of chap, without any sympathy for the finer side of literature--at least that was what Smee said. He used to sob all round the place, because he wanted to write great throbbing prose instead of borough-council meetings. One day Smee got his chance. The editor was ill, and there was a prisoner to be hanged in the county jail. Smee wrote the effort of his life. It went something in this way:-- "'Last Tuesday, under the blue vault of heaven, when the larks were singing their rhapsodies to the roseate dawn, at 8 A.M., like a sudden harbinger of horror, the black flag fluttered above the prison walls, showing that Alfred Trollop, aged forty-two, labourer, had suffered the last penalty of the law--viz., death.'" "How's that for descriptive?" asked Tommy, smacking his lips. "'Viz., death.' A glorious touch, eh?" He leaned towards Humphrey. "Don't you bother about fine writing, Quain, or you'll break your heart. We keep a stableful of fine writers, and turn 'em loose when we want any high falutin' done." "Don't be so depressing, Tommy," Mrs Pride said. "Never mind what he says, Mr Quain--there's a chance for every one to do his best in Fleet Street." "Dear optimistress," remarked Tommy, linking an arm in hers, "let's see what we have for supper." They all went into the dining-room, and Humphrey was given the place of honour next to Mrs Pride. Beaver sat opposite, and Tommy was at the head of the table carving the joint of cold roast beef. "I'm a little out of form," he said, whimsically. "This is the first meal I've had at home for a week." "I sometimes wish Tommy were a sub-editor," Mrs Pride confided to Humphrey; "then we should at least have the day to ourselves. But he says he could never sit down at a desk for eight hours a night." "Not me," Tommy interposed, with his mouth full of beef. "If they want to make you a sub-editor, Quain, take several grains of cyanide of potassium rather than yield. You've got some freedom of thought and life as a reporter, but if you're a sub you're chained down with a string of rules. They make you wear a mental uniform." "I thought a sub-editor held a more important position than a reporter," Humphrey said. "So he does, only the reporters don't think so. The paper couldn't get on without the sub-editors. I should love to see _The Day_ printed for just one issue with everything that the reporters wrote untouched. It would have to be a forty-two page paper. Because every reporter thinks his story is the best, and writes as much of it as he can.... I like the subs, they've saved my life over and over again. Next to the Agency men they're the most useful people in the world, eh, Beaver?... Have some beer, Beaver. Pass him the jug, Quain." Beaver laughed. "It strikes me you people on the regular staff of the papers take yourselves much too seriously. You've all got swelled heads. For the sake of fine phrases you'll lose half the facts. Why don't you all understand that it's simply in the day's work to do your job and forget all about it." "Lord knows," Tommy replied, "but we don't. We get obsessed with our jobs, and dream them, and spend hours taking trouble over them, and we know all the time that when they come cold and chilly at night through the sub's hands, they're lopped about and cut up to fit a space. We may pretend we don't care what happens to our writing, so long as we draw our money, but I think we all do in our secret hearts. We're born that way. The moment a man really doesn't care whether his story is printed or cut to shreds, he's no good in a newspaper office. It means he's lost his enthusiasm." Tommy's voice fell. He knew well enough that that was the state of affairs to which he had come. All the long, long years of work had left him emotionless. He had exhausted his enthusiasm, and the whole business seemed stale to him. He felt out of place in this new world of newspaperdom, peopled with energetic, hopeful young men who came out of nowhere, and captured at once the prizes which were so hardly won in his day. He felt himself being nudged out of it all, by the pushful enthusiastic army of young men who had marched down on Fleet Street. All round him he saw signs of the coming change--the old penny papers were talking of changing their price to a halfpenny; the older men in journalism were being pensioned off, or dismissed, or "put on space"--which means that they were not paid a regular salary but at so much a column for what they wrote. The spirit of change was working everywhere: some of the solid writers who found that they could not comply with the modern demands of journalism, migrated back to the provinces and became editors or leader-writers on papers in Manchester, Birmingham or Sheffield. And, at the back of all this change, the figure of Ferrol hovered.... Ferrol sweeping irresistibly over the old traditions of Fleet Street.... Ferrol threatening to acquire this paper and that paper, to start weeklies and monthlies, to extend his power even to the provinces, so that everywhere the shadow brooded. And they would want young men, keen, shrewd young men, and so the day would come when he would fade away from the life of Fleet Street. And then--"Tommy and I are going to retire soon," Mrs Pride said, with a fond glance at her husband, "aren't we, Tommy?" "She means to the workhouse, Beaver," Tommy remarked, with a grin. "We're going to have a cottage in the country, and Tommy's going to write his book." "No," said Beaver, incredulously. "Do you write books, Mr Pride?" Humphrey asked. "I? Lord, no! Not now. I once had an idea of writing books. I was just about your age. I believe I've even got the first chapter somewhere. But I've never written it. Whenever the missis and I get very depressed, we cheer ourselves up by talking of that book, and writing it in the country. By the way, do you know that deep down in the heart of every newspaper man there's a longing to write one book, and to live on two pounds a week in the country?" "That'll do, Tommy," Mrs Pride interposed. "I won't have you spoil Mr Quain's evening any more. You're making him quite depressed. Don't pay any attention to him, Mr Quain, and have some cheese." After supper they went back to the sitting-room, and Mrs Pride played to them, and Beaver sang in a shaky bass voice. Humphrey had never heard Beaver sing before. There was something grotesque about the singing. It took Humphrey by surprise. Beaver was the sort of man who, somehow or other, one imagined would sing in a high treble. He sang on and on, right through the portfolio of the "World's Favourite Songs," including "The Anchor's Weighed," "John Peel," "The Heart Bowed Down," and the rest of them. Pride sat in the arm-chair by the fireside, smoking a pipe, and nodding to the old melodies, while Humphrey gravitated to the book-shelves, and looked at some of the books. He seemed to have left Easterham and his aunt far behind him in dim ages. A new feeling of responsibility came over him, as he sat there thinking of the morrow when his battle with Fleet Street was to begin. The future rested with him alone, and it gave him a delicious thrill of individuality to think of it. It was as if he had suddenly become merged with some one else within him, who was constantly saying to him: "You are Humphrey Quain.... You are Humphrey Quain. Take charge of yourself now.... I have finished with you." He had an odd sense of not fully knowing this strange new Self with which he was faced. He wondered, too, whether Beaver or Pride had ever passed through the same sensation that was passing through him now. This was the beginning of that introspection when the presence of his Self became dominant in his mind, shaping as something to be looked at and examined and questioned, that was to lead to much bitterness and unhappiness in the years to come. The evening came to an end, but before they left Pride took Humphrey aside. "Beaver said you might like a few hints," he said. "I don't think I can help you much. I think you know your way about. But there are two important things to remember: Don't be a genius, and don't be a fool. I'll tell you more in the morning." On the way back to Guilford Street Beaver eulogized Pride. He was one of the best reporters in Fleet Street--one of the safest, Beaver meant. Never let his paper down. Worth his salary on any paper. "I suppose he gets a pretty big salary?" Humphrey asked. "Who? Pride--no! I don't think he gets very much. He's not a show man, you see. Of course, dear old Tommy hasn't got a cent to spare. He's got a girl of thirteen at boarding-school, and that takes a good bit of keeping up." "Why was he so discouraging?" "Oh! that's his way. He pretends he's a pessimist." Humphrey went to bed that night full of thoughts of the morning. And in the tumult of his thoughts he wondered how he should avoid becoming as Tommy Pride, with all his thirty years of work as nothing, and all the high ambitions sacrificed to Fleet Street. Was that to be his end too--a reporter for ever, and at the finish of it, nothing but the husks of enthusiasm. He thought of Pride's wistful desire for a cottage in the country and two pounds a week. And he fell asleep while thinking how he was going to find a better end to his work than that. PART II LILIAN I Humphrey Quain came into the office of _The Day_ with the greatest asset a journalist can possess--enthusiasm. There is no other profession in the world that calls so continually, day after day, for enthusiasm. The bank-clerk may have his slack moment in adding up his figures--indeed the work has become so mechanical to him that he can even think of other things while making his additions; the actor, even, has his lines by heart, and can sometimes go automatically through his part, without the audience noticing he is listless; the barrister may lose his case; the artist may paint one bad picture--it is forgotten in the gallery of good ones; but the reporter must be always alert, always eager, always ready to adapt himself to circumstances and persons, and fail at the peril of his career. In large things and small things it is all alike: the man who goes to report a meeting must do it as eagerly and with as much enthusiasm as the man who journeys to Egypt to interview the Khedive. And, as Humphrey soon found, every day and every hour there are forces conspiring to kill this eagerness and enthusiasm at the root. Before he had been a week on _The Day_ he began to realize the forces that were up against him. It seemed that there was a deliberate league on the part of the world to stifle his ambitions, and to make things go awry with him. Before he had been a week on _The Day_ he felt that he was being checked and thwarted by people. He was turned from the doorsteps by the footmen and servants of those whom he went to see on some quite trivial matters; or he could never find the man he went forth to seek. He went from private house to office, from office to club, in search of a city magnate one day, and failed in his quest, and, after hours of searching, he came back to _The Day_ empty-handed, and Rivers said brusquely: "You'll have to try again at dinner-time. He's sure to be home at seven. We've got to have him to-night." And so he went again at seven to the man's house, only to find that he was dining out and would not be back until eleven. Whereupon he waited about patiently, and, finally, when he did return home, the city magnate declined to venture any opinion on the subject in question to Humphrey (it was about the Russian loan), and, after all, he came back, late and tired, to the office, to find that, as far as Selsey, the chief sub-editor, was concerned, nobody cared very much about his failure or not. And, in the morning, his struggles and troubles and the difficulty of yesterday was quite forgotten, and Rivers never even mentioned the matter to him. But if _The Sentinel_, or any other paper, had chanced to find the city magnate in a more relenting mood, and had squeezed an interview out of him...! He was given cuttings from other papers, pasted on slips of paper, and told to inquire into them. They led him nowhere. There would be, perhaps, an interview with some well-known person of European interest visiting London, but the printed interview never said where the well-known person was to be found. And so this meant a weary round of hotels, and endless telephone calls, until the hours passed, and Humphrey discovered that the man had left London the night before. Even though that was no fault of his own, he could not eliminate the sense of failure from his mind. And once, Rivers had told him to go and see Cartwright's, the coal-merchants, in Mark Lane, and get from them some facts about the rise in the price of coal. And he had been shown into the office, and Cartwright had talked swiftly, hurling technical facts and figures at him, as though he had been in the coal business all his life. So that when the interview was ended, Humphrey reeled out of the office, his mind and memory a tangle of half-understood facts, and wholly incapable of writing anything on the matter. Fortunately, when he got back, he found that other reporters had been seeing coal-merchants, and all that was wanted was just three lines from each--an expression of opinion as to whether the high price would last--and Humphrey rescued from the tangle of talk Cartwright's firm belief that the rise was only temporary. Another day he had been sent to interview a Bishop--an authority on dogma, whose views were to be asked on a startling proposition (from America) of bringing the Bible up-to-date. The Bishop received Humphrey coldly in the hall of his house, and Humphrey noticed that the halls were hung with many texts reflecting Christian sentiments of love and hope and brotherhood. And the Bishop, unmoved by Humphrey's rather forlorn appearance, for somehow he quailed before the austere gaitered personage, curtly told him that he could not discuss the matter. When Humphrey came back it so happened that he met Neckinger. "Well, what are you doing to-day, Quain?" asked Neckinger with an indulgent smile. He was a short, thick-set man, with a pear-shaped face, and brown eyes that held a quizzical look in them. It was the second time Humphrey had come into touch with Neckinger, who was the editor of _The Day_, and rarely ventured from his room when he came to the office. Humphrey told him where he had been, and with what results. "Wouldn't he talk?" asked Neckinger. "No," Humphrey answered. Neckinger paused with his hand on the door knob. His eyes twinkled, and his fingers caressed his moustache. "Why didn't you make him talk?" asked Neckinger with a hint of disapproval in his voice. Then, without waiting for a reply, he went into his room. Humphrey felt that he was faced with a new problem in life. How did one _make_ people talk? It was not enough to hunt your quarry to his lair--that was the easiest part of the business--you had to compel him to disgorge words--any words--so be they made coherent sentences. You had to come back and say that he had spoken, and write down what he said at your discretion. And if he would not speak, you had, in some mysterious manner, to force the words from his mouth. That was what puzzled Humphrey in the beginning. What was the magic key that the other reporters had to unlock the conversation of those whom they went to see? They very seldom failed. Humphrey went home, perplexed, disturbed with this added burden on his shoulders. He saw his life as one long effort at making unwilling people talk for publication. And yet, on the whole, this first week of his in Fleet Street was one of glorious happiness. The romance of the place gripped him at once, and held him a willing captive. He loved the thrill of pride that came to him, whenever he passed through the swing doors in the morning, and the commissionaire, superior person of impregnable dignity, condescended to nod to him. He loved the reporters' room, with its fire and the grate, and the half circle of chairs drawn round it, where there were always two or three of the other men sitting, and talking wonderful things about the secrets of their work. In reality, the reporters' room was the most prosaic room in the whole building. It was a broad, bare room, excessively utilitarian in appearance. There was nothing superfluous or ornamental in it. Everything within its four walls was set there for a distinct purpose. The large high windows were uncurtained so as to admit the full light of day. And when the full light of day shone, it showed an incredibly untidy room, with every desk littered with writing-paper, and newspapers, and even the floor thick with a slipshod carpet of printed matter. The desks were placed against the walls and round the room. Humphrey had no desk of his own. He usually came in and sat at whichever desk was empty, and more often than not the rightful owner of the desk would arrive, and Humphrey would mumble apologies, gather up his papers, and depart to the next desk. In this way he sometimes made a whole tour of the room, shifting from desk to desk. There were pegs near the door, and from one of them a disreputable umbrella dangled by its crook handle. It was pale-brown with dust, and its ribs were bent and broken, and rents showed in the covering--as an umbrella its use had long since gone, yet it still hung there. Nobody knew to whom it belonged. Nobody threw it away--it was a respected survival of some ancient day. It remained for ever, an umbrella that had once done good and faithful work, now useless and dusty, with its gaping holes and twisted framework--perhaps, as a symbol. A telephone, a bell that rang in the commissionaire's box and told him the reporter needed a messenger-boy, and a pot of paste completed the furniture of the reporters' room. They had all they needed, and if they wished for anything they could ring for it--that was the attitude of the managerial side who were responsible for office luxuries. The manager, by the way, had a room that was, by comparison, a temple of luxury, from its soft-shaded electric lights and green wall-paper (the reporters' walls were distempered) to its wondrous carpet, and mahogany desk. Nobody seemed to care very much for the reporters, Humphrey found, except when one of them--or all of them--saved the paper from being beaten by its rivals, or caused the paper to beat its rivals. But in the ordinary course of events, the manager ignored the reporters; the sub-editors, in their hearts, regarded them as loafers and pitied their grammar and inaccuracy for official titles and initials of leading men; Neckinger never bothered much about them unless there was trouble in the air, while those distant people, the leader-writers, sometimes looked at them curiously, as one regards strange types. And yet, the reporters were the friendliest and most human of all those in the office. They came daily into contact with life in all its forms, and it knocked the rough edges off them. They were generous, large-hearted men, whose loyalty to their paper had no limits. They lived together, herded in their big bare room, chafing always against their slavery, and yet loving their bondage, unmoved at the strange phases of life that passed through their hands; surveying, as spectators regard a stage-play, the murders, the humours, the achievements, the tragedies, and the sorrow and laughter of nations. In those days the interior of the grey building was an unexplored mystery for Humphrey. He passed along the corridors by half-opened doors which gave a tantalizing glimpse into the rooms beyond where men sat writing. There were the sporting rooms, where the sporting editor and his staff worked at things quite apart from the reporters. Nothing seemed to matter to them: the greatest upheavals left their room undisturbed; football, cricket, racing, coursing and the giving of tips were their main interests, and though a king died or war was declared, they still held their own page, the full seven columns of it, so that they could chronicle the sport and the pleasure. The sporting men and the reporters seldom mingled in the office; sometimes Lake, the sporting editor, nodded to those he knew coming up the stairs. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a heavy face, and the appearance of a clubman and a man of the world. Close to the sporting room was a strange room lit with an extraordinarily luminous pale blue glare. Humphrey satisfying his curiosity prowled about the building one evening, and ventured to the door. The men who were there did not question his presence. They just looked at him and went on with their work. One of them, in his shirt-sleeves and a black apron, was holding a black square of glass to the light, from which something shining was dripping. A pungent smell of iodoform filled Humphrey's nostrils. He knew the smell; it was intimately associated with the recollections of his youth, when he had dabbled in photography with a low-priced camera, using the cistern-room at the top of the house as a dark-room. And he saw that another man was manipulating an enormous camera, that moved along a grooved base. This, he knew, was an enlarging apparatus, and he realized that here they were making the blocks for _The Day_--transferring a drawing or a photograph to copper or zinc plates. There was something real and vital about this office where each day was active with a different activity from the day before; where each room was a mirror of life itself. Next door to the room where the blue light vibrated and flared intensely, he found a smaller room, where two men sat, also in their shirt-sleeves, tap-tapping at telegraph transmitters. A cigarette dangled loosely from the lip of each man, and neither of them glanced at the work of his fingers. They looked always at the printed proof, or the written copy held in a clip before them. This was the provincial wire room. They were tapping a selection of the news, letter by letter, to Birmingham, where _The Day_ had an office of its own. Humphrey noticed with a queer thrill that one of the men was sending through something that he himself had written. Downstairs, in a long room, longer than the reporters' room, and just as utilitarian, the sub-editors sat at two broad tables forming the letter T. Mr Selsey, the chief sub-editor, sat in the very centre of the top of the T, surrounded by baskets, and proofs, and telephones, and, at about seven o'clock every evening, his dinner. He was a gentle-mannered man, whose face told the time as clearly as a clock. From six to eight it was cheerful; when he began to frown it was nine o'clock; when he grew restless and spoke brusquely it was eleven; and when his hair was dishevelled and his eyes became anxious it was eleven-thirty, and the struggle of pruning down and rejecting the masses of copy that passed through his hands was at its climax. At one o'clock he was normal again, and became gentle over a cup of cocoa. Humphrey was never certain whether Mr Selsey approved of him or not. He had to go through the ordeal every evening of bringing that which he had written to him, and to stand by while it was read. It reminded him of his school-days, when he used to bring his exercise-book up to the schoolmaster. Selsey seldom made any comment--he read it, marked it with a capital letter indicating whether its fate would be three lines, a paragraph, or its full length, and tossed it into a basket, whence it would be rescued by one of the sub-editors, who saw that the paragraphs, the punctuation and the sense of it were right, cut out whole sentences if it were necessary to compress it, and added a heading to it. Then, it was taken back to Selsey, who glanced at it quickly, and threw it into another basket, whence it was removed by a boy and shot through a pneumatic tube to the composing-room. The sub-editors' room was the heart of the organism of _The Day_ between the hours of six in the evening and one the next morning. It throbbed with persistent business. The tape machines clicked out the news of the world in long strips, and boys stood by them, cutting up the slips into convenient sizes, and pasting them on paper. The telephone bells rang, and every night at nine-thirty, Westgate, the leather-lunged sub-editor, disappeared into a telephone-box with a glass door. Humphrey saw him one night when he happened to be in the room. He looked like a man about to be electrocuted, with a band over the top of his skull, ending in two receivers that fitted closely over his ears. His hands were free so that he could write, and through the glass Humphrey watched his mouth working violently until his face was wet with perspiration. He was shouting through a mouthpiece, and his words were carried under the sea to Paris, though no one in the sub-editors' room could hear them, since the telephone-box was padded and noise-proof. And Humphrey could see his pencil moving swiftly over the paper, with an occasional pause, as his mouth opened widely to articulate a question, and again he felt that delightful and mighty sensation of being in touch with the bones of life, as he realized that somewhere, far away in Paris, the correspondent of _The Day_, invisible but audible, was hailing the sub-editors' room across space and time. He saw no longer the strained, taut face of Westgate, his unkempt moustache bobbing up and down with the movement of his upper lip, the big vein down his forehead bulging like a thick piece of string with his perspiring exertions. He saw a miracle, and it filled his heart with a strange exultation. He wanted to say to Selsey, "Isn't that splendid!" Six other men sat at the long table that ran at right angles to the top table, and Selsey was flanked by Westgate, who dealt with Paris, and Tothill, who did the police-court news,--the stub of a cigarette stuck on his lower lip as though it were some strange growth. These men, in the first few days of Humphrey's life in the office of _The Day_, were incomprehensible people to him. He could not understand why they should elect, out of all the work in the world, to sit down at a table from six until one; to leave their homes--he assumed that they were comfortable--their firesides and their wives. They did not meet life as the reporters did; they had none of the glamour and the adventure of it, the work seemed to him to be unutterably stale and destructive. One or two of them wore green shades over their eyes to protect them from the glare of white paper under electric light. And the green shades gave their faces an appearance of pallor. They looked at him curiously whenever he came into the room: he divined at once, rightly or wrongly, that their interests clashed with his. They were one of their forces which he knew he would have to fight. The remembrance of Tommy Pride's words echoed in his ears as he stood by Selsey's table. Yet this room held him spell-bound as none other did. It was the main artery through which the life-blood of _The Day_ flowed. He saw the boys ripping open the russet-coloured envelopes that disgorged telegrams from islands and continents afar off; he saw them sorting out stacks of tissue paper covered with writing, "flimsy"--manifolded copy--from all the people who lived by recording the happenings of the moment--men like Beaver, who were lost if people did not do things--the stories of people who brought law-suits, who were born, married, divorced; who went bankrupt; who died; who left wills; stories of actors who played parts; of books that were written; of men who made speeches; of banquets; of funerals--the little, grubby boys were handling the epitome of existence, and this great volume of throbbing life was merely paper with words scrawled over it to them.... It was only in after years that Humphrey himself perceived the significance and the meaning of the emotions which swelled within him during those early days. At the time, as he glanced left and right, down the long table, where the sub-editors bent their heads to their work, and he saw this man dealing with the city news, making out lists of the prices of stocks and shares, and that man handling the doings of Parliament, something moved him inwardly to smile with a great, unbounded pride. He was like a recruit who has been blooded. "I, too, am part of this," he thought. "And this is part of me." * * * * * Yet another glimpse he had into the mysteries of the grey building, and then he marvelled, not that the small things he wrote were cut down, but that they ever got into print at all. It was one night when he had been sent out on a late inquiry. A "runner"--one of those tattered men, who run panting into newspaper offices at night with news of accidents or fires--had brought in some story of an omnibus wreck in Whitehall. Humphrey was given a crumpled piece of paper, with wretchedly scrawled details on it, and told to go forth and investigate. Had he not been so new to the game, he would have known that it was wise to telephone to Charing Cross or Westminster hospitals, for the deductive mind of a reporter used to such things would have told him that where there is an omnibus wreck, there must be injury to life and limb, and the nearest hospitals would be able to verify the bald fact of an accident. But there was nobody who had sufficient leisure or inclination to teach Humphrey his business, and, perhaps it was all the better for him that he should buy his lessons with experience. For he found that "runners'" tales, though they must be investigated, seldom pay for the investigation. The "runner" exaggerates manfully for the sake of his half-crown. Thus, when he arrived at Whitehall, he found, by the simple expedient of asking the policeman on point duty, that there had been an accident--most decidedly there had been an accident; one wheel had come off an omnibus. When? "Oh, about three hours ago, but nobody was hurt as I know on. You can go back and tell 'em there's nothing in it for the noosepaper." Humphrey had never said that he was a reporter: how did the policeman know? He was a good-natured, red-faced man, and his attitude towards Humphrey was one of easy-going familiarity and gentle tolerance. He spoke kindly as equal to equal; it might almost be said that, from his great height, he bent down, as it were, to meet Humphrey, with the air of a patron conferring benefits. He was not like the Easterham policemen who touched their hats to Humphrey, and called him "sir," because they knew whenever anything happened, the _Gazette_ would refer to the plucky action of P.C. Coles, who was on point duty at the time. "Nobody hurt at all!" Humphrey repeated, looking vaguely round in the darkness, as though he expected to see the wooden streets of Whitehall littered with bleeding corpses to give the constable the lie. "You go 'ome," said the policeman, kindly. "I should be the first to know of anything like that if it was serious. I'd have to put in my report. I ain't got no mention of no one injured seriously." He said it with an air of finality, as though he were taking upon himself the credit of having saved life and limb by not using his notebook. And with that, he eased the chin-strap of his helmet with his forefinger, nodded smilingly, repeated, "You go 'ome," and padded riverwards in his rubber-soled boots. When Humphrey got back to the office and into the sub-editors' room to tell his news, he found that their work was slackening. Two or three of them were hard at it, but the rest were having their supper. A tall, spidery-looking man, with neatly parted fair hair and a singularly high forehead, was tossing for pennies with Westgate--and winning. It was midnight. One of the sub-editors said to Humphrey: "You'd better tell Selsey; he's in the composing-room." Humphrey hesitated. "It's across the corridor," his informant added. He went across the corridor, and into a new world. The room was alive with noise; row upon row the aproned linotype operators sat before the key-boards translating the written words of the "copy" before them into leaden letters. Their machines were almost human. They touched the keys, as if they were typewriting, and little brass letters slipped down into a line, and then mechanically an iron hand gripped the line, plunged it into a box of molten lead, and lifted it out again with a solid line of lead cast from the mould, while the little brass letters were hoisted upwards and distributed automatically into their places, and all the time the same business was being repeated again and again. The lines of type were set up in columns, seven of them to a page, and locked in an iron frame, and then they were taken to an inner room, where men pressed papier mâché over the pages of type, so that every letter was moulded clearly on this substance. Then this "flong" was placed in a curved receptacle, and boiling lead was poured upon it, as on a mould, so that one had the page curved to fit the cylinder of the printing machine. The curved sheet went through various phases of trimming and making ready, until it was finally taken to the basement.... Very many brains were working together that the words written by Humphrey should be repeated hundreds and thousands of times. All these men were part of the mighty scheme. They had their homes and their separate lives outside the big building, but here they were all merged into one disciplined body, for so many hours at night, carrying on the work which the men on the other side did during the day. In one corner of the room Selsey was busy with Hargreave, the assistant night editor, and as Humphrey went up he saw that they were still cutting out things from printed proofs, and altering headings. And on an iron-topped table great squares of type rested--the forms just as he had seen them in the _Easterham Gazette_ office--only they were bigger, and the "furniture"--the odd wedge-shaped pieces of wood which they used in Easterham to lock the type firmly in between the frames, was abandoned for a simpler contrivance in iron. And there were Selsey and Hargreave peering at the first pages of _The Day_ in solid type, reading it from right to left, as one reads Hebrew, and suddenly Hargreave would say: "Well we'd better take out the last ten lines of that, and shift this half-way down the column, and put this Reuter message at the top with a splash heading," or else, putting a finger on a square of type, "take that out altogether, that'll give us room." And he would glance up at the clock, with the anxiety of a man who knows there are trains to catch. No question of writing here.... No time for sentiment.... No time to think, "Poor devil, those ten lines cost, perhaps, hours of work," or, "Those ten lines were thought by their writer to be literature." Literature be hanged! It was only cold type, leaden letters squeezed into square frames--leaden letters that will be melted down on the morrow--type, and the whole paper to be printed, and trains for the delivery carts to catch, if people would have papers before breakfast. And the aproned men brought other squares of type, and printed rough impressions of them, so that Humphrey caught a glimpse of one of the pages at shortly after midnight of a paper that would be new to people at eight o'clock the next morning. He felt the pride of a privileged person. Selsey caught sight of him. "Hullo, Quain ... what are you doing here?" "Bus accident--" began Humphrey. Hargreave pounced upon him. "Any good? Is it worth a contents bill?" he asked, excitedly. "There hasn't been any accident worth speaking of. No one hurt, I mean." "All right. Let it go," said Selsey, calmly. Hargreave went away to haggle with the foreman over something. Nobody was relieved to hear that the accident had not been serious. Humphrey lingered a little longer: he saw rooms leading out of the composing-room, where there was a noise of hammering on metal, and the smell of molten lead, ... and men running to and fro in aprons, taking surreptitious pinches of snuff, banging with mallets, carrying squares of type, proofs, battered tins of tea, ... running to and fro, terribly serious and earnest, just as scene-shifters in the theatre rush and bustle and carry things that the audience never sees, when the curtain hides the stage. "Better get home," said Selsey, noticing him again. Humphrey went downstairs. The reporters' room was empty; the fire was low in the grate. He went downstairs, and as he reached the bottom step, the grey building shivered and trembled as if in agony, and there came up from the very roots of its being a deep roar, at first irregular, and menacing, but gradually settling down to a steady, rhythmical beat, like the throbbing of thousands of human hearts. II The man whom Humphrey feared most, in those early days, was Rivers, the news-editor. His personality was a riddle. You were never certain when you were summoned to his room in the morning, whether good or ill would result from it. In his hands lay the ordering of your day. You had no more control over your liberty from the time you came into Rivers' room than a prisoner serving his sentence,--no longer a man with a soul, but a reporter. You could be raised into the highest heaven or dropped down to the deepest hell by the wish of Rivers. He could bid you go forth--and you would have to tramp wretchedly the streets of the most unlovely spots in outer London in an interminable search for some elusive news: or perhaps you would be given five pounds for expenses and told to catch the next train for a far county, and spend the day among the hedgerows of the country-side. He had power absolute, like the taskmasters of old. He sat in his room, with the map of England on the wall with its red flags marking the towns where _The Day_ had correspondents, surrounded by telephones and cuttings from papers. He was in the office all day and night. At least that was how it appeared to Humphrey, who met him often and at all times on the stairs. When he was not, by any chance, there, his place was taken by O'Brien, an excitable Irishman, whose tie worked itself gradually up his collar, marking the time when his excitement was at fever-heat like a barometer. Rivers had a home, of course, and a wife and a family. He was domesticated somewhere out in Herne Hill, from the hours of eight until ten-thirty in the morning; and except once a week no more was seen of him at home. O'Brien generally took the desk on Sundays. But for the rest of his life Rivers lived and breathed with _The Day_ more than any one else. From the time the door closed on him after breakfast, to the time when it closed on him late at night, when he went home, worn-out and tired, he worked for _The Day_. He was bought as surely as any slave was bought in the days of bondage. And his price was a magnificent one of four figures. He expected his men to do as he did, in the service of the paper. For his goodwill, nothing sufficed but the complete subservience of all other interests to the work of _The Day_. Not until you did that, were you worthy to be on the paper and serve him.... And many hearts were broken in that room, with its hopeless gospel of materialism, where ideals were withered and nothing spiritual could survive. Rivers was one of the young men who had won himself to power by the brute force of his intellect. He knew his own business to the tips of his fingers, and, beyond that, nothing mattered. Art and literature and the finer qualities of life could not enter into the practical range of his vision. They were not news. The great halfpenny public cared for nothing but news--a murder mystery, for choice; and the only chance art or literature had of awaking his interest was for the artist to commit suicide in extraordinary circumstances, or for the novelist to murder his publisher. ("By George!" I can hear Rivers saying, "here's a ripping story.... Here's an author murdered his publisher ... 'm ... 'm ... I suppose it's justifiable homicide.") But on news--red-hot news--he was splendid. He might be sitting in his chair, joking idly with anybody who happened to be in the room, and suddenly the boy would bring in a slip from the tape machine: a submarine wreck! Immediately, the listless, joking man would become swiftly serious and grim. He would decide instantly on the choice of reporters--two should be sent to the scene. "Boy, bring the A.B.C. No train. Damn it, why didn't that kid bring the news in at once. He dawdled five minutes. We could have caught the 3.42. Well, look up the trains to Southampton. Four o'clock. O'Brien, telephone up Southampton and tell them to have a car to take _The Day_ reporters on. Boy, ask Mr Wratten and Mr Pride to come up. O'Brien, send a wire to the local chaps--tell 'em to weigh in all they can. Notify the post-office five thousand words from Portsmouth. Too late for photographs to-night--ring through to the artists, we'll have a diagram and a map. Off Southsea, eh? Shove in a picture of Southsea...." And in an hour it would all be over, and Rivers, a new man with news stirring in the world, would playfully punch O'Brien in the chest, and gather about him a reporter or two for company, and bestow wonderful largesse in the shape of steaks and champagne. That was the human thing about Rivers. He was master absolute, and yet there was no sharp dividing line between him and the men under him. The discipline was there, but it was never obtruded. They drank, and joked, and scored off each other, and Rivers, when things were slack, would tell them some of his early adventures, but whenever it came to the test, his authority in his sphere was supreme. He knew how to get the best work out of his men; and, I think, sometimes, he was sorry for the men who had not, and never would get, a salary of four figures. Humphrey could not understand him. At times he would be brutally cruel, and morose, scarcely speaking a word to anybody except Wratten, who was generally in his good books; at other times he would come to the office as light-hearted as a child, and urge them all into good-humour, and make them feel that there was no life in the world equal to theirs. Since that day when Humphrey had first met him in Ferrol's room, and he had laughed and said, "You're not a genius, are you?" Rivers had not taken any particular notice of him. When he came into Rivers' room, halting and nervous, he envied the easy freedom of the other reporters who chanced to be there. Wratten sitting on a table, dangling his legs, and Tommy Pride, with his hat on the back of his head, and a pipe in his mouth, while a third man might be looking over the diary of the day's events. "Hullo, Quain...." "Good-morning, Mr Rivers." "O'Brien, what have you got for Quain. Eh? Nothing yet. Go downstairs and wait." Or else: "Nothing doing this morning. You'd better do this lecture at seven o'clock. Give him the ticket, O'Brien." And, as Humphrey left the room, he heard Wratten say casually, "I'll do that Guildhall luncheon to-day, Rivers, eh?" And Rivers replied, "Right-O. We shall want a column." Splendid Wratten, he thought! How long would it be before he acquired such ease, such sure familiarity--how long before he should prove himself worthy to dangle his legs freely in the presence of Rivers. Within a few days something happened that made Humphrey the celebrity of a day in the reporters' room. It was a fluke, a happy chance, as most of the good things in life are. A man had killed himself in a London street under most peculiar circumstances. He had dressed himself in woman's clothes, and only, after death, when they took him to the hospital, did they find that the dead body was that of a man. He was employed in a solicitor's office near Charing Cross Road. His name was Bellowes, and he was married, and lived at Surbiton. These facts were published briefly in the afternoon papers. Rivers, scenting a mystery, threw his interest into the story. There is nothing like a mystery for selling the paper. He sent for Willoughby. Humphrey had found Willoughby one of the most astonishing individuals of the reporters' room. He was a tall, slim man, with a hollow-cheeked face and a forehead that was always frowning. His hair fell in disorder almost over his eyebrows, and whenever he wrote he pulled his hair about with his left hand, and mumbled the sentences as he wrote them. His speciality was crime: he knew more of the dark underside of human nature than any one Humphrey had met. He knew the intimate byways of crime, and its motives; every detective in the Criminal Investigation Department was his friend, and though by the rigid law of Scotland Yard they were forbidden to give information, he could chat with them, make his own deductions as well as any detective, and sometimes accompany them when an arrest was expected. He drew his information from unknown sources, and he was always bringing the exclusive news of some crime or other to _The Day_. He was a bundle of nerves, for he lived always in a world of expectancy. At any moment, any hour, day and night, something would be brought to light. Murder and sudden death and mystery formed the horizon of his thoughts. Humphrey had found a friend in Willoughby. In very contrast to the work in which he was engaged, he kept the room alive with merriment. He could relate stories as well as he could write them, and he spoke always with the set phrases of old-time journalism that had a ludicrous effect on his listeners. His character was a strange mixture of shrewdness, worldly-wisdom, and ingenuousness, and this was reflected in the books he carried always with him. In one pocket there would be an untranslatable French novel, and, in the other, by way of counterblast, a Meredith or a Stevenson. He and Humphrey had often talked about books, and Willoughby showed the temperament of a cultured scholar and a philosopher when he discussed literature. Willoughby went up to Rivers' room. "Here you are, my son," said Rivers, tossing him over the cuttings on the affair of the strange suicide. "Get down to Surbiton and see if you can nose out anything. I'll get some one else to look after the London end." The some one else chanced to be Humphrey, for there was nobody but him left in the reporters' room. Thus it came about that, a few minutes after Willoughby had set out for Surbiton, Humphrey came out on Fleet Street with instructions to look after the "London end" of the tragedy. Rivers' parting words were ringing in his ears. They had a sinister meaning in them. "... And don't you fall down, young man," he had said, using the vivid journalistic metaphor for failure. The busy people of the street surged about him, as he stood still for a moment trying to think where he should begin on the London end. He felt extraordinarily inexperienced and helpless.... He thought how Wratten would have known at once where to go, or how easily Tommy Pride, with his years of training, could do the job. He did not dare ask Rivers to teach him his business--he had enough common sense to know that, at any cost, his ignorance must be hidden under a mask of wisdom. The reporter thrust suddenly face to face with a mystery that must be unravelled in a few hours is a fit subject for tragedy. He is a social outlaw. He has not the authority of the detective, and none of the secret information of a department at his hand. He is a trespasser in private places, a Peeping Tom, with his eye to a chink in the shuttered lives of others. His inner self wrenches both ways; he loathes and loves his duty. The human man in him says, "This is a shocking tragedy!" The journalist subconsciously murmurs, "This will be a column at least." Tears, and broken hearts, and the dismal tragedy of it all pass like a picture before him, and leave him unmoved. The public stones him for obeying their desires. He would gladly give up all this sorry business ... and perhaps his salvation lies in his own hand if he becomes sufficiently strong and bold to cry "Enough!" And this is the tragedy of it--he is neither strong nor bold; and so we may appreciate the picture of Humphrey Quain faced for the first time with the crisis that comes into every journalist's life, when his work revolts his finer senses. He went blindly up the street, and newsboys ran towards him with raucous shouts, offering the latest news of the suicide. He bought a copy, and read through the story. It occurred to him that the best thing he could do was to go to the offices near Charing Cross Road, where the dead man had worked. He took an omnibus. It was five o'clock in the evening, and most of the passengers were City men going home. Lucky people--their work was finished, and his was not yet begun. When he came to the building he wanted, he paused outside. It was a ghastly business. What on earth should he say? What right had he to go and ask questions--there would be an inquest. Surely the public could wait till then for the sordid story. It was ghoulish. He went into the office and asked the young man at the counter whether Mr Parfitt (the name of the partner) was in. The young man must have guessed his business in a moment. Humphrey felt as if he had a placard hanging round his neck, "I am a newspaper man." "No," snapped the young man, curtly, "he's out." "When will he be back?" asked Humphrey. "I don't know," the young man answered, obstinately. "Who are you from?" That was a form of insult reserved for special occasions: it implied, you see, that the caller was obviously not of such appearance as to suggest that he was anything but a paid servant. Humphrey said: "I wanted to talk about this sad tragedy of--" The young man looked him up and down, and said, "We've nothing to say." "But--" began Humphrey. "We've nothing to say." The young man's lips closed tightly together with a grimace of absolute finality. Humphrey hesitated: he knew that the whole mystery lay within the knowledge of this spiteful person, if only he could be overcome. "Look here," said the young man, threateningly. "Why don't you damn reporters mind your own business. You're the seventh we've 'ad up 'ere. We've nothing to say. See?" His voice rose to a shriller key. He was a very unpleasant young man, but fortunately he dropped his "h's," which modified, in some strange way, in Humphrey's mind the effect of his onslaught. The young man who had at first seemed somebody of importance, faded away now merely to an underbred nonentity. Humphrey laughed at him. "You might keep your h's if you can't keep your temper," he said. Then he left the office, feeling sorry for himself. It was nearly six o'clock, and he was no further. A hall-porter sat reading a paper in front of the fireplace. Humphrey tried diplomacy. He remarked on the tragedy: the hall-porter agreed it was very tragic. There had been seven other reporters before him (marvellous how policemen and hall-porters seemed to know him at once). Humphrey felt in his pocket for half-a-crown and slipped it into the porter's hand. The porter thanked him with genuine gratitude. "Well," said Humphrey, "what sort of a chap was this Mr Bellowes?" "Can't say as how I ever saw him," said the porter; "this is my first day here." "O lord!" groaned Humphrey. He was in the street again, pondering what he should do. And suddenly that intuitive reasoning power of his began to work. A man who worked in the neighbourhood would conceivably be known to the shopkeepers round about. He visited the shops adjoining the building where the dead man worked, but none of them yielded any information, not even the pawnbrokers. The men whom he asked seemed quite willing to help, but they knew nothing. Finally, he went into the Green Lion public-house which stands at the corner by a court. Hitherto public-houses had not interested him very much: he went into them rarely, because in Easterham, where every one's doings were noted, it was considered the first step downwards to be seen going into a public-house. Thus, he had grown up without acquiring the habit of promiscuous drinking. There were a good many people in the bar, and the briskness of business was marked by the frequent pinging noise of the bell in the patent cash till, as a particularly plain-looking young woman pulled the drawer open to drop money in. Humphrey asked for bottled beer. "Cannock's?" the barmaid asked. "Please." She gave him the drink. He said "Thank you." She said "Thank you." She gave him the change, and said "Thank you" again. Whereupon, in accordance with our polite custom, he murmured a final "'Kyou." Then she went away with an airy greeting to some fresh customer. Presently she came back to where Humphrey was standing. He plunged boldly. "Sad business this of Mr Bellowes?" he ventured, taking a gulp at his beer. She raised her eyebrows in inquiry. "Haven't you read about--" he held a crumpled evening paper in his hand. "The tragedy, I mean." "Oh yes," she said. "Very sad, isn't it?" A man came between them. "'Ullo, Polly, lovely weather, don't it?" he said, cheerfully, counting out six coppers, and making them into a neat pile on the table. "Same as usual." "Now then, Mister Smart!" said Polly, facetiously, bringing him a glass of whisky. "All the soda." "Up to the pretty, please," he said, adding "Whoa-er" as the soda-water bubbled to the level of the fluted decorations round the glass. Small talk followed, frequently interrupted by fresh arrivals. A quarter of an hour passed. The cheerful man had one more drink, and finally departed, with Polly admonishing him to "Be good," to which he replied, "I always am." Humphrey ordered another Cannock. "Did he often come here?" "Who?" asked Polly. "Mr Jobling--the man who's gone out?" "No. I mean Mr Bellowes." "I'm sure I don't know," she said a little distantly. "Those gentlemen over there"--nodding to a corner of the bar where two men stood in the shadows--"can tell you all about him. They were telling me something about him just before you came in. Fourpence, please." Humphrey took with him his glass of beer, and went to the two men. They were both drinking whisky, and they seemed to be in a good humour. They turned at Humphrey's wavering "Excuse me...." "Eh?" said one of the men. "Excuse me..." Humphrey repeated. "I'm told you knew Mr Bellowes." "Well," said the other man, a little truculently. "What if we did?" It seemed to Humphrey that the most absolute frankness was desirable here. "Look here," he said, "I wish you'd help me by telling me something about him. Here's my card.... I'm on _The Day_." The younger of the two men smiled, and winked. "You've got a nerve," he said. "Why, you couldn't print it if we told you." "Couldn't I? Well, never mind. Let's have a drink on it anyway." Humphrey began his third Cannock, and the others drank whisky. One of them, in drinking, spilt a good deal of the liquor over his coat lapel, and did not bother to wipe it off: he was slightly drunk. "It's bringing a bad reputation on the firm," said the elder man. "Name in all the papers." Humphrey was seized with an idea. He knew now that the whole secret of the mystery was within his grasp. One of the men, at least, was from the solicitor's office. The instinct of the journalist made him courageous: he would never leave the bar until he got the story. "I'll tell you what," he said, "I'll promise to keep the name of the firm out of _The Day_; I'll just refer to it as a firm of solicitors!" "That's not a bad notion," said the younger man. He drew the elder man aside and they talked quietly for a few minutes. Then more drinks were ordered. Humphrey tackled his fourth Cannock. His head was just beginning to ache. A tantalizing half-hour passed. The younger man seemed more friendly to Humphrey--he had some friends in Fleet Street; did Humphrey know them, and so on. The elder man was growing more drunk. He swayed a little now. Humphrey's ears buzzed, and his vision was not so acute. The outlines of people were blurred and indistinct. "Good lord," he murmured to himself, "I'm getting drunk too." He was pleasantly happy, and smiled into his sixth glass of beer. He confided to the elder man that he admired him for his constancy to the dead man, and they began to talk over the bad business as friends. The elder man even called him "Ol' chap." They really were very affectionate. "But WHY did he do it?" said Humphrey; "that's what beats me." "Oh, well, you see he was in love with this girl ..." "Which girl?" "Why, Miss Sycamore ... you know the little girl that sings, 'Come Round and See Me in the Evening,' in the _Pompadour Girl_." "No. Was he?" "Was he not," said the elder man, with a hiccough. "Why, he used to be talking to me all day about her.... And the letters. My word, you should see the letters ... he used to show them to me before he sent them off. Full of high thinking and all that." And gradually the whole story came out, in scattered pieces, that Humphrey saw he could put together into a real-life drama. Never once did he think of the dead man, or the dead man's wife in Surbiton (Willoughby was probably doing his best there). He only saw the secret drama unfolding itself like a novelist's plot. The meetings, the letters, the double life of Bellowes, a respectable churchwarden in Surbiton; a libertine in London--and then she threw him over; declined to see him when he called at the stage door; he had dressed himself as a woman, hoping to pass the stage-door keeper. Perhaps if he had got as far as the dressing-room, maddened by the breakage of his love, and the waste of his intrigue, there might have been a double tragedy. And so to the final grotesque death in the street. It was eight o'clock when Humphrey had the whole story in his mind, and by that time, though he knew he had drunk far too much, he was not so drunk as the other two men. "There you are, old boy," said the elder man, affectionately. "You can print it all, and keep my name and the name of the firm out of the papers." "So long," said the younger man, as they parted at the door of the bar. "You won't have another." "I'd better get back now," Humphrey replied. "Thanks awfully. You've done me a good turn." He walked back to the office; the late evening papers still bore on their posters the word "Mystery"--but he alone of all the people hurrying to and fro knew the key of the mystery. He had set forth a few hours ago--it seemed years--ignorant of everything, and, behold, he had put a finger into the tragedy of three lives. All that feeling of revolt and hatred of his business passed away from him, and left in its place nothing but a great joy that he had succeeded, where he never dreamt success was possible. After this he knew he must be a journalist for ever, a licensed meddler in the affairs of other people. And so, with his head throbbing, and his legs a little unsteady, he came back to the office of _The Day_. It was nine o'clock; Rivers had left the office for the night, and O'Brien was out at dinner. He went to Mr Selsey, and told him briefly all he knew. "Where did you get it from?" Selsey asked. "From some friends of his; I promised I wouldn't mention the name of the firm of solicitors he worked in." "What about Miss Sycamore?" "Miss Sycamore?" echoed Humphrey, blankly. "Yes. Haven't you got her? We must know what she says. It mayn't be true." Humphrey's head swam. He was appalled at the idea of having to go out again, and face the woman in the sordid case. Selsey looked at the clock. "I'll send somebody else up to see her--she's at the Hilarity Theatre, isn't she? You'd better get on with the main story. Write all you can." He went to the reporters' room; nobody was there except Wratten, just finishing his work. Humphrey sat down at a desk, and began to write. His brain was whirling with the facts he had learnt; they tumbled over one another, until he did not know how to tell them all. He started to write, and he found that he could not even begin the story. He tore up sheet after sheet in despair. The clock went past the quarter and Humphrey was still staring helplessly at the blank paper. Wratten finished his work and dashed out with his copy to the sub-editor's room. "I'm drunk," he said to himself. "That's what's the matter." And later: "What a fool I was to drink so much." And then, as if in excuse: "But I shouldn't have got the story if I hadn't drunk with them." A boy came to him. "Mr Selsey says have you got the first sheets of your story." "Tell him he'll have them in a few minutes," Humphrey said. And when Wratten came into the room he found Humphrey with his head on his outstretched arms, and his shoulders shaken with his sobbing. "Hullo! What's up, old man?" asked Wratten, bending over him. "Not well?" Humphrey lifted a red-eyed face to Wratten. "I'm drunk," he said. "My head's awful." "Bosh!" Wratten said cheerfully, "you're sober enough. Selsey's delighted you've got your story. I suppose it was a hard story to get." Humphrey groaned. "I can't write it.... I can't get even the beginning of it." "That happens to all of us. I have to begin my story half a dozen times before I get the right one. Look here, let me help you. Tell me as much as you can." He touched the bell, and a boy appeared. "Go and get a cup of black coffee--a large cup, Napoleon," he said jovially to the boy, giving him a sixpenny piece. By the time the coffee had arrived, Humphrey had told Wratten the story. "By George!" said Wratten, "that's fine! Now, let's do it between ourselves. Don't bother about plans. Start right in with the main facts and put them at the top. Always begin with the fact, and tell the story in the first two paragraphs--then you've got the rest of the column to play about in." The coffee woke Humphrey up. In a quarter of an hour, with Wratten's help, the story was well advanced, and Selsey's boy had gone away with the first slips. Whenever he came to a dead stop, Wratten told him how to continue. "Wrap it up carefully," Wratten said. "Talk about the dead man's pure love for anything that was artistic: say that he was a slave to art, and that Miss Sycamore typified art for him. That'll please her. Say that she never encouraged his attentions, and that realizing life was empty without her, he killed himself. Make it the psychological tragedy of a man in love with an Ideal that he could never attain. And don't gloat." The story was finished. "That's all right," Wratten said. "Look here--" Humphrey began, but something choked his throat. He felt as if Wratten had rescued him from the terror of failure: his glimpse of brotherhood overwhelmed him. "Stow it!" said Wratten, unconcernedly. "It's the paper I was thinking of. Well, I'm off. Don't say a word about it in the morning." * * * * * And there it was, in the morning, the whole story with glaring headlines, an exclusive story for _The Day_. Humphrey, riding down Gray's Inn Road, saw the bills in the shop-windows, and two men in the omnibus were discussing it: his head was dull with the drink of last night, but he felt exhilarated when he thought of it all. He wanted to tell the two men in the omnibus that he had written the story in _The Day_. He came to the office and the fellows in the reporters' room seemed as glad as he was. Willoughby told him of his Surbiton adventure, and how Mrs Bellowes declined to see anybody. And when he went into Rivers' room, the great man smiled and said facetiously, "Well, young man, I suppose you're pleased with yourself." He winked at Wratten. "You'll be editor one day, eh?" "It's a jolly good story," said Wratten, "the best _The Day's_ had for a long time." Humphrey smiled weakly. He would have told Rivers just how it came to be such a jolly good story, if Wratten had not frowned meaningly at him. And not until Rivers said: "Come off that desk, young man, and see what you can do with this--" handing him a job, did Humphrey realize that he was at ease, dangling his legs with the great ones. III Not everything that Humphrey did was difficult, nor undesirable. There were times when his card with _The Day_ on it opened the doors of high places, magically: there were many people who welcomed him, actors and playwrights and people to whom publicity such as the reporter can give is necessary. He was received by countesses who were engaged in propaganda work, and by lordlings who were interested in schemes for the alleged welfare of the people: these people wanted to be interviewed, many of them even prepared their statements beforehand. But, in spite of the advantage they gained, they always treated him with that polite restraint which the English aristocracy adopt towards the inferior classes. He obtained wonderful peeps into grand houses, with huge staircases, and enormous rooms with panelled walls and candelabra and rare pictures; into Government offices, too, when an inquiry was necessary, where permanent officials worked, heedless of the change of Ministers that went on with each new Government; and once he went into the dressing-room of Sir Wimborne Johns, that very famous actor, who shook him by the hand, and treated Humphrey as one of his best friends, and told him two funny stories while the dresser was adjusting his make-up for Act II. Then there were the meetings--amazingly futile gatherings of people who met in the rooms of hotels, the Caxton Hall at Westminster or the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. These meetings gave young Humphrey an insight into the petty little vanities of life. They were hot-beds of mutual admiration. What was their business and what did they achieve? Heaven only knows! They had been in existence for years; this was perhaps the seventh or eighth or twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Anti-Noise Society, and the world was not yet silent. Yet here were the old ladies and the old gentlemen and the secretary (in a frock coat) congratulating themselves on an excellent year's work, and passing votes of thanks to each other, as though they were giving lollipops to children. These meetings were all built on one scheme. They always began half an hour late, because there were so few people in the room. The reporters (and here Humphrey sometimes met Beaver) sat at a green baize-covered table near the speakers, and were given all sorts of printed matter--enough to fill the papers they represented, and, occasionally, men and women would sidle up to them, and give their visiting-cards, and say, "Be sure and get the initials right," or, "Would you like to interview me on Slavery in Cochin-China?" Then the chairman (Sir Simon Sloper) arrived, whiskered and florid-faced, and every one clapped their hands; and the secretary read letters and telegrams of regret which he passed to the reporters' table; and then they read the balance-sheet and the annual report, and Miss Heggie Petty, with the clipped accent of Forfarshire, gave her district report, and W. Black-Smith, Esq. ("Please don't forget the hyphen in _The Day_"), delivered _his_ district report, and then the secretary spoke again, and the treasurer reminded them with a sternly humorous manner, that the annual subscriptions were overdue, and, finally, came the great event of the afternoon: Sir Simon Sloper rose to address the meeting. Everybody was hugely interested, except the reporters, to whom it was platitudinous and tediously stale: they had heard it all before, times without number, at all the silly little meetings of foolish people the Sir Simon Slopers had their moments of adulation and their reward of a paragraph in the papers. Nothing vital, nothing of great and lasting importance, was ever done at these meetings, yet every day six or seven of them were held. There were societies and counter societies: there was a society for the suppression of this, and a society for the encouragement of that; there was the Society for Sunday Entertainment, and the Society for Sunday Rest; every one seemed to be pulling in opposite directions, and every one imagined that his or her views were best for the people. Humphrey found the reflection of all this in the advertisement columns of _The Day_, where there were advertisements of lotions that grew hair on bald heads, or ointment that took away superfluous hair; medicines that made fat people thin, or pills that made thin people fat; tonics that toned down nervous, high-strung people, and phosphates that exhilarated those who were depressed. Life was a terribly ailing thing viewed through the advertisement columns; one seemed to be living in an invalid world, suffering from lumbago and nervous debility. It was a nightmare of a world, where people were either too florid or too pale, too fat or too thin, too bald or too hairy, too tall or too short ... and yet the world went on unchangingly, just as it did after the meetings of all the little societies of men or women who met together to give moral medicine to the world. It is necessary that you should see these things from the same point of view as Humphrey, to realize the effect of it all on the development of his character. For after a dose of such meetings, when the careful reports of speeches that seemed important enough at the time, were either cut down by the sub-editors to three lines, or left out of the paper altogether, he asked himself the question: Why? Why do all these people hold meetings? And the answer came to him with a shock: "They are doing it all for _me_. Everything that is going on is being done for _me_." And as he realized that he was only an onlooker, a creature apart, something almost inhuman without a soul for pity or gladness, a dweller on the outskirts of life, a great longing came over him to join in it all himself. It seemed that this gigantic game of love and passion and sudden death and great achievement, was worth learning, and those who did not learn it, and only looked on while the tumult was whirling about them, were but shadows that faded away with the sunset of years. He wanted to join in. He saw, now, that he was drifting nowhere. He, too, wanted to share in the great game, playing a part that was not to be ignored, that was needful to the success of the game. Alone he brooded on it. Beaver chaffed him and asked him what was up. Impossible to explain the perplexities of his inmost mind to Beaver. "I don't know," he said, "I've got the hump." They were having breakfast in the common sitting-room. "Haven't they printed your stuff?" "It isn't that," Humphrey said. "Well, what's up?" demanded the insistent Beaver. "Everything!" said Humphrey, gloomily, looking round the room. The bulrushes were still there. "Everything. This ... I feel as we used to feel at Easterham!" "I know what's the matter with you," said Beaver, folding his napkin, and pushing back his chair from the table. He regarded Humphrey with tremendous wisdom, and bit his nails. "You've got the hump," he said smiling at his inspiration. "Too many late hours." "I suppose so." "Well, look here, don't you get brooding. You want company. I vote we have lunch together to-day. You come and call for me at the office, at one." "Right you are, I will if I can," Humphrey replied. All the morning he remained in the same mood, grappling with the new aspect of things that had come to him. Alone he brooded on it: he heard Rivers running through the programme of the day's events--the King going to Windsor, a new battleship being launched, a murderer to be tried at the Old Bailey, a society scandal in the Law Courts--the usual panorama of every day, at which Rivers told his men to look. And it was a great thing for the people of Windsor that the King was coming; there would be flags and guards of honour, and the National Anthem; and the reputation of a ship-building firm, and the anxiety of thousands rested on the successful launch of the battleship, and a weary woman in a squalid slum was waiting tremblingly for the issue of the murder trial; but all these things, of such great import to those who played in the game, were not shared by those who looked on. And as Humphrey listened to Rivers, he realized that though they all moved with life, they were not of it. He remembered a story that Willoughby told of a Salvation Army meeting in the Albert Hall, when General Booth had walked up and down the platform speaking of the glories of salvation, and, suddenly, he pointed a finger at the table below. "Are you saved?" he asked, with his finger shaking at a man who was looking up at him. "Me?" said the man, looking about him confusedly, and then, with a touch of indignation at being suddenly dragged into the game, "Me? I'm a reporter!" He remembered that story now, and all that it expressed. At the time Willoughby told it, he thought it was a good joke, but now he saw the cruel irony of it. And, in this frame of mind, as he was at grips with himself, he went to call for Beaver. A light glimmered in the darkness of his mind, and the Joy and Spirit of Life itself, playing, instead of the Pipes of Pan, the keys of a typewriter, smiled upon him, and gave him the vision of a girlish face in a halo of fair hair that seemed threaded with gold as the sunlight touched it. IV He went into the office of the Special News Agency and found himself in a room where half-a-dozen girls were typewriting. They were making manifold copies of the hundred and one events that the Special News Agency "covered" with its Beavers, and supplied at a fixed annual rate to the newspapers. The Special News Agency were, so to speak, wholesale dealers in news. You bought the reports of Ministers' speeches or out-of-the-way lawsuits by the column. It was the same principle that governed the _Easterham Gazette_ and its columns of stereo. No newspaper could afford a sufficiently large staff of reporters to cover everything. So the Special News Agency had its corps of verbatim shorthand writers, its representatives in every small village, and in every police-court. There was, of course, no room for the play of imagination or fantasy or style in these Special News Agency reports, and it was because of their rather stilted writing that the reporters on papers like _The Day_ and _The Sentinel_ and _The Herald_ were sent sometimes over the same ground that the News Agency men had covered, to see if they could infuse some fresh interest into the story, or at all events to rewrite it, so that instead of each paper being uniform, it would strike its individual note in the presentation of news. The Special News Agency did for London and England what Reuter does for the world. There was among the cluster of girls working at their typewriters one who looked up at Humphrey and smiled, as he waited for Beaver. She was not a particularly pretty girl, but there was a quality in her hair and eyes and in the expression of her face that lifted it out of the commonplace. The mere fact that out of all the girls who were at work in the office, she alone left the memory of her face to Humphrey, is sufficient tribute to her personality. She smiled--and Humphrey remembered that smile, and the hair, that was dull brown in shadow and gleaming with golden threads in the sunlight, and the eyes, that were either grey or blue, and very large. And then, Beaver came and took him to lunch. They went to a Fleet Street public-house, and lunched off steak and bubble-and-squeak for a shilling, and all through the lunch Humphrey was thinking of other things--especially a smile. "Well," said Beaver, "got over your hump?" "I suppose so," Humphrey answered. ("I wonder what her name is?") "Life's not so bad when you get used to it?" Beaver remarked, contemplating his inky thumbs. "The trouble is that just as you're getting used to it, it's time to die. Eh?" Humphrey's thoughts were wandering again. ("I believe those eyes were saying something to me?") Beaver continued in his chatter, and occasionally Humphrey, catching the sense of his last few words, agreed with a mechanical "Yes," or a nod ("Why did she smile at me?"), and at last he blurted out, "I say, Beaver, what's the name of the girl that sits nearest the door in your office?" "O lord! I don't know their names," said Beaver; "I've got other things to think about. What d'you want to know for?" "She's like some one I knew in Easterham," Humphrey replied, glibly. "I'll find out for you, if you like." "No--don't bother. It doesn't matter at all." The next day he was walking down Fleet Street when he perceived her looming through the crowd. He was conscious of a queer emotion that attacked him, a sudden dryness of the throat, and a quickening of all the pulses of his body. His whole being became swiftly taut: he almost stood still. And, as she bore down upon him, he saw that she was not so tall as he had imagined, but her face looked divinely attractive under the shadow of the spreading hat, and because the sun was shining her hair glittered like a halo. Now, she was close to him, and he found himself praying to God that she would look at him, and smile again; and the next moment he felt that the ground would sink beneath him if she did so, and he longed to look the other way, but could not. The people passing to and fro knew nothing of the terrific disturbance that was going on in the mind of the young man walking down Fleet Street. Now they were level--he raised his hat--it was over, and the memory of her smile had sunk yet deeper within him. Yes, she had remembered him, and nodded to him, and that smile--what did it mean? It was not an enticing smile, it was an almost imperceptible movement of the closed lips, yet it held some magic in it. It seemed to him that though they had never spoken, she knew all about him; she came across his life, smiling in silence, and he was aware that something triumphant and fresh had come into his life, with her passing, just as he knew for a certainty that, before long, he would learn the secret of her smile, when he spoke to her. He went back to work, curiously elated and happy for no reason at all that he could understand. Things were unaltered, and yet, somehow or other, they were different. He felt, suddenly, as if years had been added to his age; he felt that he had met something real in life at last, and, when he came to analyse it, it was nothing but an intangible smile, and the glance of two grey eyes. That night, as he was on his way home, he chanced to meet Wratten. This tall man with the high forehead and curly hair was one of the puzzles of the office. He was a man who held aloof from his fellows, and because of that, they thought he was morose. Humphrey had a tremendous admiration for him, since the night when Wratten had helped him. He seemed so very splendid: he did daring things, and he never failed. The secret of his success was a brutality that stultified all his better feelings when he was on business. And he was a man who never left his quarry, though it meant waiting hours and hours for him. "Hullo," said Wratten, "where are you off to?" "Home," said Humphrey; "where are you?" "I'm going home too. I live at the Hampden Club at King's Cross." They were near Guilford Street "Won't you come up, Wratten, and have a drink in my rooms--I live here, you know." "I don't take anything stronger than lemonade," said Wratten. Humphrey laughed, and unlocked the door. He felt it an honour to have Wratten as a guest, if only for a few minutes. They went upstairs, and Humphrey apologized for the bulrushes. Wratten laughed: "Why don't you suggest to Rivers that you should write a story about the dangers of bulrushes in sitting-rooms: interview a doctor or two, and make 'em say that bulrushes accumulate dust. Invent a new disease, 'Bulrush Throat.' That'll make your landlady nervous." "By George," Humphrey said, "I will; that's a fine idea." Doubtless, you remember the scare that was raised a few years ago when _The Day_ discovered the terror that lurked in the sitting-room bulrush; you remember, perhaps, the correspondence, and the symposium of doctors' views that followed, and _The Day's_ leading article on the mighty matter. Humphrey Quain set the ball rolling, and was careful to leave marked copies of _The Day_ in places where Mrs Wayzgoose was certain to see them, and the bulrushes disappeared very soon afterwards. Thus is history made. "I owe you a lot of thanks," Humphrey said, "for the way you helped me the other night." It was the first time they had referred to the matter of the street suicide. "I didn't want you to be let down," said Wratten. "The life's rough enough as it is, a little help goes a long way. But you steer clear of too much drink, Quain. That's the ruin of so many good men...." "I couldn't help it." "Of course you couldn't--most men are drunkards from habit and not from choice. But you can take it from me, there's no room in Fleet Street for a man who drinks too much. They used to think it was fine Bohemianism in the old days, when a man wasn't a genius unless he was drunk half the time. Don't you believe it. It's the sober men who do the work and win through." "It depends on what you mean by winning through." "Well, there are many ways.... I suppose we've all got different ideas and ideals. I want to rear a family and keep a wife." "You aren't married then?" "Not yet. I'm going to be married ... soon," said Wratten, simply. "I think marriage is the best thing for us. We want something to humanize our lives. It is the only chance of happiness for most of us ... the knowledge that whatever happens, however hard the work may be, we come home ... and there's a wife waiting. I know plenty of journalists who would have gone under if it were not for the wives. Splendid wives! They sit at home patiently, knowing all our troubles, comforting us, and keeping us cheerful. By God! Quain, the journalists' wives are the most beautiful and loyal women in the world...." Humphrey smiled--and this was the man they thought was morose! "I get maudlin and sentimental when I think of 'em. They know our weaknesses, and our mistakes, and they bear with us. They smooth our hair and touch our faces, and all the misery of the day goes away with the magic of their fingers. They make little dinners for us, that we never eat, and they never let us see how unhappy they are, too ... I know, I know ... I've seen so many journalists' homes, and they're all the same ... they're simply overgrown children who let themselves be mothered by their wives." Humphrey thought of the girl he had passed that day in the street.... "I wish I were you," he said. "It must be rather fine to have some one pegging away at you always to do your best: it must be rather fine to have a smile waiting for you at the end of the long day's work." "Fine!" said Wratten, "it's the only thing that's left to us. We're robbed of everything else that matters. We haven't a soul to call our own, and we can't even rule our lives. Time, that precious heritage of every one else, doesn't belong to us. We're supposed to have no hearts, we're just machines that have always to be working at top speed ... but, thank God, there's one woman who believes in us, and who is waiting for us always." "It's funny you should talk like this," Humphrey said, "to-night, of all nights...." He was thinking again of himself and the girl who had crossed the path of his life. Wratten knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and coughed with that little dry cough that was characteristic of him. "Oh! I don't know," he said. "Nothing funny when you come to think about it. I thought you might have heard it in the office. I'm being married to-morrow. By the way, I wish you'd come along and be best man: I haven't had time to fix up for one." V It was just an incident of almost less importance than the daily work, this business of getting married. But it was an incident that left a singular impression on Humphrey. Wratten's marriage was a prosaic affair, in a registry office, horribly formal, without the idealizing surroundings of a church and the grand solemnity of the marriage service. It took place at ten o'clock on a rather cold morning in June. Wratten himself was extremely nervous, and it was his nervousness that made his manner almost brusque; he must have been a gloomy lover, and yet, as Humphrey saw the dark-eyed bride he was wedding, and marked the pride in her eyes as she looked up to him, and the fluttering of her lips as she whispered things to him, he knew that somewhere in this rugged blunt nature of Wratten there was a vein of golden tenderness and beauty. The marriage was oddly depressing: perhaps it was that the shadow of coming disaster hovered over them; perhaps Humphrey heard Wratten's words echoing in his ears, "They sit at home patiently ... knowing all our troubles, and they never let us see that they, too, are unhappy." Humphrey did his duty as best man: there was a girl friend of the bride there, and he looked after them all, and cracked jokes, and made them sign their names in the right places, and Wratten had half a dozen little commissions for him to carry out. He had been so busy yesterday, that there had not been time to clear up everything. When it was all over, and Wratten stood on the threshold of a new life, with his wife at his side, and a glad, proud smile on his handsome face, they came out of the registry office, and the girl friend emptied a bag of confetti over them, as they stepped into the cab that was to take them to Waterloo--they were going to Weymouth for a honeymoon. Some of the coloured pieces of paper fell on Humphrey's coat collar. "Good-bye, good luck," Humphrey said. Wratten clasped his hand very tightly. Once again he smiled, and gave his little dry, nervous cough. "Good-bye, old man," he said affectionately. "Thanks awfully for coming. I think I'm going to be happy at last," and the cab drove away. Humphrey saw the girl friend into an omnibus. "Didn't Maisie look splendid." He noticed that the girl friend wore an engagement-ring on her finger, and thenceforth he lost all interest in her. He went to the office as usual, but he did not tell any one that he had been to Wratten's wedding. Now, he could feel quite at home in the reporters' room, and he even had a desk which, by custom, had become his own. He was more sure of himself than he had been a few months ago, though, in his inmost heart, he was still a little afraid of Rivers. It was Ferrol who gave Humphrey confidence in himself. He called him into his room, and asked him bluntly how he liked the work. "Very much," Humphrey replied, his eyes glistening brightly, and again Ferrol was reminded of the long years that had passed, when romantic days were his. The boy was shaping well. That was fine, thought Ferrol. He meant Humphrey to have every chance; he wanted to see what stuff was in him. "That's good," said Ferrol, stroking his moustache. "Mr Rivers gives a satisfactory account of you." The passion that ruled him, the passion for making men and reputations, was strong upon him just then. He saw Humphrey as raw material, and he meant to mould him into a finished article after his own heart. He would make no mistakes, it should be done slowly, step by step; he would leave Humphrey to fight his own battles, and only if he fell bloody and wounded, would he come forward and succour the boy. "I hope you'll keep it up," he said. "Don't get into trouble, but come to me if you do." He smiled and still caressed that fierce moustache. "I suppose you've heard I'm an ogre--don't believe any tale you hear. Just come straight to me when you are in any difficulty." Humphrey came out of the room, exhilarated, and almost drunk with pride and happiness. It was Ferrol's magic again: a few words from him were like drops of oil to creaking machinery--they instilled fresh energy and desire into men, and made their hearts ardent for conquest. It was worth working night and day to have smooth words of praise from Ferrol himself, to know that he was watching you, powerful in his invisibility. * * * * * That afternoon, as he was returning from some engagement, he saw the girl with the smile coming towards him again. Afar off, it seemed, he was aware of her coming. It was as if her presence sent silent messages to him, vibrating through the air. Long before she appeared he had looked expectantly before him, knowing that she would approach him. Something in his mind linked up this neat blue-clad figure with the episode of the morning, and the little registry office, and Wratten saying, with that radiant smile of his, "I think I am going to be happy at last." And, quite on the impulse of the moment, he made up his mind. She passed him, and left him all a-quiver with excitement, and then he turned and overtook her. His heart was beating quickly in the rhapsody of it all. She stopped, noticing him at her side, hesitating, nervous. "I say...." "Oh!" She smiled, and he saw her cheeks flush with colour, and at once he noted her wonderfully slender throat and the mysterious beauty of her breathing. He was tongue-tied for a moment. She had stopped and he was speaking to her, and he was lost in the miracle of those few seconds, when he realized that in all the loneliness of this vast London, they had met and spoken at last. They stood in a little island of their own making, while people coming and going broke in a hurried surge all about them. The newsboys ran up Fleet Street calling the hour of the latest race, and, above all, came the noise and restlessness of the traffic beating up and down the street. "I say..." Humphrey began, "it's awfully rude of me to stop you like this...." She smiled again. "Not at all," she said, in a gentle voice. "Could you tell me if Mr Beaver happens to be in the office now?" he asked. "I don't think he is," she said. "Why not come up and see?" "N--no--it doesn't really matter." Humphrey laughed nervously. "I shall see him this evening. We dig together, you know." "Then it doesn't matter...?" she said. "It doesn't matter," Humphrey agreed. He waited forlornly: now she would pass away again, always elusive, just flitting in and out of his life like this, a disturbing factor. But still she waited, and Humphrey was emboldened. "I say ..." he stammered. "Won't you come and have a cup of tea?" She glanced upwards at the clock. "Do come," he said, half turning to lead the way. "There's a Lyons just near here." "Oh, well ..." she laughed and followed him. * * * * * "My name's Quain," he said, as they were drinking their cups of tea. "Humphrey Quain." He waited longingly, hoping that she would understand why he had told her his name. She drooped her eyes; everything she did was exaggerated in Humphrey's imagination. She gave him her name as if she were yielding up part of herself to him. "Mine is Filmer." It was terribly unsatisfactory just to know that. "I suppose you'll think me rude ..." he began. "Oh! you must guess...." "I never could. I should guess wrong." "Try," she coaxed. "It begins with L." He guessed Lily the second time, and she corrected him. "You're nearly right," she said, "it's Lilian." "Lilian," he echoed, admiringly. "It's a hateful name," she pouted. "It's a lovely name," he said. "Do you really think so?" "Rather!" "Why?" she smiled again. What an absurd question to ask. Why, because--but how could Humphrey tell her, when they had hardly known each other for a quarter of an hour. "I hope you didn't think it rude of me stopping you like that," he ventured, after a pause. "Oh no ... though I suppose you think it's dreadful of me to be sitting with you like this." To tell the truth, Humphrey considered the whole thing was extraordinarily dashing--that he should be sitting facing her over a cup of tea; to have learnt her name--Lilian Filmer--Lilian, beautiful name!--and to be carrying it off so calmly. "Not at all," he said. Her next words fell like a shower of cold water over him. "You're such a boy," she said, with her eyes smiling indulgently at him. He resented that, of course. "I'm twenty-one," he said loudly. "You're not more than twenty-one, I'm sure." "Perhaps I'm not," she answered, taking a tiny watch from her bosom. She sighed. "I must go." "Look here," said Humphrey, "are we going to meet again?" "What do you want to see me again for?" "I just want to," Humphrey said. "I'm all alone." "Alone in London," she laughed. "Tragic boy ... oh, how miserable you look. Don't you like being called a boy?" "I don't mind what you call me, so long as you'll let me see you again. To-morrow's Saturday...." "Oh! I can't manage to-morrow." "Well, on Sunday, then." "I never go out on Sundays." "On Monday," said Humphrey, desperately. She considered the matter. "I know I'm engaged on Monday evening." "We'll have lunch together." "Very well," she said. And, after that, they shook hands quite formally, and parted in Fleet Street. He had been in heaven for twenty minutes. There were three days to Monday. Lilian! VI Out of this period of his career, Humphrey rescued memories of moments of ineffable happiness. They came intermittently, between long blanks of doubt and painful uncertainty, when his mind was troubled with unsatisfied yearnings and half-understood desires. He was able one day to look back upon it all, with an air of detached interest, like a man looking at a cinematograph picture, and he saw meetings, and partings, and all the ferment of his wooing of Lilian. There was something intimate and secret about their meetings that pleased his palate, hungry for adventure, and this was a part of life that belonged wholly to them; he was indeed taking a part in the great game. They met on the Monday at the hour appointed, and it seemed extraordinarily unreal, like a dream within a dream, that she should be wonderfully alive and smiling by his side. Fleet Street, the office, Rivers, and the long toil of the day were forgotten in a moment, such was the miracle of her being. It seemed impossible to him, on that day, that unhappiness and failure could darken his world. There was something eternal about her that moved him with strong, unquenchable desires for triumph and conquest. Her voice vibrated through him like the throb of a war-march, urging him to great endeavour. So commonplace their greeting; so utterly inadequate to express the prodigious flutterings of his heart! They should have met alone in some solitary forest, when all the colours of the world were rushing to the clouds, in the hours of the sunset. He could have led her to a resting-place of moss and fern, and whispered to her all the thoughts that were in his mind.... But here in the world of everyday, what romance could survive the prosy clamour of it all. There was nothing to say but "Good-morning," and halting, nervous things about the weather, and the theatre, and each other's work. Anything of deeper import must be told by sighs and silences. And thus, they parted again, after their lunch in a dingy Italian restaurant in the Strand, he with all his longings unfulfilled, and with a deeper sense of something that had been lacking in his life. Why could he not have told her all that he had felt? Why was it necessary for him to mask and screen his emotions with absurd talk that only seemed to waste precious opportunities? She rose before him in his imagination, amazingly distinct and real, no longer a shadow, but a real person. He conjured her presence at will before him, and she appeared as he liked to see her best, with her eyes grey and thoughtful, and the sunlight gilding her hair where it swept up from her white brow. Thus, when she was not there, he lived with her, and told her all the things he dared not say to her. And nobody knew of these exquisite moments but himself. To mention her to Beaver, now, would be sacrilege. There was but one man who, he thought, would understand what was passing through him, and that was Wratten, who was away on his honeymoon. They met several times during the next few weeks; it seemed to him that she would not consent to meet him if her heart did not echo his own. And yet, she gave no sign. There was always an air of chastened constraint about them both. He helped her adjust her fluffy feather boa once, and his hand brushed her cheek, and he remembered the feel of it, smooth and soft, like the touch of the downy skin of a peach. All the time, of course, in the intervals of these meetings, there was the same breathless round of work to be done. Sometimes he would have to cancel their arrangements because he was given an assignment just at the very hour they had set apart for themselves--it was done by a hurried scrawl on office paper--"Dear Miss Filmer, I'm so sorry," and so forth. Once he had written "Dearest," but he tore it up, fearing he might lose her for ever. He could not risk offending her. He knew that she was rigorously strict in certain conventions. "I say ... may I call you Lilian?" he had asked one day, and she had glanced at him with a stricken look, and said, "Oh--please, please don't, Mr Quain." She had even laid her hand upon his, with a persuasive gesture. It was a distinct pat--the sort of pat one bestows when a child is to be coaxed into goodness. She was very perplexing. Her manner could alter in the most unexpected and unaccountable manner. One day she might be quite gay, and he would feel that now it was merely a question of moments before he could storm her heart and carry it: and the next time he saw her she would be strangely distant, as though she regretted the progress they had made. Or else, she would be provokingly casual, and wound him deliberately in his weakest spot. She would call him a boy, with a little smile and play of the eyebrows. Ah! that rankled more than anything she said or did, for the whole happiness of his life depended on his being taken seriously, and at his own valuation--and he valued himself as a man of the world, with the experience of double his years. It was, perhaps, this attitude of hers towards him that made him tell her of his work, which, in these days, became so magnified in importance to him. When by virtue of _The Day_ he got behind the scenes of any phase of London life, he used to make a point of telling her just how it was done, in a rather cock-a-whoop manner. "Do you know," she said, "we have in our office thirty men who are doing the same thing, and, in all London, there are hundreds more?" That crushed him entirely. She thought him vain. They very nearly quarrelled seriously. One day Jamieson, the dramatic critic of _The Day_, met him in the office. Jamieson was a tubby little man with a high Shakespearean forehead, who exuded cheeriness. He was a professional optimist. He used to depress the reporters' room with his boisterous happiness: he was so glad that the flowers were blooming, and the grass was green, and that there were children, and the joy of life, and so forth. He accosted Humphrey with twinkling eyes. "Glorious day, Quain," he said; "makes you feel glad that you're alive, doesn't it? Ah! my boy, it's fine to see the streets on a day like this--full of pretty girls in their spring dresses." "I don't get time to think about the weather, unless I'm writing about it," said Humphrey, with a laugh. "Buck up, my boy," said Jamieson, patting him on the back. "You want to look on the bright side of things on a day like this.... By the way, would you like to have two stalls for the Garrick to-morrow. It's the same old play they've had for two hundred nights--they only want a paragraph for _The Day_. I've got a first night on at His Majesty's." Humphrey accepted the tickets gladly, for he had a vision of an evening at the theatre with Lilian, and Jamieson went on his way, leaving in his wake a trail of chuckling optimism. It happened to be a Saturday night, when he was quite free, and so he arranged with Lilian to meet her at Victoria--she lived at Battersea Park--and then they would have some dinner before they went to the theatre. * * * * * In those days Humphrey had not risen to the luxury of an opera hat; he wore a bowler hat, and his coat-collar buttoned up over the white tie of his evening-dress. He thrust his hands into his pockets and waited at Victoria Station for her. She was to meet him at a quarter to seven, and it was now five minutes to the hour and she had not come. He stood there, absolutely white with the tension of the passing moments. It seemed that he had been waiting an eternity, and he had lived through a thousand moments of disappointed expectation. Others who had been waiting there when he came had long since claimed those whom they had come to meet, and walked them off with smiles and laughter. He was still waiting. * * * * * Seven o'clock! What on earth could have happened? Visions of possible disasters crossed his mind: a train wreck and a cab accident; or perhaps she was ill and was not coming. There would be no way of communicating with him, and he would have to go on waiting. Or, perhaps, she had repented of her consent to make the evening glorious for him. The suspense was really terrible. There was nothing to do except to watch the newsboys cheerily gathering the magazines and papers together into piles, and shuttering the bookstall. He saw people running for trains, and whenever the hiss of steam announced the arrival of another train, he hurried to the wicket-gate to peer into the recesses of the crowd that struggled through it, in the hope of seeing her face a second before she actually appeared in person. At five past seven he was still moodily waiting. It was cruel of her to keep him dallying with patience like this. She must have known that he would be waiting for her on the moment. How little she cared if she could not even be punctual to the time they had arranged. He began to feel stale and dusty, as if he had been in his evening-dress for years. He made up his mind to be very angry with her when she came. And lo! she was at his side: more wonderful than ever, so wonderful that he scarcely recognized her. She had come through the crowd at the wicket-gate, floating towards him, it seemed, like a cloud of filmy, fluffy white. Her face was radiantly flushed and smiling, and he sprang towards her with a cry of relief and gladness. "Here I am," she announced. "I wondered if you'd be here." (As if he had not been waiting heart in mouth, for all that time.) She wore no hat, but her hair was done in a way that he had never seen before. It seemed to change her strangely. If anything, it made her look more beautiful, as it rose in little waves from her forehead and fell about her ears in wayward threads of sparkling brown. And there was a black velvet ribbon that went in and out among the glory of her hair. He slipped his hand beneath her white cloak that was fastened tightly to her chin, to guide her through the clumsy throng of station people. Her arm was warm and bare, as soft as satin, and there was something sacred in the very touch of it. It was an occasion for a cab. They chattered on the way of everyday things, though all the time, with her by his side, so close, so beautiful, he could only think of Paradise. "I thought you were never coming," he said, with a dry throat. "Was I so late?" she asked, with a laugh. "I couldn't help it. I ran like mad, and just saw the train going out of the station." He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, but just then they arrived at the little restaurant in Soho where they were going to have dinner. He went in with her, supremely conscious that every one was staring at them. There was a stuffy smell of hot food, and the tables were crowded with diners--very few of them in evening-dress. He was passed on from waiter to waiter until a table was found, and then Lilian unfastened her white cloak, and he helped her to take it off, with a queer sensation of awe and wonder. She stood before him transformed, another Lilian from the one he had known in the street where they worked. He was amazed that she did not realize how this white display of her neck and arms and gently breathing throat was dazzling him with its splendour. He was amazed that she could sit there, revealing her richest beauty for the first time, and be totally unembarrassed--as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.... The dinner was no doubt excellent, but Humphrey could not eat. He made a pretence of it, but he felt it was violating the ecstasy of these moments to eat before her. He only wanted to sit and look at her. He drank quite a lot of wine, almost a whole bottle in fact, for she took just half a glassful with water. It was cheap stuff, masquerading under the vague label of "Margaux," and it sent his imagination rioting. He was conscious of being deliciously extravagant when he ordered coffees and liqueurs, though the whole bill came to little more than twelve and six. Then they went to the theatre, and he bought her chocolates, and they sat in the stalls, side by side, for nearly three hours. He tried to appear normal--impossible! He knew what was coming: he fought against it for quite a long time, but some primeval instinct in him was stronger than his will--his hand sought hers, when the lights were low, and closed upon it. If she had withdrawn her hand, the whole castle of his dream would have come crashing about his ears. But she did not: she let it rest there. Once or twice he glanced at her sidewise, but she seemed oblivious of him. Her gaze was fixed on the players, her lips parted with pleasure; the pendant that hung from her neck stirring gently with the movement of her bosom. She was enjoying the play, but Humphrey could pay no attention to it. He could only think of her. How real was all this: how every moment counted as a moment of pure, throbbing enjoyment. And he thought of Rivers, and the office, and Selsey and the sub-editors' room, messenger boys and the tape machines--what did it all matter beside the incomparable happiness of these moments. Knowledge came to him subconsciously: it was for this that one worked and suffered. * * * * * As they were going in the cab together to Victoria through St. James's Park, where the lamps make a necklet of yellow round the dark shadows of the trees, and the moon was white in her face, he leaned towards her and kissed her on the lips. She gave a little dry sob, and her head drooped on his shoulder, so that he could bend over her and kiss her with all the impetuous longing of youth. And suddenly she shook herself free with an extraordinary melting look of tenderness and pity in her eyes. He thought she was angry, but she only smiled and patted his cheek. And he felt as if he had passed through the portals of a new world, whose music beat gloriously on his ears, and whose colours leapt before his eyes in flashes of brilliance. "Lilian.... Lilian," he whispered, calling her by her name for the first time. "It's only for to-night," she said.... "Why did you kiss me?" "Lilian," he said again. They came out into the glare of the streets near Victoria: romance dropped away from her as the Park was left behind. She sat upright and fumbled with her hair. "You oughtn't to have kissed me.... I oughtn't to have...." The discussion of it was horrible to him. It jarred. He, too, came suddenly back to reality. "It was only for to-night, of course," she said, with a nervous laugh. "It's not!" he said, positively. "It's for to-morrow and for all time." They drew up at the station. It was all over. The idyll ended in a clatter of horses' hoofs and hissing of steam, and engines whistling, and the hurrying to catch the last train. "Look here ..." said Humphrey, as he stood by the carriage door. "I'm not angry," she whispered. "It was my fault." The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag. Humphrey's heart was bursting with the hideous intrusion of modernity. "Good-night," she said. "Good-night and thank you. It's been beautiful." There was just a second left to him, and he made use of it. She was leaning out of the window, and he swung himself on to the footboard and whispered-- "Lilian--I love you. I'll write to you to-night." Before she could reply, there were cries of "Stand away there," and the train swung out of the station. That night Humphrey wrote his first love-letter, and told her all the things he had been wanting to say for weeks. VII They became engaged. It was a secret, furtive affair, for Lilian desired it. He gave her his signet ring--a present from his father--and she wore it, though not on her engagement finger, in case people should ask questions. She gave Humphrey a photograph of herself--in evening-dress--which he carried about in his pocket-book, to take out and look at frequently. He wrote to her every night--even when they had met during the day--long, long letters full of very high-sounding sentiments and praise of her. Heavens! the pages he covered with great promises. Her letters were not of the same quality: they were rather snappy and business-like, and held in them no romance or sentiment. Now and again she called him "dear" in her letters, and sometimes "dearest," but they were for the most part inadequate letters, that made him feel as if he were being cheated out of the full measure of his love-affair. She told him that she was five years older than he was, and it only puffed him with greater pride, to think that he had conquered her in spite of his youth. In very truth, it was a conquest! For days and days she had withstood the eager battery of his assault on her heart. "No," she had said gently, "you're a dear boy and I like you ... but let's be friends." He went through all the phases of anger, sulkiness, despair and gloom, pleading with her daily, until the final exultation came. He used to see her home as far as Battersea, whenever his work allowed him freedom. There was a narrow, dark lane through which they walked, so that he could talk in the darkness of his love for her. Always, before they parted, she allowed him to kiss her. She kissed him too, and often they stood, with beating hearts, and lips met in one long kiss. He drew her to him, yielding and supple, and told her that she must marry him. She could resist no more, she let her head sink on his shoulder, and his finger caressed her chin and neck, and they stayed thus fettered with the exquisite moments of love. "I will be so good to you," Humphrey murmured. "Yes ... yes ..." she whispered, her last resistance gone. And that was how they became engaged. But out of the glamour of their love and kisses there emerged the grey talk of practical things. "We don't know anything about each other," she cried. "I know you.... I feel that I have known you all my life!" he insisted. "Don't you feel like that towards me?" he asked, anxiously. "Perhaps I do," she said, and Humphrey went into raptures over it. "Isn't it wonderful," he said, "to think that only a few weeks ago we were really strangers, and now you have been in my arms--how can we be strangers, Lilian, and kiss as we do?" "Have you told your mother yet?" he asked, one day. "No--not yet," she said. "Oughtn't I to meet her?" "I suppose so--wait a little longer," she pleaded. "Have you told your aunt?" "You asked me not to. I'd love to take you down to her--she'd like you, I'm certain. It wouldn't matter if she didn't." They made plans, of course: nothing was settled about the day of their marriage. It was a question whether life was possible for them both on three pounds a week. "I'm sure to get a rise, soon," said Humphrey. "I'll go and ask for one, and tell Ferrol I'm going to be married. We can live splendidly on four pounds a week. Heaps of people live on less." "I don't know.... It's mother I'm thinking of," she confessed. "What about mother?" he asked. "I'm wondering what she'll do without me." "There are your sisters," he said. "How many are there, let me see"--he ticked them off--"Mabel, Florence and Edith. That's enough for her to go on with." Her face grew wistful. "Yes--that's enough," she echoed, her eyes not looking at him. "I ought to have told you, Humphrey, long before this, but mother's rather dependent on me and Edith. There's Harry, of course, but he's still at the Technical Institute--he'll be able to help some day. Florence is still at school--and Mabel--Mabel's got something the matter with her hip." "Well, what about your father?" She winced. "Father--father doesn't help much. He's--he's an invalid." Humphrey was young, and this was his first love, and the more obstacles there were to overcome, the greater seemed the prize to him. "We could send your mother a little money each week ..." he said. "It won't cost so much when you're not there." "Yes, we could do that. And I could still go on with my work." "What," he cried, horrified, "you go to the Special News Agency after we're married?" "Yes, why not?" "Oh, Lilian dear, I don't want you to do that. I want you to have a home of your own, just to sit there and arrange it as you like, and do nothing but loll in an arm-chair all day until I come home in the evening, and then we'll loll together." She laughed. "You are a funny boy," she said. "I suppose you think a house doesn't want looking after. It's much harder work than typewriting." "But don't you want a _home_," he persisted, mournful disappointment in his voice. "Of course I do, dear; I know what you mean--I was only teasing you. But, I do think, for the beginning, I ought to go on with my work. It's so much safer. Supposing you get out of work, then I could keep things going for a time." "I'm hanged if I'm going to live on you," he said indignantly. They compromised by agreeing to the purchase of a typewriter--Lilian was to found a little business of her own that could be done at home. Plenty of people wanted typewriting, and she could earn almost a pound a week, she said, that would be enough for mother.... These practical discussions were very bitter to Humphrey: they robbed the whole thing of the last vestige of beauty; they depressed him, he knew not why. She did not mean it, but everything she said, that had nothing to do with endearment and love, made him feel hopeless. He was only really happy when they rested as children in one another's arms, talking delightful nonsense between their kisses, and not thinking at all of the plans of their lives that puzzled them so much when they came to talk about them. It was about this period that Wratten came back from his honeymoon, and asked Humphrey to come and dine with him at home, always assuming that neither of them would be kept by work. "Tommy Pride is coming if he can, and I've asked Willoughby." It happened that Humphrey was the only one of the invited guests from the office who was able to come. The news of a Regent Street burglary published in the afternoon papers, made Willoughby champ his false teeth--a habit of his when he was excited--run his hand through his tangled hair, and depart in mysterious ways. Tommy Pride was sent to a lecture that began at eight. "Just my luck," he said to Humphrey, with a wry smile. "The missis will be disappointed." So Wratten and Humphrey went out together. "I say," said Humphrey, on the way, "don't tell any one, but I'm engaged to be married." "No--are you?" Wratten said. "Congratulations. When did that happen?" "Quite recently." Out came the photograph. "You're a lucky fellow. When are you going to get married?" "I don't know yet--we haven't decided. Do you think we can live on three pounds a week?" "Is that all you get, old man--you're worth more: it's a bit of a tight fit." Humphrey wondered what Wratten's salary was. Perhaps Wratten guessed his thoughts, for he said: "I don't like telling people what I get--there's a sort of secrecy about it--but, if you don't let it go any further, I'll tell you--I get ten pounds a week." Humphrey felt himself shrink into insignificance before that mighty sum. Ten pounds seemed a tremendous salary to earn--no wonder Wratten had married. It was too much for one man's needs. "I say, that's pretty good," he said, admiringly. "Oh! you'll be worth more than that, some day," Wratten said. "You're the kind of chap that gets on, I can see.... That's why I shouldn't be in a hurry to marry if I were you," he added; "I've seen lots of fellows stick in the mud by marrying too early. It doesn't give them a chance. Marriage helps in some ways, and holds back in others ... a man is not so independent when he marries. He has to think of others besides himself. Unless, of course, his wife has a little means of her own." He has to think of others besides himself! That point of view had never come to Humphrey before. Why, he was marrying solely to please himself. Marriage seemed to him, then, necessary to the fulfilment of his dreams. Lilian was a mere excuse. He told her that he wanted to make her happy, blinding himself to the fact that he wanted to make himself happy. He was going to use her as a motive for his life, that was all. She would urge him on to success, encourage him, look after him, comfort him when he was in need of it--he had never thought of her at all, except as an accessory to his life. Of course, if anybody had told Humphrey this, at the time, he would have denied it, vehemently; protested his eternal love; sworn that she was always uppermost in his mind; and that it was his most ardent desire to work for her happiness. Love not only blinds us to the imperfections of others, but twists the vision we have always held of ourselves. Wratten had taken a flat at Hampstead--a little box of a flat--at a ridiculously high rent, but to Humphrey, as he came into the sitting-room, it appeared as an ideal home. There was an air of repose and rest about it, the walls papered in a soft green, chintz curtains drawn over the windows, a carpet of a shade of green deeper than the walls, and old furniture about the room. The artistic nature is always hidden below the practical journalist, and it comes to light in different ways. With some men it shows itself in a love of old books; with others, it bursts out in the form of writing other things than ephemeral newspaper "copy"; and with nearly all, the artist in them shakes itself free from its hiding-place and shines clear and strong in the home. There is no time for art during the day; no need for it, indeed. The standard of what is good is not made by the reporter, but by the paper for which he writes. And here, in Wratten's home, Humphrey found the vein of the artist in him, in his perception and appreciation of old furniture. He fondled his pieces. "Here's a nice little rocking-chair," he said. "Don't see many of these now." "I like this," said Humphrey, touching another old chair. "Ah! yes, that's a beauty," Wratten replied. "I picked that up in Ipswich frightfully cheap. It's an old Dutch back chair of the seventeenth century." He tilted it up and ran his palm over the perfect curve of the cabriole legs, entirely absorbed in the pleasure of touching the chair. "I didn't know you went in for this sort of thing," Humphrey said. "I've been getting things like this together for years ... they're so restful, these old things. Can you imagine anything more peaceful than that book-case?" and he pointed to a beautiful Empire book-case, with rows of books showing through the latticed glass and brass rosettes for handles to the drawers that rested on claw feet. The change in Wratten was really remarkable. Although he was still serious, and his face in repose was gloomy, he seemed to have lost his brusque manner. Marriage had undoubtedly softened him. Mrs Wratten came into the room and welcomed Humphrey. Wratten slipped his arm through his wife's, and she looked up at him and smiled at him.... Humphrey saw himself standing thus, in his own home, with Lilian close to him, his companion for ever. It all seemed so very desirable. This little home was very compact and peaceful, thousands of miles removed from the restlessness of Fleet Street.... While they were talking, a young man and a woman were ushered into the room by the little maid-servant. The likeness between the two was unmistakable--they were obviously brother and sister. The young man was the taller of the two, very slender, with the thin and delicate hands of a woman. Humphrey noticed the long fingers tapering to the well-kept nails. The face was the face of an ascetic, thin-lipped and refined. The eyes were peculiarly glowing, and set deeply beneath the overhanging eyebrows; the nose was finely chiselled; the nostrils sensitive and curling, with a faint suspicion of superciliousness. He was introduced to Humphrey as Kenneth Carr, and Humphrey knew the name at once. Kenneth Carr had the reputation of being a brilliant descriptive writer; he was on the staff of _The Herald_, but, besides that, he had written several historical biographies, many novels, and was at work on a play. He belonged to a type which is a little apart from Fleet Street, with its wear and tear--a shy, scholarly man, who found that historical biographies and novels did not yield sufficient income, and, therefore, the grinding work of everyday journalism was preferable to pot boiling. Fleet Street was, to him, a stepping-stone. He would have been happier in the editorial chair of a weekly paper, or writing essays for _The Spectator_ and the _Saturday Review_, but, as it was, he threw in his lot with Fleet Street, and did his work so well that he stood at the top of the ladder. But Fleet Street had left its mark on his face--it was pale and thin, and the eyes had a strained, nervous look in them. "Awfully good of you to ask us," he said to Mrs Wratten. "Elizabeth and I don't go out much, she gets so tired from her slumming." His sister smiled--Humphrey saw that the handsome features of Kenneth Carr became beautiful in his sister's face. The sharp lines about the nose and mouth were softened, her eyes were bluer and larger, her face rounded more fully, and devoid of the hollows which made the face of Kenneth so intellectual. The likeness between brother and sister finished with the lips--hers were very red, and were faintly parted, so that one had a glimpse of her teeth, like a string of white pearls. She wore her hair in two loops from a parting in the centre, and she had a habit of carrying her head a little forward, so that the outward curve of her neck was emphasized in its perfect grace. "What does your brother mean by slumming, Miss Carr?" Humphrey asked as they sat at dinner. "He calls it slumming," Elizabeth Carr laughed, "but it isn't exactly that. I'm rather fond of the people who have no chance in life. I want to make a chance for them." She spoke banteringly, but her eyes had a curious way of growing large and earnest as if they were anxious to counteract the lack of seriousness in her voice. "I'm trying to make a thoroughfare through the Blind Alley," she said. "Isn't it dramatic? Can't you imagine me with pick and shovel, Mr Quain." "What do you mean by the Blind Alley?" he asked. She suddenly became grave. "Of course, you've never thought of that--have you? It's just a phrase.... Some day I'll explain to you fully. It's where the people who have no chance live." "How do you help them?" "We don't help them much, at present--we're only beginning. It's a life's work," she said, earnestly, "and it's a work for which a life would be gladly given. You've asked me the question I'm always asking myself--How is it to be done?" "Does your brother help?" "Kenneth--oh, as best he can. It's the apathy that we want to overcome. That's what makes the Blind Alley." She laughed. "We'll do it some day--I don't know how--but we'll do it." Kenneth Carr's voice drawled across the table. "Look out, Mr Quain, or Elizabeth will have you in her toils. I'll bet she's talking slumming to you. You can't be a social reformer and a reporter, you know, nowadays. The two don't hang together." "Kenneth!" his sister said, with pretended indignation. "Look at me! She's making me compile a book about poverty that'll be nothing but statistics--who wants them outside blue books. She's got me in her toils." The phrase amused Humphrey: he thought of Lilian, and began comparing her with the woman next to him. Of course, they were not alike; the comparison irritated him, why compare people so entirely different. One might know Elizabeth Carr for years, and yet never _know_ her; Lilian was different. She seemed simpler, and yet.... He wondered if Lilian had ever heard of the Blind Alley, or bothered about the people who have no chance. When the dinner was finished, and they were all settling down to chatter, the telephone bell rang. Wratten went to answer it. "It's the office," Mrs Wratten said, with disappointment in her voice. Wratten came back. "I'm frightfully sorry," he said. "The office wants me ... Collard's arrested." He went over to his wife. "I shall be late, dear, don't sit up," he said. "Who's Collard?" she asked. "Oh! the Company promoter--reg'lar crook--but he might have waited until the morning to be arrested." "Filthy luck!" he grumbled, as he reappeared, shouldering himself into his overcoat. "Having to leave all you people like this.... Can't be helped." The maid came in with coffee. Wratten gulped a thimbleful, kissed his wife, and went out. The evening seemed to have lost something of its pleasure with his sudden departure. They fell to talking over the ways of work and the calls of the office. It was as if Fleet Street had suddenly asserted itself, and shown the futility of trying to escape from it even for a few hours. "Poor Mr Wratten," Elizabeth Carr sighed, "I do think they're heartless." "Why don't you help us, Miss Carr?" Humphrey said, with a laugh. "We're in the Blind Alley too." VIII The weeks passed into August, and Humphrey took eagerly all the work that was given to him by Rivers. He became a mental ostrich, assimilating all sorts of knowledge. One day, perhaps, he would have to describe a cat show at the Crystal Palace, the next he might be attending a technical exhibition at the Agricultural Hall and Olympia, and have his head stuffed with facts and figures of this and that industry. He was acquiring knowledge all day long, but it was only superficial; there was no time to go deeply into any subject, and indeed, his one object was to unburden his mind of all the superfluous things he learnt during the day. If reporters were to keep a book of cuttings of everything they wrote--and they know the value of their work sufficiently not to do that--they would be amazed, looking back over ten years (those cuttings would fill several mighty volumes), at the vast range of subjects they touched upon, at the inside knowledge they had of the little--and even big--things of life; of the great men with whom they had come into contact, perhaps for a few minutes, perhaps for a day; of the men they had even helped to make great by the magic of publicity--they would be astounded at the broadness of their lives, at the things they had forgotten long ago, and perhaps they would pity themselves, looking over their cuttings, for the splendid futility of it all. You remember Kipling's poem of "The Files," bound volumes of past years; which are repositories of all lost endeavours and dead enthusiasm. Heaven help us when we can write and achieve no more, and the only work of our youth and manhood lies buried, forgotten, in the faded yellow sheets of the files. But Humphrey Quain at this period, just like every other young man, whether he be a haberdasher or a reporter, did not contemplate the remote future. He was young, and his brain was clear and fresh, and he wrote everything with a pulsing eagerness, as though it were his final appeal to posterity. He found his style improving, as he read, and his understanding broadened. He wrote in the crisp style that suited _The Day_; he had what they call the "human touch"--that was a phrase which Ferrol was very fond of using. Rivers began to entrust him with better things to do: now and again he was sent out of London on country assignments. That was a delightful business, to escape for a day or so from the office routine, and be more or less independent in some far-away town or village. You were given money for expenses, and told to go to Cornwall, where something extraordinary was about to happen, or some one had a grievance, or else there was some one to interview, and you packed a handbag, and went in a cab to Paddington, and had lunch on the train, and stopped at the best hotel, and generally tried to pretend that you were holiday making. But, more often than not, the idea of a holiday fell away when you got to the place, and you had to bustle and bother and worry to get what you wanted. Then you had to write your message, and that meant generally being late for dinner, or perhaps it was the kind of story that kept you hanging about and made it necessary to telephone news late at night. But going out of town held a wonderful charm for Humphrey--it gave him a sense of responsibility. It made him feel that the office trusted him; somehow or other he felt more important on these country jobs, as if he bore the burden of _The Day_ on his own shoulders. There was the charm, too, of writing the story in the first person, instead of adopting the impersonal attitude that was the rule with London work; and the charm of fixing the little telegraph pass to the message, which franked it at press rates to _The Day_ without pre-payment. Sometimes there were other men on the same story, and they forgathered after work, and as all journalists do, talked shop, because they cannot talk of anything without it touches the fringe of their work. The men he met were, for the most part, thoroughly experienced and capable, they were tremendously enthusiastic, though they tried to appear blasé, because it was considered the correct thing among themselves. They never discussed each other's work, nor told of what they had written. Even when they met in the morning, though they had all read their colleagues' messages in the papers, and compared them with their own, they kept aloof from all reference to the merits or demerits of these messages. But it used to rejoice Humphrey's heart to see, sometimes, how older men who were inclined to patronize him as a beginner and a junior the night before, treated him as one of themselves in the morning at the breakfast-table. And he nearly burst with pride when he first saw his messages headed: "From _The Day_ Special Correspondent." Even though he were no further afield than Manchester or Birmingham, it seemed to place him in the gallant band of great ones just as if he were a Steevens, a Billy Russell, or an Archibald Forbes. And all the time he was learning,--learning more swiftly than any one else can learn, in the school of journalism, where every hour brings its short cut to knowledge and worldly wisdom. The occasional separations from Lilian, however, modified a little the charm of going away. These orders to go out of town had a habit of coming at the most undesirable moments, generally upsetting any plans they had made together for spending an enjoyable evening somewhere. "When we are married," said Humphrey, on the eve of a departure for Canterbury to describe the visit of a party of priests from France and Italy who were making a pilgrimage to the Cathedral, "when we are married, you shall come away with me. It's not bad fun, if the job isn't hard." "I wish you didn't have to go away so often," she pouted. There was a hint of conflict, but Humphrey was too blind to see it. He only wished he had to go away more often, for the measure of his success on _The Day_ was in proportion to the frequency of special work they gave to him. "All will be well when we are married," he said, comforting her. His love-story wove in and out of his daily work. The date of their marriage had not yet been fixed, because Ferrol was away somewhere in the south of France, and that business of the extra pound a week on his salary could not, of course, be settled until Ferrol came back. It seemed, too, that Lilian was in no hurry to be married; she loved these days of his wooing to linger, with their idyllic moments, and rapturous embraces, and the wistfulness of all too insufficient kisses. For the period of engagement was to them a period of licensed kissing. Nor was it always possible to meet beneath the moon. Humphrey grew cunningly expert in finding places where they could kiss in broad daylight. There was an Italian restaurant in the Strand (now pulled down for improvement), which had an upstairs dining-room where nobody but themselves ever seemed to go, and then there was the National Gallery, surprisingly empty, where the screens holding the etchings gave them their desired privacy, and on Saturday afternoon they went in the upper circles of theatres, sometimes, on purpose not to see the play, but to sit in the deserted lounges during the acting, and enjoy each other's company. Their love-affair was tangled by circumstance; scamped and impeded--they made the best of it, and lived many hours of happiness. And then, one day, when he least expected it, she said: "I suppose you ought to come down and see mother." Humphrey went out to Battersea to the home of his betrothed. The circumstances of his visit were not happy. It was raining, and there is no city in the world so miserable as London when it rains. The house was in a rather dreary side-street, a long distance from Battersea Park, a mere unit in the army of similar houses, that were joined to one another in a straight row, fronted by railings that had once been newly painted, but were now grimed and blackened. These houses appalled one: they were absolutely devoid of any kind of beauty, never could they have been deemed beautiful by their architect. They were as flat-fronted and as hideously symmetrical as a doll's-house; nor, apparently, did the people who dwelt in them take any pains to lessen the hideousness of their exteriors: ghastly curtains were at every window, curtains of mid-Victorian ugliness, leaving a cone-shaped vacancy bounded by lace. In the windows of the lower floors one caught a glimpse of a table, with a vase on it, and dried grass in the vase, and behind the glass panes above the front doors there was, in house after house, as Humphrey walked down the street, a trumpery piece of crockery or some worthless china statuette, or the blue vase of the front window, with more grass in it, or a worse abomination in the shape of a circular fan of coloured paper. Number twenty-three, to be sure, where Lilian lived, was, as far as the outside view was concerned, different from the other houses, in that there were real flowers in the window, instead of dried grass. Humphrey felt wet and miserable when he reached it; the rain had dripped through a hole in his umbrella, and had soaked the shoulder of his coat. He went up the steps and pulled the bell. He waited a little while, and happening to glance over the railings into the area, he saw a girl of rather untidy appearance look up at him, and quickly vanish, as if she had been detected in something that she had been forbidden to do. The girl, he noticed, had the same features, on a smaller scale, as Lilian: he supposed she was Florence. Then he heard footsteps in the passage, and through the ground-glass panels of the door he could see a vague form approaching. The next moment all memory of ugliness and squalor and the dismal day departed from him, as Lilian, the embodiment of all the beautiful in his life, stood before him, smiling a welcome. How she seemed to change her personality with every fresh environment in which they met! She was the same Lilian, yet vaguely a different one here, with her brown hair done just as charmingly yet not in the same way as she did it when they went to theatres in the evening. She wore a white muslin blouse, without a collar, and round her neck was a thin gold chain necklace which he had given her. Though he did not realize it at the time, his joy in her was purely physical; the mere sight of her bared neck and throat and the warm softness of her body was sufficient to make him believe that he loved her as he could never love anybody else; he sought no further than the surface; she was pretty, and she was agreeable to be his wife. He did not stop to think of anything else. "So it's really you!" she said, with a laugh. As though she had not been expecting him! He murmured something about the weather as he shook his dripping umbrella. She could invest commonplaces, courtesy phrases, with reality. Her eyes were tender as she said, "You poor thing." It was really fine to have some one so interested in your welfare that her eyes could show pity over a few rain-spots. "You must come in and dry yourself over the fire. We had a fire because it is so wet." She closed the door. He took off his coat and hat, and suddenly he caught her silently to him (her eyes spoke of caution, and looked towards the door, leading from the passage), and they kissed hurriedly and passionately. She disengaged herself, and began to talk about trivialities in a high tone. "I have not told any one yet," she whispered. "It is still a secret--so you needn't be afraid of mother." She led the way into the room. Somebody was sitting on the sofa, against the light. "Mother," said Lilian, "this is Mr Quain." "Oh," said Mrs Filmer, rising and coming forward to shake hands with him, "how do you do?" Humphrey sat down in a gloomy, black horsehair chair by Mrs Filmer, who returned to a sofa that belonged to the same family. They began to talk. It was plain that Lilian's mother had been coached by her. She seemed to pay him a deference altogether disproportionate to the occasion, if he were to be considered as a mere casual visitor, a friend of Lilian. She was a faded woman of fifty years or so, the personification of the room itself, for everything within those four walls was irrevocably lost and faded--the photographs in their ugly frames were yellow and old-fashioned; the pictures on the walls, chiefly engravings of thirty years ago, in bevelled frames of walnut wood, were spotted with damp; the furniture was absolutely without taste, a mixture of horsehair and mahogany, and the piano had one of those frilled red satin fronts behind a fretted framework. There was a blue plush _portière_, with a fringe of pom-poms down one side of it, hanging from a brass rod over the door. It was difficult for him to believe that she was Lilian's mother: that she had actually brought into the world that beautiful, supple being whom he loved. Had she ever been like Lilian? He could trace no resemblance to her in this little thin woman who sat before him, her hands, with the skin of them warped and crinkled, crossed in her lap, her hair sparse and faded, with threads of brown showing among the grey, and the fringe of another tint altogether. She did not even talk as Lilian did: she was too careful of aspirates. He saw that she was altogether inferior to Lilian. She talked of nothing--nothing at all. And all the time she was talking, and he was answering her, he was aware, dimly, of Lilian's presence, somewhere in the background; he was conscious of her watching him, studying him. The weather was terrible for the time of the year. They wanted to move out of this house; it was too large for them. It was so nice for Lilian to have such a comfortable office to work in. But it was a long way to come home, when the weather was bad. The weather was very bad to-day. The summer, one supposed, was breaking up. After all, it was not so very out of season. Mr Quain must find his work very interesting. And so on. Tea was brought in by a girl who was Lilian on a smaller scale. "Edith, this is Mr Quain," said Lilian; and to Humphrey, "This is my sister Edith." She put the tray down, and shook hands limply. He noticed that she had precisely the same coloured eyes as Lilian's, but they were weaker, and she did not carry herself well. She seemed but a pale shadow of the splendid reality of Lilian. Then Florence, the other sister, came into the room; she was the young girl whom Humphrey had seen over the railings as he stood on the doorstep. She was undeveloped, but her face and figure bore great promise of a beautiful womanhood. Her hair was of a reddish colour, and hung in a long plait down her back. Her face was quite unlike Lilian's: he judged that she resembled her father. "You look dreadful, child," said Lilian, with a laugh. "Go and wash your face, little pig." Florence made a grimace, and tossed her pigtail. "It's freckles," she said, hopelessly. "I've been scrubbing away for ten minutes." She looked at Humphrey appealingly, with a smile in her eyes--they all had that smile he knew so well. "I think you're too hard on your sister, Miss Filmer," he said to Lilian, with mock gravity. (How odd the Miss Filmer sounded.) "She looks radiant. I noticed it was freckles at once." Florence went to Lilian and put her arm round her waist. They were evidently very sisterly. Edith was busy pouring out tea ("One lump or two, Mr Quain"); Mrs Filmer sat with her hands crossed in her lap looking out of the window into the garden beyond. Humphrey took a cup of tea across to her; she was too effusive in her thanks; begged him to sit down, and urged Florence to look after Mr Quain. Just then the front door clicked. "There's Harry," said Edith, putting down the teapot, and running to the door. A short, well-built young man appeared. His hair was the reddish colour of Florence's hair, and his face was frank and boyish. He was about nineteen years old, just the age of discrimination in ties and socks, and the flaunting of well-filled cigarette cases. He and Edith were apparently the greatest friends, doubtless because there was only two years' interval in their ages. Nevertheless, he pulled Florence's pigtail affectionately and gave her a brotherly kiss; pecked Lilian on the cheek ("What a horrid collar you're wearing, Harry," she said, "and you simply reek of tobacco"), and kissed his mother on her forehead. Then Lilian introduced him to Humphrey Quain, and they shook hands and regarded each other furtively, with a constrained silence. Humphrey felt that the whole family must know of the relations between Lilian and himself, though not one of them spoke about it. But they all treated him with a certain deference, and gave him a status in the house, which invested him with a superiority that seemed to match Lilian's. For there was no doubt of her superiority in this household, now that they were all gathered together. She seemed so stalwart and broad beside them; a creature apart from them all. She did not appear to belong to them, and yet she was, indisputably, of them. They were so commonplace, and she was so rare--at least, that was what Humphrey thought. He watched her as she moved about the room bearing plates and cups, noiselessly, gracefully; she gave him a new impression of domesticity as she wandered about in her own home without the hat that he was accustomed to see her wearing. And she gave him, furthermore, an appearance of strength and character, as though she had acquired the right to rule in this household by the might of her own toil which chiefly supported it. While she was in the room, it lost some of its faded quality, and when she left it to take a cup of tea and a piece of cake to Mabel, the third sister, who was an invalid lying, he understood, on a couch upstairs, the room became desolate, and the most insistent person was the faded mother with her querulous voice. They made him look at picture-postcard albums and photographs, and some of Florence's drawings, while Lilian was absent. Florence wanted to be a fashion artist, and though her drawings were incredibly bad and scratchy, he felt it was necessary for him to say that they showed promise.... How had Lilian grown to be Lilian in these surroundings, he wondered--surroundings of such frank ugliness and shabby gentility? He glanced out of the window which gave a view of a narrow oblong garden at the back, where a few stunted wallflowers struggled to live. A patch of unkempt grass ran between the high walls, and there a broken wicker-work chair faced the windows. As he looked out he saw a man stumbling over the grass towards the side door: he caught a glimpse of the soiled and frayed clothes, and feet clothed in down-at-the-heel slippers, of a grey face with shrunken cheeks, and pale blue eyes that peered weakly from beneath grey wiry eyebrows. The man came across his vision like a spectre, trailing his slippered feet one after another, and swaying a little as he walked. He was fascinated by the sight, and suddenly his attention was distracted by Lilian. She had come back to the room, and was standing at his side. Her eyes had followed his, and she knew what he had seen. "Will you have some more tea?" she said, abruptly, touching him on the shoulder. He turned away hastily: his eyes met hers; they held a challenge in them, as though she were daring him to speak of the man in the garden. It was as if he had probed into a carefully hidden secret. He knew, without being told, that this aimless, shambling man with the slippered feet was the father. He was given in a moment the explanation of this room; the mother; the invalid child; and the air of subdued failure that brooded over the house. He saw Lilian as a regenerating, purifying influence, trying to lift them out of the slough. Their eyes met, and though no word was passed between them, he understood everything. He wished that he had not come to this house. This family depressed him, and made him feel afraid of Life. It was an odd thought that haunted him: they would be his relations when he married Lilian. But when, after the leave-takings, she came to the door to help him on with his coat and let him out, he realized that she was unchanged, that she was still splendid for him, and as desirable as she had always been. He felt something of a hero, because he was going to rescue her from this dreadful home of hers.... The memory of the father dogged his thoughts as he came away. He wished he had not gone to the house. IX At eight o'clock, on a chill morning, the women in the red-brick cottages of Hyde, which are built round the Hyde collieries, felt the earth quiver beneath their feet, and heard a low roar, reverberating about them. Their hands went up to their beating hearts; they rushed to their windows that overlooked the grey wastes where the shafts of the mines stood gaunt against the horizon; they saw a burst of flame leap from the upcast shaft of No. 3 mine; leap vividly for a swift moment, and leave behind it a vision of a twisted cable-rope, and twisted iron, and the flame that vanished swiftly bore with it the souls of two hundred men: their husbands, their sons--their men. They gathered their shawls about them, and ran, with their clogs clattering on the cobbled streets, to the pit-mouth, joining a stream of men, whose eyeballs shone whitely from the grime and black of their faces--they ran with terror clutching at their hearts and fear at their heels, and every lip was parched and dry with the horror and dread of the moment. There had been a disaster to No. 3 pit: an explosion; a fire--"What is it? Tell us?" They crowded round the mine offices, besieged the mine manager: "For the love of Heaven, for the mercy of Mary, for the sake of Christ--tell us! We must know ... we are the wives, the daughters, the mothers of those who went below to their work in the blackness of the coal.... No need to tell us: we know, now; we see the thin cloud of smoke, with its evil smell, floating above the shaft ... the engine-room is silent. The ventilation fan is not working. It has been shattered, with the lives of all those who matter, by this explosion. "Yes, yes, we will wait. Some of our men are sure to have escaped; they know the workings. They will find their way to the Arden mine shaft adjoining, and come up in the cages. Perhaps they all will, and no lives will be lost. We will wait...." At eleven o'clock the little tape machines in the newspaper offices printed out letter by letter the message that was sent by the Hyde reporter, who overslept himself that day, and did not hear the news until ten. "An explosion occurred in the No. 3 mine of the Hyde Collieries this morning. Two hundred men were working at the time, and it is feared that there has been a serious loss of life." "Off you pop," said Rivers to Wratten, who had just arrived at the office. "This looks big. I think you'd better have some one with you. Boy, tell Mr Quain to come up." Half an hour later Wratten and Quain were on their way in a cab to Euston, Humphrey thrilling with the adventure of being chosen to accompany Wratten, looking forward to a new experience. "Horrible things, these mine disasters," said Wratten. "I hate 'em," as if any one in the world was so misguided as to like them. "Are they difficult to do?" asked Humphrey. "Sometimes ... it depends. If there's a chance of rescue, you've got to hang about sometimes all night. They get on my nerves. This'll be your first, won't it?" "Yes," Humphrey said. It seemed strange to him that they should be discussing such an appalling disaster so dispassionately; considering it only from their point of view. There was no sense of tragedy, of deep gloom, in their talk. It was all part of their business--a lecture, a murder, an interview, a catastrophe--it was all the same to them. They were merely lookers-on. When they arrived at Euston, a tall man, whose chief characteristics were gold-rimmed spectacles and a black moustache, came towards them. He wore a red tie and carried a heavy ash stick in his hand. "What--ho! Wratten," he said, jovially, "coming up?" "Hullo, Grame," said Wratten, "anybody else here yet?" "Oh! the whole gang. We're for'rard in a reserved compartment." Kenneth Carr, white-faced and breathless, arrived at the last moment. "Hullo!" he said, "isn't this awful.... Two hundred men! I'll join you as soon as possible." "Poor Kenneth!" Wratten remarked to Quain, as they followed Grame to the carriage. "He really feels this quite keenly. He realizes the immensity of the tragedy to which we're going to travel. It's a mistake. It hampers one." "I should have thought it would make you do better work," Quain answered, "if you really felt the tremendous grief of it all." "Not a bit. It makes you maudlin. You lose your head and go slobbering sentimental stuff about. Remember, you're no one--you don't exist--you're just a reporter who's got to hustle round, find out what's happened, and tell people how it happened. Never mind how it strikes you--_The Day_ ain't interested in you and your sensations--it wants the story of the mine disaster." "But--" Humphrey began. Wratten turned on him savagely. "Oh! Good God! don't you think _I_ feel it too? Don't you think I hate the idea of never being able to write it as I see it? By God! I wouldn't dare tell the story of a mine disaster as I see it. _The Day_ would never print it--it would be rank socialism." There were five other reporters in the carriage. Two of them Humphrey had met before: Mainham, who wore pince-nez, looked like a medical student, and spent every Saturday at the Zoological Garden, where he discovered extraordinary stories of crocodiles, who suffered from measles; he was, in a way, the registrar of births, deaths and marriages among the animals; and Chander, a thin-faced, thin-lipped young man, who wore long hair, whose conversation was entirely made up of a long chain of funny stories. Chander faced the little tragedies of his work daily, but he kept himself eternally young by pretending only to see the humorous side of things. For instance, he once spent a whole morning in the rain and slush of a January, trying to verify some story. He tramped the dismal pavements of a dirty street off Tottenham Court Road, in search of a certain man in a certain house, finally gave it up in disgust, and discovered that he should have gone to another street of the same name by King's Cross. That would have disheartened the average man: but Chander turned it into a funny story--it is good to have the Chander point of view. The other reporters were Thomas, who worked for _The Courier_--a penny paper--a well-ordered, methodical, unimaginative man, who had a secret pity for the poor devils who had to work for halfpenny papers; and a big broad-shouldered man, whose name was Gully. His face at a glance seemed handsome enough, until you noticed the narrow eyes and the coarseness of the heavy under lip. He had brought a pack of cards with him and wanted to play nap. "Good heavens!" said Kenneth Carr, irritably, "try and behave as if you had some decency left. We're going to a mine disaster. There's two hundred dead men at the other end of the journey." "Well, you do talk rot," Gully replied. "Are they relations of yours?" He sniggered at his joke, and asked Mainham to play. Mainham said he couldn't play in the train, but Thomas was willing. Chander, who knew that Kenneth Carr loathed Gully and all that he stood for, joined the party out of sheer good-nature. He hated quarrelling. "Why look on the black side of things, Carr?" he said. "Perhaps they're not dead at all. We needn't go into mourning until we know everything, and we don't know anything except what the early editions of the evening papers had. And newspapers are so inaccurate." "Ass!" said Kenneth, with a grin, for he and Chander were good friends, and he understood Chander's tact. Gully shuffled the cards. "I hope they're dead," he said, "because then we shall be able to get back to-morrow." Kenneth Carr, Grame and Wratten looked at each other. Wratten gave his head a little toss, and made a clicking noise that meant, "What can you expect, after all, from Gully." "Charitable soul," Chander said, admiringly. "What a sweet temperament you have. Won't it be sad if you find 'em all alive and ready to kick!" Kenneth Carr, Wratten, Mainham and Humphrey went into the dining-car, as the express rocked northwards towards Luton. The journey was full of apprehension for Humphrey; he had never been on such a big story as this, and, though he knew he had to do nothing but obey Wratten, there was still a doubt of success in his mind. It interfered with his appetite. He marvelled that the other men could eat their food so calmly, as though they were going on a pleasure trip, and talk of ordinary things. Of course, they were thoroughly used to it. It was as common an incident in their lives as casting up columns of figures is to a bank clerk, or the measuring of dead bodies to an undertaker. After luncheon, Mainham left them to go back to the carriage, and the three friends were alone over cigarettes and coffee. "I'm sorry I lost my temper with Gully," Carr said, after a pause. "Oh, we all know Gully." Wratten smiled and sipped his coffee. "Don't get like Gully," Kenneth said to Humphrey, "even if you feel like him. It's bad; it's the Gullys that have brought such a lot of disrespect on journalism. He's the type of journalist whom people think it necessary to give 'free' cigars to, and 'free' whiskies and sodas; 'free' dinners, even. They think it is the correct thing to give 'free' things to us, as one throws bones to a dog. It's the Gullys who take everything greedily and never disillusion them." "But don't you think you're too sensitive?" Humphrey ventured. "It seems to me that the work we do demands a skin thick enough to take all insults. Look at the things we have to do sometimes!" "It's our business to take risks," Wratten interposed. "I don't mind what I do, so long as there's a good story in it. If it's discreditable, the fault isn't with me. I'm only a humble instrument. It's _The Day_ who's to blame--_The Day_ and the system. I do my duty, and any complaints can be made to Neckinger or Ferrol, with or without horsewhip. That's my position." "You see," Kenneth Carr said, musingly, "there are, roughly, three classes of reporters. There's the man who is keenly alive to the human side of his work and talks about it, as I'm afraid I do; there's the man who feels just as keenly and shuts up, as you and Wratten and Mainham and hosts of others do; and there's the chap, like Gully, who hasn't an ounce of imagination, and gloats over things like this mine disaster, because he's a ghoul. I envy people like you and Wratten. You do the best work because, although you feel pity and sorrow, you never allow these feelings to hamper your instincts of the reporter." Humphrey smiled. "Wratten doesn't." The time passed in recounting some of Wratten's audacious doings. His bullying a half-suspected murderer into a confession; his brutal exposure of a woman swindler--he had answered an advertisement for a partner in some scheme or other, found the advertiser was a woman with a questionable commercial past, pretended he was _bona fide_, and, when he had obtained all his material, ruthlessly exposed her in _The Day_. There was the case of the feeble-minded millionaire, who was kept a prisoner in his house. There was the case of the Gaiety girl who married a lordling, and Wratten pried into their private lives, forced the lordling into an interview, and wrote a merciless story that made London snigger. He was absolutely callous in his work, yet so human and tender-hearted out of it. Humphrey, since that night when he had been helped by him, had looked up to Wratten as the type of the ideal reporter, with courage unlimited, who never flinched, even when the work was most unsavoury and humiliating. He was not popular with the reporters of the papers: he kept himself away from them, and restricted his friendship to one or two men. The reason of his unpopularity was simply because others feared him as a rival, and Humphrey found, later, that there was merit in that sort of unpopularity. The strong men are never popular. The train had now sped past Rugby, and the green valleys and chequered landscapes ran by in a never-ending panorama. The sunshine held with them as far as Crewe, and then, as they came into an unlovely stretch of land bristling with factory chimneys, the clouds gathered, and the greyness settled over the day. The three friends sat silently now: Wratten and Carr, seated opposite, were looking out of the window, and Humphrey over Carr's shoulder caught glimpses of the little world to which they were journeying. He saw the great brick chimneys everywhere now, breathing clouds of foul black smoke, and then, wherever he looked, the strange-looking gearing-wheels of the coal-mine shafts came into view. Some of them were quite near the railway line, and he could see the light twinkling between their spokes as the great shaft wheels moved round, hauling up invisible cages. There were tangles of iron-work, and buildings of grimy brick, and, as they rushed on, they passed gaunt sidings where coal-stained trucks waited in a long line. They were in a world of brick and iron and coal: down below them, beneath the throbbing wheels of the express, the earth was a honeycomb of burrows, where half-naked men sweated and worked in the awful heat and close darkness. This was a hard world, spread around them, a world where men lived hard, worked hard, and died hard. A world without sunshine,--all grimy iron and coal and brute strength. And again Humphrey could not help feeling the pitiful artificiality of his own work, that mattered so little, compared with this real and vital business of dragging coal from the heart of the earth to warm her children. They had to change at Wigan: the bookstalls were covered with placards of Manchester and Bolton newspapers telling of the horror of the disaster. They bought copies of every paper, and saw the whole terrible story, hastily put together, and capped with heart-rending headlines. They would have to wait thirty minutes for the train to Hyde: Wratten twitched Humphrey's sleeve and drew him aside. "Look here," he said, "I don't know what the other fellows are going to do. Trains are no good to me--I mayn't be able to get back to Wigan to wire, and the Hyde post-office will be a one-horse show. I'm going to get a motor-car. Come on." So they left the group. Social friendship was at an end: there were no "Good-byes," each man was concerned with himself and his own work. Motor-cars were not used by newspapers at that time to the extent that they are used to-day; they were doubly expensive, and even a little uncertain, but _The Day_ was always generous with expenses when it came to getting news. They went outside, and Wratten hailed a dilapidated four-wheeler. "Drive to a motor garage--quick," he said. "Won't t' old hoss do, guv'nor?" asked the cabby, with the broad Northern accent. "No, it won't, and look slippy," growled Wratten. The old cab rattled over the stones and down a steep hill. "This is a pretty dull hole," Humphrey said, looking out at the town, which seemed to be oozing coal from all its pores. "Yes," Wratten said shortly. "I'm trying to think out a plan. You'd better come with me to Hyde, and after we've got some stuff for the main story, you can hang on, and I'll bump back here in the car, and put it on the wire. Then I'll come back to the mine and relieve you. You'll probably have got some interviews by then, and we can run them on to the story." They arranged for the motor-car, and during a ten-minutes' wait, Wratten dashed off to the post-office. "Always call at the post-office when you get on a job like this, and tell them what you're going to send. Besides, the office may have some instructions for you in the poste restante. And always wire your address to the office. We'd better stop at the Royal. I daresay every one else will be there, but it can't be helped." They set out in the evening for the mine. The car took them through the mean streets of Wigan and the outlying villages, where the shadow of disaster hung like a black curtain over the houses. The streets were strangely silent: groups of men stood at the street corners, talking in constrained voices, and women with shawls over their heads flicked across the roads, grey and ghostlike, the slap of their clogs breaking harshly into the silence. Now and again they passed a beer-house, brilliantly lit, and from here came sounds of voices, and high nervous laughter. "They always get drunk on days like these," Wratten said. "They have to forget that death is always sitting at their shoulders." And now there was a stretch of open country, yet even the fields had not the bright green of the Southern fields. The very grass was soiled with the coal, and the mines and the tall chimneys made a ring round their horizon. Humphrey moved uneasily in the car: the brooding spirit of tragedy that hovered over the place was beginning to seem intolerable. It was all so grey, so appallingly dismal and squalid. Here were the houses with the blinds drawn over their windows--whole streets of them--houses where there was no man to come home now. Here were women leaning over the railings of the patches of gardens, staring before them into the desolate future. Fatherless babes crawling about the dusty pavements and gutters, unheedingly, knowing nothing of the disaster that had scorched and withered the mankind of their world. They turned down a side-street, and came out upon an open space filled with a mighty crowd of people. Behind them was the gate that led to the colliery, and far away, above their heads, Humphrey saw the winding wheel above the shaft, twisted and broken, the shaft itself jagged and castellated where the force of the explosion had torn the brickwork, and the cable-ropes shattered and tangled, as if some giant hands had wrenched it loose and made a plaything of it. The crowds before the gate parted as they heard the noise of the motor-car. They made a narrow lane, just wide enough for the car to creep through. The gate was guarded by a police-sergeant, who, overcome by the sight of the motor-car, opened the way, and saluted: Wratten, bulky with rugs and wraps, touched the peak of his cap. The car drew up outside the offices, and they set out to walk up the black hill to the pit-mouth. Desolation, utter and dismal; the lowering sky stained and splashed with the red of the dying sun; dark masses gathering below the purple pall of clouds; the ground barren and black with coal beneath the feet: these were Humphrey's first impressions as they walked up the hill, with thousands of envious, resentful eyes regarding them from the crowds that huddled beyond the railings. Nobody questioned them; nobody asked them what right they had to be there. They were part and parcel of the scheme--the literary undertakers, or, if you like, the descendants of the bards of old, the panegyrists, come to sing their elegies to the dead. The full force of the tragedy came, as a blow between the eyes, when they reached the pit-mouth. Those women, waiting patiently throughout the day,--and they would wait, too, long into the night, keeping up their vigils of despair--who could forget them? Who could look at their faces without feeling an overwhelming gush of pity flooding the heart; those eyes, red-rimmed and staring intensely, eyes that could weep no more, for their tears were exhausted, and nothing but a stony impassive grief was left! The shawls made some of the faces beautiful, Madonna-like, framing them in oval, but others were the faces of dolorous old women, grey-haired, and mumbling of mouth. And some of them laid their forefingers to their lips, calling the world in silence to witness their stupendous sorrow. They stood there compact and pitiful: thinking of God knows what--perhaps of the last good-bye, of a quarrel before parting, of a plan for the morrow, of all the little last things that had been done by their men, before death had come. And, permeating everything, into the very nostrils of all of them, there crept a ghastly smell of gas and coal-dust--a smell that brought to the vision of the imaginative the shambles in the twisting galleries of coal below their feet; great falls of black boulders, nameless tortured hulks that once were men--living, loving, laughing--lying haphazard as they fell to the same gigantic fist that smote the iron wheel above the shaft, and crumpled the brickwork as if it were cardboard. They had to see it all: they met other reporters wandering in and out--dream-people in a world of terrible reality. Their companions of the train were all there: Kenneth Carr, surveying that wall of women silently; Mainham, talking to the mine-manager, whose black and sweating face told of many descents into the mine; Gully, buttonholing a woman with a baby in her arms, and making notes in his notebook; Grame, plodding to and fro in the coaly mire, for it had been raining that morning in the North: all working, all observing, all gathering facts. It was not their business to moralize, to link up dead men and disasters with the idea of these desolate women and humanity at large. That was the leader-writer's work. Their business was to get the news and say how it happened. They dared not even expose criminal negligence, or inhuman cruelty, or savage conditions of work--and libel laws were there to restrain them. And they all felt--yes, I believe even the brutal Gully felt it for a moment--the unspeakable horror of the tragedy, the injustice not of men dying like this, but having to live like this; great waves of sympathy and pity came over them, and they pitied themselves for their impotence. Ah! if they could have told the millions that would read their writings in the morning, the thoughts that were in their minds.... Humphrey saw it all. He saw the gaunt, drear shed where the flickering lamp-light played over a dozen shapeless bundles sewed up in white. A man came to the shed--this business of identification was no woman's work--the policeman in charge whispered something: they went in together; the policeman turned back the sheet--O God! is it possible that a face once human could look like that! Turn down the sheet. We cannot recognize him. All we know is that the bundle of clothes seared from his body is his; that pocket-book is his too, and we recognize the bone crucifix that he bought one Easter-tide in Manchester. "Hold up.... Thanks, matey, the light's a bit dim...." An odour of carbolic mingled with the stench of the coal-dust; a blue-clad nurse with a scarlet cross on her arm moved among the white bundles, and she seemed to bring with her a promise of exquisite peace after pain, and rest and eternal sleep. Outside, a grim black wagon lumbered up the hill, and, as the wind flapped its canvas doors open, one saw its load of coffins.... Now the rescue party was going down again. They emerged from a brick shanty, through whose windows Humphrey could see the shelves which were meant to hold the miners' lamps--there was a pathos in those empty shelves. These men were going down to dare death: they looked inhuman fantastic creatures, with goggled helmets over their heads, and great knapsack arrangements of oxygen and nitrogen to breathe, for one breath of the air in the mine below meant stupor and sleep everlasting. There were five men, and as they passed the group of dolorous women, they must have felt the tremor of hope and deep gratitude that shot through the fibre of every despairing one. Here were the sexes in their elemental state, stripped of all the artificial trappings of civilization; men were doing the work of men; women giving them courage with the blessings of God that they murmured. The leader of the rescue gang carried a little canary in a cage; the little yellow bird piped and sang, and hopped about his perch. The little yellow bird was the centre of all their faith in God's mercy: for if the bird could live in the air of the mine, there was still some hope for their men. Slowly the cage descended the shaft that was unbroken. The sunset blinked between the spokes of the gearing-wheel, slower and slower--they were at the bottom of the mine. Now, they were in that inferno of vaporous blackness, with death stalking them, a gaunt, cloudy monster, who had but to puff out his cheeks and breathe destruction. There would be enormous falls of coal and timber to combat; they would have to crawl on their bellies, and stagger along, stooping to the broken roofs of the galleries, and always there was the startling danger of a jar knocking their knapsacks, or breaking the mouthpieces through which they breathed their precious elixir of life. Up above, the night was coming, and a rain as soft as tears began to drift downwards. The women waited. Salvation Army officers moved among them, enticing some of them into the shelter of the silent machine-room. "Of what use is tea and coffee to us? Give us our men. No food or drink shall pass our lips until our men have kissed them, or we have kissed their still faces." Up above, a preacher preached of the infinite mercy of God, and the gospel of pain and sorrow by which the Kingdom of Heaven is reached. He stood there with his arms outstretched, like a black cross silhouetted against the darkening sky, his low, mournful, dirge-like voice blending with the gloom.... Down below, in the reek and the stench, the rescuers' hands are bloody with tearing their way through obstacles, and their pulses are hammering in their heads ... and they have seen sickening things. Now the wheel begins to move again. Doctors hurry to the door of the cage--lint, bandages, stretchers, evil and glittering instruments that kill pain with pain, all the ghastly paraphernalia of Death. They are coming up!... They are coming up!... A silence, so swift and sudden, that it is as if the great multitude had whispered "Hush," the tinkle of the bell marking the stages of the ascent is clearly heard by people waiting on the bank. The cage appears.... The men stagger out, one by one, helmets removed, their faces grimed and sweaty, their eyes white and staring out of the black grotesquery of their faces, their lips taut and silent. And one of them carries a cage in his hand, a cage with an empty perch, and a smother of wet and draggled feathers huddled into one corner. A world without the song of a bird--no hope! ... no hope. * * * * * "I shall have to dash back to Wigan now, and get my stuff on the wires," said Wratten. "Will you wait here and I'll come and relieve you. Pick up any stuff you can. Facts." Humphrey wandered about the dismal pit-mouth--sometimes he was challenged by the police, and ordered to keep within a certain area. He found a cluster of reporters by a lighted lamp. One of them had received an official communication from the mine-manager, and he was giving it to his colleagues. Humphrey took it down in his note-book. Then there was another flutter. A piece of flimsy paper was fixed to a board outside the lamp-house. A message from the King. Now, the wires were humming with words, thousands upon thousands of words sent by the writers to all the cities of the kingdom. And in all the offices the large square sheets of the press telegraph-forms were being delivered. Humphrey saw the picture of _The Day_ office: Selsey sitting at the top of the table, the boy handing him the pile of news from Wigan, a sub-editor cutting it down, here and there--always cutting down. Perhaps, you see, some great politician was making a speech at the Albert Hall, and space was needed for three columns, with a large introduction. It was nine o'clock. Another rescue party had gone down. The women still waited, their faces yellow now in the flare of lamps. It seemed to Humphrey that he had left London centuries ago ... that he had never met Lilian at all. It was as if that morning his life had been uprooted, and it would have to be planted again before it could absorb the old interests and influences.... He was hungry and cold. There was no chance of getting food. If he were a miner, or had any real part in this game, the Salvation Army would have given him tea and bread ... but he was a reporter, an onlooker, supposed to be watching everything, and, in a sense, physically invisible. A car panted up.... It was Wratten. "Here I am, Quain. Anything happened? Official communication. Oh yes, and the King's telegram. Better send them off. Hop into the car and then send it back for me. I'll wait." "Wait?" Humphrey said. "What about food?" "I've got some sandwiches. I'll wait here until two. Never know what will happen. Rescuer might get killed. It's happened before. Fellow might be brought up alive." "But it's going to rain like blazes." "Is it?... Off you get. You can turn in. I'll keep the deck." * * * * * It was nearly eleven when Humphrey had sent his telegram to London. The post-office was open by a side door for the correspondents, and some of them were still writing. Cigarettes dangled from their lips. They had an opened note-book on one side and a pile of telegraph-forms on the other--not the forms that ordinary human beings use, but large square sheets, divided up into spaces for a hundred words on a page. Fifteen of them made a column in _The Day_--Wratten had covered thirty forms. Humphrey went back to the hotel. His friends were in the coffee-room amazing the waitress with their appetites for cold meat and pickles and beer at half-past eleven. The tension was over, and the reaction was setting in. Their faces were strained, and they all seemed unnaturally good-humoured. They laughed at anything, clutching at any joke that would make them forget the dismal horrors of their day. Kenneth Carr looked more pallid than ever. "Where's Wratten?" he asked, as Humphrey came into the room. "Still waiting up there," Humphrey said. "What's the good of waiting?" Gully put in. "If anything happens, the Agency men will send it through, and, anyway, it's too late for the first edition." "I reckon I've done my day's work; me for the soft bed," Chander remarked. "By the way, I found five separate men who've got five separate shillings out of me. Each swore he was absolutely the first person to arrive on the scene and no one else there. It's a sad world. Good-night." Kenneth Carr left shortly afterwards, and the others remained drinking and telling stories. Humphrey had been chary of drinking since his adventure that evening when he was on his first murder story, but to-night he drank with the rest. They were all urged by the same motives. They wanted to forget the black pit-mouth, and the women, and the smell of the coal-dust. That night Humphrey woke up suddenly and heard the rain drumming against the window. He wondered if Wratten were back from the mine. He fell asleep again, and dreamed of a gaunt building, where a blue-clad nurse, with the face of Lilian, hovered about white, shapeless bundles.... And in London the dawn was coming westwards over Fleet Street, and the vans were rattling to the stations, so that all that had been written would be read over millions of breakfast-tables everywhere in the kingdom. X Since his visit to Lilian's home, he had come to a definite decision about his marriage. It would have to be privately done, and the news kept from his aunt until they were wedded. In spite of the increasing breadth of his life, he had not yet shaken off the narrow influence of Easterham; his aunt still remained as a factor to be considered in his scheme of things. If he told her, beforehand, she would ask all sorts of questions. Who were the Filmers? What did Mr Filmer do? (He winced at even this imagined question.) Were they _really nice_ people? That was the greatest quality that anybody could have in his aunt's estimation--the quality of being _really nice_. It was a vague, impalpable quality that defied definition, though Humphrey knew that, somehow or other, his aunt would arrive at the conclusion that the Filmers had not that desirable attribute, if she could by any chance visit them. Of Lilian, of course, there could be no doubt.... She was rare and exquisite, so different altogether from the rest of her family. Nobody could help loving her, and he knew that she would survive the Easterham inquisition. But he saw at once that Mrs Filmer and his aunt would never, never blend. She would find out at once that Mrs Filmer was not "really nice."... He and Lilian talked it over, whenever they could meet. She did not share his hurry to be married. "It is sweet like this," she said once. There was an odd, wistful note in her voice. Then she looked at him fondly, and, "Oh! what a boy you are, Humphrey," she said. He did not object to that so much now. He smiled indulgently--he had not been many months in Fleet Street, but he seemed to have absorbed the experience of as many years. He was changing, so gradually, that he could not note the phases of his development himself. He felt that he was leaving all his old associations far behind. It was as if some driving power were within him, rushing him forward daily, while most of the other people round him stood still. There was Beaver, for instance--he seemed to have left Beaver long ago, though they were still at their old Guilford Street lodgings. But, somehow, Beaver seemed now just a milestone, marking the passage of a brief stage in his life. Soon, he knew, Beaver would be out of sight altogether. There was Tommy Pride--another milestone; he had run on and caught up with Wratten and Kenneth Carr, and these were the people who were influencing him now.... And there was that great ambition, growing into a steady flame: ambition burning up every other desire within him; ambition leading him by ways that mattered not so long as they led at last to conquest. Lilian was to help him: she was to be a handmaiden to ambition. The picture of the journalistic homes that he had seen made him long to found one of his own. This life of lodgings and drifting was profitless--he wanted a home; permanence and peace in this life of restless insecurity. Very often he dreamed of his home--where would it be?--they would have to be content with rooms at first, an upper part, perhaps, but the rooms would be their own, and they could shut the door on the world, and live monarchs of their own seclusion for a few hours, at least, every day. There were walls lined with books, too, in his picture of the home, and Lilian, in an arm-chair of her own, set by the fireplace, and the blinds down, and the light glittering on the golden threads in her brown hair. He told Lilian of his dreams, and she shook her head and smiled. "It's a nice picture, isn't it?" she said. "Don't you see it too?" he asked. "Sometimes. I used to see it quite a lot at one time. Before I knew you." He showed chagrin. "Oh! wasn't I in it?" "How could you have been when I hadn't met you? I forget who was the ideal for me at the moment. Lewis Waller, perhaps, or William Gillette." She laughed. "Silly Humphrey, it's the picture you're in love with, and you can put anybody in the arm-chair." He protested against it, yet all the while he was wondering how she could have known that! He had not considered that point of view himself, nor would he now. It was Lilian he wanted; she was just as beautiful as ever, and nobody else was within his grasp. He sighed. "I do wish we could settle about--about our marriage. Let's fix it up for next week." She pretended to be horrified. "Only a week to prepare in! Look at the things I've got to buy. My bottom drawer isn't half full." "Well!" he said, hopelessly, "when are we going to get married? Do let's try and fix a day." He could not understand why, sometimes, she would seem so eager and delighted with the prospect of marriage, and at other times she would be in a mood for indefinite postponement, as though she wished to keep him for ever lingering after her with all his thirst for love unquenched. He could not know that she was beginning to realize, with that intuition which no man can fathom, that her dreams had been but dreams, and the love that they thought everlasting but the passing shadow of a moment. * * * * * When he got back to the reporters' room that evening--he had been reporting the visit of a famous actress to a Home for Incurables--Willoughby met him with a grave face. "Heard about Wratten?" he asked. "No--what is it?" Humphrey said, feeling that evil news was coming. "Double pneumonia--they thought it was a chill at first ... he got it at that mine disaster last week. You were there, weren't you?" "Yes. He would insist on staying out all night ... it was raining...." "That was Wratten all over," Willoughby said. Humphrey winced. "Don't say 'was,'" he said, almost fiercely. "Wratten's going to get better. It's impossible for him to die ... why, he is only just begun to live ... and there's his wife ... and, perhaps...." He stopped short. Nobody could quite understand what Wratten meant to him. Not even Wratten himself. "I didn't know you and Wratten were very thick," Willoughby said. "He's a good chap, but so devilish glum." "None of you know Wratten--I don't suppose I do--but I know that he's the whitest man in the Street." He went out to Hampstead that night, after work, but the nurse who came to the door said that he could not see Mrs Wratten, she was in the sick-room--Mr Wratten was dangerously ill; but he was going on as well as could be expected. XI Ferrol was back in his room, among his buttons, after a long holiday abroad. There was always a subtle difference in the office when he returned after these occasional absences; and not only in the office, but in the whole Street, where men would say to each other, "Ferrol's back, I hear ... wonder what _The Day_ will do next." For Ferrol always returned to his paper with some new scheme, some new idea that he had planned while he was away--he seemed to be able to see weeks ahead, to know what people would be talking about, or, if he could not be certain as to that, he would "boom" something in _The Day_, and its mighty circulation would make people talk about anything he wanted them to discuss. They were doing nearly a million a day--think of it! Ferrol, sitting in his office, could touch a button, give some instructions, and send his influence into nearly a million homes. He could move the thoughts of hundreds of thousands; throw the weight of _The Day_ into a cause and carry it through into success. He could order the lives of his readers, in large matters or small matters. That famous Batter Pudding campaign, for instance, is not forgotten, when _The Day_ found a crank of a doctor, who declared that our national ill-health was due to eating Batter Pudding with roast beef. Batter Pudding was on every one's lips, and in no one's mouth. People stopped cooking Batter Pudding. Ferrol touched a button and they obeyed. Nor must we forget the wonderful campaign on the "Bulrush Throat," by which Humphrey was able to oust the bulrushes from Mrs Wayzgoose's sitting-room. Yet, sometimes, in _The Day_ campaigns, there was a spark of greatness and a hint of nobler things, that seemed to reflect the complex personality of Ferrol himself; Ferrol groping through the web of commercial opportunism which was weaving round him, striving after something ideal and worthy. A man has been wrongly arrested and condemned--Ferrol stands for justice; the columns of _The Day_ are opened to powerful pens; the nation is inflamed, there are questions in the House, the case is re-opened and the conviction quashed. Nameless injustices and cruel dishonesty would flourish if _The Day_ were not there to expose such things. You must balance the good against the evil, and perhaps the good will outweigh the evil, for Ferrol, when he touched the buttons, did many good things, and the nearest approach to evil he made was in doing those few things that were transparently foolish.... Something in _The Day_ had arrested his attention that morning. (He always read the paper through, page by page, from the city quotations to the last word on the sporting page.) The article in question was not an important one: it was a few hundred words about a party of American girls who were being hustled through London in one day--the quickest sight-seeing tour on record. The account of their doings was brightly written, with a flash of humour here and there; and, you know, it had the "human touch." Who wrote it? The button moves; pink-faced Trinder starts nervously from his desk in the ante-room, and appears shiny, and halting in speech. He is sent on a mission of investigation, while Ferrol turns to other matters: the circulation department wants waking up. Ferrol actually travelled in his car all the way from his house in Kensington, and for every contents bill of _The Day_ he saw three of _The Sentinel_. Gammon, the manager of the circulation department, appears, produced magically by touching a button. "This won't do, you know." There are explanations, though Ferrol doesn't want explanations--he wants results; which Gammon, retiring in a mood for perspiration, promises. There has been a slight drop in advertisement revenue--Ferrol has a finger in every pie. "Dull season be damned," says Ferrol to the advertisement manager--a very great person, drawing five thousand a year, commissions and salary, and with it all dependent on Ferrol. In two minutes Ferrol has produced a "scheme"--an idea that may be worth thousands of pounds to the paper. "Splendid," says the advertisement manager. "Get ahead with it," says Ferrol.... In ten minutes it is as if there had been an eruption in every department of the grey building. The fault-finding words in the red room with the buttons drop like stones in a pool, making widening rings, until they reach the humblest junior in every department--Ferrol is back, and the office knows it!... Trinder reappears. Mr Quain wrote the article ... and Ferrol suddenly remembers. So the boy has been doing well. Both Neckinger and Rivers approve of Humphrey. "Not a brilliant genius, thank God!" says Rivers, "but a good straightforward man. Very sound." Thus is Ferrol justified once more in his perception for the right man. His thoughts travelled back once more to Easterham, to the days when he himself was Humphrey's age, to the days of Margaret, and the white memories of his only romance. Strange that the vision of her should always stand out against the thousand complexities of his life after all these years. He saw her just as he had last seen her, eyes of a deep darkness, and black hair that seemed by contrast to heighten the dusky pallor of her skin. A child that was too frail to live, and yet she had inspired him in these long distant days. It was astonishing to think that she had had a separate life of her own; that she had married and passed out of the scheme of things. She was dead, and yet she came knocking like this at queer, irregular intervals, at the door of his life. And Ferrol was drawn with a strange attraction towards this boy who was her son; he came as if he were a message from Margaret, holding out her hands to him, across the unfathomable abyss of Space and Time. "Now you can repay," she seemed to say. * * * * * "Well, Quain," said Ferrol, as Humphrey came into the room. Ferrol masked his sentiments behind the crisp, hard voice that he always cultivated in the office. Nobody could have guessed from his treatment of Humphrey that he regarded the boy with any particular favour. Ferrol knew well enough how to handle men: they must be made always to believe that they are firm and independent, and it does not do to let them see the props and supports that hold them up. Humphrey was busily searching for the reason of this summons to Ferrol's room. It was only the third time that he had been in this broad red room, yet already his nervousness vanished, he no longer feared his greatness, or the comprehensive power of the man with the black moustache and the strong hands that held in their grip all the fortunes of _The Day_. He stood there, by Ferrol's desk, so changed, so different from the timid Humphrey who had felt the floor sinking beneath him when he faced, for the first time, this man whose potentiality he could not grasp. There was little outward difference, save, perhaps, the lips compressed a little tighter, and a frown that came and went, but inwardly the timid Humphrey had gone, and in its place there was a bolder Humphrey, whose mind was all the better for the bruises of battle. "Well, Quain," said Ferrol, moving papers about his desk, and regarding Humphrey all the time with those penetrating grey eyes. "You sent for me, sir?" Humphrey asked. "Yes." Ferrol paused. "Getting on all right?" he blurted out. Humphrey smiled--Getting on! The phrase had been on his lips on that day when he had first appeared in the red room. He thought of all the things that had been crowded into his life since then. Of all that he had seen; of all the people he had met; of the glimpses into the greatness and the pettiness; the worthiness and the unworthiness; the virtue and the vice and the vanity of it all. As he thought thus, he saw a blurred composite picture of the past months, figures flitting to and fro, men striving in the underworld of endeavour, work, work, and a little love, and, in the background, a whimsical picture of his aunt who preached the stern gospel of Getting On, without knowing what it really meant. "I'm going to have you put on better work," Ferrol said. How the boy's eyes sparkled and lit up his face! "Mr Rivers is quite satisfied. You shall do some of the descriptive work. Think you'll be able to do as well as John K. Garton one day?" John K. Garton!--he was the great descriptive writer of _The Day_, the man who signed every article he wrote, who was never seen in the reporters' room, except when he looked in for letters; a being who seemed to Humphrey to belong to quite another sphere, above Wratten, above Kenneth Carr, above all the reporters in salary and reputation. He was one of Ferrol's products: all England knew of him, and read his work as special correspondent, yet Ferrol could put a finger on a button, you know.... Humphrey laughed. "Oh, I don't know, Mr Ferrol," he said, awkwardly. "My work would probably be quite different, I couldn't write in his style." "That's right," said Ferrol. "Try and find an individual style of your own. No room for imitators here. Still, there's plenty of time to talk about that. I just wanted to let you know I've had my eye on you." Ferrol nodded, Humphrey turned to go. Then he remembered he was going to ask Ferrol for a rise in salary. He came back to the desk. "Oh, Mr Ferrol," he said, "I ought to tell you, I'm going to be married." Ferrol pushed his pad aside. What a fool he had been to think he could constitute himself the only influence in this boy's career. How was it he had overlooked the one important factor--a woman. It came so suddenly, this revelation of Humphrey's intimate life, and all at once Ferrol found himself swayed with an unreasoning dislike of this unknown woman--it was an absurd feeling of jealousy.--Yes, he was jealous that anybody should exercise a greater influence than himself over Humphrey, now that he had decided to push him forward to success. "Married!" he said, harshly, "you damned young fool!" The words came as a blow in the face. Humphrey flushed, and found that he could not speak. He thought of Ferrol's soft words that had opened up such illimitable visions of the future, and then, quite unexpectedly--this. "Somebody in Easterham?" asked Ferrol. "Oh no! Nobody in Easterham. She lives in London. She's in Fleet Street." "A woman journalist?" "No--she's a typist." "You damned young fool!" Ferrol repeated. "What do you want to get married for?" XII In the silence that followed, Humphrey stood bewildered. The harsh note in Ferrol's voice surprised him; what on earth could it matter to Ferrol whether he married or not. And Ferrol must have read his thoughts, and seen his mistake at once. "Of course," he said, "it's no business of mine. Your life's your own. Only I think you're too young for that sort of thing. Why, you haven't seen the world yet. You haven't a father, have you?" "No," said Humphrey. "Well"--Ferrol's voice softened--"you won't mind my advising you then." "No," said Humphrey again: already he seemed to feel Lilian slipping from his grasp. "I'm looking at it simply from the business point of view. No man has a right to marry until his position is made--least of all a reporter." "But she would help me," Humphrey pleaded. "She would be able to help me. She would ..." he broke off. Ferrol completed the sentence for him. "Keep you straight. Yes, I know. I've heard it all before. The man who needs a woman to keep him straight is only half a man." "But," continued Humphrey--and he thought of Wratten and Tommy Pride--"we don't get much out of life--we're at work all day long, there's absolutely nobody ... I mean, there's nothing left in it all ..." he spread his hands wide. "At the end there's nothing ... emptiness." He stammered broken sentences that had a queer impressiveness in them. "I'm nothing ... it seems to me ... all this life, rushing about all day ... and everything forgotten to-morrow ... there's nothing that lasts ... nothing except...." "Oh, you think you'll get happiness," Ferrol said. "Perhaps you will. But every moment of happiness is going to cost you years of misery. As soon as you marry, what happens? You are no longer independent. You've got to lie down and take all the kicks. You've got to submit to be ground down; to be insulted by men whom you dare not strike back, as you would, if you had only yourself to think of.... And then, you know, in a year's time, you've got to work ... double as hard, and to watch every penny, and to save.... Why, you young fool, don't you see that if you're going to get on in this business, you mustn't have any other wish in life but to rise to the top. Everything must be put aside for that--you must even put aside yourself. You must have only one love--the love of the game; the love of the hunter for his quarry." What made Ferrol talk like this.... What had happened to Humphrey that he should be there, standing up to Ferrol, fighting the question of his marriage? Something new and unexpected had thrust itself into their relations, and Humphrey could not understand it. "But that's what I want to do," he said; "we should do it together." "Yes. How?" said Ferrol, a little brutally again. "Shall I tell you? I know you young men who marry the moment you see a marrying wage. It's all very well for you--you may progress--you may develop--you're bound to, for men knock about and gather world experience. But what of the woman at home?--cooped up in her home with babies? Eh? have you thought of that? Where would your home be? You haven't got as far as that, then. The woman stands still, and you march on. She can lift you up, but you can't lift her up. And then the day comes that you're a brilliant man--the most brilliant man in the Street, if you like...." Ferrol smiled. "Oh! you never know. Think of John K. Garton, and Mallaby, and Owers.... And you're different. You can link up the things of life. You can perceive and appreciate pictures and fine music and the meaning of everything that matters ... and for the woman who has not been able to progress, nothing but popular songs, chromographs, and ignorance of anything but the petty little things of to-day. Then you hear people saying, 'How on earth did he come to marry her?' There's always an answer to that. _He_ didn't marry her. It was another man--the man he was twenty years ago--who did it. Do you see?" Humphrey looked about him forlornly. His dreams were crumbling before the onslaught of Ferrol's remorseless less words. The powerful magnetism of this man held him: he felt sure that Ferrol was right.... Ferrol was only voicing the thoughts that he himself had feared to express. Above the inward turmoil of his mind, he heard again the voice of Ferrol, forceful and insistent: "You are not the man you will be in twenty years' time. There's no reason," he added hastily, "why I should take all this trouble over you ... no reason at all ... it's no concern of mine. Other people on my staff can do as they please--for some men marriage is the best thing ... I don't interfere. I'm not interfering now. I'm only giving my point of view." "Yes ... I know," Humphrey said, and somehow or other he seemed to feel an extraordinary sympathy for Ferrol; he seemed to understand this man. At that moment he would have stood forth for Ferrol and championed him against a world of hatred! "Only I thought ..." Humphrey began. "You see, she supports her family...." "O Lord!" Ferrol groaned. "It's worse than I imagined." "Besides, she's ... she's clever ... we have the same tastes." "Of course you have. But your tastes will alter. You're going to progress.... And she's going to progress, too, on different lines.... A woman's line of progress is different ... and in twenty years' time!" The telephone bell rang. Ferrol took up the receiver. "Well, that's all," he said to Humphrey. And then: "I don't take this trouble with every one." Humphrey groped for words. "No ... I understand ... I see what you mean.... You don't think...." Ferrol nodded. "You can do what you like, of course." He put the receiver to his ear and began talking rapidly. XIII Lilian knew the letter by heart now, she had read it through and through so often. She had received it early that morning, when, as usual, she ran downstairs at the postman's knock, so as to take that precious letter, that came daily, from the floor where it lay as it had been dropped through the slit in the door. Of late, the sisters and brother had noticed the hurry to capture the first post, and there had been a little good-humoured chaffing over the breakfast-table, where they all sat together--the father and mother took their breakfast upstairs in bed, in keeping with their slatternly lives. "Going to be a blushing bride soon, Lily?" said Harry, with a wink to Edith. "Don't be silly!" Lilian said, crumbling her letter in her pocket. "What's he like? Is it that nobleman who came here a few weeks ago? If so, I don't think much of his taste in ties!" "It's better than your taste in socks," retorted Lilian. "Aha!--a hit, a palpable hit. Guessed it at once. Pass the butter, Edie." "Do tell us all about it," Florence urged. "The family wants to know," pleaded Harry. "Lilian--are you really...." Her hands closed over the letter which she had just read. She turned her head away and pretended to be busy at the coffee-pot. They were all joking among themselves, and they did not notice the tears glisten in her eyes. "There's nothing to tell," she said, in a hard voice. "Oh, we don't believe that!" Harry said. "Young ladies wot gets letters in masculiferous handwritings every morning...." She rose abruptly and looked at the clock. Then--wonderful Lilian!--she laughed and threw them all off the scent. "You children are too talkative," she said, with pretended loftiness. "I mustn't stop chattering with you or I shall miss the eight-forty." She put on her gloves with precision, and took up her little handbag, and adjusted her hat, just as if nothing had happened to disturb the ordinary course of her life; and, then, with the usual kiss all round, she let herself out of the house. Oh, she kept herself well in hand throughout the journey to town--nobody knew, and nobody must know. It was only a secret between herself and her heart. She looked out with dry eyes over the dismal plain of chimney-pots with which the train ran level, the cowls spinning in the wind ... the chimney-pots stretched row upon row, far away, until, with a hint of the open sea, adventure and wide freedom, the masts and rigging and brown sails arose from the ships lying in the docks. But when she came to the office she rushed upstairs, and in the little room where they hung their cloaks and hats, all her pent-up emotions broke loose with a torrent of tears. She wanted to empty her eyes of tears so that there should be none left, and she wept without control, silently, until she could weep no more. It was just like a short, sharp storm on a day that is oppressive and heavy; the air is all the cooler and sweeter for it, fresh breezes play gently over the streets, the world itself seems eased after its outburst. She could smile again. She bathed her red eyes in the cold water of the basin, and performed some magic with a powder-puff. Nobody would have guessed, as she sat tap-tapping at her typewriter, with the sunshine touching her hair with its golden fingers, that a thunderstorm had shaken her nature a few minutes earlier. It was all over now; only the letter remained, and she knew the letter by heart, she had read it so often. A difficult letter to write! Well, not really, for that which comes from the heart is easy to write. It is insincerity which presents difficulties, and in this business Humphrey had not been insincere. He had not made any cold calculations as to the future; he had not weighed the pros and cons of it all. After the letter was written and posted, the vision of her reproachful face haunted his dreams, and he felt that he had lost something irretrievable--something of himself that had gone from him, never to return. He was only considering himself. He saw the sudden possibilities of the future which Ferrol had opened for him; the true proportions in which he had painted that picture of the days to come. The fear of these responsibilities attacked him and made him a coward. He saw, at once, that he could not marry Lilian, and he told her so in a tempestuous, passionate letter, with ill-considered phrases jumbled all together, treading on one another's heels, as fast as the ideas tumbled about in his mind. "I cannot do it, Lilian, dear," he began. "We should never be happy together. I can see that. I don't know what you will think of me; you cannot think any worse of me than I think of myself. I feel a blackguard; I feel as if some one had given me a beautiful, priceless vase, and I had hurled it to the floor and smashed it. It is not that I love you any the less, but I cannot ask you to share this life of mine. When I first knew you, I thought it would be beautiful if we could be married--everything seemed so easy to accomplish. But now I see that years must pass before I win my way, and that marriage for us would be an unhappy, uphill affair. Forgive me, forgive me, Lilian. I cannot tell you all my thoughts on paper. But meet me just once more in the old restaurant in the Strand, where I can explain to you all that I want to say, and plead for your forgiveness. Oh, my sweet Lilian, you will understand and help me, I know. "HUMPHREY." This was the letter, written on the impulse of the moment, which Humphrey sent to her. Incredible that it should be dropped in the ordinary way into a pillar-box, to lie for hours with hundreds of other letters, to pass through many hands until it finally came into the hands of the postman at Battersea Park, who delivered it, without any emotion, with a score of bills and receipts and circulars. Well, it was done, and, while Humphrey was waiting for his work in the reporters' room of _The Day_, Lilian's mind was busy with the new development of affairs. Now, she could review everything calmly, she felt in her heart that Humphrey was right, but there was the sense of wounded pride with her. He had thrown her over! He did not even ask her to wait for him--yes! she would have waited--he was hasty to unburden himself and win his freedom again. Yet she knew that she could not wait--she was older than he--she would be too old in ten years' time. The flower of her life would be full for a few years, and then she knew he would see that her glory was waning.... All this was no surprise to her. Instinctively she seemed to have known that this would be the outcome of her love affair. Strange! how she accepted it without any more demur than the natural outburst of tears--and what were those tears, after all, but tears of self-pity, as she looked upon herself and saw that she was poor and patient and loveless? They met in that same Italian restaurant in the Strand to which Humphrey had first taken her on that day, months ago, when the glamour was upon him. The proprietor knew them for more or less regular customers, and they always had the upstairs room, which was invariably empty. This dreadful business of the waiter taking his hat and stick, setting the table in order, offering the menus, and recommending things, with a greasy smile, and knowing, dark eyes! They had to mask their feelings, and to play the old part, and pretend that they were going to have lunch. She noticed that Humphrey's face was pale, the lines about his mouth less soft than usual. His eyes were strained, and he looked at her wistfully, not quite sure of his ground, wondering whether there would be a scene. She could read him thoroughly. She knew that he really felt mean and uncomfortable, that she had but to use her woman-wit to recapture him at once--snare him so completely that never could he escape again. She knew that the very sight of her weakened him in his resolve, a kiss on the lips, and her fingers stroking his hair and face, he was hers, and the world well lost for him. But that was not Lilian's way. A strange, deep feeling of pity was in her heart as she marked the pallor of his face. She would have mothered him, but never cajoled him. "He is only a boy," she thought sorrowfully, "with a boy's destructiveness. This, that he thinks is an overwhelming tragedy, will be only a mere incident in a few years' time." And she smiled at her thoughts. Her smile awoke only the faintest echoes of dying memories within him: her smile that had once thrilled him, and sent his heart beating faster, and made his throat so curiously parched--incredible that such things had happened once! "You are not angry," he said, timidly, with a touch of tragedy in his voice. "Angry?" she echoed. (He feared she was going to make light of the whole affair, and trembled at the idea of her mocking him: he might have known that that also was not Lilian's way.) "Angry," she repeated. "No, Humphrey. I'm not angry." "There's no excuse," he began, hopelessly, "I've got nothing to say for myself.... It seems to me ... it seems best that it should be ... for both of us, I mean." "I think it's better for me," she said, softly. "There's no good making a tragedy of it. Things always turn out for the best." He fidgeted uneasily. "I was thinking it over last night.... Oh, my head aches with thinking.... You see, what can we do, if we married. Everything's up against us ... it's all fighting and risks, and uncertainty. I don't mind for myself" (and Humphrey really believed this, for the moment), "it's you that I'm thinking of ... it wouldn't be fair. I could ask you to wait ..." he did not finish. Now, really, Humphrey's arrogance must be taught a lesson. Behold, Lilian gathering her forces together to crush him--ask her to wait, indeed! as if he were her last chance. And then something in his eyes checked her, something wistful and intensely pathetic. Splendidly, Lilian spared him. He was so easy to crush ... perhaps she still liked him a little, in spite of everything. "No," she said. "There's no need to do that. We'll each go our own ways." The waiter, after discreet knocking at the door, came between them with plates of food and clatter of knives and forks. They regarded him silently, and when he was gone, they made a feeble pretence of eating. "I ought to have known better," she said, returning to the business again with a wry smile. "I ought to have known it couldn't have lasted." "It isn't that I love you any the less," he said, unconsciously quoting a phrase in his letter. "I don't know how to explain my attitude.... I love you just the same ... but, somehow...." "Don't, don't explain," she interrupted. "I understand. Of course it's impossible if you think like that. And, of course, Humphrey, there's no need to talk of love...." She laughed a little, and then, really, she could not spare him any more. "Oh, what a boy you are!" He flushed hotly. "I know you've always looked upon me as a boy," he said. "You think I'm a child ... but it takes a man to do what I'm doing ... it takes courage to face it out ... it hurts." "Oh, you _are_ a boy," she said, with a little hysterical laugh. "Of course you're only a boy." She pushed her plate away from her. "Don't you see what you've done--you've broken up everything." And she put her head on her arms outstretched on the table, and sobbed and sobbed again. He watched her shoulders tremble with her sobs, and heard her accusing words repeat themselves in a pitiful refrain in his ears. At that moment he touched, it seemed, the lowest depths of meanness. He felt awkward and foolish.... She was crying, and he could do nothing. "Lilian ... Lilian," he pleaded, touching her hand that was flat on the table. "Don't--I didn't mean to." Heavens! if she did not stop, he would snatch her to him, and kiss her hotly, and let Ferrol and the world and all its success go by him for ever. The waiter saved the situation. His knock came as a warning, and when he entered the room with more plates and a greasier smile, he found the lady at the window flinging it open widely and complaining of the heat, the gentleman looking moodily before him, and the food barely touched. "You no like the fricassee, sare?" he said, turning the rejected food with his fork. "It's all right," Humphrey said, in a voice that the waiter knew to mean "Get out." "No appetite to-day." Lilian turned from the window, as the door closed behind him. Her eyes and lips were struggling for mastery over her emotions, and the lips conquered with a wan, watery smile. She placed her hand on Humphrey's shoulder. "There," she said, wiping her eyes, destroying the tension with a prosy sniff. "It's all over--I didn't mean to be so silly." The miserable meal went on in silence. There was nothing more to be said. He was thinking of all this pitiful love-affair of his, how it ran unevenly through the fabric of work and hopes, beginning at first with a brilliant pattern--a splash of the golden sunrise--and gradually becoming worn, until now all the threads were twisted and frayed. After this, they would part, never to meet again on the old terms, never to recapture the thrill of early love. Odd, how she who had lain so close to his heart, enfolded in his arms, would have to pass him in the street henceforth, perhaps with only a nod, perhaps without any recognition at all. And nobody would know, nobody would guess of their shipwrecked love. "I'm glad I never told mother," she said once, voicing her thoughts. She took a little package from her pocket: it held the few trinkets he had given her, wrapped up in tissue-paper--a brooch or two, a thin gold necklace with a heart dangling from it, and his own signet ring. "No ... no ..." he said; "for God's sake, keep those. I should be happier if you kept them." She shook her head gently. "I could not keep them," she said. "They were little tokens of your love ... they belong to you now." There was a pause. The clock chimed two. The disillusion was complete, all the fine draperies of love had been wrenched away--they were so flimsy after all--and behind them reality stood, sordid and ashamed. She tried to strike a note of cheerful fatalism. "Well, what must be, must be," she said, reaching for her cloak. He sprang to his feet to help her, remembering how, in other days, his hand had touched her cheek, and he had urged her lips towards him, that he might kiss her. How calm and self-possessed she was now. How magnificently she mastered the situation--a false move from her and the moments would become chaotic. He was uneasy, awkward and embarrassed ... one moment, ready to snatch her to his arms and begin all over again; the next, alertly conscious that he was unencumbered, that henceforth there was no other interest in his life but work--free! Now she was ready to go. "I won't come down with you," he said, "I'll say good-bye now." He could not face a parting in the street. He watched her gather her things together, her bag, her umbrella, her gloves ... she smiled at him, and now the smile was a riddle: he could not guess her thoughts: contempt or pity? Suddenly she bent down towards him, stooped over him, with her face aglow with a divine expression, virginal and tender, the light of sacrifice in her eyes, the sweet pain of martyrdom on her lips; she bent towards him and kissed him lightly on the forehead. "Good-bye, Humphie dear." She had never spoken with a voice like that before, she had never shown how much she loved him, and all the misunderstandings, the torment, the doubts and uncertainties were washed away as his thoughts gushed forth in a great appreciation of his loss. The next moment she had gone. He was alone in the room, with her good-bye ringing in his ears. Idly he fingered a little packet of tissue-paper, opening it and laying bare the little pieces of metal that were all that remained to him of his love. He touched the presents that he had given to Lilian--each one held memories for him.... The gold signet ring had belonged to his father.... If only Daniel Quain had been there, with his world-wisdom and philosophy.... Tears, Humphrey? Surely, not tears! Think how splendidly free you are now; think of the moment of triumph when you can go to Ferrol and tell him that you are no longer hampered; see how straight the path that leads to conquest. XIV That night, in a little box of a flat in Hampstead, a man was fighting his last battle, with the fingers of Death at his throat and the arm of Love for his support. It was a sharp, short battle, ended when the night itself finished, and the dawn came through the chinks in the shutters, as pale and as cold as a ghost. This was the end of Leonard Wratten, whom so few people understood, who had always kept his own counsel, so that only he himself knew of his own struggles and ambitions--they were just like Humphrey's, just like those of every other man in the Street. He had not asked much of life, and all that he asked for was given him, and then snatched away. They talked about it in the Pen Club, and in the offices. "Overwork," they whispered. "He was just married." Ferrol rose to the occasion: wrote handsome cheques for Mrs Wratten, straightened out affairs, sent her flowers, arranged for her to take a sea-cruise ... did all that he possibly could, except bring Leonard Wratten striding back to life again. But there was one in Fleet Street who followed the coffin to the cemetery, who seemed to feel that he alone had understood Wratten. ("It's always the best fellows that are taken," they said, when he was gone, as they say of every one.) And, as he came away from the cemetery in the sunshine when the coffin had been lowered into the grave, and scattered with lilies, he knew that he had lost friendship inestimable, for it had not had time fully to develop and ripen. Wratten's death, and the break with Lilian, came hard upon each other: he felt that the roots of his life were stirred, two influences of such potent possibilities had gone from him. He knew that a phase of his life was closed. PART III ELIZABETH I The Pen Club stands far away from Clubland up a narrow court that leads from Fleet Street, into the maze of the little streets and courts that finally emerge on Holborn. It is the hidden core of newspaper land. It lurks behind the newspaper offices with discreet ground-glass windows, unpretentious, and obscurely peaceful. No porter in brass-buttoned uniform guards its doors--indeed, it has but one, and that a door with a lustrous, black-glass panel, with a golden message of "Members Only" lettered upon it. Strangers and messengers are requested to tap gently on the window of a little pigeon-hole at the side. Oliver Goldsmith once lived in the house that is now the Pen Club; Dr Johnson lived a few courts away, and strode down Fleet Street to the "Cheshire Cheese," little dreaming that Americans would follow in his footsteps as pilgrims to a shrine. Its courts have had their place in the history of our letters, but all that is past, for journalism affects a contempt for literature, and literature walks by with a high head. If you want literature, and art, and high-thinking, you must go further west, along the Strand, where you may find a club that still clings to the traditions of Bohemia: but if you want to meet good fellows, jolly, generous, foolish men, wise as patriarchs in some things, and like children in others, then you must join the Pen Club. All around it are the flourishing signs of the journalists' trade. Here a process-block maker; there a lesser News Agency; round the corner a large printing works, and almost opposite it the vibrating basements of _The Day_. You can see the props of the scenery--take a stroll through the courts, and you see the back-doors of all those proud newspaper offices, great rolls of paper being hoisted up for to-morrow's issue, dismal wagons piled high with yesterday's papers, tied up in bundles, "returns"; unsold papers that will be taken back to the paper-mills and pulped: food for the philosopher here! Humphrey Quain joined the Pen Club when he had been three years in Fleet Street. It was Willoughby, the crime enthusiast of _The Day_, who put his name down; Jamieson, the dramatic critic, seconded him. Two years had made very little outward difference in Humphrey. He had perhaps grown an inch, and his shoulders broadened in proportion, but his face was the same frank, boyish face that had gazed open-mouthed in Fleet Street on that January day. Yet there was some slight change in the expression of the eyes; they had become charged with an eager, expectant look; observation had trained them to an alertness and a strained directness of gaze. Inwardly, too, the change in him was imperceptible. He had lost a little of that cocksure way of his, and acquired, by constant mingling with men older than himself, a point of view and an understanding above his years. In worldly knowledge he had advanced with large and sudden strides: some call it vice and some call it experience. A young man, thrust into the whirlpool of London, finds it difficult to avoid such experience, and so Humphrey had allowed himself to be tossed hither and thither with the underswirl of it all, learning deeper lessons than any man can teach. He had come out of this period with a sense of something lost, yet never regretting its loss. Sometimes a bitter spasm of shame would overtake him when he thought of the sordid memories he was accumulating. He could have wished it all undone, and he looked back on the Humphrey Quain of Easterham, and saw himself singularly unsmirched, and innocent--knowing nothing, absolutely nothing. After all, he thought, was this knowledge? Does all this go towards the making of a man, as the steel is tempered by the fire? Humphrey did not know ... he took all that life offered him: the good and the bad, the folly with the wisdom. That affair of his with Lilian Filmer was now nothing more than a memory. They had never spoken since their wretched meeting in the Strand restaurant. It was strange, too, how rarely they had met, when in the old days scarcely a day seemed to pass without the sight of her in Fleet Street. She still worked in the Special News Agency Office, and yet, during the two years that had passed since their parting, he had not seen her more than four or five times, and then only in the distance. Once he found himself marching straight towards her in the crowd of the luncheon-hour walkers: panic seized him; he did not know what to do. She was walking proudly with the erect carriage of her body that he knew so well--and then, almost mysteriously, she had disappeared. Perhaps she had seen him, and avoided a direct meeting by turning down a side street or by passing into a shop. For a year he always walked on the other side of the street during the luncheon hour. At the back of his mind she lived as vividly as she had lived in the days when she had been the most important factor in his existence. There were times when the thought of her rendered him uneasy; he felt he had not been true to himself, there was a reproachful blot on his escutcheon.... Strange! how lasting his love had seemed that night when he had kissed her in the cab after the theatre. He could look back on it all now dispassionately. There had been progress in the office. His salary was now eight pounds a week. He remembered the day when he had gone to Ferrol, and said, a little miserably, for the strain of the breaking with Lilian pressed hardly on his heart in those days: "I've broken off my engagement." In these words he had dedicated himself to Ferrol and _The Day_. Nothing more was said. Ferrol nodded in a non-committal sort of way. A few weeks later Humphrey was sent to the East Coast on special work. He did well, and the increase in salary came to him at last. With this he lifted himself out of the old ruck of his life. The money opened up unbounded vistas of wealth and new possibilities to him. He decided to leave Beaver and Guilford Street. Beaver, as an influence, had served his turn in shaping Humphrey's career. It was Beaver who first showed him the way to London, and now, at odd intervals, Beaver occurred and recurred across his vision, still biting his nails, and still with ink-splashed thumbs. No stress of ambition seemed to disturb Beaver's placidity. He was content to plod on and on, day after day, a journalistic cart-horse, until he dropped dead in his collar. That was how it seemed to Humphrey, who never credited Beaver with any great aspirations, yet that shaggy man had a separate life of his own, with his own dreams, and his own aims, which one day were destined to touch the fringe of Humphrey's life. Humphrey took a small flat in Clifford's Inn, a place of sleep and peace and quiet then, as it is now, out of the noise of Fleet Street. It was a "flat" only by courtesy, for in reality it was made up of two rooms and a box-room. The larger was his sitting-room, and the smaller--a narrow, oblong room--he used as a sleeping apartment. Very little light, and scarcely any air, came through the small latticed windows, but the rooms held a mediæval charm about them, and he was free for ever from the landladies and grubbiness of lodgings. He paid a pound a week for his rooms in Clifford's Inn. Every evening when he was free in London, Humphrey went to the Pen Club. The place had a fascination for him, which he could not shake off. One could not define this fascination, this influence which the Club wielded over him. It grew on him gradually, until an evening spent without a visit to the Club seemed empty and insufficient. There was nothing vicious about the Club--it was just a meeting-place, where one could eat and drink. Within its four walls there was peace unutterable; and the world stood still for you when you passed the threshold. Other clubs have tape machines spitting out lengths of news: telegrams pasted on the walls; chairs full of old gentlemen reading newspapers with dutiful eagerness--the Pen Club was a place where you escaped from news, where nobody was interested in news as news, but merely in news as it stood in the relation to the doings of their friends. There was no excitement over a by-election, nobody cared who would get in on polling day; nobody thrilled over a revolution in a foreign state; mention of these things only served as a peg on which to hang discussions of personalities. "I expect Williamson's having a nobby time in St Petersburg," or "Who's down at Bodmin for _The Herald_--Carter?--I thought so. Jolly good stuff in to-day." And when news did touch them, it touched them personally, and altered the tenor of their lives perhaps for many days. At any minute something would happen, and a half-dozen of them would be wanted at their different offices. They would just disappear from the Club for a few days, and return to find that a fresh set of events had dwarfed their own experiences completely. They were never missed. A man might be absent in Morocco for half-a-year, living through wild happenings, with his life hanging on a slender thread--a hero in the eyes of newspaper readers--but nobody in particular in the eyes of the Pen Club, where every one found his level in the fellowship of the Pen. They came and went like shadows. Humphrey found all types of journalists in the Pen Club--odd types off the beaten track of journalism, guarding their own cabbage-patch of news, and taking their wares to market daily. There was Larkin, for instance, who took the railway platforms as his special province. He was a tall, thin man, with friendly eyes smiling behind gold-rimmed pince-nez. No Duke or Duchess could leave London by way of the railway termini without Larkin knowing it. Those paragraphs that appeared scattered about all the newspapers of London, telling of the departure of Somebody and his wife to Cairo or Nice marked the trail of Larkin's day across the London railway stations. Then there was Foyle, a chubby, red-faced man, with a jolly smile, who, by the unwritten law of Fleet Street, chronicled the fires that happened in the Metropolis. A fire without Foyle was an impossible thing to imagine. There was Touche, who dealt only in marriages and engagements; and Ford, who had made a corner for himself in the Divorce Courts; Chate, who sat in the Bankruptcy Court; Modgers, who specialized in recording the wills and last testaments of those who died; and Vernham, lean, long-haired, and cadaverous, who was the Fleet Street authority on the weather. These men and others were the servants of all newspapers, and attached to none. In some cases their work had been handed down from father to son; they made snug incomes, and though they were servants of all, they were masters of themselves. And all these men were just like children out of school, when they met in the Pen Club: there was no grim seriousness about them--they kept all that for their work. They had insatiable appetites for stories, for reminiscences of their craft. They knew how to laugh. It was well that they did, for, if they had taken themselves seriously, they would never have been able to face the caricatures of themselves which hung on the walls. These caricatures, drawn by a cartoonist on one of the dailies, were things of shuddering satire: they were cruelly true, grotesque parodies of faces and mouths, legs and arms. If you wanted to know the truth of a member, all you had to do was to consult the wall, and there you saw the man's character grimacing at you in colours. * * * * * Humphrey had been away from London for a week, and he came back to find the Club seething with excitement. The moment he crossed the threshold he was aware of something abnormal in the life of the Club. It was the last night of the Club elections for the Committee--a riotous affair as a rule. All round the room there was the chatter and buzz of members discussing the new spirit in the Club. As member after member dropped in, the excitement grew. It was a historic election. For the first time the youngest members of the Club had been nominated to stand on the Committee. The older members, the men who had watched the Pen Club grow from one room in the second floor of a house to two whole houses knocked into one, looked on a little sorrowfully. They had not become accustomed to the new spirit in the Club. Among themselves, they said the Club was going to the dogs. These young men were making a travesty of the whole business. They had no reverence for traditions. After all, the election of a Chairman and a Committee was a grave affair. It was amazing how seriously they took themselves. Presently Chander appeared selling copies of _The Club Mosquito_, a journal produced specially for the occasion, which stung members in the weakest spots of their personalities. There were caricatures and portraits of all the "Young Members" who were going to save the Club, as they put it, from the moss and cobwebs of old age. Really, these young men were very ruthless. They invented Election songs, and they sang boisterously:-- "We're going to vote all night, We're going to vote all day." Privileged sub-editors, dropping in for a half-hour from their offices, found themselves caught up on the tempest of exhilaration. "Hallo, here's Leman--have you voted yet, Leman?" and a paper would be fetched and Leman would be made to put a cross against thirteen names, with thirteen people urging him to have a drink. Bribery and corruption! Humphrey abandoned himself to the merriment of the evening. He constituted himself Willoughby's election-agent, and canvassed for votes with shameless disregard for the Corrupt Practices Act. Sharp, the sporting journalist, was busy making a book on the result. That eminent war-correspondent, Bertram Wace, issued a manifesto, demanding to know why he should not be Chairman. The price of _The Club Mosquito_ rose to a shilling a copy when it was known that all the proceeds were to go to the Newspaper Press Fund. Humphrey found himself left alone with the excitement eddying all round him. He was able to survey the scene with an air of detached interest. It reminded him of his school-days: all these men were young of heart, with the generous impulses of boys; they had the spirit of eternal youth--the one reward which men of their temperament are able to wrest from life. He saw Willoughby, with his black hair in a disordered tangle over his eyes, joining in the war-song of the Young Members. As he looked at all these men, chattering, laughing, grouped together here and there where some one was telling an entertaining story, he saw the smiling aspect of Fleet Street, the siren, luring the adventurous stranger to her, with laughter and opulent promise. To-morrow they would all begin their nervous work again, struggling to secure a firm foothold in the niches of the Street, when a false move, a mistake, would bring disaster with it; but they thought nothing of to-morrow; they lived in a life of to-days.... He saw Tommy Pride come into the Club. Two years had left their mark on Tommy's face. New reporters had appeared in the Street, and somehow Tommy found himself marking time, while the army of younger men pressed forward and passed him. He could not complain; he felt that if he asserted himself, Rivers or Neckinger would tell him bluntly that they were cutting down the staff--the dreadful, unanswerable excuse for dismissal. He knew that his mind was less supple than it was years ago; the stress and the bitterness of competition was sterner now than in those days when they posted assignments overnight. So, too, his pen went more slowly, finding each day increasing the difficulty of grappling with new methods. Tommy Pride had lived in To-day, and now To-morrow was upon him. "Stopping for the declaration of the poll, Pride?" asked Humphrey. "Not me," said Tommy, picking a bundle of letters from his pigeon-hole. "I've had a late turn to-night and the missis will be sitting up." "Well, what about a drink?" Tommy shrugged his shoulders wearily. "Oh--a whisky and soda," he said. "What a row these fellows are making." Willoughby attacked him with a voting paper, and Humphrey noticed how Pride's hand--the hand that had written millions of words--trembled as he made crosses against the names. It was as if each finger were attached to thin wires; it reminded Humphrey of those toy tortoises from Japan, that danced and shook in a little glass case. And he thought: "Will my hand be like that one day?" The torrent of talk flowed all round him; gusts of boisterous laughter marked the close of a funny story. In all the stories there was a note of egotism. He saw, suddenly, why these men were not as other men. They were profound egotists, they lived each day by the assertion of their own individuality. The stronger the individuality of the man, the greater his chance of success. And these men, he saw, though they all worked in a common school, were absolutely different from one another. They were different, even, in breeding: there were men whose voice and pose could only have been acquired at one of the 'Varsities; there were men who lacked the refinements of speech; keen, eager men, and men whose eyes had lost their lustre, who seemed weary with work; mere boys, self-assertive and confident with the wisdom of men of the world, and older men with grey heads and bald heads. They surged about him, and came and went, in twos and threes, some of them departing to their homes in the suburbs, north and south, whither trains ran into the early hours of the morning. Humphrey had been long enough in Fleet Street to know them all: if you could have taken the personalities of these men and blended them together, the composite result would have closely resembled the personality of Tommy Pride--who was now drinking his second glass of whisky. They were men of tremendously active brains--not one of them but had an idea for a new paper that was worth a fortune if only the capital could be procured--and all of them longed intensely for that cottage in the country after the storm and stress of Fleet Street; they could not talk seriously without being cynical, for though they saw the real side of life, the pompous make-believe of the rest left them without any illusions. "Better wait for the result now," Humphrey said to Tommy. "It'll be out in a few minutes." "All right," said Tommy, glancing at the clock. "Green's offered me a lift in his cab. Have a drink, Quain. I had the hump when I came in--feel better now." They all trooped upstairs, where the Young Members were making discordant noises. They sang new and improvised quatrains. You would have thought that not a care in the world could exist within those cheerful walls. There was a shout of "Here they are." The vote-counters came into the room. One of them they hailed affectionately as "Grandpa." Humphrey had seen him before, walking about Fleet Street, with his silver beard and black slouch hat set on his white hair, but to-night he felt strangely moved, as the old man came into the room, smiling to the cheers. What was it? Some association of ideas passed through his mind, some linking up of Ferrol, young, powerful, master of so many destinies, with the picture before his eyes.... These thoughts were overwhelmed with a tumult of shouting. The old man was reading out the names of the members of the new Committee. The Young Members had won. "Come on," said Tommy Pride, "let's get off before the rush." As they passed out of the Club into the cool air of the night, Tommy suddenly recollected Green and his offer of a cab. "Oh, never mind," he said; "can you lend me four bob for the cab; I'm rather short." Humphrey passed the money to him, and, drawn by the jingle of the coin, as a moth is to candle, a man lurched out of the shadows of the court. The gas-light fell on the unshaven face of the man, and made his eyes blink feebly: it showed the pitiful, shabby clothes that garbed the swaying figure. "Hullo, Tommy," said the man. He smiled weakly not sure of his ground. "Good God!" said Tommy. Eagerness now came into the man's face; a terrible eagerness, as if everything depended on his being able to compress his story into as few words as possible, before Tommy went. There was no beating about the bush. "I say, old man, lend me a bob, will you?... Didn't you know?... Oh, I left two years ago.... Nothing doing.... Yes, I know I'm a fool.... Honest, this is for food.... Remember that time we had up in Chatsworth, when the Duke...? Seen anything more of that fellow we met in Portsmouth on the Royal visit?... What was his name?... Can't remember it ... never mind, I say, old man, _can_ you spare a bob?" Tommy passed him one of the shillings he had just borrowed from Humphrey. "Why don't you pull up," he said; "you can do good stuff if you want to." "Pull up!" said the man. "Course I can do good stuff. I can do the best stuff in Fleet Street.... Remember that story I wrote about...." There was something intensely tragic in this sudden kindling of the old, egotistical flame in the burnt-out ruin of a man. The cringing attitude left him when he spoke of his work. "Well, you'd better get home..." Tommy said. "What's the missis doing?" "She's trying to make a little by typewriting now.... Thanks for the bob...." He shambled down the court towards Gough Square. "So long." His footsteps grew fainter, until the last echoes of them died away. Tommy Pride came out with Humphrey into Fleet Street. There came to them, as it comes only to those who work in the Street, the fascination of its night. The coloured omnibuses, and the cabs, and the busy crowds of people had left it long ago, and the lamps were like a yellow necklace strung into the darkness. Eastwards, doubly steep in its vacancy, Ludgate Hill rose under the silent railway bridge to St Paul's; westwards, the Griffin, the dark towers of the Law Courts, and the island churches loomed uncertainly against the starless sky. The lights shone in the high windows of offices about them, and they caught glimpses of men smoking pipes, working in their shirt-sleeves--Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, were waiting for their news. The carts darted up and down the street with loads of newspapers for the trains. There was a noise of moving machinery. A ragged, homeless man slouched wretchedly along the street, his eyes downcast, mumbling his misery to himself. Two men in grimy clothes were delving down into the bowels of the roadway, and dragging up gross loads of black slime. They worked silently, seeing nothing of the loathsomeness of their work. Over all, above even the noise of the machinery, there came the cleansing sound of swiftly running water, as the street-cleaners, with streaming hoses, swept the dust and the muck and the rubble of the day into the torrents of the gutter. II Humphrey took rooms in Clifford's Inn, because that was where Kenneth Carr lived. The two came together, though their natures were opposite, and their friendship had ripened. Carr was an ascetic, denying himself most of the ordinary pleasures of life, sacrificing himself to the work of his heart; his mind was calm, with a spiritual beauty; he was a man of singularly high ideals. This contrast with Humphrey's frank materialism, his love of pleasure and lack of any deep, spiritual feeling, seemed only to draw their friendship closer. Then there was the memory of Wratten. They often talked together of him, and, as for Humphrey, he never found himself face to face with a difficult piece of reporting without imagining what Wratten would have done. Most people in Fleet Street had forgotten him long ago, but on Humphrey's mind he had left an indelible impression. "I wonder what it was about Wratten that makes us remember him still," Humphrey said one day. "I had only known him a few months." "I don't know," Kenneth said. "It's like that, I've noticed. Sometimes a man, out of all the others you meet, comes forward, and you feel instantly, 'This man is worth having as a friend.' The charm of Wratten was that there were two Wrattens: one, the glum, churlish man, with whom nobody could get on, and the other, the self-revealing Wratten we knew." They smoked in silence. Presently Kenneth threw his cigarette into the fireplace. "I suppose I'll have to get on with my book." "Why don't you come out ... come to the Club?" "Not me, my son. I'm happier here. I want to get a chapter done." "What's the good of writing novels ... they don't pay, do they?" "Pay! They pay you for every hour you spend over them," said Kenneth. "I should go brooding mad if I couldn't sit down for an hour or so every night and do what I like with my people. The unhappiest moments of my life were when, to oblige Elizabeth, I gave up novel-writing for a time, and took to poverty statistics." Humphrey glanced up at the mantelpiece. A portrait of Elizabeth Carr was there, in a silver frame, set haphazard among the litter of masculine knick-knacks--ash-trays, a cigarette-box and a few old pipes. It was a portrait that had always attracted Humphrey; the sun had caught the depth of her eyes and the shadows about her throat. He was never in the room without being conscious of that portrait, and often, when he was not thinking of her at all, he would find himself looking upwards at the silver frame to see, confronting him, the eyes of Elizabeth Carr. She, herself, never seemed to be quite like the photograph. She came, sometimes, to see Kenneth, and, at rare intervals, Humphrey's visits coincided with hers. She did not live with her brother. She was more fortunate than he, because she had been left an income which was large enough for all her wants. She had always wished to help Kenneth with a small allowance, but he declared he would not touch a penny of her money. "I'll fight my own battles," he said. There was something in her attitude towards Humphrey--a vague, impalpable something--that left him always uneasy; perhaps it was a subtle display of deference--he could not define it, but he felt that she was comparing him, in her mind, with Kenneth, and that he was worsted in the comparison. She would move about in the little room, preparing tea for them, her presence bringing an oddly domestic air into the rooms, and Humphrey would help her, and she would be jolly and laugh when he was clumsy, but all the time it was as if she were holding him away from her with invisible hands. And, when he looked at her photograph, he saw behind the clear beauty of the face, with its smile of tenderness and large eyes that never left him, an Elizabeth Carr divinely meek ... utterly unlike the Elizabeth Carr he knew, who carried herself with such graceful pride and seemed so far above him. He took up the portrait for a moment. "She hasn't been here lately?" he said. "Who?" asked Kenneth, at his writing-table. "Your sister ... you were speaking about the statistics you did for her." "Oh? Elizabeth. No. She's been pretty busy with her work." "Slumming, eh?" "That's about it. I don't know half her schemes. Wonderful girl, Elizabeth. Now I come to think of it, I've got to go down to Epping Forest to-morrow. Some bean-feast she's giving to a thousand slum kids. There's sure to be a ticket in your office, why don't you ask to do it?" "I will," said Humphrey. "A day's fresh air in the forest would do me good." And he did. Things happened to be slack that day in Fleet Street, and Rivers thought there would be plenty of human interest in the story, "though, of course, it's a chestnut," so that was how Humphrey found himself on the platform at Loughton Station an hour later. The morning was rich with the warmth and colour of June. The clear fresh smell of the country was all about him. The scent of the flowers, the sight of the green fields dappled with the yellow and white of kingcup and daisy, the pale sky above him with the sun beating down from the cloudless blue, called him back to Easterham, and the life that now seemed centuries away. Throughout all the comings and goings of years, throughout the change, and the unrest of men and women, the old Cathedral close would be unaltered. The rooks would still clamour and circle about the beeches, and the ivy would grow more thickly. Looking back on Easterham, now on the odd market-place, and on the streets that wandered out to the hedgerows and meadow-lands towards the New Forest, he looked back on a picture of infinite peace. A bird's song and the croon of bees as they swung in their flower-cradles; a horse galloping freely in a field, and cattle browsing in the sunshine--were not all these of more worth than anything else in life? Unnoticed, he had relinquished everything to Fleet Street. The poison of its promise had drugged him. He could appreciate nothing outside its narrow area ... news! news! and the talking of news; fifty steps round to the Pen Club, and fifty steps back to the office; all the day spent in that world of bricks and mortar, which had once seemed so vast, and was now to him nothing more than a very much magnified Easterham. He had not even sought out London. He remembered regretfully the evening of his first ride with Beaver, through the crowded streets to Shepherd's Bush, when he had promised himself nights and days of enchantment in the new wonder of London. And the wonder was still unexplored. As it was with London, so it was with everything. His acquaintance and knowledge was superficial. There was no time for deep study, and the Past could not live with the Present hammering at its doors urgently day after day. Just so, too, with the cities in every part of England. He had travelled much, but he came away from every place taking with him only the knowledge of the whereabouts of the hotel, the post-office and the railway station. A sense of waste filled him; he saw behind him the years, crowded with events, so crowded with movement that he could retain nothing of their activity. And he saw before him a repetition of this, year after year, and again year after year, a long avenue of waiting years, through which he passed, looking ever forward, seeing nothing, remembering nothing, and coming through them all empty-handed, unless.... Unless what? He saw the impasse waiting for him. What was there to be done to avoid it? He might rise to the highest point in reporting--climb up laboriously, only to find at the top of the ladder that others were climbing up after him to force him down the steps on the other side. Kenneth Carr was rescuing the flotsam of the years. These books of his, though they brought little money, were something permanent; they were the witnesses of endeavour; they remained as things achieved out of the reckless squandering of the hours. And Humphrey knew that for him there would be nothing left except the dead files of _The Day_, nothing more profitable than that, a brain worked out, weak eyes and a trembling hand. Yes, and as he looked about him on the glory of the country, and heard the breeze making a sea-noise among the trees, he felt that there was something everlasting here, if he could only grasp it. He could not explain it. He only knew that looking upwards into the lucent depths of the green leaves of a tree, and catching now and again the glimpse of the blue sky beyond, seemed to remove the oppression that weighed his soul, and release his mind from perplexity. He smiled. The old phrase came echoing back to him. "Two pounds a week and a cottage in the country," he thought. Eternal, pitiful, unfulfilled desire. The whistle of the approaching train woke him from his thoughts. "I'm an ass," he said to himself. "I couldn't live a day without being in the thick of it." He walked back to the station, just in time to see the train coming round the bend of the platform, giving a glimpse of fluttering handkerchiefs and eager faces at the windows. The stillness of the station was suddenly shattered into a thousand noisy pieces. The children tumbled over one another in their haste to be the first to see all that there was to see. There was a mighty sound of shrill voices, chattering, laughing, and calling to one another: a confused picture of pallid-faced children, darting from group to group, seeking their child-friends, and arranging themselves in marching order. The teachers herded them together like hens marshalling their elusive brood. Humphrey surveyed the scene with an eye trained to the observation of detail. He saw the painful cleanliness of the children, as though they had been scrubbed and washed for days before their outing. He saw behind the neatness of the pink ribbon and the mended boots, a vision of faded mothers, fumbling with hands shrivelled by laundry work, or fingers ragged with sewing, at these parting touches of pathetic finery. And, behind the vision of the mothers, he saw that whole sordid underworld hung round the neck of civilization.... These children, pinched and haggard, were left to live in the breathless slums, with only charity to help them. The State made laws for them: but there was no law to make them grow up otherwise than the generation of neglect which produced them. They were too young to know the difference between happiness and misery. They could only sing and march away, an army of rags and patched neatness, because for one whole day their young limbs were to have the freedom of the country. They thought of that one day, and not of the other three hundred and sixty-four days of squalor and want. "Hullo--here you are, then," Kenneth Carr appeared out of the crowd of children. "Seen Elizabeth--I've lost her." Humphrey looked along the platform, and he saw Elizabeth Carr bending down and talking to a little girl. She looked tall and beautiful, among all the harsh ugliness for which these children stood. Her figure, as she stooped to the little ones, seemed to shine with grace and merciful pity. She saw Humphrey, and nodded to him, as he raised his hat. Then she came up leading the child. "Look," she said, and though her eyes were lit with anger, her voice was gentle. "Look at this child's dress--and the father's earning thirty shillings a week." Humphrey looked. The child was dressed grotesquely, so grotesquely that it appealed more to the sense of the ludicrous than to the sense of pity. Her main garment was an absurd black cape sparkling with sequins, that undoubtedly belonged to her mother's cloak; it reached to below the child's knees. Beneath this was a tattered muslin blouse of an uncertain, faded colour, and beneath that--nothing. Elizabeth lifted the cape a little and showed undergarments made of string sacking. The child had neither shoes nor stockings. "Isn't it a shame!" she cried, sending the child to join the rest. "Doesn't it revolt you?" "Poverty!" said Humphrey. "What can one do?" "Do!" retorted Elizabeth. "What's the good of having compulsory education, if you don't have compulsory clothing. I know the parents of that child. They could dress that child if they wanted to. Oh," and she clenched her fists, "it makes me feel so helpless." They talked about it on the way to the forest, as they followed in the wake of the children. "The wicked folly and the shame of it," she said. "Does nobody realize the ruin and wreckage that belongs to big cities? Thousands on thousands of lives ended before they began. The parents don't know, and won't know. "And what becomes of those who live? These children here will go through their school-days, and then--what? A small percentage of them may get on, the rest will become casual labourers, dock-hands, and loafers." They passed a long, ill-clad youth lounging along the road. His face was brutally coarse, and he walked with a slouch. "There's one of them," Elizabeth went on. "Now, I know that boy: he used to come to these outings three years ago. He's left school now, and he has tramped down from London for the sake of a meat-pie or a mug of tea. Lots of them do that, you know," she said to Humphrey. "He's never learnt a trade. Of course, he learnt history and geography, and all that, and he got a place, I think, as an errand-boy. There's no interest in running errands--so he just loafs now; and he'll loaf on through life, until he's an old man, sleeping on the Embankment, or on the benches on the Bayswater side of the Park. Perhaps he'll have a few spells in prison--anyhow, he's doomed. Lost. And so are nearly all these children here to-day." The strength of her convictions amazed Humphrey. He had never heard Elizabeth talk like this before. He wondered why she, so beautiful and frail, should mingle with the ugliness of life. When they came to the forest, and Kenneth wandered off alone, she told him. "It's because behind all this sordidness there is something that is more than beauty--there are magnificent tragedies here, that make my throat dry. There are struggles to live of which nobody ever knows. And, sometimes, you know, when I come from one of my slums and stand by the theatres as they are emptying, and see the lighted motor-cars, and all these other women with jewels round their necks and in their ears, I want to laugh at the folly of it all. "They don't know ... they never can know, unless they go down to the depths, and look." Humphrey was silent. "And nobody can do anything, you know, except this sort of thing. It's a poor enough thing to do, but it's something to know you're helping." "I think this work is noble," Humphrey said. "Oh no--not noble. It would be noble if we could do something lasting--something permanent." They were sitting now on the soft grass, and he looked sidewise at Elizabeth Carr, and saw the fine outline of her profile. There was great beauty in her face, in the delicate oval of her chin, in the shadows that played about her throat, showing soft and white above the low collar of lace. That low lace collar and unornamented dress gave to her a touch of demure simplicity. She had the fragrance of lavender: he could imagine her--(seeing her now, with her eyes and lips tender, and her hands meekly clasped in her lap)--standing in a room of chintz and Chippendale, tending her bowl of pink roses by the latticed window opened to the sunshine. He sat by her absorbing her serenity; there was repose and rest in the unconscious pose of her body. He had suddenly found the Elizabeth Carr of the photograph on Kenneth's mantelpiece: her presence seemed to bring him peace. The noise of the children rioting in their happiness made her smile. "Come," she said, "let us go and join them." They walked across the open space in the forest, the soft grass yielding to their feet, and came upon the whole exulting landscape. On all sides of them the ragged little ones, released for a day from the barren prison-house of alley and by-way, ran and romped in the freedom of unfettered limbs, uttering shouts of triumph and gladness. This picture of merriment unchecked, cheered the heart with its bright movement. Here was life, overflowing, bubbling, swirling in little eddies among the trees and undergrowth, running free over the green meadow-lands with all the chattering animation of childhood. Out of the main stream they found strange types of children, odd-minded little things, full of cunning and mother-wit that they had learnt already, knowing the world's hand was against them. Some of them clutched pennies in grimy fists: money saved in farthings for weeks in anticipation of this treat. Others secreted about their person portions of the meat-pie which was given them for lunch. They would take this home as an earnest of altruism. Impossible to forget the shadow of misery that overhung all their lives; impossible to see these ragged children, who had hopeless years before them, without realizing the mad folly and the waste of citizenship. Splendid Empire on which the sun never sets! Will the historian of the future, discovering in the ruins of the British Museum Humphrey's account of that day in Epping Forest, place his finger on the yellow paper with its faded ink, and cry: "This is where the story of the Decline and Fall of Britain begins." They went to see the children take their tea. They sat at long plank tables under the corrugated iron roof of the shed-like pavilion. The girls were in one vast room, the boys in another. Their school-teachers rapped on the table, and the jabber and chatter faded away into a silence. Then the voice of one of the school-masters started singing-- "Praise God, from whom----" and the hymn was taken up by the voices, singing vociferously-- "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." There was nothing half-hearted about it; they made a great clamour of their thanks, and their shrill treble made echoes within echoes against the iron roof and wooden walls of the room in which they sat. And Humphrey, always the looker-on, saw the imperishable pathos of this and all that lay behind it, and for a moment he felt pity tug at his heart. Then, as if ashamed of his weakness, he turned to Elizabeth and saw that she was watching him. She laid a gloved hand on his sleeve for the fraction of a second; it was an impulsive, unconscious movement, the merest shadow of a caress. "I did not know you could feel like that," she said softly. III In those days Humphrey, trained in the school of experience, took his place in the ranks of Fleet Street, that very narrow community, where each man knows the value of his brother's work. He was being shaped in the mould. The characteristics of the journalist were more strongly marked in him than they had ever been. He was self-reliant and resourceful, he had acquired the magic faculty of making instant friendships; he had developed his personality, and there was about him a certain charm, a youthful ingenuousness of expression that stood him in good stead when he was at work. People liked Humphrey; among his colleagues in the Street, he was not great enough for jealousy, nor small enough to be ignored. He steered the middle course of popularity. He had been long enough now on _The Day_ for Ferrol to perceive his limitations. Humphrey did not know--nobody knew--that Ferrol from his red room was watching his work, noting each failure and each success, watching and weighing his value. And it was with something of regret that Ferrol realized that in Humphrey he had found not a genius, but merely a plodding conscientious worker, perhaps a little above the average. For, in spite of Rivers, who found that genius and reporting do not go hand in hand, Ferrol was always searching alertly for the miraculous writer whose style was individual; whose writing would be discussed in those broad circles where _The Day_ was read. One sees Ferrol hoping for that spark of genius to glow in Humphrey, dreaming, whenever his thoughts took him back, of days now so dim that they seem never to have existed, and faced only with disappointment. Up to a certain point he could make Humphrey--but no further. Perhaps, after all, the boy might show his worth in work of broader scope.... Ferrol plans, and plans, rearranging the men in his employ, moving a man here, and a man there, a god with life for a chessboard and human lives as the men.... One sees Humphrey, young and vigorous, doing his daily work.... It was an extraordinary life, full of uncertainties and sudden surprises ... a life of never-ending energy, with little rest even in sleep, for into his dreams there crept all the tangle of the day's happenings. Disaster swept all round him, but he seemed to be lifted above all evil by the magic of his calling. The king can do no wrong: no journalist ever seemed to be hit by the hazards of life. Murders, the collapse of houses, railway smashes, roofs falling in and burying people in the rubble, shipwrecks and terrible fires.... Humphrey was always on the spot, sooner or later, with a dozen others of the craft.... He was outside the range of the things that really mattered. Politics and the problems that touched deeply the lives of the people did not come his way. They fell into the hands of the lobby correspondent, the man in the Press Gallery of the House, or the sociological writers who stood somewhat aloof from the routine of the Street. But, on the whole, the life was glorious, in spite of its bitter moments. "I shall have to chuck it, you know," Kenneth Carr said, one day. "This life is too awful: it's the system that's wrong, there is no system." That was Kenneth's point of view. Of course there was no system. Is there any system in life? "We're all sick men, in Fleet Street," sighed Kenneth. "We're sick and we're growing old. Our nerves are broken with the continual movement and unrest. There's no time allowance made for our stomachs: I tell you, we're all sick men in Fleet Street, brain, nerve and stomach." At such times, Humphrey would laugh and defend the Street and its work, just to cheer Kenneth up. "Don't you go and drop out," he urged. "I shall be left without a friend." The next day they met each other on the platform at Paddington. There was to be a Royal week in Windsor. A foreign monarch had come to England. "Well, what do you think of the life to-day?" Humphrey asked. "Oh, it's all right," Kenneth laughed. "I suppose I wanted a little fresh air and sunshine.... I shall get it in the forest." IV He was reading a letter in the bold, firm handwriting of Elizabeth Carr. "DEAR MR QUAIN," she wrote, "I don't think I ever thanked you for the article you wrote of our day in the forest with the children. I asked Kenneth to tell you how glad I was, but I expect he forgot all about it. I think your article was most _sympathetic_, though I wish you hadn't made quite so much of that unfortunate child who was dressed so grotesquely. I will tell you what I mean when I see you, for I am writing to know if you can come to dinner here. I'm sorry Kenneth won't be able to come--he's away in Lancashire on that dreadful strike. Thank Heaven--he'll be leaving it all soon." There was a postscript. "Of course, I know the nature of your work will not let you say 'yes' definitely, but I've made the day Saturday, on purpose to give you a chance. And if I don't have a wire from you, I shall expect you." It was quite a month since he had spent that day in Loughton with Elizabeth Carr, and though he could not name offhand the things he had done since then, day by day, that day and its incidents remained sharply defined in his memory. Had he really taken more than usual care to write his account of their doings? Or, was it that the vision of her, and the recollection of her earnest eyes, inspired him to better work? Or, had there been nothing very special about the story after all, and was her letter merely a courtesy? The fact remained that he was flattered to receive the letter with its invitation. Kenneth had certainly forgotten to deliver her message. He looked upon it as something of a triumph for him: very patiently he had waited for a word from Elizabeth Carr. There was that extraordinary remark of hers when he had watched the children sing their grace. He had asked her what she meant by it, and she had declined to say. He had felt humiliated by her words: did she imagine that he had no heart at all? She seemed to think that because he was a reporter on a halfpenny paper, he must be absolutely callous. He re-read the letter. She was curiously captious. She seemed ready to take offence now because he had made a "story" out of that wretched child clad in its mother's cape and bedraggled blouse. Well, of course, she wasn't a journalist. She couldn't be expected to see human interest from the same point of view as _The Day_. He wrote, accepting her invitation provisionally. In the days that followed, thoughts of Elizabeth Carr recurred with disturbing persistency. He recalled the odd way in which she had come into his life: first at that evening at the Wrattens, when Lilian Filmer had been his foremost thought, then, intermittently, at Kenneth Carr's, something unusually antagonistic in her attitude to him; and now she had come into the heart of his work, bringing with her a touch of intimacy. She, who had always averted herself from him, was now asking him to be her guest. She, who had always seemed to ignore him, was, of a sudden, extending towards him tentacles of influence, vague and shadowy; he was uneasily aware of their presence. He read her letter several times before the Saturday came--the gentle perfume of it reminded him of her own fragrance. He was sensitive to praise and appreciation, and he dwelt often on those words which spoke of his work. It was pleasant to know that he had at last shown Elizabeth Carr what he could do. She was, he knew, judging him always by Kenneth's standard, in life as well as writing, and of course every one knew that Kenneth's ideals were high, that his writing was brilliant.... So Kenneth was going to leave Fleet Street. It was the first that Humphrey had heard of it. "I shall have to chuck it," Kenneth had said, and he was going to keep his word. He contemplated the prospect with melancholy. Kenneth was a good friend; his departure would leave an intolerable gap in London life. The chats and the evening meetings would be gone.... They would pass out of each other's daily life.... Thus Saturday came, and Humphrey found himself free to carry out his acceptance of Elizabeth's invitation. Humphrey had always imagined that Elizabeth lived in a flat with some woman-friend: he was surprised when he found the address led to a little white house, one of a row of such houses, in a broad, peaceful road at the back of Kensington High Street. It was one of those houses that must have been built when Kensington was a village; it was like a cottage in the heart of London. The Virginian creeper made its drapery of green over the trellis-work that framed the window, and the walls were green with ivy. An elderly woman opened the door to his knock, and he found himself in a low-ceilinged hall, with a few black-and-white drawings on the walls, and a reproduction of Whistler's Nocturne. He was ushered into the sitting-room. Even if he had not known that it was her house, he could have chosen this room, out of all the rooms in London, as the room of Elizabeth Carr. Wherever he looked, he found a reflex of her peace and gentle calm. In the few moments of waiting he took in all the details of the room: the soft-toned wall-paper, with a woodland frieze of blue and delicate shades of green, the old Japanese prints on the walls, and the little leather-bound books on the tables here and there. He had sat so many times in the rooms of different people whom he went to interview, that his observation had trained itself mechanically to notice such details. He heard a rustle on the stairs, the door opened gently, and Elizabeth Carr came into the room. She looked as beautiful as a picture in the frame of her own room. So had he imagined her, her hair looped back from its centre parting piled in gleaming coils just above the nape of her neck, leaving its delicate outline unbroken; a long necklet of amethysts made a mauve rivulet against the whiteness of her bosom till it fell in a festoon over her bodice, and blended with the colour of her dress, amethystine itself. And in her hair there gleamed a comb beaten by a Norwegian goldsmith, and set with moonstone and chrysoprase. She came forward to greet him, moving with the subtle grace of womanhood. Her charm, her frank beauty, filled him with a peculiar sense of unworthiness and embarrassment. Before the wonder of her, before the purity of her, everything else in life seemed incomprehensibly sordid. "I am so glad you were able to come," she said. She looked him in the eyes as she spoke, and there was this, he noticed, about Elizabeth Carr: she meant every word she said--even the most trivial of greetings took on significance when she uttered them. Her words gave him confidence. "It was good of you to ask me...." There was a slight pause. "I nearly missed the house," he said with an inconsequential smile. "I always thought you lived in a flat." "Did you?" she replied. "Oh no!--(Do sit down--I'm expecting some more visitors shortly.) I've had this house for a long time." She sighed. "It's an inheritance, you know, and I thought I'd live in it myself, instead of letting it. Kenneth and I have dreadful squabbles--he says it's too far out for him, and wants me to keep a flat with him in town--and I loathe flats. I've got a small garden at the back, and it's blessed in the summer. There's a walnut tree and a pear tree just wide enough apart to hold a hammock." "A hammock in London!" cried Humphrey; "I envy you! Think of our Clifford's Inn." "I really don't know how you people can live on the doorsteps of your offices. I'm sure it's not good for you. Anyway, Kenneth's giving it up." "I hadn't heard of it before your letter." "It was only settled a few days ago. Grahams, the publishers, liked his last book well enough to offer him a good advance; and the book's sold in America--he's got enough to get a year's start in the country, and so he's going down there to write only the things he wants to." Humphrey smiled in his cocksure way. "Aha! he'll soon get sick of it, Miss Carr." Elizabeth Carr's fingers strayed into the loops of her amethyst necklace; the light shone on the violet and blue gems as she gathered them into a little heap, and let them fall again. Her brows hinted at a frown for a moment, and then they became level again. "Nothing would make you give up Fleet Street, I suppose?" she asked. "No ... the fever's in me," he said. "I couldn't live without it." "Are you so wrapped up in it?" "Well," said Humphrey, "I suppose I am. It's rather fine, you know, the way things are done. You ought to go through a newspaper office and see it at work ... all sorts of people, each of them working daily with only one aim--to-morrow's paper...." "And you never think of the day when Ferrol doesn't want you any more?" "Well, you know," Humphrey said, with a smile, "it's difficult to explain. We just trust to luck. After all, lots of men have drifted into journalism; when they're done, they drift back again." "I see," Elizabeth Carr said, nodding her head gently. "And there are always fresh men to drift." "I suppose so." "And, you're quite content." Humphrey shrugged his shoulders. "What else can I do?" The bell rang. "Ah! what else!" she exclaimed, rising to meet her visitors. The new-comers were introduced to Humphrey. One was a tall, thin man, with remarkable eyes, black and deep-sunken, and the thin mobile lips of an artist. His name was Dyotkin; he spoke English fluently, with a faint Russian accent. The other was a woman whose youthful complexion and features of middle age were in conflict, but whose hair tinged with grey left no doubt of her years. Although her dress was in excellent taste, it suggested an unduly overbearing wealth. Humphrey recognized her name when he heard it: Mrs Hayman. She was one of the philanthropists who helped Elizabeth in her work. They went into dinner, to sit at a little oval Chippendale table just big enough for the four of them; Dyotkin and he faced one another, sitting between Elizabeth and Mrs Hayman. "Your work must be very interesting," Mrs Hayman said. Humphrey smiled. That was the commonest remark he heard. Those who did not know what the work was, perceived dimly its interest, but not one of them could ever be made to understand the intense, eager passion of the life. "It is interesting," Humphrey said. "Miss Carr knows a good deal of it." "I suppose you go everywhere--it must be splendid." "When you talk like that, I, too, think it must be splendid. Sometimes, it's very funny." "Still, it's nice to see everything, isn't it? And I suppose you go to theatres and concerts." "Oh no! I'm not a critic. That's another man's work. I'm just a reporter." "I don't know how you get your news. What do you do? Go out in the morning and ask people? And isn't it dreadfully difficult to fill the paper?" It was always the same; nobody could understand the routine of the business. Everybody had the same idea that newspaper offices lived in a day of tremulous anticipation lest there should not be enough news. Nobody understood that the happenings in the world were so vast and complex, that their sole anxiety was to compress into four pages the manifold events that had happened while the earth had turned on its axis for one day. "Now, yesterday, for instance?" Mrs Hayman said, with an inviting smile. "What did you do yesterday?" "Oh, yesterday was an unpleasant day. I had to go to Camberwell late at night. A man had given himself up somewhere in Wales. He said he'd murdered Miss Cott--you remember the train murder, three years ago.... He kept a chemist's shop in Camberwell, we found out. So I had to go there. I got there dreadfully late. The door was opened by a girl. Her eyes were swollen and red. She was his daughter, I guessed.... I can tell you, I felt awkward." "I should think so," Elizabeth said. He looked at her, and saw that she was annoyed. "What did you do--go away?" Mrs Hayman asked. "Go away? Good gracious, no. I interviewed her." "Interviewed her!" "Well, I talked with her, if you like. They were very pleased at the office." "I think it's repulsive," Elizabeth remarked. "Oh, come!" Humphrey remonstrated. The dinner was finished. It occurred to Humphrey that he had fallen from grace. "We will go into the next room," Elizabeth said, "and Mr Dyotkin shall play to us." As she passed by him, Humphrey went forward and opened the door for her. Dyotkin and Mrs Hayman lingered behind. He passed into the adjoining room with Elizabeth. He wanted to defend himself. "You're a little hard on me, you know," he said. "I don't understand how you can do it," she said. "Do what?" "Forget all your finer feelings, and make a trade of it." "I don't make a trade of it," he said, hotly. "You cannot separate the good from the bad. You must take us just as we are--or leave us." The words came from him quietly, almost unconsciously, as though in an unguarded moment his tongue had taken advantage of his thoughts. She turned her face sideways to his, and he was conscious of a queer look in her eyes--an expression which was absolutely foreign to them. He saw doubt, uncertainty and surprise in the swift glance of a moment. "I ought not to have said that," he thought to himself. And, then, hard upon that, defiantly, "I don't care what she thinks; it's what I thought." The expression in her eyes softened. Though he had said nothing more, it was as if he had subtly communicated to her that which was passing in his mind. "Yes," she said, with softness in her voice, "we must take the good with the bad, but we must separate the sincere from the insincere. I saw you that day in the forest when your eyes showed how you felt the pity of it all--and yet, you see, you did not put that in _The Day_. You did not write as you felt." So that was her explanation. How could he make her comprehend the conflict that was for ever in his mind, and even his explanation could not redeem him in her eyes. John Davidson's verse ran through his mind like a dirge:-- "Ambition and passion and power, Came out of the North and the West, Every year, every day, every hour, Into Fleet Street to fashion their best. They would write what is noble and wise, They must live by a traffic in lies!" Ah, but it was wrong of her to take that view. As if one could ever tell the truth in a world where the very fabric of society is woven from lies and false conceptions. How could he tell her and make her believe that he was thrilled, and that his throat tightened at things that he saw--and yet he never dared give way to his emotions, and write them. Why, the most vital things in his life were not the things he wrote, but the things he did not write. Though his mind was rioting with indignation, he laughed. "We mustn't take our work too seriously," he said. "It's too ephemeral for that. Things only last a day." She did not answer. She turned from him without a word. He had meant to anger her, and he had succeeded. There was a chatter of voices in the passage and Mrs Hayman came into the room with Dyotkin. Elizabeth went towards him. "Won't you play something?" she begged. Dyotkin sat down by the piano. The seat was too low; he wanted a cushion, or some books, and Elizabeth went to fetch them. The sight of her waiting on Dyotkin filled Humphrey with an increasing annoyance. It jarred on him somehow. He attempted to help in an ungainly way, but Elizabeth, without conveying it directly, held aloof from his assistance. He settled himself in the arm-chair by Mrs Hayman ... and Dyotkin played. Humphrey had no knowledge of music. He did not even know the name of the piece that was being played, but as the fingers of Dyotkin struck three grand chords, something stirred within his soul, and, gradually, a vague understanding came to him, and he followed and traced the theme through its embroidery. And the following of the theme was just like the following of an ideal. At times he was lost in waves of seductive sounds, that charmed him and led his thoughts away, and then, suddenly, the chords would emerge again, out of the bewildering maze of melody clear and triumphant, again, and yet again; he could follow them, though they were cunningly concealed beneath intricate patterns. And then, for a moment, he would lose them, but he knew that they were still there, if he sought for them, and so he stumbled on; and, behold, once more as the dawn bursts out of the darkness, the familiar sounds struck on his ears. And now they were with him always: he hearkened to them, and they were fraught with a strange, delicious meaning. "I have thought this," he said, in his mind. Here was something far, far removed from anything of daily life. He was uplifted, exalted from earthly things. The wonder of the music enchanted him. Ah! what achievements were not possible in such moments! He felt grandiose, noble and apart from life altogether.... The music ceased. He sighed as one awaking from the glory of a dream. He looked up, and his eyes, once again, met the eyes of Elizabeth, deep and tender and unspeakably divine. V It is impossible to point a finger at any date in this period of the career of Humphrey Quain and say, "This is the day on which he fell in love with Elizabeth Carr." For the days merged gradually into weeks and months, and they met at irregular intervals, and out of their meetings something new and definite came to Humphrey. There was no sudden transition from acquaintance to friendship, from friendship to love. He could not mark the stages of the development of their knowledge of one another. But before he was aware of its true meaning, once again the spirit of yearning and unrest took hold of him. This time, his love was different from that abrupt love-affair with Lilian Filmer. Then untutored youth had broken its bounds, and love had swept him from his foothold. He had been ardent, passionate in those days, the fervour of love had intoxicated him; but now, with this slow attachment, his love was a different quality. Lilian, coming fresh upon the horizon of his hopes, bringing with her the promise of all that he needed in those days, had made a physical appeal to him. Always there was working, subconsciously, in his mind, the thought of her desirability. She offered him material rewards; they were attracted to each other by the mutual disadvantages of their surroundings. Their meeting, their abortive love-affair was the expression of the everlasting desire of the companionship of sex: they were, both of them, groping after things half-understood, towards a goal that looked glamorous in the incomplete vision they had of it. But Elizabeth Carr appealed to the intellectual in him. No doubt the old primeval forces compelled him towards her, but they were far below the surface of his thoughts whenever the vision of Elizabeth rose before him. He could not describe the hold she had on his imagination. Her influence had been so subtly and gently exercised, that he had not noticed the power of it, until now he was dominated by the thought of her. The finer spirit that lies dormant in every man, except in the very basest, put forth its wings and awoke. In little questions of everyday honour he began to see things from Elizabeth's point of view: little, trivial questions of his dealings with mankind which jarred on Elizabeth's own code of morality. Unquestionably, he was better for her influence, better from the spiritual standpoint, but weaker altogether when judged by the standard of everyday life. Elizabeth preached the gospel of altruism not directly, but insidiously, and he found himself adopting her views. Hitherto his had been the grim doctrine of worldly success: those who would be strong must be ruthless and remorseless; there must be no halting consideration of the feelings of others. Though he did not realize it, his absorption of Elizabeth's ideals was weakening him, inevitably. The charity of her work, with its gentle benevolence, was reflected in all her life. She gained happiness by self-sacrifice, and peace by warring against social evils. Their characters and temperaments conflicted whenever they met, and yet, after each meeting, it seemed to Humphrey that their friendship was arising on a firmer basis. Sometimes the shock of their opposing personalities would leave behind it quarrelsome echoes--not the echoes of an open quarrel, but the unmistakable suggestion of disagreement and dissatisfaction. He blundered about, trying to fathom her wishes, but her individuality remained always to him a problem, inscrutably complex. There were times, it seemed, when their spirits were in perfect agreement, when he was raised high in the wonder of the esteem in which she, obviously, held him. Those were the times when he came first to realize that he loved her: and the audacity of his discovery filled him with dismay. He knew that she was altogether superior; she lived exalted in thought and deed in a plane far above him. They met, it is true, over tea, or at a theatre, just as if they both inhabited the same sphere, but, in spite of that, they were as separate planets, whirling in their own orbits, rushing together for an instant, meeting for a fraction of time, and soaring away once more until again they drew together. And, even when understanding of her seemed nearest to him, she suddenly receded from his grasp. A change of voice, a change of expression, a movement of her body--what was it? He did not know. He only knew that something he had said had separated them: she could become, in a moment, distant and unattainable, another woman altogether, coldly antagonistic. Yet, by the old symptoms, he knew that he loved her. She persisted in his thoughts with an alarming result. He found himself pausing, pen in hand, at his desk in the reporters' room, thinking, "Would Elizabeth be pleased with this?..." And an impulse that needed all his strength to combat seized him to abandon the set form into which _The Day_ had cast his thoughts, to criticize and to express his own individual impression, whether they accorded or not with the views held by _The Day_. This was altogether new and disturbing. He was a mouthpiece whose mere duty was to record the words of others by interviews, or a painter to present pictures and not opinions. Conscience and convictions were luxuries that belonged to the critics of art, and the leader-writers. There came to him days of unqualified unhappiness, when he was possessed by doubts. For the first time he mistrusted the value of his work: he began to see that the fundamental truths of life were outside his scope. Cities might be festering with immorality and slums; vice might parade openly, but these things could never be touched on in a daily newspaper. Nobody was to blame, least of all those who controlled the newspaper, for it is not the business of a daily to deal with the morals of existence.... It is not easy to analyse his feelings ... but, as a result of all this vague tormenting and apprehension, the old thrill at the power and wonder of the office which throbbed with daily activities forsook him, leaving in its place nothing but the desolating knowledge of the littleness and futility of it all. * * * * * The phase passed: the variety of the work enthralled him again. He travelled to distant towns and remote villages, and whenever he was in the grip of his work, all thoughts of Elizabeth Carr departed from him. He obtained extraordinary glimpses into the lives of other people; he acquired a knowledge into the working of things that was denied to those who only gleaned their knowledge second-hand from the things that he and others wrote. He saw things all day long: the plottings, the achievements and the failures of mankind. The other men of the Street flitted into his life and out again at the decree of circumstance. For a week, perhaps, half-a-dozen of them would be thrown together in some part of England. They met at the hotels; they formed friendships, and they parted again, knowing, with the fatalism of their craft, that they would forgather perhaps next week, perhaps next year. There was no sentiment in these friendships. There were the photographers, too. A new race of men had come into Fleet Street, claiming kinship with the reporters, yet divided by difference of thought and outlook upon news. They were remarkable in their way, the product of the picture daily paper. And their coming marked the doom of the artist illustrators in the newspapers. They were the newest of the new generation, shattering every conception even of the younger men of the manner in which a journalist should perform his duty. The photographers were drawn, as a class, from the studios and operating-rooms of the professional photographer. They forsook the posing of babies and young men in frock coats for the photographic quest of news. Their finger-tips and nails were brown with the stain of iodoform, and for them there was no concealment of their profession, for they went through life with the burden of their cameras slung over their shoulders. Their audacity was astounding, even to Humphrey and his friends, who knew the necessity of audacity themselves. They ranged themselves outside the Law Courts, or the Houses of Parliament, or wherever one of the many interests of the day centred, and when a litigant or a Cabinet Minister appeared, a dozen men closed towards him, their cameras at the level of their eyes, and a dozen intermittent "clicking" noises marked the achievement of their quest. They saw life in pictures; a speech was nothing to them but the open mouth and the raised arm of the speaker; the poignancy of death left them unmoved before the need of focus and exposure. The difficulties of their work seemed so immense to Humphrey that reporting seemed child's play beside it. For not only had they actually to be on the spot, to overcome prejudices and barriers, but, once there, they had to select and group their picture, and to reckon with the light and time. And though the photographers and the reporters were far removed from one another by the external nature of their work, though neither class saw life from the identical standpoint, yet they were interdependent, and linked by the same ceaseless forces working towards one common end.... Sometimes, also, in out-of-the-way places, Humphrey met men who reminded him of his days on the _Easterham Gazette_, men with attenuated minds who were even more absorbed in their work than the London reporter. They had a shameless way of never concealing their identity: they were always the "reporter"; some of them never saw the dignity of their calling, they were careless of speech and appearance, seeming to place themselves on the level of inferior people, and submitting to the undisguised contempt of the little local authorities, who spoke to them scornfully as "You reporters." Yet, among these, Humphrey found scholars and men of strange experience. Their salaries were absurdly low for the work they did--thirty shillings to two pounds a week was the average; their lives were a thousand times more dismal and humdrum than the lives of the London men. And, in spite of these, many London men sighed for the pleasant country work. Whenever Humphrey heard a man speak of the leisure and peace of country journalism, he told them of Easterham and its dreadful monotony. He had interior glimpses, too, of other newspaper offices; not a town in the kingdom without its sheet of printed paper, and its reporter recording the day or the week. These offices held his imagination by their sameness. Whether it was Belfast or Birmingham, Edinburgh or Exeter, their plan was uniform. There was always the narrow room, with its paper-strewn desks or tables at which the reporters sat; always the same air of hazy smoke hovered level with the electric-light bulbs; the same type of alert-eyed men, with the taut lips and frown of those who think swiftly, came into the room, smoking a cigarette or a pipe (but rarely a cigar), and brought with them a familiar suggestion of careless good-fellowship as they sat down to the work of transcribing their notes. And, always, wherever he went, the pungent smell of printer's ink was in his nostrils, the metallic rustle of shifting types from the linotype room, and the deep, rumbling sound of machinery in his ears. Ah, when he got down to the machines that moved it all, he probed to the depths of the simple greatness. Those big, strong men who worked below it all, and lived by the labour of it, made a parable of the whole social system. Of what avail would all their writing be, if it were not for the men and the machines below? Once he went down the stone steps to the high-roofed basement of _The Day_. He went at midnight, just when the printing was about to begin. It was as if he had penetrated into the utmost secrecy of the office. Here were the things of which nobody seemed to think; here, again, were men in their aprons stained with grease and oily ink; men with bare, strong arms lifting the curved plates of metal, and fixing them to the cylinders; each man doing his allotted work, oiling a bearing here, tightening a nut there, moving busily about the mighty growth of machinery that filled the brightly lit room. The sight of that tangle of iron and steel confused his thoughts. He understood nothing of it all. Those great machines rose before him, towering massively to the roof, tier upon tier of black and glittering metal, with rods and cranks, and weird gaps here and there showing their bowels of polished steel. The enormous rolls of paper which he had seen carried on carts and hoisted many a time into the paper-department of the office, were waiting by each machine, threaded on to a rod of steel. Their blank whiteness reflected the light of the electric lamps. And then, suddenly, a red light glowed, and somebody shouted, and a man turned a small wheel in the wall--just as a motor-car driver turns the wheel of the steering gear--and the great machines broke into thunderous noises. The din was appalling. It was loud and continuous, and the clamour of it deadened the ears. Humphrey looked and saw the white reels of paper spinning, and, through the forest of iron and steel, he could trace a cascade of running whiteness, as the paper was spun between the rollers, up and down and across, until it met the curved plates of type, and ran beneath them, to reappear black with the printed words. And the columns looked like blurred, thin lines in the incredible rapidity of the passing paper. The moments were magical; he tried to follow the course of this everlasting ribbon of paper, but he could not. He saw it disappear and come into his vision again. He saw it speed and vanish along a triangular slab of steel, downwards into the invisible intricacies that took it and folded it into two and four and eight pages, cut it and patted it into shape, and tossed it out, quire after quire, a living, printed thing--_The Day_. And everywhere, wherever he glanced at the turbulent, roaring machines, little screws were working, silent wheels were spinning, small, thin rods were moving almost imperceptibly to and fro, to and fro. He saw great rollers touching the gutters of ink, transmitting their inky touch to other rollers, spinning round and round and round; and the paper, speeding through it all, from the great white web to the folded sheets that were snatched up by waiting men and bundled into a lift, upwards into the night where the carts were waiting. And the force of the noise was dreadful, and the power of the machines perpetual and relentless as they flung from them, with such terrible ease, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square, folded papers. They looked as if they could crush the lives of men in the swift snare of their machinery. VI Whom should he meet one day, but Beaver! Beaver of the inky thumbs and the bitten nails, who had, somehow, eluded him, though they both worked in the narrow Street. Nothing astonishing in this, for the work of Beaver lay in circles different from his own. He never came outside the radius of meetings, inquests, the opening of bazaars and the hundred and one minor happenings that are to be found in "To-day's Diary." But here he was, utterly unchanged from the Beaver with whom Humphrey had lived in Guilford Street, with Mrs Wayzgoose, her wasteful coal-scuttles and her bulrushes. They met in a chop-house by Temple Bar, a strange place, where the lower floor was packed with keen-faced men from the Courts of Justice over the way and the Temple at the back. They sat crowded together, abandoning all comfort in the haste to enjoy the luxury of the chops and steaks for which the house was famed. There were no table-cloths on the round tables, where coffee-cups and plates of poached eggs and rounds of toast jostled each other. Only in England would people sit with joy and eat cheek by jowl in this fashion, with the smell of coffee and hot food in their nostrils, and the clatter of plates and knives and forks in their ears. Upstairs men played chess and dominoes over coffee and rolls, cracking their boiled eggs with difficulty in the cramped space. Humphrey heard a voice hail him as he threaded his way between the tables. He looked back and saw Beaver waving a friendly fork at him. "Hullo!" cried Beaver, shifting his chair away a few inches, and seriously incommoding a grey-haired man so absorbed in his game of chess that his coffee was cold and untouched. "Come and sit here," cried Beaver. They shook hands. "Well, how goes it?" Humphrey asked. "Still with the nose to the grindstone?" "That's it," Beaver said. Their positions had been changed since the days of Easterham, when Beaver seemed miles above him in worldly success. He remembered the day Beaver left for London, to embark on a career which shone clear and brilliant in Humphrey's imagination. "Write in!" Those had been Beaver's last words. "Write in. That's what I did." The vision of it all rose before him now, as he sat by Beaver: the dingy office, with the scent of the fishmonger next door, the auctioneer's bills on the walls, with samples of mourning and wedding cards, and tradesmen's invoice headings, to show the excellence of the _Gazette's_ jobbing department. And now--? He was conscious of a change in Beaver's attitude towards him. Humphrey had taken his place in Fleet Street among the personalities, among the young men of promise and achievement. He had even seen his name signed to occasional articles in _The Day_--glorious thrill, splendid emotion, that repaid all the long anonymous hours of patient work! "You're getting on!" Beaver said. There was admiration unconcealed in his eyes and voice. "Great Scott! It seems impossible that you and I ever worked together on that rotten Easterham paper. That was a fine story you did of the Hextable Railway Smash." "I've got nothing to complain of," Humphrey replied, hacking at a roll of bread. "It hasn't been easy work. Yours isn't, for the matter of that." Beaver laughed. "Oh, mine--it isn't difficult, you know. I get so used to it, that I can report a speech mechanically without even thinking of the speaker." "It's a safe job, you know," he said, after a pause. "A life job." Humphrey knew what Beaver's exultation in the safety of his job meant. There were men in Fleet Street, husbands of wives, and fathers of families, who lived and worked tremblingly from day to day, never certain when a fatal envelope would not contain the irrevocable "regret" of the editor that he could no longer continue the engagement. Why, it might happen to Humphrey himself, for aught he knew. Truly, Beaver was to be envied after all. "But don't you think you'd do better on a daily paper?" Humphrey said. "I could tell Rivers about you, you know. There might be room on _The Day_." "I'm taking no risks. I'm going to stop where I am. You see--er--" Beaver became suddenly hesitant, and smiled foolishly. "What I mean to say is--I'm engaged to be married." He leant back in his seat and contemplated the astonishment in Humphrey's face. "No--are you really!" "Fact," retorted Beaver. "Been engaged for the last year." Beaver going to be married! The news touched Humphrey oddly: Beaver could be earning very little more than Humphrey had earned at the time when he had almost plunged into married life, and there was no desire on Beaver's part to reach out and grasp greater things; he was in a life job, untouched by the wrack and torment of ambition, and the craving for success. Oh, assuredly, Beaver was not to be pitied in the equable calmness of his life and temperament. "Well, I congratulate you, old man--though I never thought you were the marrying sort." Beaver took the congratulations blushingly. "Nor did I, until I met Her." He spoke of "Her" in an awed, impressive manner, as though She were some abnormal person far removed from all other people in the world. Humphrey tried to figure the girl whom Beaver had chosen. He thought of her as a rather plain, nice homely sort of person, with no great burden of intellect or imagination. Beaver's hand dived into an inside pocket, and out came a leather case. This he opened, and displayed a photograph, reverently. "That's her!" he said, showing the portrait. Humphrey kept his self-possession well. Neither by a look nor a word did he betray the past: there was nothing in his manner to show Beaver that the girl whose portrait he held in his hand was she whose lips had clung to his in the young, passionate kisses of yester-year. But, as Humphrey looked on the face of Lilian Filmer, the same Lilian, even though the photograph was new, and the hair was done in a different fashion, an acute feeling of sorrow came over him, bringing with it the remembrance of aching days, of the early beginnings, of those meetings and partings, and hearts that strained, and he saw the reflection of himself, foolish and cruel, mistaking the shadow for the substance, struggling and struggling, all for nothing ... for not even as much as Beaver had gained. She looked at him out of the eyes of her photograph, and about her lips there still hovered that smile which had always been a riddle to him; a smile of indulgent love, or contempt? Who knows--a woman's smile is the secret of her sex. Yet now, it seemed, her lips were curved in triumph. This was her revenge on him, that he should go for ever loveless through the world, while she should steal into a haven of welcome peace. Beaver's voice brought him back to physical things. She would kiss Beaver's shaggy-moustached lips, and his arms would catch her in an embrace.... How soon she had forgotten ... he thought, unreasonably.... She might have waited.... She might have understood.... "Well?" said Beaver, awaiting praise. "You've had a good old look." "She's awfully nice and charming," Humphrey answered, returning the photograph. "She's like somebody I know." "Oh, you've probably seen the original, old man, when you used to come and call for me. She used to be one of the girls in our office." He had forgotten that lunch in the Fleet Street public-house, when Humphrey had asked for the name of the girl. Used to be one of the girls in the office! Then Lilian had left. He wondered what she was doing, and an impulse that could not be withstood, compelled him to find out whether she had ever mentioned him to Beaver. "By George!" he said. "I remember, now. Miss Filmer, her name was, wasn't it?" "That's it, Miss Filmer. Did you ever speak to her, then?" He was treading on uncertain ground. It was clear that she had never spoken of him. He felt that she had forgotten him, absolutely and completely. "Oh, I think so--just casually, now and again." "Well, I never!" said the innocent Beaver. "That's interesting. I'll tell her I met you." "Oh, she wouldn't remember me or my name," Humphrey answered, hastily. "It was only just 'How-d'ye-do' and 'Good-day' with us.... So she's left the office now." "Yes. It's rather a sad story. Her father died, you know. He was a chronic invalid--paralysis, I think. Anyhow, we don't speak of it much, and I've never pressed her. But the father who was so useless in life, has been the salvation of the mother by his death. Odd, isn't it? He was insured for a good round sum, and Lilian's mother--did I tell you her name was Lilian?--has bought a little annuity, so that Lilian's free. She used to slave for her mother and the rest of the family until they grew up. That's why she worked overtime at the office. 'Pon me soul, I'd rather be the lowest jackal in Fleet Street than some of these poor little typist girls at eighteen bob a week.... Well, time's up. I've got to be at the Mansion House at three: the Lord Mayor's taking the chair at some blooming meeting to raise a fund for something, somewhere. What are you doing to-day?" "Oh, I'm on the Klipp case at the Old Bailey." Humphrey came away profoundly disturbed. Something entirely unexpected had happened. Lilian had lived as the vaguest shadow at the back of his mind, just as he had last seen her, when she bent down to kiss him, and now this picture would have to be erased. He shuddered at the thought. She was Beaver's "girl": she would be Beaver's "missis." After all, what did it matter? He and Lilian had long since parted; there had been little in common between them. He might have married her, and been as Beaver; she might have married him, but never, never, could she have held the magic and the inspiration of Elizabeth Carr. His mind, always susceptible to outside influences, brooded on the new fact that had come into his life. Unconsciously, as a natural sequel to his thoughts, he began to dream of his new love, and to see himself happier than he had ever been, with Elizabeth for ever at his side. The same motives that impelled him to Lilian after that scene in the registry office, when Wratten was married, now urged him towards Kenneth Carr's sister.... And, of course, one day, Beaver would have to mention his name to Lilian. She would probably smile and say nothing. "He's engaged now," Beaver would say. "There won't be any bachelors left, soon." And that would be his message to Lilian. VII On a Saturday evening some weeks later, Humphrey sat in the dismantled room in Clifford's Inn, in which he and Kenneth Carr had shared so many hours of grateful friendship. The room looked forlorn enough. Square gaping patches on the wall marked the places where pictures had once hung; the windows were bared of curtains and the floor was dismal without the carpet, littered with scraps of paper and little pieces of destroyed letters. Trunks and boxes ready for the leaving were in the small entrance hall, now robbed of its curtains and its comfort. A pair of old boots, a broken pipe, a row of empty bottles and siphons, a chipped cup or two--these alone formed the salvage which the room would rescue from Kenneth's presence. "This," said Kenneth, taking the pipe-rack from the mantelpiece, "this, my son, I give and bequeath to you." He laughed, and tossed it over to Humphrey, who caught it neatly. Kenneth waved his arm comprehensively round the room. "Now if there's any other little thing you fancy," he said, "take your choice. I'm afraid there's nothing but old boots and broken glass left. You might fancy a bottle or two for candlesticks." "The only thing of yours I coveted was your green edition of Thackeray, and you took jolly good care to pack that before I came," Humphrey remarked. "I'll send you one for your next birthday. I shall be rolling in money when I get to work. Meanwhile, just hold this lid up, while I put these photographs in." The light glinted on the silver of the frames. Humphrey knew nothing of two of them, but the third was a photograph that he had always observed. He could see it now as it lay, face upwards, in Kenneth's hand--the photograph of Elizabeth, very sweet and beautiful, with soft eyes that seemed to be full of infinite regret. "Do you know, old man," he said, "I wish you'd let me have that photograph." "Which one?" "The one of Elizabeth." Closer acquaintance had led to the dropping of the formal "Miss" and "Mister." "What will Elizabeth say: it was a special and exclusive birthday present to me, frame and all." "You can easily get another one. Keep the frame if you want to. Honest, I'd like to have the photograph. It would remind me of you and all the jolly talks we've had." "Best Beloved," laughed Kenneth, jovially, "I can refuse you nothing. It is yours, with half my kingdom." He slipped the photograph from the frame. "You know, I feel exhilarated at the thought of leaving it all. I walk on air. I am free." He slammed the lid on the last box and pirouetted across the room. "Thanks," said Humphrey, placing the photograph in his letter-case. "Think of it," Kenneth cried, "from to-morrow I'm a free man--free to write as I will: free to say at such and such a time, 'Now I shall have luncheon,' 'Now I shall have dinner,' or, 'Now I will go to bed.' Free to say, 'To-morrow week at three-thirty I shall do such and such a thing,' in the sure and certain knowledge that I shall be able to do it. Henceforth, I am the captain of my soul." "Oh yes, you feel pretty chirpy now, but just you wait. You wait till there's a big story on, and you read all the other fellows' stories--you'll start guessing who did this one, or who got that scoop--and you'll wish you were back again." "Not I! I shall sit in the seclusion of my arm-chair, and gloat over it all the next morning. And I shall think, 'Poor devils, they're still at it--and all that they think so splendid to-day will be forgotten by to-morrow.' I've had my fill of Fleet Street.... Besides, I don't quite break with it." "Why?" "Didn't I tell you? Old Macalister of _The Herald_ is a brick. He's the literary editor, you know, a regular spider in a web of books. He's put me on the reviewers' list, so you'll see my work in the literary page of _The Herald_. And it's another guinea or so." "Good old Macalister," Humphrey said. "The literary editors are the only people who give us a little sympathy sometimes. I believe that whenever they see a reporter they say: 'There, but for the grace of God, go I.'" Kenneth surveyed the room. "There," he said, brushing the dust of packing from him. "It's finished. In an hour I shall be gone." "What train are you catching?" "The eight-twenty. I shall be in the West Country two hours later, and a trap will be waiting to take me to my cottage. You should see it, old man--just three rooms, low ceilings and oaken beams, and a door that is sunk two steps below the roadway. Five bob a week, and all mine for a year. There's a room for you when you come." "Sounds jolly enough!..." Humphrey sighed. "By George, I shall miss you when you've gone, Kenneth," he said. "There'll only be Willoughby left. It's funny how few real, social friendships there are in the Street, isn't it? Fellows know each other and all that, and feed together, but they always keep their private family lives apart...." "I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to crow. I _am_ sorry to leave. I'm pretending to be light-hearted and gay, as a sort of rehearsal for Elizabeth--she'll be here soon--but, really and truly, I feel as if I were leaving part of myself behind in Fleet Street. Say something ludicrous, Humphrey; be ridiculous and save me from becoming mawkish over the parting." "I can't," Humphrey admitted miserably. "It gives me the hump to sit in this bare room, and to think of all the talks we've had--" "You've got to come here on Monday again, and see that Carter Paterson takes away the big box." "I shall send a boy from the office: I won't set foot in the room again.... Wonder who'll live here next?" he added inconsequently. "Donno," Kenneth replied, absently looking at his watch. "They're not bad rooms for the price. I say, it's time Elizabeth were here." Their talk drifted aimlessly to and fro for the next quarter of an hour. They had already said everything they had to say on the subject of the journey. A feeling of depression and loneliness stole over Humphrey: his mind travelled to the days of his friendship with Wratten, and he was experiencing once more the sharp sense of loss that he had experienced when Wratten died. There came a knock at the door, and Elizabeth appeared, bringing with her, as she always did, an atmosphere of gladness and peace. Her beautiful face, in the shadows of her large brimmed hat, her brilliant eyes, and the supple grace of her figure elated him: he came forward to greet her gaily. Sorrow could not live in her presence. "I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "But I've kept the cab waiting.... Well, have you two said your sobbing farewells?" Kenneth kissed her. "Don't make a joke of the sacred moments ... we were on the verge of a tearful breakdown. My tears spring from the fact that he has given me no parting gift." "Good Lord! I forgot all about it." Humphrey produced from his pocket a small brown-paper parcel. "It's a pipe--smoke it, and see in the smoke visions of Fleet Street." "Well, I'm hanged!" said Kenneth, conjuring up a similar parcel; "that's just what I bought for you. A five-and-sixpenny one, too." "Then I've lost," Humphrey said, with mock gloom. "Mine cost six-and-six. He'll have to pay the cab, Elizabeth, won't he?" "If you two are going to stand there talking nonsense Kenneth will miss the train. Come along! I'll carry the little bag. Can you both manage the big one?" Both of them cunningly kept up their artificially high spirits. Even when Kenneth switched off the electric light, and the room was in darkness, except for a pallid moonbeam that accentuated the bareness of the floor and walls, they parodied their own feelings. They were both a little ashamed of the sentimental that was in them. But as the cab drove out of Fleet Street, they were silent. The lights were flaming in the upper rooms, but the offices of _The Herald_ and _The Day_ and the rest of the large dailies were unlit and silent, for Sunday gave peace to them on Saturday night. But Fleet Street itself was still alive, and the offices of the Sunday papers were active, and the noise of the presses, without which no day passes in the Street, would soon be heard.... Half an hour later, under the great glass roof of Paddington Station, the last farewells had been said. Nothing but a "So long, old man," and a "Good-bye" and a tight handshake marked the breaking of another thread of friendship. Humphrey watched the train curve outwards and away into the darkness with that queer emotion that always comes when one is left standing on a railway platform, and a lighted train has moved out, full of life behind its lit windows, leaving in its place a glistening, empty stretch of rails. Elizabeth was fluttering a valedictory handkerchief to the shadows. Humphrey touched her arm gently. "Shall we go now?" he said. "I suppose we'd better." These were awkward, uneasy moments. He would have liked to have told her how much he felt the passing of Kenneth, but he was afraid of hurting her, for he knew that she, too, was saddened at his departure. "You'll let me see you home, won't you?" he asked. "Would you? Thanks, so much." They passed out of the station, and he called a hansom. His hand held her arm firmly as he helped her into the cab. She thanked him with her eyes. The moment was precious. It seemed that he had taken Kenneth's place; that, henceforth, she would look to him for protection. They rode in silence through the lamp-lit terraces, where the white houses stood tall and ghostly, flinging their shadows across the road. There was nothing for him to say. He knew that their thoughts were running in the same groove. The sudden clear ray of a lamp flashed intermittently as the cab came into the range of its light, and he could see her face, serene, thoughtful, and very beautiful. It made him think of the photograph that lay in his pocket, against his heart.... She was very close to him, closer than she had ever been before, so close that he had but to put out his arms and draw her lips to his. Never again, he thought, would she be as close to him as she was at this moment. And the memory of Lilian intruded ... and with the memory came a vision of just such a ride homewards in a hansom.... Ah, but Elizabeth was of a finer fibre,--a higher being altogether. His body tingled at his thoughts. His imagination ran riot in the long silence, and he did not seek to check it. He was seized by an indefinite impulse to hazard all his future in the rashness of a moment, to take her and kiss her, and tell her that he loved her. "Here we are," she said, with a sudden movement as the cab jolted to a standstill. He sighed. How calm and remote she seemed from love. "You must come in for a moment and have something." He hesitated from conventional politeness. "The drive has been cold," she said. "I will ask Ellen to mix you a whisky and soda; and I daresay she's left some sandwiches for us." "For us!" There was an inestimable touch of intimacy about those words. "Thanks," he said (was his voice really as strange and as husky as it sounded to his ears?) "Thanks--if I won't be keeping you up." Again, that suggestion of close acquaintance and absolute familiarity, as she let herself and him into the house with her latchkey, and closed the door softly on the world outside. It was all nothing to her. She moved about with perfect self-possession, unaware of the agitation within him. "Let me turn up the light," she said, leading the way into the sitting-room. He stumbled against something in the feeble light. "Mind," she cried, laughingly. "Don't knock my treasures over." And then, suddenly, the room was in utter darkness. He heard her make an impatient murmur of annoyance. "There! I've turned it the wrong way.... Don't move ... I know where the matches are." He heard the rustle of her dress, and her breathing, and the faint fragrance of her pervaded the darkness. He stood there in the black room with the blood surging in his veins, and pulses that seemed to be hammering against the silence. He could feel the throbbing of his temples. She moved about the room, and once she came near to him, so near that her hair seemed to float across his face with a caress that was soft and silken ... clearly in his brain he pictured her, smiling, pure and beautiful ... this darkness was becoming intolerable. He made a step towards her.... And the room was lit with a brightness that blurred his sight with the sudden transition from darkness. He saw her standing by the gas-bracket, with a look of concern on her face. "Humphrey!" she cried, "is anything the matter with you?" He was standing in a direct line with the oval mirror on the wall, and he caught the glimpse of a white face, with straining eyes and blanched lips, that he scarcely recognized as his own. She came to his side, tenderly solicitous. He could bear it no longer. The words came from him in faltering sentences. "Elizabeth," he cried. "Don't you know ... I love you, I love you." Her face flushed with perfect beauty. "Oh--Humphrey ..." she said. And by the intimation of her voice, half-reproachful, and yet charged with infinite pity and love, he knew that, if he were bold enough, he could take her and hold her for evermore. "I love you.... I love you ..." he said, drawing her unresistingly towards him. And there was nothing in life comparable to the exquisite happiness of that miraculous moment when her lips met his. VIII He seemed to have reached out and touched the very summit of life in that swift moment of supreme excellence. His whole being vibrated with the splendour of living. He felt as he had felt that night when those three grand chords struck by Dyotkin had stirred the depths of his soul.... And then his moment faded away into the irrevocable past, as she disengaged herself with a gentle, graceful movement, and they stood facing each other in silence. He saw her eyes, inexpressibly mild and soft, droop downwards, as she bent her head; he marked the colour mounting up her cheeks, flushing faintly the whiteness of her neck, and her fingers straying nervously in the thin, golden loop of the chain that fell across her bosom. The wonder of his emotions dazed him. All that he could realize was that, in the space of a second, their relations had been absolutely changed. Henceforth, she appeared to him in another aspect. Quite suddenly and swiftly they had become isolated from all the countless millions in the world by the sorcery of a kiss. It seemed unreal and absurd to him. He wanted to laugh. "You had better sit down," she said in a low voice, that had a note of appeal in it. "I hear Ellen coming.... It will not do to let her notice anything...." Astonishing, he thought, how tranquil and undisturbed she could remain. She could talk to Ellen as if nothing at all had happened; she could hand him sandwiches and prattle about little things as long as Ellen was in the room, and even when the door closed on Ellen she seemed loath to let him speak. But he stopped her, emboldened by the privilege of his love. He went over to her and, placing his hands on each side of her face, drew her forehead towards his kiss, and looked at her with sparkling, victorious eyes. "You have made me happier than I have ever been," he said. "I will be very grateful and good to you." Her eyes met his searchingly. "You will, really?" she asked. "Really," he said, and he kissed her again. Now they could talk--he had so much to say. With her acceptance of his pledge, her smiling "Really," and his reply, he became normal again. His thoughts descended from their eminence and came back to their matter-of-fact, everyday plane. "Tell me," he said, with a lover's vanity, "when did you first know that I loved you?" "I don't know ..." she said. "Perhaps to-night." "Only to-night!" he echoed, disappointed. "Oh, I have loved you long before this. I think it began when we went to the forest together that day with the children.... I shall be able to help you with your work," he cried, buoyantly, "or will you drop it now?" She laughed merrily. "How you hurry things on!" she said. "Give me time to think, like a good boy. We're not going to be married to-morrow, are we?" "No ... no," he protested, "I didn't mean that. Let's have a really long, lovely engagement. Give me months in which I can do all sorts of things for you; we'll see things together that I've never seen before--museums and picture-galleries. Do you know, there's hundreds of things in London I've never seen." "Why not?" "I put off the seeing until I go there with my love." The consummate joy of the hour infected him. He walked up and down the room promising great things ... vanity and egotism tinged his talk. "I shall get on, you know. I shall do something great in Fleet Street, one day. There's no knowing where I shall stop. And then there are the books I mean to write. Oh yes! Kenneth's sown the seeds of book-writing in me. And plays ... plays are the things to make money with...." "You won't need money," she said, kindly. "I have enough for both of us." "Dearest," he answered. (It seemed the most natural thing in the world, now, that he should call her "dearest.") "You must not say that.... You won't mind waiting, just a little, will you? Until I feel I can come to you and say that I do not need your money.... I can't explain it ... I should never be happy if I took a penny from you." She took his hand and caressed it. "I like you all the better for that, Humphrey." (He noticed that she did not use the word "love.") He saw the future splendid, and roseate. He thought, with a smile, of Ferrol. Ferrol could not check him now. He had made his own identity, he was conscious of his own will to achieve that which he set out to do. Besides, there was such a difference between Lilian and Elizabeth. He emerged from the house, a new being in a new world, living in the amazement of the last hour. IX It seemed strange to him that, with such a change in his life, the old work should proceed unaltered: he stood in Rivers' room, listening to Rivers' talk and banter as the news-editor gave him his work to do; he came before Selsey at night, copy in hand; he mingled with the reporters in their big, bare room, talking of the day's paper, and discussing their jobs and their troubles with them; he came into that close, personal contact with men whom he knew, and men who knew him, and yet there was always an abyss that divided his two lives. So it was with all of them: in their friendship they seemed to say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further"; their homes, their private sorrows and eager hopes, the real lives that they lived, in fact, were left behind them with the closing of their house-door, and they came to the office different beings. Those matters that touched their innermost lives were never discussed. Occasionally, the birth of a baby in the home of a reporter or a sub-editor would bring a queer suggestion of humanity and ordinary life into their affairs: sometimes, the news would filter through of a wife seriously ill in some home at Herne Hill or Wimbledon, and there were solicitous inquiries (Ferrol would send down the greatest specialist in one of those deep, generous moods of his), for the rest they displayed no interest in each other's private affairs. As a matter of fact, it was assumed, by the law of the Street, that they had no private lives of their own. It is impossible to imagine Humphrey saying: "If you please, I am engaged to be married, may I have the evening off," if at seven in the evening anything from a fire at the docks to the kidnapping of a baby occurred. Therefore he told no one of the new wonder that had come into his life, not even Tommy Pride, who, by the way, had of late taken to sending out for a glass of whisky and soda, and doing his work with the glass before him on the table. They looked at each other in the reporters' room, and sighed, "Poor old Tommy." Least of all would he tell Ferrol. He would have liked to have gone to Ferrol, and told him, but he remembered Ferrol's outburst. He was older now, and he could not trust himself to listen calmly to the old arguments. And he felt that it would be a slur on Elizabeth if he were forced to plead the cause of his marriage.... So the days followed each other, and he was happy with that mixed happiness which is, perhaps, the most perfect. After the first great moment when he had declared his love, their relations had fallen back to their original groove. It was safer thus: one could not live always on the exalted plane of that moment. His love-affair with Elizabeth Carr was of a different calibre from that with Lilian. It was truer, and rested on a firmer basis of friendship, but it lacked the ardour, and the passionate moments and kisses of the days when love held the ascendancy over his work.... Once, when he was moved with most eager desire during one of their lonely meetings, he caught her to him, and kissed her, and he was conscious of an unspoken reproach in her lips and eyes, that took from him, for the moment, all the savour of his love. It seemed to him that he was most successful when he was not playing the lover, when they met just as if they were rather exceptional friends instead of betrothed, and this irked him from time to time. He wanted to love, and be loved, he wanted to give all and take all. But when, in those rare moods, she answered his kisses recklessly, she was splendidly beautiful and magnificent, atoning lavishly for all that she had withheld from him. In one thing this wooing ran parallel with the wooing of Lilian: there were the same interruptions and postponement of plans; Fleet Street for ever intruded, and always there was the remorseless, inexorable conflict between his love and his career. After an unfortunate week of shattered plans for spending an evening together, she sighed impatiently. "I wish you would give up Fleet Street," she said. "You could do better work." "Oh!" he said, light-heartedly, "one day I will. I'll sit down and write my book. But it's too soon yet." She looked at him with doubt in her eyes. She seemed to be feeling her way through the dark corridors of his mind. "But surely you don't like the work," she said. He laughed. "Some days I don't, and some days I do. Some days I think it loathsome, and some days I think it glorious.... We're all like that." * * * * * A day came when he thought it glorious, when Fleet Street gave him of its best, a swift reward for his allegiance. He was in the reporters' room one evening, talking the latest office gossip with Jamieson and Willoughby, which concerned the marriage of _The Day's_ Miss Minger, with young Hartopp of _The Gazette_. It was an event in Fleet Street, marking, in its way, the end of the epoch of the woman reporter. "I don't think a reporters' room is a fit place for a woman," Willoughby said. "They're all right for their special work--cooking and dress and weddings, and all that--but hard, right-down chasing after stories is man's work." "I didn't mind Miss Minger," remarked Humphrey. "She was a jolly good sport, but women have us at a disadvantage. Remember that time when we all fell down on the gun-running story at Harwich, and Miss Minger sailed in, smiled her prettiest, and squeezed a scoop out of them." "Ah, well," Jamieson said. "They're all the same ... marriage, you know, and a happy home, with jolly children. They soon find out that it's better to let hubby do the reporting.... Hullo, young man Trinder, what do you want?" he said, breaking off as the pink-faced secretary stood in the doorway. "_You're_ wanted," Trinder said, nodding to Humphrey. "Me!" said Humphrey. "What's up?" "Ferrol wants you." "My word!" said Willoughby. "Are you going to be sacked, or is your salary to be raised?" "Our blessings on you," cried Jamieson, as he followed Trinder out of the room, upstairs, and along the corridor to Ferrol's door. Ferrol stood with his hat and coat on waiting for him. "Oh, Quain," he said, shortly. "Get your things and come along. I want to talk to you." Humphrey paused, bewildered. "Hurry up," said Ferrol. He took his watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and clicked its case hurriedly. "I've got to be back here at ten." "Very well, sir," said Humphrey. He ran back to the reporters' room, and gathered together his hat and his coat and his stick. "What's up?" chorused Jamieson and Willoughby. "Lord knows!" he gasped. "_He_ wants me to go somewhere or the other with him." "Most certainly you are either going to be sacked or have your salary raised," remarked Willoughby. "But if you are going to be made editor, be kind to us when you are all-powerful." "Ass!" laughed Humphrey, in reply. He went back. Ferrol made a noise of satisfaction, and led the way out of his room, carefully switching off the lights. Down the stairs they went, side by side, Humphrey walking beside the mighty Ferrol, just as he did in his dreams. Down the stairs they went, and the men coming up--his colleagues--raised their hats to Ferrol, for they always gave him respect, and the heart of him throbbed with the strangeness of it all. The commissionaire saluted stiffly, and gazed at Humphrey with a new esteem. A small boy in uniform darted with haste before them, and opened the door of a limousine car, reflecting the lights of the night in its lacquered brilliance. The chauffeur touched the polished peak of his hat. It seemed that everybody paid homage to Ferrol, greatest of all men in the eyes of Humphrey Quain. For this man was the symbol, the personification of the Street and the paper for which he had worked with all his heart, with all his might, and with all his soul. He stood aside to let Ferrol step into the car first, but Ferrol, with a smile, urged him into the lighted interior. He received an impression of superlative comfort and riches in that small, blue-lined room with its little electric lamp overhead. There were rugs of deliciously soft camel-hair, and, as he settled in the yielding cushions, his outstretched feet struck something hard, that gave warmth instantly, even through the leather of his boots. A silver cone-shaped holder, filled with red roses, confronted him; their very scent suggested ease and luxury. There were touches of silver everywhere: an ash-tray at his right hand, a whistle attached to a speaking tube, and a row of books in a silver case--an A B C Railway Guide, a diary, an address book, and a postal guide. They gave the Ferrol touch of concentrated energy, even in these surroundings of comfortable, upholstered rest. The car sped along with a soft movement, almost noiseless, except for the low purring of its engines. Through the windows, past the strong face of Ferrol, he caught glimpses of a wet world with people walking upon their own reflections in the glistening pavements, of ragged beggars slouching along with hunched-up shoulders, of streaming crowds passing and repassing, ignoring entirely the passage of this splendid, immaculate room on wheels, never questioning the right of those people within it to the shelter which was denied to them. And he felt extraordinarily remote from all these people: an odd thrill of contempt for them moved him to think: "What fools they are not to get cars for themselves." It was as if he had been suddenly translated to another world: a world inhabited by a superior race of men and women, almost god-like in the power of their possessions, who looked down on other struggling mortals from their exalted plane, with a vision blurred by warmth and security. The silence enchanted him. If Ferrol had spoken, the spell of that journey would have been snapped. The silence enabled him to enjoy to the full the extraordinary sensation of being whirled along in the darkness by the side of Ferrol towards some unknown destiny. The discipline had made him always regard Ferrol with awe; but now, as he sat wrapped in the warm rugs of the motor-car, the social barriers dropped. He wondered why Ferrol was doing this. The speed of the car slackened gradually. He caught a glimpse of railings and the lights shining among the trees, bringing back to him the old memories of his first impression of the park. But they were on the Kensington side, and the breadth of the park from Bayswater to Kensington made all the difference. Here there seemed to be a culture and dignity in the very houses themselves: they did not suggest the overbearing, self-made prosperity of that broad road that ran parallel with it on the other side of the trees and meadows. A servant stood by the open door of the car. His face was implacably dignified. His white shirt-front and tie were splendidly correct for his station, in that he wore three obvious bone studs and a black tie. He held the door of the house open, and Humphrey followed Ferrol inside. He had been to many houses such as this as a reporter, when he had waited with a sense of social inferiority in halls hung with old masters, and furnished with rare old oak ... at those times the servants had treated him with a mixture of deference and contempt. But this was different: respectful, eager hands relieved him of his coat and hat; vaguely he knew he had to follow one of the owners of these hands up a broad staircase, along a soft carpeted passage, to a room which, suddenly flooded with light, showed its possession of a basin fitted with shining silver taps. He washed luxuriously; the towels were warm to the touch. He felt at peace with the world. Down the stairs again, with a portrait on the white panelled wall for each step, to the inner hall lined with tapestries and brocade, where a bronze statue held an electric torch aloft to light the way to the dining-room. Ferrol was standing by the fire. "Chilly to-night," he said, as Humphrey came into the room. His voice echoed in the spacious loneliness of the room. "Yes," said Humphrey, "it is." He hesitated a moment, and then added "sir." It seemed the correct thing to do, though Ferrol and he might have been, for all that had happened in the last half-hour, excellent personal friends, of equal status in the world. "Come and warm yourself," said Ferrol, motioning him to a high-backed chair by the fire. Humphrey sat down, and put his hands to the fire. This room with its bright lights and its high ceiling filled him with a realization of his own comparative poverty. The walls, again, reflected the artistic in Ferrol. His glance wandered to the table. Dishes of delicacies in aspic and mayonnaise gave colour to the white glitter of glass and silver. A bowl of great chrysanthemums rose out of the centre-piece of crystal, whose lower tiers were crowded with peaches, apricots, green figs, grapes, and other exotic fruits.... A whimsical vision came to him of a sausage-shop in Fleet Street where, often, kept late on a job, without opportunity for dinner, he had sat on a high stool at the counter eating sausages and onions and potatoes as they came hot from the sizzling trays of fat in the window. The thought made him smile. "What's the joke?" asked Ferrol, smiling too. Humphrey went a diffident pink. After all, why shouldn't he tell Ferrol? He was quite right: the great man bubbled with laughter. He saw the ingenuousness of the thought. It endeared Humphrey to him. "Ah, young man," he said, "I know that shop." Humphrey's eyebrows raised. "I've passed it many a time and seen the inviting sausages. By God!" he continued, bringing his fist down on the mantelpiece, "I'd give you everything on the table, every night of your life, if I could go in and sit at the counter and eat them." He laughed. "So don't you be in too much of a hurry to give up sausages." A servant appeared, bearing a silver soup-tureen. Ferrol sat at the top of the table, and Humphrey took the seat at his right hand. The soup was clear and delicious, possessing a faint, elusive flavour of sherry. While he was eating, he became aware of the butler pouring light-coloured wine into a high stemmed glass. He looked up and saw Ferrol regarding his wine glass. "It's all I drink," said Ferrol. "A little hock with dinner. In my day, many a fellow was ruined with too much drink. Are they as bad now?" he asked. It was a strange experience to have Ferrol question him on the doings of the Street. "Oh no!" he said, hastily, "there's not much of that now. Perhaps a half dozen or so here and there, but nothing serious." (But he thought of the shaking hand of Tommy Pride as he spoke.) "None of my men drink, eh?" Ferrol said. It was more of an assertion than a query. "Do you know we've got the finest staff in London--in England." During the whole of that delightful dinner Humphrey listened to Ferrol talking about the men with whom he worked. He knew them all: knew all that they had done, and all that they were capable of doing. He asked Humphrey's opinion on this man and that man, and listened attentively to the reply. Sometimes Humphrey made a joke, and Ferrol laughed. And, as the dinner progressed, and the clear, cold wine invigorated his mind and warmed his perceptions, he conceived a greater liking for this man, who was so human at the core of him. In the office one saw him with the distorted, disciplined view, as an unapproachable demi-god, surrounded by people who sacrificed his name to their own advancement. Ah! if one could always be on these terms of privileged intimacy with him, what a difference it would make in the work. If one dared tell Ferrol of the obstacles and the petty humiliations that obscured the path to good work for the sake of the paper.... "Tell me," said Ferrol, suddenly, pushing bunches of black grapes towards him--"tell me about Easterham, and your life there." Now, what could there be in Easterham and its monotonous life to interest Ferrol, thought Humphrey. Nevertheless, he told him of Easterham, and the _Easterham Gazette_ on which he had worked. That amused Ferrol vastly. And he had to answer oddly insistent questions--to describe the Market Square, and the Cathedral close, with its rooks and ivy. It astonished him to find how interested Ferrol was in these little things, and almost before he was aware of it, he found himself speaking of personal matters, of things that touched his own inner, private life, of his aunt (with her stern gospel of "Getting On"), of the mother whom he did not remember, and of Daniel Quain, his father. And as he talked on, he saw suddenly that Ferrol was listening in a detached manner, and it occurred to him that he had rather overstepped the limits of a reply to a polite inquiry. He became confused and shy. His reminiscences withered within him. Ferrol tried to urge him along the old track. "He's only doing it out of politeness," thought Humphrey. "I shan't tell him any more. He's making fun of me." He cracked walnuts in silence and sipped at the port. (Ferrol touched neither nuts nor wine.) He did not interpret that air of detached interest with which Ferrol had listened to him as meaning anything else but boredom. He did not know that, as he was speaking, the old years came back again to Ferrol, bringing with them once again the vision of Margaret and those secret walks outwards from Easterham, under the white moon of romance and love and supple youth that could be his never more. Ferrol sighed. "You ought to be very happy," he said. "I think the happiest time of my life was when I was reporting." "Were you ever a reporter?" asked Humphrey. "Oh yes! I didn't buy _The Day_ at once." He rose and went to a cabinet to fetch silver and enamelled boxes of cigars and cigarettes. The cigarettes were oval and fat. "I don't think you've had enough scope," said Ferrol, handing him a lighted match. "You've done well ... not as well as I hoped ... but perhaps you'd do better elsewhere." A peculiar sensation attacked Humphrey in the regions of his throat and heart. ("Most certainly you are to have your salary raised or be sacked.") He waited tensely. The butler came into the room, apologetically. "Half-past nine, sir," he said; "the car's waiting, sir." "Oh--yes. I forgot. I've got to be back at the office.... All right, Wilson. "Let me see--what was I saying.... Oh yes, broader scope. Can you speak French?" he asked abruptly. "Just what I learnt at school.... I can read the papers." "You'll easily pick it up.... Look here, I'll give you a lift back to Fleet Street. Do you want to go there?" "Yes," said Humphrey, and then, suddenly, for some odd reason, he thought of Elizabeth. He was not very sure of his geography, but the street in which she lived could not be far from here. "I think I'd rather walk, if you don't mind.... I've got a call to make." He wanted to tell Elizabeth how splendid Ferrol had been to him. "Oh well! It doesn't matter. Come and see me at twelve to-morrow. I'm going to send you to Paris." "Paris!" echoed Humphrey, as if Ferrol had promised him Paradise. "Paris," repeated Ferrol. "We're changing our correspondent." X He did not go to Elizabeth that night: he walked, in a dream, past Knightsbridge and up Piccadilly, contemplating the fulfilment of all his dreams. Everything seemed possible now. He was a young man--and Ferrol was going to give him Paris; he was a young man--and Elizabeth had given him her love. The sequence of this thought was significant. It would be very fine to tell her.... At last he was lifted out of the rut into a field of new endeavour. From Paris the path led to other cities, of course--to Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome. One day he would see them all. Life became at once very broad and open. He walked on, an un-noteworthy figure in the throng of people that moved along Piccadilly, his thoughts surging with the prospects of his new life. "Humphrey Quain ... Paris Correspondent of _The Day_." He murmured that to himself. Glorious title! Splendid Ferrol. How noble was this work in Fleet Street, holding out great promises to those who served it well, and sacrificed everything on its altar. How could one abandon a calling where fortune may change in a moment? He passed through astonishing ranks of women whose eyes and lips simulated love: one or two of them spoke to him in foreign accents. He passed on across the Circus where the lights of the Variety Theatres made a blur of yellow in the nebulous night. His steps led him again to Fleet Street, and he walked with the joy of a man treading the soil of his own country. It was always the same when he passed the Griffin: deep satisfaction took hold of him at the sight of the signs in all the buildings, telling of newspapers all the world over, in this narrow Street in which the lives of him and his kind were centred. The fascination of the Street was perpetual. It belonged to him. It belonged to all of them. At every hour of the day and night there were always friends to be met. He turned into the cheery warmth of the Pen Club--friends everywhere and Fleet Street smiling! There was laughter at the wooden counter, where Larkin was telling some story to a group of men. "Well, the next day I thought I'd go up and inquire after his lordship's health. The butler was very kind. 'Come in,' he said. 'His lordship's expecting you.' So up I went, thinking I was going to get a fine story--he was supposed to be dangerously ill in bed, mind you." Humphrey joined the group and listened. ("Have a drink?" said Larkin, turning to him. "It's my shout.") "Well," continued Larkin, "when I got to the room, there was his lordship in pants and undervest--you know how fat he is--with dumb-bells in his hands and whirling his arms about like a windmill. 'Do I _look_ like a dying man?' he said, dancing lightly on his toes. 'Go back, young man, and tell your editor what you've seen. Good-morning.'" "Talking of funny experiences," said one of the others, "I remember--" And so it went on, story after story, of real things happening in the most extraordinary way. It was all this that Humphrey enjoyed, this inter-change of experiences, this telling of stories that were never written in newspapers, that belonged alone to them. Presently Tommy Pride came in. "Hullo all!" he said, "Hullo! young Quain--been busy to-day?" They sat down together, and Humphrey noticed that Tommy's face had changed greatly, even in the last few months. The flesh was loose and colourless, and the eyes had a nervous, wandering look in them. "Ferrol's going to send me to Paris--he told me so to-night," Humphrey blurted out. "Splendid," said Tommy. "Good for you." And then a look of great pathos crept into his eyes, and he seemed to grow very old all at once. "I wish I had all your chances," he said wistfully. "I wonder what will be the end of me.... I hear they're making changes." "Don't you bother," Humphrey said. "Ferrol knows what you're worth.... But, I say, Tommy, you don't mind, do you ... aren't you taking too much of _that_," he pointed to the whisky glass. "Oh, hell! What does it matter," said Tommy. "What does anything matter.... I'm a little worried ... they're thinking of making changes," he repeated aimlessly. * * * * * It was all settled in a few minutes the next morning. The Paris appointment was definitely confirmed: he was to leave immediately. He hastened to Elizabeth to tell her the wonderful news. It never occurred to him that she could be otherwise than pleased and proud at his success. But her manner was recondite and baffling. "Have you accepted the post?" she asked. "Why, of course," he said. "How could I refuse such a chance." She regarded him dubiously. "No--you could not refuse it. I don't blame you for not refusing it. I think I know how you feel...." "It's splendid!" Humphrey cried. His voice rang with enthusiasm. "Fancy Ferrol singling me out. It will be the making of me.... It might lead to anything." "But weren't you only going to stay in journalism for another year, Humphrey?" "Oh, of course, when I said that, I couldn't foresee that this was going to happen.... Elizabeth," he said suddenly, with a great fear on him, "do you want me to give it up now?" "No ... no," she said in haste. "You don't understand. It's so difficult to make you see. I wasn't prepared for this...." She laughed for no reason at all. "I am glad of your success. I am glad you're happy.... Of course, you don't expect me to come to Paris, like this, at a moment's notice. You must give me time." He smiled with relief. "Why, of course, I didn't imagine I could carry you away at once.... But after a few months, perhaps. It will take me a few months to get used to the work." "Yes," she agreed, "after a few months. We shall see." Her face was strangely sorrowful. Her attitude perplexed him. It hurt him to find that she did not share in his rejoicings. It took away some of the savour of his success. He thought he was the master of his destiny. He could not discern the hand of Ferrol moving him again towards a crisis in his life. PART IV PARIS I The noise of Paris came to him through the open windows, a confusion of trivial sounds utterly different from the solid, strong note that London gave forth. It was the noise of a nursery of children playing with toys--he heard the continuous jingle of bells round the necks of the horses that drew the cabs, the shouts of men crying newspapers, the squeaking horns of motor-cars, and, every afternoon, at this hour, the sound of some pedlar calling attention to his wares, with a trumpet that had a tinny sound. At intervals the voice of Paris, modified by the height at which he lived and the distance he was from the Grands Boulevards, sent a shout to him that reminded him of London. That was when a heavy rumbling shook the narrow street which was one of the tributaries of the Boulevards, as a monstrous, unwieldy omnibus, drawn by three horses abreast, rolled upwards on its passage to the Gare du Nord. The horses' hoofs slapped the street with the clatter of iron on stone, and the passing of the omnibus drowned every other sound with its thunder, so that when it had gone, and the echoes of its passage had died away, the voice of Paris seemed more mincing and playful than before. Humphrey had been in Paris six months now, but the first impression that the city gave had never been erased from his mind. At first the name had filled him with a curious kind of awe: Paris and the splendour of its art and life, and the history which linked the centuries together; all the history of the Kings of France which he did not know, and the rest that he knew with the vagueness of a somewhat neglected education--the bloody days of the Revolution, the siege, the Commune; Paris, the cockpit of history and the pleasure-house of the world. There was some enchantment in the thought of going to Paris, not as a mere visitor, but as a worker, one who was to share the daily lives of the people. And he had arrived in the evening of a February day, in the crisp cold, bewildered by the strangeness of the station. The huge engine had dragged him and his fellows--Englishmen chiefly, travelling southwards, and eastwards, and westwards in search of sunshine--across the black country of France, into the greener, sweeter meadows of the Valley of the Loire, with tall poplars on the sky-line, through the suburbs with their red and white houses looking as if they had been built yesterday, to the vaulted bareness of the Gare du Nord. There, as it puffed and panted, like a stout, elderly gentleman out of breath, it seemed to gasp: "I've done my part. Look after yourselves." To leave the train was like leaving a friend. One stepped to the low platform and became an insect in a web of blue-bloused porters, helpless, eager to placate, afraid of creating a disturbance. It seemed to Humphrey in those first few moments that these people were inimical to him; they spoke to him roughly and without the traditional politeness of French people. The black-bearded ticket-collector snatched the little Cook's pocket-book from his hand, tore out the last tickets, and thrust it back on him, murmuring some complaint, possibly because Humphrey had not unclasped the elastic band. There was bother about luggage too; Heaven knows what, but he waited dismally and hungrily in the vast room, with its flicker of white light from the arc-lamps above the low counters at which the Customs-men, in their shabby uniforms, seemed to be quarrelling with one another, their voices pitched in the loud key that is seldom used in England. He was required to explain and explain again to three or four officials; something of a minor, technical point, he gathered, was barring him from his baggage. His French was not quite adequate to the occasion; but it was maddening to see them shrug their shoulders with a movement that suggested that they rejoiced in his discomfiture.... It was all straightened out, somehow, by a uniformed interpreter, a friendly man who came into Humphrey's existence for a moment, and passed out of it in a casual way, a professional dispenser of sympathy and help, expecting no more reward than a franc or so for services that deserved a life-long gratitude. But when the cabman had shouted at him, and the blue-bloused porters (one had attached himself to each of his four pieces of baggage) had insisted on their full payment, and after there had been an exchange of abuse between the cabman and an itinerant seller of violets, whose barrow had nearly been run down, Humphrey looked out of the window and caught his first glimpses of Paris ... of the light that suggested warmth and laughter. He saw great splashes of light, and through the broad glass windows of the cafés a vision of cosy rooms, bustling with the business of eating, of white tables at which men and women sat--ordinary middle-class people. The movement of their arms and shoulders and heads showed that conversation was brisk during their meal; they smiled at one another. As the cab sped softly along on its pneumatic tyres, he saw picture after picture of this kind, set in its frame of light. "I shall like living here," he thought. Chance decreed that the Rue le Peletier was being repaired, and the cab swung out of the narrower streets into the vivid and wonderful brilliance of the Boulevard des Italiens. The street throbbed with light and life. He was in a broad avenue with windows that blazed with splendid colour in the night. The faces of the clocks in the middle of the avenue were lit up; the lamps of the flower and newspaper kiosks made pools of shining yellow on the pavement; and above him the red and golden and green of the illuminated advertisements came and went, sending their iridescence into the night. It was not one unbearable glare that startled the eyes, but a blend of many delicate and fine luminous tints: one café was lit with electric lights that gave out a soft pale rose colour, another was of the faintest blue, and a third a delicate yellow, and all these different notes of light rushed together in a lucent harmony. Music floated to him as he passed slowly in the stream of bleating and jingling and hooting traffic. He saw the people sitting outside the cafés near braziers of glowing coal, calmly drinking coloured liquids, as though there were no such thing as work in the world. And that was the thought that gave Humphrey his first impression of Paris. These people, it seemed, only played with life. There was something artificial and unreal about all these cafés: they played at being angry (that business at the Customs office was part of the game), an _agent_ held up a little white baton to stop the traffic--playing at being a London policeman, thought Humphrey. He wondered whether this sort of thing went on always, with an absurd thought of the Paris he had seen at a London exhibition. The cab veered out of the traffic down a side-street between two cafés larger than the rest, and, at the last glimpse of people sitting in overcoats and furs by the braziers, he laughed in the delight of it. "Why, they're playing at it being summer," he said to himself. Six months had passed since that day, and he had seen Paris in many aspects, yet nothing could alter his first impression. The whole city was built as a temple of pleasure, a feminine city, with all the shops in the Rue Royale or the Avenue de l'Opera decked with fine jewels and sables. Huge emporiums everywhere, crowded with silks and ribbons and lace; wonderful restaurants, with soft rose-shaded lights and mauve and grey tapestries, as dainty as a lady's boudoir. Somewhere, very discreetly kept in the background, men and women toiled behind the scenes of luxury and pleasure ... those markets in the bleak morning, and the factories on the outskirts of the city, and along the outer Boulevards one saw great-chested men and narrow-chested girls walking homewards from their day's work. But there was pleasure, even for these people: the material pleasure of life, and the spiritual pleasure of art and beauty. The first they could satisfy with a jolly meal in the little bright restaurants of their quarter with red wine and cognac; and of the second they could take their fill for nothing, if they were so minded, for it surrounded them in a scattered profusion everywhere. * * * * * Humphrey, in the Paris office of _The Day_, on the fourth floor of an apartment building in the Rue le Peletier, sat dreaming of all that had happened in the past six months. Wonderful months had they been to him! They had altered his whole perception of things. Here, in a new world and a new city, he was beginning to see things in a truer proportion. Fleet Street receded into the far perspective as something quite small and unimportant; the men themselves, even, seemed narrow-minded and petty, incapable of thinking more deeply than the news of the day demanded. Humphrey, from the heights of his room in Paris, began to see how broad the world was, that it was finer to deal with nations than individuals, and from his view Fleet Street appeared to him in the same relation as Easterham had appeared to him in London. The clock struck five. Rivers and Neckinger and Selsey would be going into the conference now in Ferrol's room to discuss the contents of the paper. "Anything big from Paris?" some one would be asking, or "What about Berlin?"... And he knew that every night they looked towards Paris, where amazing things happened, and he, Humphrey Quain, was Paris. That splendid thought thrilled him to the greatest endeavour. He was _The Day's_ watchman in Paris, not only of all the news that happened in the capital, but of all the happenings in the whole territory of France. A pile of cuttings from the morning's papers were on his desk. Here was a leading article on the Franco-German relations from the _Echo de Paris_--an important leading article, obviously inspired by the Quai D'Orsay. There was a two-column account of the Hanon case--an extraordinary murder in Lyons which English readers were following with great interest. There was a budget of "fait-divers," those astonishing events in which the fertility of the Paris journalist's imagination rises to its highest point. They supplied the "human interest." He had received a wire from London to interview a famous French actress, who was going to play in a London theatre, and that had kept him busy for the afternoon. The morning had been devoted to reading every Paris paper. At five o'clock Dagneau arrived with the evening papers, bought from the fat old woman who kept the kiosk outside the Café Riche. He let himself into the flat with a latch-key, and appeared before Humphrey, a young man, immaculately dressed, with a light beard fringing his fat cheeks. Humphrey could never quite overcome the oddness of having a bearded man as his junior. Dagneau was only twenty-two, but he had grown a beard since he was twenty; that was how youths played at being men. Humphrey called Dagneau "the lamb." "Hullo," he said. "Anything special?" Dagneau's pronunciation of English was as bad as Humphrey's pronunciation of French, but in both cases the vocabulary was immense. "They're crying 'Death of the President' on the Boulevards," said Dagneau. Humphrey leapt up. "Great Heavens! You don't say so!" he shouted, going to the telephone. "Be not in a hurry, _mon vieux_." (Though Dagneau was his assistant, they dropped all formalities between themselves.) "It is in _La Presse_." "But--" "Calm yourself. _La Presse_ is selling in thousands. The news is printed in great black letters across the front page." "Is it true?" gasped Humphrey. "It is true that the President is dead--but it is the President of Montemujo or something like that in South America, and not M. Loubet." Dagneau laughed merrily and slapped the papers on the table. He took Humphrey by the shoulders and shook him playfully. "I--would I let my old and faithful Englishman down?" he asked. The newspaper phrase spoken as Dagneau spoke it sounded delightful. "By George, you gave me a shock," Humphrey laughed. "I thought I'd been dozing for an hour with the President dead. Dagneau, you are an _espèce de_--anything you like." "Any telegrams from London?" "One to interview Jeanne Granier. I've done it Will you go through the evening papers? Look out for the _Temps_ comments on the Persian railway ... they're running that in London. And the latest stuff about the Hanon case. I'll run round to _Le Parisien_ and see what they've got." He went down the winding staircase, past the red-faced concierge and his enormous wife, who knitted perpetually by the door ("_Pas des lettres, m'sieu_," she said, in answer to his inquiring look), and so into the street. A passing cabman held up his whip in appeal, and, as moments were precious now, Humphrey engaged him. They bowled along through the side-streets, and at the end of each he saw, repeated, the glorious opal and orange sunset over Paris: those magnificent sunsets that left the sky in a smother of golden and purple and dark clouds edged with livid light behind the steeple of St Augustine. They came to the building of _Le Parisien_, with whom _The Day_ had an arrangement by which Humphrey could see their proofs evening and night, in exchange for extending the same privilege to the London Correspondent of _Le Parisien_ at the offices of _The Day_. He crossed the threshold into the familiar atmosphere of Fleet Street. Hurry and activity: young Frenchmen writing rapidly in room after room. Some of them knew him, looked up from their work and nodded to him. From below the printing-machines sent tremors through the building, as they rolled off the first edition for the distant provinces of France, and for the night trains to every capital of Europe. The same old work was going on here: the same incessant quest and record of news. He went to the room of Barboux, the foreign editor. "Good-evening," said Barboux, black-bearded, fat and bald-headed. He pronounced "evening" as though it were a French word, and it came out "événandje." Barboux offered Humphrey a cigarette he had just rolled with black tobacco, and asked him most intimate questions of his doings in Paris, so that Humphrey had either to acknowledge himself a prude or a Parisian. "All the same," said Barboux, "Paris is a wonderful city, _hein_?" "It is," said Humphrey. Barboux continued: "Is it not the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most entrancing city in the world, young Englishman?" "All except London," replied Humphrey. "Rosbif--Goddam--I box your nose," laughed Barboux. It was a set form of dialogue that took place every night between them, without variation, a joke invented by Barboux. A man in an apron--a French version of the type in _The Day's_ printing-office--brought in a budget of proofs. "There is nothing that is happening, ain't it?" remarked Barboux, who always rendered _n'est ce pas_ in this literal fashion. "Apparently not," Humphrey agreed, glancing through the proofs. "When do they expect the verdict in the Hanon case?" Barboux touched a bell. A young man appeared. His hair was fair and long, his clothes were faultless to the crease in the trousers turned up in the English style over patent-leather shoes with the laces tied in big bows. Barboux introduced him: "M. Charnac will tell you about the Hanon case." The young man bowed in a charming manner, and spoke in a soft, delicious French, with a voice that was charged with courtesy and kindness. "They do not expect a verdict to-night, m'sieu. The court has adjourned. I've just had the finish of our correspondent's message." "_Merci_," said Humphrey. "_Pas de quoi_," said Charnac, bowing. Humphrey rose and bowed with the ultra politeness that was now part of his daily life. They shook hands. "_Enchanté d'avoir fait votre connaissance_," and Charnac bowed once more. "_Enchanté_," mumbled Humphrey. Barboux was at the telephone, saying impatiently, "Ah-lo.... Ah ... lo." Humphrey put on his hat, Barboux extended his left hand--the greatest sign of friendship that a Frenchman can give, since it implies that he knows you too well for you to take offence at it. "_À demain_," said Humphrey, as he went away. When he came back to the office, work began in earnest. First of all he had to select from the budget of news on his table those items that would be most acceptable to English readers. That was no small matter on days when there were many things happening. It required sound judgment and a knowledge of what was best in news. Then there was always the question of the other correspondents of London newspapers: what were the other fellows sending? He and Dagneau talked things over, and, finally, when they had decided what to transmit to London, the work of compiling the stories began. It was necessary to build up a coherent, comprehensive story out of the cuttings before him, in which all the points of the different papers should be mentioned. Dagneau helped him, making illiterate translations of leading articles, that needed revising and knocking into shape. Perhaps, even at the eleventh hour, a telegram might arrive from the London headquarters, setting them a new task, rendering void all the work they might have done. After two hours' writing Humphrey laid down his pen. "Come along, my lamb," he said to Dagneau; "let us go to dinner." Then they put on their hats and coats and went to Boisson's, a few doors away in the Rue le Peletier, where Père Boisson presided over a pewter counter, spread with glasses and bottles, and Mère Boisson superintended the kitchen, and Henri, the waiter, with a desperate squint, ran to and fro with his burden of plates, covering many miles every night by passing and repassing from the restaurant tables to the steamy recesses behind the door. This was the part of Paris life that pleased Humphrey most. They received him with cheery _Bons soirs_, and Henri paused in his race to set the chairs for them, and arrange their table. Yards of crisp bread were brought to them, and a _carafon_ of the red wine from Touraine, whither M. Boisson went on a pilgrimage once a year to sample and buy for himself. Little French olives and _filet d'hareng saur_; soup with sorrel floating in it; fish with black butter sauce; a _contre-filet_ or a _vol au vent_ deliciously cooked; Roquefort cheese, and, to wind up with, what M. Boisson called magnificently _Une Belle Poire_--this was the little dinner they had for something under three francs, and, of course, there was special coffee to follow, and, as a piece of extravagance, a liqueur of _mandarin_ or _noyeau_. "This is better than Fleet Street," said Humphrey, inhaling his cigarette and sipping at the excellent coffee. Boisson in his shirt-sleeves and apron came over to them and spoke to them with light banter. He also had a joke of his own: he conceived it to be the highest form of humour to interject "Aoh--yes--olright," several times during the conversation. Madame Boisson waddled towards them, with an overflowing figure, and said, as if her future happiness depended on an answer in the affirmative, "_Vous avez bien diné, m'sieu_." The smell of food was pleasant here: there was no hurry; men and women concentrated all their attention on eating and enjoying their meal. The light shone on the glasses of red and white wine. It was a picture that delighted Humphrey. And Dagneau was telling him of his adventures on the previous night with a little girl, the dearest little girl he had ever met, kissing the tips of his fingers to the air, whenever his emotions overcame him ... and Humphrey smiled. This was a side of Paris of which he knew nothing. His thoughts went back to London where Elizabeth lived, beautiful and austere. "I must write to Elizabeth to-night," he thought. At nine-twenty Dagneau caught the eye of Henri and made an imaginary gesture of writing on the palm of his left hand. "That's the way to get a perfect French accent," he said to Humphrey. Henri nodded in swift comprehension and appeared with a piece of paper on which illegible figures were scrawled. They paid and went away, with the Boissons and Henri calling farewells to them. Happy little restaurant in the Rue le Peletier! They got back to the office just as the telephone bell was making a rattling din. Humphrey sat down and adjusted over his head the steel band that held the receivers close to his ears. Then, pulling the telephone closer to him, and spreading out before him all that he had written, he waited. And, presently, sometimes receding and sometimes coming nearer above the hum and buzz that sounded like the wind and the waves roaring about the deep-sea cables, he heard the voice of Westgate coming from England. "Hallo ... hallo ... hallo.... That you, Quain.... Can't hear you.... Get another line ... buzz--zz--zz ... oooo. Ah! that's better." Westgate's voice became suddenly clear and vibrating as though he were speaking from the next room. But Humphrey could see the little box in the sub-editors' room, where all the men were working round Selsey, and the messenger-boys coming and going with their flimsy envelopes; he could see the strained, eager face of Westgate, as he waited, pencil in hand ... and he began. He shouted the news of Paris for fifteen minutes, and at the end the perspiration wetted his forehead, and Westgate's good-night left him exhausted. Sometimes, when the wires were interfered with by a gale, the fifteen minutes were wasted in futile shouting and endeavour to be heard in London; sometimes Westgate would say bluntly: "Selsey says he doesn't want any of that story," when he began to read his carefully prepared notes. Those were desperate minutes, shouting to London against time. "All well?" asked Dagneau, when he finished. "I suppose so," Humphrey answered. "Westgate was in great form to-night--he was taking down at the rate of a hundred and twenty words a minute...." He rose and stretched himself. "Will you pay the late call at the newspaper offices? I'll be at Constans in case anything happens." Out again into the bright glamour of the Boulevards to Constans at the corner of the Place de l'Opera, in the shadow of the opera-house, to meet the other correspondents, and wait on the events of Europe, and drink brandy and soda or the light lager-beer that was sold at Constans. It was a place where most of the Paris correspondents gathered, and, sometimes, the "Special Correspondents" came also. They were lofty people, who had long since left the routine of Fleet Street; the princes of journalism, who passed through Paris on their way to St Petersburg, to Madrid--to any part of Europe or the world where there was unrest; war correspondents, and special commissioners; men who had letters of introduction from diplomat to diplomat, who talked with kings and chancellors, and interviewed sultans. They flitted through Paris whenever any big news happened, in twos and threes, only staying for a few hours at Constans to meet friends, and then on again by the midnight expresses.... They were a jolly lot of fellows who met in those days at Constans: O'Malley of _The Sentinel_, the fair-haired scholar who spoke of style in writing, and could speak French with an Irish accent and knew how to ask the waiter to "Apporthez des p'hommes de therrey"; Punter, who represented the Kelmscotts' papers, talked French politics late into the night, and wore a monocle that never dropped from his eye--not even in those exciting moments when Michael, his coal-black eyes and hair betraying his ancestry, crossed his path in argument. At midnight Dagneau came in with word from the outside world. All was quiet. So Humphrey went back to the hotel in the Rue d'Antin, where he rented a room on the fifth floor by the month for eighty francs, including the morning roll and bowl of coffee. He wrote his letter to Elizabeth: he wanted her to come to Paris and share his life with him. II He wanted her very much to share in the delight of those days. It was all so new and beautiful to him, so different from London. He went about the city, sometimes alone, sometimes with Dagneau for a companion, to the Louvre, where the Venus de Milo filled him with awe and wonder, or to the Luxembourg, with its statuary set among the green trees. In the afternoons, when he had any spare time, he would take a book and read in the Tuileries, or on one of the seats in the Champs Elysées, where the fat Norman and Breton nurses, with their broad coloured ribbons floating from their _coifs_, wheeled perambulators up and down, or took the children to the Punch and Judy shows. And on Sundays in the season, there were the races at Longchamps, with a drive homewards in the cool of the evening, through the Bois, where his cab was one of a long line of vehicles making a moving pageant of the human comedy, with laughing bourgeois families riding five and six in a cab, and aristocracy and opulent beauty, artificial and real, rolling by in victorias and electric broughams. Those rides down the Avenue du Bois to the Arc de Triomphe made him feel very poor: the women, lolling back in silken comfort, seemed lifted above the everyday world, away from all thought of squalor and sordidness. They were the rare hot-house flowers of society; the cold wind of life's reality would wither them in a day. So they passed before him, exquisitely beautiful and remote, looking with languid interest at the rest of the people in the incomparable vanity of their silk and lace and diamonds.... Yet again, his work took him behind the scenes of Parisian life, into places that are not familiar to the casual visitor to Paris. He would sit in the Chamber of Deputies to make notes of an important debate, or to watch the rigid semicircle of French legislators break up into riotous factions, with the tintinnabulation of the President's bell adding to the din. This would appear in _The Day_ with the head-line, "Pandemonium in the French Chamber." Perhaps it was necessary to interview a _juge d'instruction_ in his private room at the Palais de Justice, or to pass through the corridors of the Surété--France's Scotland Yard--to inquire into a sensational murder mystery. And he found, too, that in Paris he had a certain standing as a journalist that was denied him in London. He was registered in books, and the seal of approval was given to him in the shape of a _coupe-fil_, which was a card of identity, with his portrait and the name of _The Day_ on it--a magic card that enabled him to do miraculous things with policemen and officials; it was a passport to the front row in the drama of life. There was no need in Paris to haggle with policemen, to wink at them, and win a passage through the crowd by subterfuge as in London: this card divided a way for him through the multitude. So that now, when he felt that he had established himself in his career, when his salary was more than adequate for the needs of two, the strong need of Elizabeth came to him. The brilliant gaiety of Paris swirled about him, and tried to entice him into its joyous whirlpool. He knew the dangers that beset him: he knew the stories of men who had been dragged into the whirlpool, down into the waters that closed over their heads, bringing oblivion. And he looked towards the ideal of Elizabeth, as he had always looked towards the ideal of the love which she personified, to save him from the evil things that are bred by loneliness and despair. III One Saturday night, when there was nothing else to do, he went up to Montmartre, and walked along the Boulevard de Clichy, past the grotesque absurdities of the _cabarets_ that are set there for the delectation of foreign and provincial strangers: _cabarets_ that mock at death and heaven and hell with all the vulgarity and coarseness that exists side by side with the love of beauty, art and culture in Paris. For a franc you could watch the old illusion of a shrouded man turning to a grisly skeleton in his narrow coffin; or you could see a diverting burlesque of the celestial realms, and observe how sinners were burnt in a canvas hell with artificial flames. Humphrey had seen all these during his first week in Paris: he had laughed, but afterwards he had been ashamed of his laughter. They were a little degrading.... He passed them by to-night, in spite of the enticing blandishments of the mock mute, the angel and the devil by the doors of their haunts. He wandered aimlessly along this Boulevard, where women crossed his path, looking very picturesque, without any covering to their heads, shawls across their shoulders and red aprons down to the fringe of their short skirts. There was something savage and primitive about these women: they lacked the frankness and gaiety of the coster-girl in London; they were beautiful, with an evil and cruel beauty. Vicious-looking men slouched from the shadows. Their looks could not conceal the knives in their pockets. They were as rats in the night, creeping from pavement to pavement, preying on humanity. The door of a café chantant opened, as Humphrey came abreast with it, and the sound of a jingling chorus, played on a discordant piano, arrested his steps. The man who was coming out, thinking that Humphrey was about to enter, held the door open for him politely. Something impelled Humphrey forward. He went inside. The room was heavy with tobacco smoke; it floated in thin clouds about the lights and drifted here and there in pale spirals as it was blown from the lips of the smokers. His vision was blurred by the smoke at first, and, as he stood there blinking and self-conscious, it was as though he had intruded into some private and intimate gathering. It seemed that every one in the room was staring at him. The impression only lasted a moment. He perceived a vacant chair by a table and sat down, with the bearing of one to whom the place was familiar. All around him the men and women were sitting. There was an air of sex-comradeship that, in spite of its frankness, was neither indecent nor blatant. The people were behaving in the most natural way in the world. Sometimes a woman nestled close to a man and their hands interlaced; sometimes a man sat with his arm round the waist of a girl. Mild liquids were before them--the light beer of France, little glasses of cherries soaked in brandy, glasses of white and red wine. Their eyes were set towards the small stage at the end of the room, a narrow platform framed in crudely-painted canvas, representing trees and foliage; while at the back there was a drop-scene that showed a forest as an early Japanese artist might have drawn it, with vast distances and a nursery contempt for perspective. His eye wandered to the walls painted with scroll-work and deformed cupids and panels of nude women, so badly done that they appealed more to the sense of humour than to the sexual. The pictures on the walls seemed to leave the men and women untouched; they concentrated all their attention on the entertainment. The only person in the place who showed any sign of boredom was the gendarme who sat by the door, the State's hostage to its conscience. Nothing, said the State, in effect, can be indecent if one of our gendarmes is there. This was not one of the _cabarets_ where the poet-singers of Montmartre chant, with melancholy face, their witty doggerel or their fragrant pastorals; where people came to hear the veiled obscenities of political satire or allusions to passing events; this was a second-rate affair, a _tingel-tangel_--a species of family music-hall. A waiter in an alpaca jacket, a stained apron wound skirt-wise round his trousers, approached Humphrey with an inquiring lift of his eyebrows. He removed empty glasses dexterously with one hand and slopped a cloth over the table with the other. "M'sieu, desire...?" "_Un fin_," answered Humphrey. The waiter emitted an explosive _Bon_ and threaded his way through the labyrinth of chairs to a high wooden counter, where a fat man, with his shirt-sleeves rolled back to his elbow, stood sentinel over rows of coloured bottles. The light shone on green and red liqueurs, on pale amber and dark brown bottles placed on glass shelves against a looking-glass background, that reflected the bullet shape of the _patron's_ close-cropped head. Meanwhile the pianist had finished his interlude, and there was a burst of applause as a woman appeared on the stage. She wore an amazing hat of orange and white silk, in which feathers were the most insistent feature. There was something extraordinarily bold and flaunting in her presence. Her neck and shoulders and bosom were bare to the low cut of her bodice, and the cruel light showed the powder that she had scattered over her throat and shoulders to make them white and enticing; it showed the red paint on the lips and the rouge on the cheeks, and the black on her eyelashes and eyebrows. The crude touches of obvious artifice destroyed her beauty. Her waist was compressed into a painful smallness, and her skirt was flounced and reached only to the knees. She sang a song that had something to do with a soldier's life. "Tell me, soldier," she sang, "what do you think of in battle? Do you think of the glory of the Fatherland and the splendour of dying for France?" And the soldier answers: "I think only of a farm in Avignon, and a maiden whose lips I used to kiss on the old bridge; I think only of my old mother and how she will embrace me when I come home." When she sang the simple song, though her voice was false, and her gestures stereotyped, the rouge and the powder and the paint were forgotten for a moment. She was one of those unconscious artists belonging to a people who have art woven into the warp and woof of their daily life. The audience took up the chorus. She nodded to them with an audacious smile. The pianist, with his cigarette stub hanging from his lips, under cover of the volume of voices, forsook the treble for a moment, and reached out with his hand for a glass of beer that rested above the piano. It was the strange, fumbling motion of his hand that caught Humphrey's eye, trained to observe such details. He looked closer, and saw that the pianist's eyes were closed, and the lashes were withered where they met the cheek. He was blind; he never saw the faces and figures of the women who sang, he only heard the voices; he could see nothing that was harsh and cruel. And the picture of the blind pianist at the side of the garish stage, improvising little runs and trills and spinning a web of melody night after night, stirred Humphrey with an odd emotion. There was a pause. The door opened and closed as people came and went. Humphrey sipped at the brandy; the fiery taste of it made his palate and throat smart. The price of the entertainment was one franc, including a drink. Suddenly the pianist struck up a well-known air. A slim girl, in the costume of the district, slouched on to the stage, her hands thrust into the pockets of her apron. Her hair was bundled together in careless heaps of yellow, her eyes were pale blue and almost almond-shaped, her features finely moulded, with a queer distinction of their own. And when she took one hand out of her apron pocket, he saw that the fingers were long and exquisitely tapered, and tipped with pink, beautiful nails that shone in the light. Those finger-nails betrayed her. They were not in keeping with the part. She started singing, walking the small stage with a swaying motion of her body; her young form was lithe and graceful; her movements tigrine. And as she sang her lilting chorus, her pale eyes gazed from their narrow slits at Humphrey, not boldly or coquettishly, but with an indeterminate appeal, as though she felt ashamed of her song. "Quand je danse avec mon grand frisé Il a l'air de m'enlacer Je perds la tête 'Suis comme une bête! 'Y a pas chose--'suis sa chose à lui 'Y a pas mal--Quoi? C'est mon mari Car moi, je l'aime J'aime mon grand frisé." The audience sang the swinging chorus, and she moved sinuously to and fro with the rhythm of it. Humphrey sat there, and he seemed to lose consciousness of all the other people in the room--the smell of the smoke, and the jingle of the piano, and the ill-painted pictures on the walls faded away from him; all his senses seemed to merge and concentrate on the enjoyment of this moment. She was singing on the stage for him, her narrow eyes never left him. And her song was a pæan in praise of the brute in man. She acted her song. Her face was radiant with the joy of being possessed, and her eyes shone as she abandoned herself to the words: "Quand je danse avec le grand frisé Il a l'air de m'enlacer...." Then her wonderful hands with their glinting finger-nails went up to her head, and she half-closed her eyes, as though she were swooning: "Je perds la tête...." Now her eyes were opened, and they glared wildly, and her lips trembled, and her slim body quivered with animal hunger: "'Suis comme une bête." And now, she smiled, and pride was on her face; one hand rested on her hip, and she swaggered up the stage, as the words fitted into the opening lilt: "'Y pas chose--suis sa chose à lui 'Y pas mal--Quoi? C'est mon mari...." Her face became at once miraculously tender. She expressed great and overpowering love--a love so strong that it swept everything before it--a love that was without restraint, passionate, fierce and unquenchable. Her arms were outstretched. Her dark blouse, opened at the neck, revealed her white throat throbbing with her song: "Car moi, je l'aime J'aime mon grand frisé." And when she sang "_Je l'aime_," she invested the words with passion and renunciation. They clamoured for another verse, crying "_Bis ... Bis_," in throaty tones, but she only came on to bow to them, and walk off again with that swaying stride. "_Eh, bien!_" said a voice at Humphrey's elbow, "she is very good, our little Desirée, _hein_?" He turned half round in his chair. At first he did not recognize the immaculately clothed young man, with the fair, long hair, who smiled at him, and then he recollected that they had met in the office of _Le Parisien_. "M. Charnac, isn't it?" Humphrey asked. "I didn't know you at once.... Yes, she's very good. What's her name?" "Desirée Lebeau," Charnac answered. He looked at Humphrey again, still smiling. "Do you often come here?" he asked. "This is the first time.... I was wandering about.... I just dropped in." Humphrey noticed that Charnac was not alone. A pretty girl dressed becomingly in black, with a touch of red about her neck, sat by his side. "Allow me to present a friend, Margot," Charnac said to the girl. "He is an Englishman--a journalist," he added. And to Humphrey he said: "Mlle. Margot Lebeau. She is the sister of our little Desirée." "_M'sieu est Anglais_," said the dark-haired girl in a piping voice. "_Ah! que ça doit être interessant d'être Anglais._" IV The entertainment was near its end. A dainty figure came from the heavy curtains that hung from each side of the proscenium and hid the entertainers from the audience. Humphrey recognised Desirée, though she had forsaken her stage-costume and wore a simple dark-blue dress, with a black fur boa held carelessly about her shoulders. She came towards them with a smile, stopping on the way, as one or two men, of a better class than the bulk of the audience, hailed her. She bent down to them, and whispered conversations followed. She laughed and slapped the face of one man--an elderly man with a red ribbon in his button-hole. It was a playful slap, just the movement that a kitten makes with its paw when it is playing with long hanging curtains. Charnac pushed out a chair for her invitingly. She came to them with a smile hovering about her lips, and a look of curious interest in her pale eyes as she saw Humphrey. She shook hands with Charnac, and kissed her sister Margot, and then, with a frank gesture, without any embarrassment, she held out her hand to Humphrey and said: "_Bon soir, p'tit homme._" There was a quality of friendship in her voice; her whole manner suggested a desire to be amiable; she accepted Humphrey as a friend without question, and, as for Charnac, she treated him as if he were one of the family, as a brother. The women in the room stared at the party every few moments, absorbed in the details of Desirée's dress, and the men glanced at her with smiles that irritated Humphrey. "It is a little friend of mine--an Englishman," Charnac said to Desirée. "An Englishman!" said Desirée, in a way that seemed to be the echo of her sister's remark a few minutes earlier. "I have a friend in England." She spoke French in a clipped manner, abbreviating her words, and scattering fragments of slang through her phrases. "Is that so?" Humphrey said. "What part of England?" "Manchestaire," she replied. "His name was Mr Smith. You know him?" Humphrey laughed. "I'm afraid I don't--Manchester's a big place, you know." "Is it as big as London?" "Oh no. Not as big as London." "I should like to go to London. I have a friend there--a girl friend." "Oh! where does she live?" "I forget the name of the street--somewhere near Charing Cross--that's a railway station, isn't it?" "Yes." Silence fell between them while a comedian, dressed as a comic soldier, sang a song that made them all laugh; though Humphrey could not understand the _argot_, he caught something of the innuendo of the song. Strange, that in France and Germany, in countries where patriotism and militarism are at their highest, the army should be held up to ridicule, and burlesqued in the coarsest fashion. The song gave Humphrey an opportunity of studying Desirée's face. He saw that the yellow hair was silky and natural; her eyebrows were as pale as her hair, and when she laughed, her red lips parted to show small white teeth that looked incredibly sharp. She was not beautiful, but she held some mysterious attraction for him. She was of a type that differed from all the women he had met. Though her face and figure showed that she was little more than twenty, her bearing was that of a woman who had lived and learnt all there was to know of the world. One slim, ungloved hand rested on the table, and he noted the beauty of it, its slender, delicate fingers, and the perfect shape of her pink, shining nails. In the making of her, Nature seemed to have concentrated in her hands all her power of creating beauty. The song finished to a round of applause. "_Il est joliment drôle_," said Desirée to Charnac. "Ah! zut ... I could do with a drink." "We won't have anything here," Charnac said. "They only sell species of poisons. Let's go and have supper at the Chariot d'Or.... Will you join us, Mr Quain?" Why not? It was a perfectly harmless idea. Every experience added something to his knowledge. And yet, he hesitated. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, a feeling of uneasiness awoke in him. Charnac would pair off with Margot, and he would have to sit with Desirée during the meal. The thought carried with it a picture of forbidden things. Conscience argued with him: "You really oughtn't to, you know." "Why not? What harm will it do?" he urged. Conscience was relentless. "You forget you have a duty to some one." "Nonsense," he said, "let's look at the thing in a broad-minded way. It won't hurt me to have supper with them, surely." Desirée laid a hand upon his sleeve gently. "_Tu viens--oui_," she asked, in a low, caressing voice. Their eyes met. He saw the pupils of her narrow eyes grow larger for a second, as though they were striving to express unspoken thoughts. Then they receded and contracted to little, dark, twinkling beads set in their centre of pale blue circles. "_Oui_," he said, with a sigh. * * * * * They came out into the noisy night of the Boulevard. They walked together, Charnac and Margot with linked arms. The lower floors of the night restaurants were blazing with light, but in the upper rooms the drawn blinds subdued the glare, and transformed it into a warm glow. Cabs and motor-cars came up the steep hill from the Grands Boulevards below for the revelry of supper after the theatre. The great doors of the Chariot d'Or were continually moving, and the uniformed doorkeeper seemed to enjoy the exercise of pulling the door open every second, as women in wraps, accompanied by men, crossed the threshold. They went upstairs into a long brilliant room, all gold and glass and red plush, with white tablecloths shining in the strong light. In the corner a group of musicians, dressed in a picturesque costume--it might have been taken from any of the Balkan States, or from imagination--played a dragging waltz melody. A dark woman sat by them, wearing a Spanish dress, orange and spangled, the bodice low-cut, and the skirt fanciful and short, showing her thin legs clad in black open-work stockings. She regarded the room with an air of detached interest, unanswering the glances of the men. She was the wife of the first violinist. Charnac led the way to a table; he placed himself next to Margot on the red plush sofa-cushions, and Humphrey sat with Desirée. While Charnac was ordering the supper and consulting their individual tastes, Humphrey glanced round the room at the men who sat at the little tables with glasses of sparkling amber wine before them, some of them in evening-dress, with crumpled, soft shirt-fronts, others in lounge suits or morning-coats. Not all had women with them, but the women that he saw were luxurious, beautiful creatures, with indolent eyes and faces of strange beauty. The lights gleamed under rose-coloured shades on the table, on the silver dishes piled high with splendid fruits, on bottles swathed tenderly with napkins, set in silver ice-pails, on tumblers of coloured wines and liqueurs. "It's pretty here, eh?" said Desirée. "It's not so bad. I've never been here before. Do you come often?" "Oh no! not often: only when Margot brings Gustave to come and fetch me after I've been singing." She clapped her hands gaily as the waiter set a steaming dish of mussels before them. The house was famed for its _moules marinières_. "I adore them," she said, unfolding her serviette, and tucking it under her chin. Charnac ladled out the mussels into soup-plates. Their blue iridescent shells shone in an opal-coloured gravy where tiny slices of onion floated on the surface. Her dainty fingers dipped into the plate, and she fed herself with the mussels, biting them from the shells with her sharp white teeth. She ate with an extraordinary rapidity, breaking off generous pieces from the long, crisp roll of bread before her, and drinking deeply of her red Burgundy. She was simply an animal. Margot ate in much the same way, with greedy, quick gestures, until her plate was piled high with empty mussel shells. And, during the meal, they chattered trivialities, discussing personal friends in a slangy, intimate phraseology. The sharp taste of the sauce, with its flavour of the salt sea-water, made Humphrey thirsty, and he, too, drank plenty of wine; and the wine and the warmth sent the colour rushing to his cheeks, and filled him with a sense of comfort. The whole atmosphere of the place had a soothing effect on him. The orchestra started to play a Spanish dance, and the woman in orange rose from her seat, and tossing her lace shawl aside, moved down the aisle of tables in a sidling, swinging dance, castanets clicking from her thumbs, marking the sway and poise of her body above her hips. It was a sexual, voluptuous dance, that stirred the senses like strong wine. Now she flung herself backwards with a proud, uplifted chin. One high-heeled satin shoe stamped the floor. Her eyes flashed darkly and dangerously; she flaunted her bare throat and bosom before them; now she moved with a lithe sinuous motion from table to table, one hand on her hip, and the other swinging loosely by her side. There was something terrible and triumphant in her dance to the beat of the music with its rhythm of a heart throbbing in passion. "Bravo! bravo!" they cried, as the dance finished. "_Bis_," shouted Charnac, lolling back in his seat with his arm round Margot's shoulder. "She dances well," said Humphrey. Desirée turned her pale eyes on him. "I can dance better," she said, and before he had realized it, she was up and in the centre of the room, and everybody laughed and clapped hands, as Desirée began to dance with stealthy, cat-like steps. Her face was impudent, as she twined and twisted her thin body into contortions that set all the men leering at her. It was frankly repulsive and horrible to Humphrey; she seemed suddenly to have ceased to be a woman, just as when she had started to eat. She was inhuman when she sang and ate and danced. The blur of white flesh through the smoke, the odour of heavy scents, and the sight of Desirée writhing in her horrid dance, sickened him. He saw her white teeth gleaming between her lips, half-parted with the exhaustion of her dance, he saw her eyes laughing at him, as though she were proud and expected his applause, and he felt a profound, inexplicable pity for her that overwhelmed his disgust. She flung herself, panting, into her seat, and pushed back her disordered yellow hair with her hands. "_Oh la! ... la!_" she cried, laughing in gasps, "_c'est fatiguant, ça_ ... my throat is like a furnace." And she clicked her glass against the glass that Humphrey held in his hand, and drained it to the finish. "Why did you do that?" asked Humphrey, huskily. "Do what?" "Dance like that--in front of all these people?" "Why shouldn't I, if I want to?" "I don't like it," he said, wondering why he was impelled to say so. "Well, you shouldn't have said she dances well," Desirée replied. "I must be going," Humphrey said. "Oh, not yet," Charnac said. "Let's all go together." "No," he pushed his chair away with sudden resolution. "I must go." "But, my dear--" Desirée began. "I must go," Humphrey repeated, slowly. It was like the repetition of a lesson. "I must go now." "Oh, well--" Charnac said. The waiter appeared with a bill. "You will allow me to pay?" Humphrey asked Charnac. "_Mais non, mais non, mon ami_," he replied, good-naturedly. "It was I who asked you to come, wasn't it? Another night it will be your turn." "Another night," echoed Margot, in her high-pitched voice. "_J'adore les Anglais, ils sont si gentils._" "And why cannot you stop?" Desirée asked. He avoided her eyes. Never could he explain in this room, with its scent and its music and its warmth, that turned vice into happiness and made virtue as chilling and intractable as marble. He only knew that he had to go. He made some excuse--any excuse--work--a headache ... he did not know what he was saying; he was only conscious of those narrow eyes beneath pale eyebrows, and red parted lips, and the soft hand that lay in his--the soft hand with the finger-tips as beautiful as rosy sea-shells. They were not to blame; they could not be expected to know his innermost life, nor why it was that he felt suddenly as if he had profaned himself, and all that was most sacred to him. But that finer, nobler self that was always dormant within him, as eager to awaken to influences as it was to be lulled to sleep by them, became active and alert.... There was a hint of dawn in the sky as he came out into the empty street, his mind charged with a deep melancholy. But, as the cool air played about his face, he breathed more freely after the stuffy warmth of the room, and he walked with a firm step, square-shouldered, erect and courageous. V Some weeks later there came a letter which brought the reality of things into his own life. It was a short and regretful letter from a firm of Easterham solicitors, announcing the death of his aunt. They informed him of the fact in a few, brief, dignified words. There was an undercurrent of excuse, as if they felt themselves personally responsible for the sudden demise, and were anxious to apologise for any inconvenience that might be felt by Mr Quain. He gathered that his aunt had lived on an annuity, which expired with her; that a little financial trouble--loans to a brother of whom Humphrey had never heard--absorbed her furniture and all her possessions, with the exception of a watch and chain, which she had willed to Humphrey. The funeral was to take place two days hence--and that was all. The letter moved him neither to tears nor sorrow. His aunt had been as remote from him in life as she was in death. An unbridgeable abyss had divided them. Never, during the years he had lived in Easterham, after his father's death, had they talked of the fundamental things that mattered to one another. He felt that he owed her nothing, least of all love, for she remained in his memory a masterful, powerful influence, trying to fetter him down to a narrow life, without comprehension of the broad, beautiful world that lay at her doors. He could see her now in her dress of some mysterious black pattern, and always a shawl over her shoulder, her white hair plastered close to her heavy gold earrings, her lips thin and compressed, and her eyes hard-set, when she said, "You must Get On." She did not know, when she urged him to go forward, how far he meant to go. Her vision of Getting On was bounded by Easterham--what could she know and understand of all the bewildering phases he had undergone; the bitter heartaches, the misery of failure, and the glory of conquest in a world wider than a million Easterhams. But, as he thought of her dead, a strange feeling came to him that now she could understand everything, that she knew all, and was even ready to reach out in sympathy to him. Her last pathetic message--a watch and chain! The rude knowledge that he had gained of the secret things of her life--how she lived, her loan to the brother; it seemed that some hidden door which they had both kept carefully locked had been flung open widely--that his eyes were desecrating her profoundest secrets. It was not the first time that Death had stirred his life, but this was a sudden and unexpected snapping of a chain that bound him with his boyhood. Always he had been subconsciously aware of his aunt's presence in the scheme of things; there had been ingrained in him a certain fear of her, that he had never quite shaken off. Behind the individuality of his own life she had lurked, a shadowy figure, yet ready to emerge from the shadows at a moment of provocation, and become real and distinct and forbidding. And now he could scarcely realize that she was dead--that he was absolutely alone in the world, though there might be, somewhere, cousins and kinspeople whom he had never seen. She had not been demonstratively kind to him in life. The watch and chain she left was the first present he could ever remember receiving from her. But he felt that he could not absent himself from her funeral; it would be a sad and desolate business in the Easterham churchyard, with not many people there, yet he knew that he could not pass the day in Paris without thinking of her, lowered into the grave to the eternal loneliness of death. He sent a telegram to London, and received a reply a few hours later, giving him permission to leave Paris, and the next day he travelled to England. The collection of papers and magazines rested unread in his lap. He looked from the window on the succession of pictures that flashed and disappeared--a blue-bloused labourer at work in the fields, or a waggoner toiling along a country lane; children shouting by the hedgerows, and the signal-women who sat by their little huts on the railway as the train sped by. He could not read; sometimes, with a sigh, he sought a paper (France had just caught the popular magazine habit from England), turned the pages restlessly, and, finally, leaning on the arm-rest, stared out of the window.... The shuttle of his mind went to and fro, twining together the disconnected threads of his thoughts into a pattern of memories--memories of his youth and his work and his aunt interwoven with the strong, dominating thought of Elizabeth.... His thoughts turned continually to Elizabeth; sometimes they spun away to something else, but always they were led back through a series of memories to that night when he had kissed her for the first time. It was odd how this absence from her seemed to have changed her in his mind. There had been an undercurrent of disappointment in their relations, of late. Her letters had been strangely sterile and unsatisfying. She had written an evasive reply, after a delay, an answer to his last letter begging her to come to him.... Yet he was eager to see her and to kiss her. He felt that she was all that he had left to him in the world: that she and his work were all that mattered.... A garrulous Frenchman lured him into conversation during dinner; he was glad, for it gave him relief from the monotonous burden of his thoughts ... and on the boat he dozed in the sunshine of a smooth crossing. Once in England again, the delight of an exile returning to his home provided new sensations. The porters were deferentially solicitous for his comfort; the Customs officers behaved with innate politeness, and the little squat train, with its separate compartments, brought a glow of happiness to him. He saw England as a stranger might see it for the first time: he observed the discipline and order of the railway station that came not from oppression but from high organization and planning. There were no mistakes made; the boy brought his tea-basket and did not overcharge him; the porter accepted sixpence and touched his hat, not obsequiously, but in acknowledgment, without a suggestion of haggling for more. It seemed incredible that he should find this perfection, where a year ago he could not see it.... There were Frenchmen in the carriage, and he sat with the conscious pride of an Englishman in his own country. The train moved out, giving a glimpse of the harbour and the sea breaking in white lines over the sloping beach; and then through a tunnel that emerged on fields. The first thing he noticed was the vivid green of the country, and the way it was cut up and divided into squares and oblongs: the small clumps of low-set trees, the fat cattle, and the peace brooding over the land. And then he noticed the little houses, low-storied and thatched, with a feather of blue smoke waving from their chimneys. The whole journey was a series of new impressions that elated him. Stations flashed and left behind a blurred memory of advertisements, and names that breathed of yeoman England: Ashford--Paddock Wood--Sevenoaks--Knockholt; and then the advertisement-boards stood out of the green fields, blatantly insisting on lung tonics and pills, marking off mile after mile that brought him nearer to London. The houses closed in on the railway line; the train ran now through larger stations of red brick, passing the peopled platforms with an echoing roar; other crowded trains passed them, going slowly to the suburbs they had left behind. A new note seemed to come into the journey as the evening descended, and the world outside was populous with lights. The memory of the clean, sweet country, with its toy houses, was wiped away by a swift blot of darkness as the train flashed through New Cross, and out into the broad network of rails with which London begins. He saw the factories and the sidings and the busy traffic of trains overtaking one another, running parallel for a space, and then swaying apart as one branched off to the south-eastern suburbs. He saw the smoke hanging in thick clouds on the far horizon; masts and rigging made spidery silhouettes against the sky; and the tall, factory chimneys thrust out their monstrous tongues of livid fire. The city was before him right and left, overgrown and tremendous. They ran level with crooked chimney-pots and the scarred roofs of endless rows of houses. The upper windows were yellow with light, and he caught glimpses of women before mirrors and men in their shirt-sleeves. Dark masses of clouds rolled before the moon. Something wet splashed on his cheek. A silent Englishman sitting next to him, said moodily: "Raining as usual. I've never once come home without it raining." He laughed as though it were a bitter joke. Fantastic reflections wriggled on the wet, shining approach to London Bridge--a swift vision of bus-drivers, with oilcloth capes glinting in the rain, hurrying crowds, and something altogether new--a motor-omnibus. Then the train, with a dignified, steady movement, swung slowly across Hungerford Bridge, and he saw the strong, resolute river, black and broad, flowing to the bridges, within the jewelled girdle of the Embankment. The sense of England's greatness came to him, as the landmarks of London were set in a semicircle before him: the tall dome of St Paul's, the spires of churches, the turrets of great hotels, grey Government offices, culminating in the vague majesty of the Houses of Parliament. How different the streets were from Paris! There was a force and an energy that seemed to be driving everything perpetually forward. This business of getting to dinner--it was about half-past seven--was a terribly earnest and crowded affair. The throng of motor-cars and omnibuses jammed and flocked together in the Strand, held in leash by a policeman's uplifted hand, and when it was released, it crawled sluggishly forward. Here and there, rare sight for Humphrey, one of the new motor-omnibuses lumbered forward heavily, threatening instant annihilation of everything. There was no chatter of voices in the crowd--no gesticulation--the people walked silently and hurriedly with a set concentration of purpose. He went to a hotel in the Adelphi to leave his bag. Then he came out, pausing for a moment irresolutely in the crowd. It was too late, as he had foreseen, to go to Elizabeth. He had made up his mind to see her on his return from Easterham. An omnibus halted by him: he boarded it, and as he passed the Griffin, he breathed deeply like a monarch entering his own domain, for the scent of the Street was in his nostrils and the old, well-known vision of the lit windows passed before him, and a newsboy ran along shouting a late edition. This was the only Street in the world, he felt, that he loved; its people were his people, and its life was his life. He turned into the Pen Club, to friendship, good-fellowship and welcome. And all the old friends were there--Larkin, retelling old stories, Chander spinning merry yarns, and Vernham making melancholy epigrams. Willoughby, he learnt, was away on a mystery in the north, and Jamieson was at a first night. "By the way," said Larkin, "heard about Tommy Pride?" "No. What's happened?" "He's left _The Day_." "Sacked?" asked Humphrey. Larkin nodded. "Rather rough on poor old Tommy. Married, isn't he?" A picture of his first visit to the home of the Prides leapt before Humphrey's eyes, and the comfort, the cheeriness, that hid all the hard work of the week. The news hurt him queerly. "What's he doing?" he asked. "Well, not much. Tommy's not a youngster, you know. I suppose the Newspaper Press Fund will tide him over a bit." Larkin dropped the subject, to listen to a story from Vernham. After all, it was the most casual thing in the happenings of Fleet Street to them: it might happen to them any day; it was bound to happen to them one day. And there would always be young men ready to take their places. Nobody was to blame; it was just one of the chances of the inexorable system which made their work a gamble, where men hazarded their wits and their lives, and lost or won in the game. Humphrey knew more than they did what it meant for Tommy Pride. He heard as a mocking echo now, the old cry, "Two pounds a week and a cottage in the country."... "Have a drink," Larkin said. He became suddenly out of tune with the place. His perception of Fleet Street altered. He saw the relentless cruelty of it, the implacable demand for sacrifice that it always made. He visioned it as a giant striding discordantly through the lives of men, crushing them with a strength as mighty as its own machines that roared in the night ... a clumsy and senseless giant, that towered above them, against whom all struggles were pitiful ... futile. VI "One lump or two?" asked Elizabeth, holding the sugar-tongs poised over his cup of tea. "One, please," said Humphrey. "Milk or cream?" "Milk." She handed him the cup in silence. There was something in the frank, questioning look in her blue eyes that made him avert his gaze. Their meeting had not been at all as he had imagined it. He did not spring towards her, boyishly, and take her in his arms and kiss her. He had approached her humbly and timidly when she stood before him, in all her white purity and beauty, and their lips had met in a brief kiss of greeting. Her manner had been curiously formal and restrained, empty of all outward display of emotion. And now they sat at tea in her room with the conversation lagging between them. As he looked round at the room with its chintzes and rose-bowls, its old restfulness reasserted itself. But to Humphrey it seemed now more than restful--it seemed stagnant and out of the world.... Somewhere, in Paris, there were music and laughter, but here, in this quiet backwater of London, one's vision became narrow, and life seemed a monotonous repetition of days. He felt moody, depressed; a sense of coming disaster hung over his mind, like a shadow. Her quick sympathy perceived his gloom. "You ought not to have gone," she said, softly. "You mean to the funeral?" "Yes; you are too susceptible ... too easily influenced by surroundings. There was no need to come all this way to make yourself miserable." "I don't know why I went," he said. "We never had much in common, my aunt and I, but somehow ... I don't know ... I couldn't bear the thought of not being present at her funeral. I had a silly sort of idea that she would know if I were not there." "You are too susceptible," she repeated. "Sometimes I wish you were stronger. You are too much afraid of what people will think of you. This death has meant nothing at all to you, but you are ashamed to say so." "It has meant something to me," he said. "I don't mean that I felt a wrench, as if some one whom I loved very dearly had gone ... I felt that when my father died ... but her death has changed me somehow--here--" and he tapped his breast, "I feel older. I feel as if I had stood over the grave and seen the burial of my youth." "It has made you gloomy," Elizabeth said. "I think you would have been truer to yourself if you had remained in Paris." He reflected for a few moments, drinking his tea. He felt sombre enough in his black clothes and black tie--dreary concessions to conventionality. "Ah, but I wanted to see you, Elizabeth," he said earnestly. "It's terribly lonely without you." She leaned forward and laid her hand lightly on his, with a soft, caressing touch. "It's good of you to say that," she said, and then, with a frank smile, "tell me, Humphrey, do you really miss me very much?" "I do," he said; and he began talking of himself and all that he did in Paris. Elizabeth listened with an amused smile playing about her lips. He told her of his work and his play, growing enthusiastic over Paris, speaking with all the self-centredness of the egotist. "It seems very pleasant," she said. "You are to be envied, I think. You ought to be very happy: doing everything that you want to do; occupying a good position in journalism." He purred mentally under her praise. Already he felt better; her presence stimulated him; but he could not see, nor understand, the true Elizabeth, for the mists of vanity, ambition and selfishness clouded his vision at that moment. If only he had forgotten himself ... if only he had asked her one question about herself and _her_ work, or shown the smallest interest in anything outside his own career, he might have risen to great heights of happiness. This was the second in which everything hung in the balance. He saw Elizabeth lean her chin in the palm of her hand and contemplate reflectively the distance beyond him. He marked the beauty of her lower arm, bare to the rounded charm of the elbow, as it rested on the curve of the arm-chair. So, he thought, would she sit in Paris, and grace his life. And then, suddenly, her face became grave, and she said, abruptly: "Humphrey, I want to talk to you very seriously. I want to know whether you will give up journalism." He remembered her hint of this far back in the months when she had first allowed him to tell her of his love. He had thought the danger was past, but now she came to him, with a deliberate, frontal attack on the very stronghold of his existence. "Give up journalism!" he echoed. "What for?" All the weapons of her sex were at her command. She might have said, "For me"; she might have smiled and enticed and cajoled. But she brushed these weapons aside disdainfully. Hers was the earnest business of putting Humphrey to the test. "Because I think you and I will never be happy together if you do not. Because, if I marry you (he noticed she did not say, 'When I marry you'), I should not want your work to occupy a larger place in our lives than myself. Because I hate your work, and I think you can do better things. Those are my reasons." He stood up and walked to the window, looking out on the trees that made an avenue of the quiet road. A man with a green baize covered tray on his head came round the corner, swinging a bell up and down. "Well?" she said. "Oh but look here, Elizabeth," he began, "you spring something like this on me suddenly, and expect me to answer at once...." "Oh, no! you can have time to think it over. You've had nearly a year, you know." "How do you make that out?" "Have you forgotten? When you were going to Paris--before you were going to Paris even--I tried to show you that I wanted you to give up the work. I remember you promised things. You said you'd write books, or do essays for the weeklies...." "But, dear, you can't make a living writing books--unless you fluke, or unless you're a genius; as for essays for the weeklies, frankly, I don't believe I can do them--I'm not brilliant enough." "Yes, you are," Elizabeth urged. (Fatal mistake to make, it smoothed all his vanity the right way.) "I believe in you, Humphrey. If I didn't believe in you, I wouldn't be talking as I am now. And, besides, I've told you before, I have enough for us both." Though she was offering him freedom; though, if he wished, he could accept her offer and be rid for ever from the torments of Fleet Street, he could not leave its joys. "You don't understand," he said. "You couldn't expect me to live on you...." "Why not? I should be prepared to live on you, if I were poor." "That's different. You're a woman." She laughed. "We won't go into the side-issues of arguments over ethics," she said. "You need not live on me. You told me that you had saved four hundred pounds. If we lived simply that would keep us both for a start, and you could be adding to your income by writing. Humphrey, don't you see I'm trying to rescue you. I want you to do something fine and noble; I want you to go forward." "Well, I've gone forward," he said. "I've made myself in the Street. You don't know what you ask when you want me to give it up. Nobody can understand it unless he's been in the game. I can't think what it is--it isn't vanity, because all that we write is unsigned; it's sheer love of the work that drives us on." "But you hate it, too." "We hate it as fiercely as we love it..." he said, simply. "One day we say to ourselves, 'We will give it up.' That's what I say to you, now. I'm going to give it up, one day." "That you have also promised before," she said, in a gentle voice. "Let us talk it over between ourselves. Why shouldn't you leave now?" He was cornered: he stood at bay, facing her beauty, but behind it and above it he saw all the struggles and endeavour and splendid triumph that awaited him in the restless years to come, when each day would be a battle-field, and any might bring him defeat or conquest. He saw the world opening before him, and far-off cities close at hand; he saw himself wandering through the years, touching the lives of men; a privileged person, always behind the scenes of life, with a hint of power perhaps.... And, in exchange, she offered him peace and rest, both of which corroded the soul eager for war; peace and rest and love, that would be so beautiful until the years made them familiar and wearisome, until he would be forced to go out again into the thick of the battle ... and by that time his armour would be rusty, and the years of peace would have blunted his sword. "Elizabeth," he said slowly, "I can't live in a room, now. I can't always look out of the window on the same scene. I must keep moving. Each day must bring me a fresh scene, a fresh experience. I have grown so used to change and movement that a week without it makes life dull and unbearable. I'm not fit for anything else but the work I do. I'm born to do that and nothing else. Everything in life now I see from the point of view of 'copy.'" He laughed, but there was a sob in his laughter at his shameful confession. "Why, even at the funeral, as I stood over the grave, and watched them lower the coffin, I felt that I could write a splendid column about it, and instead of feeling the solemnity of it all, I found that I was watching the white surplices against the green trees, and looking at the faces of the people, and painting a picture in my mind...." He paused. Her eyes were downcast, and her fingers played absently with the loops of the chain that hung from her neck. "It's a habit," he went on. "It's grown on me, so that I see life and its emotions as a series of things to be written about. Why shouldn't I have thought as I did at the funeral? I have been taught to do it, when I go to the funerals of great men that I have to report. I'm a journalist ... a reporter. I've seen men eat their hearts out in a year, after they've left the Street light-heartedly. The reaction comes suddenly. Things are happening all around them, and they're out of it. And they creep back, and try to get a job again. That's what Kenneth himself will do one day.... I don't want to be one of those, Elizabeth. I want to go through with it, right through to the failure at the end of all, and when the failure comes, I'll build up again." She spread out her hands helplessly. "I see..." she said, "I see...." That was all for a moment, and then, again: "If you were doing something worthy, I could understand; if you were producing art, I could understand, too ... but this"--a copy of _The Day_ was on the table, and she held it in her hand--"this is unworthy. This is all you produce with your infinite labour." "It's not unworthy ... we have our ideals." She laughed, and her laugh stung him. "Humphrey, you have the ha'penny mind that does not see beyond its own nose. You just live for the day itself. Oh!" she cried, "if you knew how I hate your Ferrol, and all that he stands for: all the ignoble things in life, painting everything with the commercial taint of worldly success. There was a beautiful picture bought the other day for the National Gallery. I see it is to be known as the '£60,000 picture.' That's the spirit behind Ferrol ... we might be crying for great reforms--I have not spoken of my work in all this--we might be lifted up with the power at his command...." When she spoke of Ferrol, Humphrey remembered all that had been done for him. What could she know of Ferrol's personality, of his splendid force, of the thousand generous acts that remained hidden, while only the things were remembered that blackened his reputation. His admiration for Ferrol was immeasurable. He saw in the indomitable energy of the man something tangible and positive among all the negative virtues of life. Ferrol stood for achievement that crowned the indefatigable years. And with it all, this superman could descend from his loftiness and be human and weave the spell of his humanity about the lives of others. "You don't understand Ferrol," he said. "Very few people do. But he has been kind to me ... there's something in Ferrol that draws me to him. One day you will see he will do all that you expect him to do, but the time is not yet ripe for that. And you speak as if Ferrol were the only man in England who owned a newspaper. What of the others--have any of them done as much good as he has done?" "Whatever good he has done, is done from motives of gain." "I do not look at motives," he retorted. "I look only at the effects of the action. If a bad deed is done from good motives, it does not make the deed anything but bad." They were standing face to face now. "Come, Elizabeth," he said, moving towards her. "You do not know how I love you, and if you loved me, you would not ask me to give up my work." Her face was white and beautiful, and her hand went up to her heart with a womanly gesture. She spoke in a low, deliberate voice. "In all that we have said, there has never been a word of what giving up _my_ work may mean to me. Yet you would have me abandon it, and forsake all the good we have tried to build up...." "You would have to give it up, one day, Elizabeth. Besides, if you like," he said, desperately, "I'll go to Ferrol and ask him to remove me from Paris back to London. I'll do anything to meet you, I only want to make you happy." "Oh, don't keep on saying that sort of thing," she said; "it irritates me. Those hollow repetitions of set phrases--just because they're the right thing to say." "I think you are unreasonable," he began. "I have worked all these years for success, and now, just when I've won it, you wish me to throw everything away." "I wish you to do nothing against your will. I thought you would have seen my point of view. I thought you would be ready to share in my work, which is the work of humanity.... I am sorry. You see, we clash. We shall be better alone." He stared at her with dull incomprehension. "We clash. We shall be better alone." The words repeated themselves over and over again in his brain. And his mind suddenly went back to a little room in the Strand and the tears of Lilian.... "You mean that," he said, slowly. "You mean that." She nodded. "Don't you see how impossible it would be?" "You never loved me," he flung forth as a challenge. "You could have helped me and understood me.... I am not so bad as you think I am." A sad smile answered him. "I understand you so well, Humphrey, that I know I shall never be able to help you." He looked about him in weak hesitation. "I suppose I must begin again," he said. "You ... you ... all the time it is you," she cried, passionately. "And what about myself; must not I begin over again, too?" "I'm sorry," he said, feeling the inadequacy of his words. He longed intensely to be away from her now, to be out in the open street where he could think. This room was stifling. He went through the horrid methodical business of parting as if it were all a dream. He remembered glancing at the clock in a casual way, and saying, "I'd better be going"; he remembered the ludicrous search for one glove, he murmuring that it didn't really matter, and she insisting on a search with aching minuteness.... He never saw her again; her life had impinged on his, and left its impression, as many others had done. He did not regret her as he had regretted Lilian, for she had outraged his self-respect, and left him abashed and humbled. VII He went back to Paris, and a week later the trouble broke out in Narbonne. At first it did not seem very serious. One understood vaguely that the wine-growers were in revolt. The Paris buyers had been adulterating the vintages--making one cask into a dozen--so that they came to a year when there was such a glut of this adulterated wine on the market, that the wine-growers of the South were left with wine to spill in the gutters, and wine to give to the pigs--but without bread to give to their children. Then there arose one of those men who flame into history for a few vivid moments. A leader of men, whose words were sparks dropped among straw; who had but to say "Kill," and they would kill, until he bade them stop. For a time, in a way essentially peculiar to France, the ludicrous prevailed. Municipalities resigned, mayors and all, and there was no giving nor taking in marriage, no registration of births or deaths. Odd stories of the despair of love--sick peasantry at postponed weddings--filled the papers; the _Assiette au Beurre_ published a special number satirizing the situation. It was a good joke in Paris--but at Perpignan and Montpellier twenty thousand _vignerons_ were talking of bloody revolution, and marching with blue and silver banners, and calling on the Government to put a tax on sugar, so as to make adulteration so costly that it should be profitless.... And Humphrey in the Paris office distilled a column a day from the forty columns that the French Special Correspondents sent to their papers, while Dagneau, up at the Ministry of the Interior, garnered facts and official _communiqués_. Work was his salvation and his solace. Everything of the past was wiped away from his mind when Humphrey worked. The personal things affecting his own private life became trivial beside the urgent importance of keeping _The Day_ well-informed. And thus habit had fortified his power of resistance to external matters that might have disturbed a mind less trained to make itself subservient to the larger issue of duty. In a week--a brief week--he had gone through every phase of sorrow, anger, self-pity at his rejection. He thought of writing--indeed, he went so far one night as to compose a letter imploring Elizabeth for forgiveness, promising everything she wished ... but, when it was written, he tore it into little pieces. A mood of futile oaths followed. He felt that he had been balked of her by trickery. It led to violent hatred of her cold austerity, her icy splendour. He put away the thought of her from him. After all, what did it matter? They would never have been happy together. Always she was above him, distant and unattainable ... yet those fine moments, when she had stooped down and lifted him up, when gold and brilliance took the place of the dross in his mind! How she filled him with dreams of overwhelming possibilities, of ennobling achievements.... Below the crust of the selfishness and vanity of his life, there was a rich vein of good and strong desire ready to be worked, if she had only known. There were moments when his whole soul ached with an intense longing to be exalted and free from the impoverished squalor of its surroundings. He knew it, and the thought of it made him unjust to Elizabeth. She had not known of those constant conflicts which endured over years that seemed everlasting,--a guerrilla warfare with conscience. They had not mattered. She had given his soul back to him, to do as he liked with it; she had forsaken him before he was strong enough to stand alone.... The telephone bell rang. He adjusted the metal band over his head. "Londres," said the voice of the operator. His ears heard nothing but the voice of _The Day_ calling to him; his eyes saw nothing but the sheets of writing at his side, and everything else faded from his mind but the news of the night.... * * * * * He put the receiver down, and almost immediately the telephone bell rang, and he heard a voice telling him that it was Charnac.... "Where have you been?" asked Charnac. "One has missed you." Humphrey explained his absence. "Can you come to supper to-night," Charnac called. "Your little Desirée will be there." His voice came out of the depths of space, calling Humphrey to the gaiety of life. "Your little Desirée...." It brought to him, vividly, her thin, supple figure; those strange blue eyes that looked widely from beneath the pale eyebrows; and the lips of cherry-red. The song that she had sung that night had been lilting ever since in his mind: "... Je perds la tête 'Suis comme une bête." He saw her in all her alluring languor, secret, and mysterious. And it was the eternal mystery in her that attracted him. For a few moments he hesitated, indeterminately, at the telephone. "_Eh bien, mon vieux_," called Charnac's voice. "Will you come? 11.30 at the Chariot d'Or." "I'll come," said Humphrey. It was ten-thirty. Ripples of unrest stirred his mind; he felt deeply agitated. He knew that he was on the brink of a new and complex development in his life; and the future stretched before him, vague and impenetrable, full of a promise of mournful and fierce delights, of happiness inconceivable, and sorrow inexperienced. No scruples retarded him now, and the voice of conscience was stilled, but despite all this, an indefinable mist of melancholy clouded his soul. Dagneau came briskly into the office. Humphrey ceased brooding, and swung round in his chair. "Lamb," he said, "I'm going out to supper to-night." "Oh! la! la!" Dagneau laughed. "Who's the lucky lady?" "Not for the likes of little lambs that have to stay in the office and keep the fort." Dagneau made a grimace. "I suppose it isn't safe for both of us to leave," he said. "No fear," Humphrey replied. "There's no knowing what these fellows mayn't be up to in the South. Anyhow, if anything urgent happens, come along to me. I shall be in the Chariot d'Or until one o'clock." Dagneau was a good fellow, thought Humphrey, as his cab climbed the hill to Montmartre. It was jolly decent of him not to mind. He forgot the office now, and thought only of the night's adventuring. There was fully a half-hour to spare, so he idled it away on the terrace of a café sipping at a liqueur. Every variety of street hawker came to persuade sous from him: they had plaster figures for sale, or wanted to cut his silhouette in black paper, or draw a portrait of him in pastels, or sell him ballads and questionable books, bound in pink, pictorial covers. The toy of the moment, frankly indecent, yet offered with a childlike innocence that made it impossible for one to be disgusted with the vendors, was thrust before him fifty times. They showed him how it worked, and when he refused, they brought from inner pockets picture-postcards which they tried to show him covertly, until he drove them away with the _argot_ he had learned from Dagneau. At the time appointed a cab climbed the steep Rue Pigalle, and drew up before the Chariot d'Or. Charnac sat in the middle comfortably squeezed in between Margot and Desirée. They waved a cheery greeting as they saw Humphrey, and he helped them down. Without any question he linked his arm in Desirée's, and led her up the brilliant scarlet staircase to the supper-room. Her meek acceptance of him, and the touch of her, gave him a strong sense of possession. This woman acknowledged his right of mastery over her, without a word being spoken, without any pleading, or the bitter pain of uncertainty. From that moment he felt she was his completely and unquestionably. There was no need to woo her and win her; she was to be taken, and she would yield herself up, as women were taken and women yielded themselves up in the earliest days of the earth. They went to their table. He had no eyes for anyone but Desirée. She threw off her wrap, with a gesture of her shoulders, and as it tumbled from them, they shone white and shapely, and a rose was crushed to her bosom, making a splash of scarlet on her white bodice. She laughed and looked at him frankly, as if there were to be no secrets between them, and once, while the supper was being ordered, her thin hand rested in his, and he was stirred to wild, delicious emotion. Yes, she was all as he had imagined her; she had not changed at all, and her yellow hair and pale eyebrows and thin face culminating in her pointed chin, reminded him of an Aubrey Beardsley picture--those slanting eyes, and red lips eternally shaped for a kiss, and the slender throat that rippled below the white surface of its skin when she spoke, the thin bare arms, and her hands, balanced on delicate wrists--those hands with their long dainty fingers and exquisite finger-tips. The sight of her inflamed him. Their conversation was commonplace. Why, she wanted to know, did he run away the last time they met. He lied to her, and pleaded a headache. "And you won't run off this time?" she asked, with a childish note of appeal in her voice. He sought her hand and held it in his own. She drew it away with a little grimace. "You're hurting me," she said. Occasionally Margot cut into their conversation. She lacked the beauty of her sister, her figure was stouter, and her face was not well made-up. She treated Charnac with good-natured tolerance. During the supper--again the famous mussels--Desirée asked Humphrey many questions about himself--they were not questions which penetrated deeply into his private life, indeed, she showed no desire to pry into his surroundings. She wanted to know his tastes, and his likes and dislikes, and when, sometimes, he said anything that showed that they had something in common, she laughed delightedly at the discovery. Her eyes held a wonderful knowledge in them, but the boldness of their gaze did not suggest immodesty to him. Her eyes seemed to say: "There are certain things in life we never talk about. But I understand them all, and I know that you know I understand." It made him feel that there was nothing artificial about their friendship; in one bound they had attained perfect understanding, and it was miraculous to him. It was miraculous to him to sit there, with the music surging in his veins, and to look upon this delicately-wrought creature, beautiful, perfect in body, knowing that when he wished he could take her in his arms, and she would give herself to him without any hesitation. She was utterly strange to him, and yet, by this miracle, their lives were already commingled in swift intimacy. He thought of the other two women who had influenced his life: though he had kissed them, and spent long hours with them, they seemed now irrevocably distant from him, and never had he penetrated to the stratum of full comprehension that lay below the surface of misunderstandings.... He looked back on the years that were past, and he could only see himself struggling and pleading and breaking his heart to win that which was won now without any contest at all. Was it love or passion that he wanted from them. Ah! if we would only be frank with ourselves, and admit that there is no love without passion, there is no passion without love: that by separating passion from love, it has become a degraded and hidden thing. And Humphrey wanted love: the desire for love, love inseparable from passion, had made a turbulent underflow beneath the stream of his life. Twice he had tried to grasp love, twice it had eluded him. He had been despoiled by circumstance ... cheated by his own conscience. It was miraculous to him now, that he should be able to wrest his prize from life with so little struggle after all. He looked at Desirée, and her eyes smiled--how incredibly near they seemed to one another, how the unattainable drew close to him and smiled.... He became aware of his name spoken aloud, and he looked up and saw a waiter looking round the room, with Dagneau at his side. Dagneau's face was strained and anxious. He seemed out of breath. Suddenly he caught sight of Humphrey, and hurried towards him. He raised his hat to the group. "Pardon, mad'm'selle," he said to Desirée, as he put a telegram before Humphrey. The blue slips pasted on the paper danced before his eyes. "_Qu'est que c'est?_" Margot asked, fussily. "Ferrol wants you to go to Narbonne," Dagneau said. "There's been shooting there.... I looked up the trains. You can catch the one o'clock from the Gare d'Orsay if you hurry." Humphrey stared stupidly at the telegram, and Desirée touched him with her hand. "_C'est quelque chose de grave?_" she asked. He shrugged his shoulders. "Narbonne," he said to Charnac, laconically. "_Oh! nom d'un nom_--to-night?" asked Charnac. "_C'est embêtant, ça._" And, suddenly, Humphrey grew peaceful again, and all the turbulence of his thoughts calmed down and flowed towards the one desire that he had made paramount in his life--the desire of the journalist for news, the longing of the historian for history. Fleet Street called to him from those blue strips with their printed message. "Go Narbonne immediately cover riots," and the signature that symbolized Fleet Street--"Ferrol"--held in it all the power that had made him a puppet of Fate. But Narbonne.... From all parts of Europe the Special Correspondents would be converging on the town. There would be great doings to describe, new interests to make him forget rapidly. Dagneau helped him on with his coat. "Send on my bag," he said, glancing at his watch. "I'm awfully sorry," he added to Charnac. "You'll understand. Explain to them, won't you? Dagneau, stop and finish my supper." He forgot everything else ... what else mattered? "_Dis donc_," Desirée said, "are you going again?" How surprisingly unimportant she seemed at this moment. Her expression was half-suppliant, half-petulant. "If you go," she said distinctly, "I will never speak to you again--never." As if she could hold him back when others had failed! But he was moved to show her tenderness. A momentary pang of regret shot across him because he had to leave her. "Don't be cross," he whispered. "I shall be back in three days." She turned her head away impetuously. And he realized that there never had been, nor ever could be, anything in common between them. * * * * * Once, when he was dozing in the train speeding southwards to Bordeaux, he woke up and laughed as he remembered the ludicrous amazement on the face of Desirée as he left her suddenly and gladly to take up his work. VIII The matters that occupied his mind belonged only to his work. In the early morning at Bordeaux, when he had to change, he bought a budget of morning papers, and read them in the refreshment-room over his roll and coffee. The news was alarming enough: people were fleeing from Narbonne and the neighbouring towns. Seven had been shot in a riot on the previous night; the soldiery was in charge of the town, and martial law had been proclaimed. The French journalists excelled themselves in superlatives ... their stories were vain accounts of personal emotions and experiences, for it is the fashion with them to thrust their personality in front of the news. Thereafter, on the journey to Narbonne, Humphrey wondered how he was going to get his telegrams out of the town, if it were besieged. He bought a map of the district and studied it: it might be necessary to send a courier to Perpignan, or back to Bordeaux, or, if things were very bad indeed, there were carrier pigeons; the Spanish frontier at Port Bou was not very far away also ... perhaps, he could find some one to whom to telephone. It was his business to get any news out of Narbonne, and there would be no excuse for failure. The people in his carriage were talking of the shooting. "I shouldn't like to be going there," one said. "It will be worse to-night," another remarked. "Those Southerners lose their heads so quickly." It seemed odd to Humphrey that while they were talking of it in this detached way, he alone, probably, out of the whole train-load, was about to plunge into the actualities of revolution of his own free will. For the next few days he would be living with the grievances of the wine-growers, learning things that were unknown to him now. He would have to record and describe all that happened. His was the power to create sympathy in English households for the wrongs of these people starving in the midst of their fertile vineyards. The brakes jarred the carriages of the train. Heads were put out of the window. On the up-line a goods train carrying flour had met with an accident. The engine lay grotesquely on one side, powdered with white flour, and the vans looked as if they had been out in a snow-storm. The melancholy sight of the shattered train slid past, as their own train jolted slowly on its journey. "What is it--have they wrecked the train?" some one asked. "No," another said, pointing to a paragraph in the paper, "it was an accident. The engine ran off the metals last night. It's in the _Depêche de Toulouse_." They all chattered among themselves. It was a trivial affair, then--one had thought for a moment that those sacred Narbonnais...! But there was something sinister in that wrecked train with its broken vans and its engine covered in a cloud of white. It seemed to presage disaster, as it lay there outside the door of the town. The train stopped. "Narbonne" cried the porters. Humphrey descended as though it was the commonest thing in his life to enter garrisoned cities. The platform was full of soldiers, some standing with fixed bayonets, others sleeping on straw beside their stacked arms. Officers strolled up and down to the clank of their swords; outside, through the door of the station, itself guarded by an infantryman in a blue coat, with its skirts tucked back, he caught a glimpse of horses tethered to the railings. Nobody stopped him but the ticket-collector: in the midst of all this outward display of militarism, the business of the station went on as usual. Trains steamed in and departed; expresses pounded through on their way to Paris; porters were busy with parcels. The hotel buses were drawn up outside, just as if nothing in the world had happened to disturb the life of the town. He chose the Hotel Dorade omnibus, and away they went. The streets were lined with soldiers bivouacking on the pavements. The avenue from the station was a long line of stacked rifles, and soldiers in blue and red lounging against the walls, smoking cigarettes, or lying on the pavement, where beds of hay had been made. Many of the shops were shuttered. He looked up, and the flat roofs of the houses were like barracks, with the _képis_ of soldiers visible between the chimney-pots. The bus passed an open square--cavalry held it, and another street, broad and long, leading from it, was a camp of white tents. Sentries guarded the bridges across the river, and though the main Boulevard was free of soldiers, he saw a hint of power in the courtyards of large houses. The walls were placarded with green and yellow posters, addressed to "Citoyens," urging them to resist the Government. The soldiers read them idly. And, in the midst of all this, the people of Narbonne sat outside the cafés in the sunshine, under the red and white striped awnings, drinking their vermouth or absinthe! Later, after he had taken his room at the Hotel Dorade, he walked about the town through the ranks of the soldiers. Groups of people stood here and there, with grim faces and stern-set lips; they looked revengefully at officers and mounted police, and whenever a regiment marched into the town to the music of its drums and bugles, it was greeted with hoarse shouts of derision, and mocking cries of "Assassins!" At the corner of a street of shops he came upon a little mound of stones set round a dark stain on the cobbled road; a wreath was laid there, and a night-light still burned under a glass cover. A piece of white cardboard, cut in the shape of a miniature tombstone, rested against a brick. He read the ill-written inscription on the card:-- | | ----- | | | | RENÉ DUCLOS âgé de 29 ans assasiné par le gouvernement. There were seven other little memorial mounds in the neighbourhood. Each one of them marked where a victim had fallen to the soldiers' ball cartridge. One of the cardboard tombstones bore a woman's name. Her death was one of the inexplicable accidents of life: she was to have been married on the morrow. On her way she had been carried along in the crowd which was marching towards the Town Hall ... and in a minute she was dead. These signs of tragedy made a deep impression on Humphrey's journalistic sense. He saw that the soldiers had not dared to move the mounds that reminded the people of the dreadful happenings in their midst. And they were surrounded by little silent crowds, who spelt out the inscriptions, sighed, and departed with mutterings. A man with bloodshot eyes, and unkempt hair, his chin thick with bristles, lurched across the road, and stood by Humphrey, regarding him with a curious, persistent gaze. Humphrey moved away, and the man edged after him. He made for the main Boulevards where the crowded cafés gave him a sense of safety. He turned round, and saw that he was still being shadowed. A voice hailed him from a café: he turned and saw O'Malley, the Irishman of _The Sentinel_. "Hallo," said O'Malley, "been here long?" "Just arrived," Humphrey said. He was glad to see a friend. That unkempt man who had followed him made him feel uncomfortably insecure. "Where are you stopping?" O'Malley asked. "At the Dorade." "I'm there too: there's a whole gang of French and English fellows here. Been having no end of adventures. My carriage was held up outside Argelliers yesterday, and they wanted to see my papers. As bad as the flight to Varennes, isn't it?" He laughed, and they sat down to drink. The unkempt man took up his position against the parapet of the bridge opposite. Humphrey noticed that O'Malley wore a white band round his arm with a blue number on it, and his name, coupled with _The Sentinel_, written in ink that had frayed itself into the fabric. "You'll have to get one of these," O'Malley explained. "It isn't safe to be a stranger here. They're issued by the People's Committee to journalists who show their credentials. A lot of detectives have been down here, you see, posing as journalists, and asking questions in the villages, getting all sorts of information; that's how they managed to arrest the ringleaders in the villages." "It was a pretty mean trick," Humphrey said. "Mean--I should think it was. They nearly lynched Harridge, the photographer, yesterday, and they chased another so-called journalist to the river, and he had to swim for his life, while the mob fired pot-shots at him from the bridges. So now they've placarded the town to explain that every real journalist has a white armband with a number on it." Humphrey looked at the shaggy man opposite. "Good Lord!" he said, "that's why that fellow's been shadowing me...." "Yes. He's one of the Committee's spies." "I'd better get that armband quick." "No hurry. You're all serene in my company. We'll finish our drink and stroll up together." On the way O'Malley told him some of the latest developments. The chief ringleader, the man whom the wine-growers hailed as the Redeemer, was still at large, and nobody knew where he was. Picture-postcards of the bearded man with a halo round his head and a bunch of grapes dangling from a cross that he held in his right hand, were selling in thousands at two sous each. "To-morrow there are the funerals," remarked O'Malley. "Seven funerals at once. It ought to make a good story." They came to a dingy house, where there were no soldiers. Humphrey followed O'Malley up a narrow, twisting staircase to a little room. The walls were plastered with the posters he had seen on the street hoardings. Five men sat in the room, smoking cigarettes. The air was full of the stale reek of cheap tobacco. They sat in their shirt-sleeves with piles of papers before them. One of them, a gross man with a black moustache straggling over his heavy under lip, spread out his fat hands in inquiry. Another, thin, undersized and dirty, with a rat-like face, peered at them with blinking red-rimmed eyes. "What do you want?" he asked, gruffly. O'Malley, in his best Irish-French, explained his business and presented Humphrey. The hollow farce of polite phrases, which mean nothing in France, was played out. They wanted to see his _carte d'identité_ and all the credentials he had. Humphrey unloaded his pocket-book on them. Finally, they made him sign a book, and they gave him a white armlet; he pinned it round his arm, and walked forth a free man. The unkempt man stood on the opposite side of the street still watching him. And now, as he walked along the streets of Narbonne, with the white armlet of the revolutionaries giving him protection, he smiled to see the soldiers guarding the streets. "Look here," he said to O'Malley, "who's going to give me anything to prevent the soldiers bayoneting me?" "Yes--I've thought of that too," O'Malley answered. "Funny, isn't it, that we've got to fly for a safeguard to the People's Committee? By the way, don't you get talking to strangers more than you can help. They're down on spies. I'm going to get my copy off now. See you at the post-office." Humphrey went back to the Dorade, and wrote his message, a descriptive account of all that he had seen, in abbreviated telegraphese. Other correspondents were there, war correspondents used to open campaigns, prepared for all emergencies; others had come from the Fleet Streets of Spain and Belgium and Germany. There was an American, too, who had travelled from Paris: as he had not yet obtained his armband, he remained in the hotel, writing very alarming telegrams. The Englishmen dined together--a jolly party--at a large round table, and, afterwards, they all went out to look at the town at night under arms. Once, during their walk, the sound of firing came to them, and they ran helter-skelter up the Boulevard right into the arms of a young lieutenant, who laughed and told them that nothing serious had happened. He invited them all to a drink in a café, and just to satisfy them, Humphrey went reconnoitring and found that all was peaceful. He had no time to think of anything but his work. At midnight he went to bed and slept deeply. * * * * * On the second day the "Redeemer," whom every one had imagined to be captured, suddenly appeared in Narbonne, and was whisked away in a motor-car to Argelliers, his native town. Bouvier, of the _Petit Journal_, saw him, dashed into a motor-garage, and hired a car in an instant. "_Viens_," he shouted, as Humphrey strolled down the Street. "The 'Redeemer' has come back. You can share my car." Humphrey, knowing nothing except that Bouvier was very excited, and that, by a chance, some big news had come under his notice, jumped into the car, and away they whirled into the open country. The Southern landscape was vivid in the hot sunshine of the late autumn; they left clouds of dust behind them as the car raced along to overtake the car of the "Redeemer." They passed the spacious vineyards, where the grapes grew like stunted hop-fields, twining round their little sticks; they sped through avenues of poplars, and almond trees and ilex; through villages where old women cheered and pointed down the long road. "We're catching him up," Bouvier grunted. "They must have heard the news of his coming somehow." A bend in the road, and a bridge with the blue river running beneath its arches; farmhouses and boys driving cattle home; children swinging on a gate, and old men plodding towards the sunset, on sticks that could never straighten their bent backs: the country came at them and receded from them in a succession of pictures framed in the hood of their car. Vineyards, and again vineyards, with the ungathered grapes withering in the sun, and people crying to them, "He's come back: the brave fellow." As the road led nearer to Argelliers they overtook yellow coaches, full of people, and country carts swinging along. The drivers pointed their whips ahead, and shouted something, but the words were lost in the rush of the wind as the car rushed by them. "The whole countryside seems to know that he's escaped. There'll be thousands in the Market Place," Bouvier said. "It'll be a fine story," Humphrey agreed. "Those other fellows must have missed it." He was drunk with the excitement and the happiness of hunting a quarry. They came to the Market Place of Argelliers, and the sight amazed him. Left and right the people crushed together--a rectangular pattern of humanity. People of all ages had been drawn there by the magnetism of this man who had stirred up the South to revolt. The caps and dresses of the women and girls gave touches of colour to the sombre crowd of men, and, as he stood up in the motor-car for a better view, he saw row upon row of pink, upturned faces, parted, eager lips, and eyes that strained against the sunshine to see the black-clad figure of a man standing on the low roof of the People's Committee. Boys had climbed the trees round the Market Place--their gaping faces shone from the dark branches; and on the outskirts of the vast crowd men and women stood up in carts and waggonettes--horses had been harnessed to anything that ran on wheels. There was not a soldier in sight. The sun shone fiercely on the Market Place of Argelliers, where two thousand people were thinking of their wrongs. And the man on the roof talked to them. His voice, strong and sonorous, came to them urging them to be of good cheer. They flung back at him cries of encouragement, and called him by name. "I'm going into the crowd," Humphrey said. "Better stop here," urged Bouvier. "They're an excitable lot." "I must hear what he's saying." Humphrey climbed out of the car, and pushed his way into the middle of the crowd. There was a loud shouting over some remark that the speaker had made. He found himself wedged in tightly between heavy, broad-shouldered men, with black eyes and swarthy faces. He heard the man on the roof speak about those who had been attacking him, and a voice close to Humphrey yelled, "_La Depêche de Toulouse_," and immediately another voice cried out, "_Conspuez la Depêche de Toulouse_." He turned at the voice and saw, with a sudden shock, the shaggy-haired man with the bloodshot eyes who had dogged his footsteps that first day in Narbonne. Their glances met. Humphrey thrust back into his pocket the pencil with which he had been making furtive notes. "_Conspuez les autres!_" cried the man with the bloodshot eyes, "_conspuez les mouchards_." He was conscious of a new note in the crowd: he saw anger and hatred passing swiftly over all the faces around him. They turned on him with relentless eyes. He saw the shaggy-haired man shouldering his way, and scrambling towards him with crooked fingers that clawed at the air. In one quick second he realized that he was in danger. "_Conspuez les autres._" The cry rose all about him swelling to a roar of confusion. "_En voilà un!_" shouted the shaggy man, pointing to Humphrey's white armband. They surged against him, and he was swept from his feet. He heard the shriek of women, and the babble and a murmur that ran like an undercurrent through the storm of noisy voices. The black figure on the roof was wringing his hands, and trying to calm the mob. Humphrey turned to escape. "What a fool I was to come into the thick of it," he thought. Once, in the struggle, he saw Bouvier standing with a white face in the motor-car, probably wondering what the row was about. And then, they came at him suddenly and determinedly. Remorseless and menacing faces were thrust close to him. He struck out and a thrill went up his arm as his fist met a hard cheek-bone. Something fell on his arm with a heavy, aching blow that left it numb and limp, and at the same moment an excruciating spasm of self-pity swept upward from his soul, as he saw, as in a red mist, uplifted, clenched hands struggling to meet him. This was real life at last. He had ceased to be an onlooker; the game was terrible and earnest, and he was, for the first time, the principal figure in the play. His agony did not last long. The hot breath of the men was on him, and the evil, bloodshot eyes of the shaggy-haired man who had denounced him, loomed terribly large, like great red-veined moons. And, in that last moment, before all consciousness went from him for ever, as he swayed and fell before the trampling mob, in that supreme moment when deliverance came from all the tribulations that life held for him, an odd, whimsical idea twisted his lips into a smile as he thought: "What a ripping story this will make for _The Day_." THE END COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Hyphenation has been retained as in the original publication. Page 25, in the phrase "every day" a space was kept (every day, it seemed). Page 31, comma erased (among which, "Twencent"). Page 41, double quotes added ("We had an awful row.). Page 56, hyphen retained (a bed-sitting room). Page 77, apostrophe added (reporters' room). Page 112, She changed to she (Yes, she had remembered him,). Page 121, period added (he began.). Page 190, double quotes added (I know."). Page 192, period erased (to wait..."). Page 195, apostrophe replaced by period (she was now.). Page 212, double quotes added (I wrote about...."). Page 212, double quotes added (Thanks for the bob...."). Page 245, period added (of the office.). Page 254, sedn changed to send in (I'll send you). Page 256, single quote added (forgotten by to-morrow.'). Page 256, single quote added (go I.'"). Page 307, question mark changed to period (Not as big as London.). Page 310, phaseology changed to phraseology in (intimate phraseology.). Page 340, period added (anything in common between them.). Both "latchkey" and "latch-key" were used in this text. This text also uses "countryside" and "country-side", "earrings" and "ear-rings", "lawsuits" and "law-suits", "notebook" and "note-book", "schoolmasters" and "school-masters", "tablecloths" and "table-cloths". This was retained. 
36417	----	THE PICTORIAL PRESS. [Illustration: HEADING OF 'THE JACOBITE'S JOURNAL,' 1747. (_Supposed to be Drawn by Hogarth._) (_See page 197._)] THE PICTORIAL PRESS ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. [Illustration] BY MASON JACKSON. With One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT. PUBLISHERS. 13 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1885. _All Rights reserved._ NOTE. Some of the chapters of this book in a condensed form were published a few years ago in the _Illustrated London News_, and my acknowledgments are due to the proprietors of that journal for permission to reprint such of the woodcuts as accompanied the text in that form. I have also to thank them for their courtesy in allowing me to use several other engravings from the _Illustrated London News_, including some from the early numbers, which must now be reckoned among the curiosities of the Pictorial Press. M. J. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. 1 The Pictorial Taste Universal--The Early 'News-books'--Development of the Newspaper Press--General use of Newspapers--Establishment of Illustrated Journals--Wandering Ballad-Singers the First Newsvendors--The _English Mercurie_ of 1588--The Abolition of the Star Chamber and its Effect on the Press. CHAPTER II. 8 Illustrated Broadsides--Sir Francis Drake's Operations against the Spaniards--Papers of News in the Reign of James I.--The first Periodical Newspaper published in England--Illustrated Tracts relating to Storms and Floods--Remarkable Murders favourite subjects with the early Newswriters--Murder of the Rev. Mr. Storre--Murder in Cornwall--Apparition of Three Skeletons--Visions in the Air--Attempt on the Life of the Duke of Buckingham--Fall of Meteors at Bawlkin Green, Berkshire--The _Swedish Intelligencer_--Passage of the River Leck by Gustavus Adolphus--The Sallee Rovers--The _Weekly News_ of 1638, an Illustrated Paper--The Irish Rebellion of 1641--The Plague in London--Murder on board an English Ship--The Earl of Strafford--His Execution on Tower Hill--Archbishop Laud--A Burlesque Play about him--Attack by the Mob on Lambeth Palace--Caricature of the Devil offering Laud a Cardinal's Hat. CHAPTER III. 63 Ben Jonson's Ridicule of the Early Newspapers--Fondness of the Old News-Writers for the Marvellous--The Smithfield Ghost--The Wonderful Whale--The Newbury Witch--Satirical Tracts and Caricatures at the Commencement of the Civil War--Religion Tossed in a Blanket--Caricatures of the Pope and the Bishops--Pluralists and Patentees--Taylor, the Water Poet--_Mercurius Aulicus_--Activity of the Pamphleteers--Welshmen Satirised--Satires on Prince Rupert--On the King and Queen--The Ladies' Parliament--Illustrated Tracts relating to Social and Political Subjects--Sir Kenelm Digby's Duel--The King entertained by the City of London, 1641--Executions in 1641--The Liquor Traffic and Sunday Closing in 1641--Abuses of the Ecclesiastical Courts--Ritualism and Nunneries in 1641--Truths enforced by Lieing--Stage Players and the Plague in 1641--Bartholomew Fair in 1641--Destruction of Charing Cross and Cheapside Cross--Strange Apparition--Method of enforcing their Views adopted by the Puritan Pamphleteers--Parodies of Roundhead Sermons--Matthew Hopkins the Witch-finder--The _Welsh Post_ of 1643--William Lilly the Astrologer--Three Suns seen in London on the King's Birthday. CHAPTER IV. 108 The Civil War--Flying Sheets of News--Disturbance at Kingston-on-Thames--Plot against London--Riotous Proceedings at York, and Conspiracy in Edinburgh--The House of Commons--The Royal Standard raised at Nottingham--Battle of Edgehill--Prince Rupert--The Lord Mayor of London--_Mercurius Civicus_--The _Scottish Dove_--The _Flying Post_--The _Kingdomes Weekly Post_--Cruelties of the Cavaliers--The 'Levellers'--The King's Escape from Oxford--Funeral of the Earl of Essex--The Great Seal Broken--Fairfax--Cromwell--Sea Fight in the Channel--The Prince of Wales's Squadron--Mutiny at Norwich--Siege of Colchester--Execution of Sir Charles Lucas--The King at Carisbrooke Castle--Execution of the King--Confession of Richard Brandon. CHAPTER V. 153 Decrease of Newspapers after the Civil War--_Mercurius Democritus_--The _Faithful Post_--The _Politique Post_--Broadsides for the People--The Hollow Tree at Hampstead--Prodigious Monster taken in Spain--The Restoration--Trial of the Regicides--Execution of the Regicides--Licenser of the Press appointed--Popular Taste for the Supernatural--Apparition in the Air in Holland--Revival of _Mercurius Civicus_--Murder of Archbishop Sharpe--The _Loyal Protestant_--Frost Fair on the Thames--Monmouth's Rebellion--The Bloody Assizes--Funeral of Queen Mary, Consort of William III.--Increase of Newspapers after the Revolution. CHAPTER VI 180 Constant Attempts at Illustrated News--Increase of Caricatures--The _Postman_, 1704--Fiery Apparition in the Air, seen in London--Caricature against the Jacobites--The South-Sea Bubble--Eclipse of the Sun, 1724--The _Grub Street Journal_ an Illustrated Paper--The _Daily Post_--Admiral Vernon's Attack on Porto Bello--The _Penny London Post_--Henry Fielding and the _Jacobite's Journal_--_Owen's Weekly Chronicle_--_Lloyd's Evening Post_, and the Trial of Lord Byron for the Murder of Mr. Chaworth--The _St. James's Chronicle_--Illustrated Account of a Strange Wild Beast seen in France--The _Gentleman's Journal_ of Anthony Motteux--The _Gentleman's Magazine_ of Edward Cave--The _London Magazine_--The _Scot's Magazine_. CHAPTER VII 219 Revival of Wood-engraving by Thomas Bewick--The _Observer_ started, 1791--The _Times_ an Illustrated Paper--Illustrations of News in the _Observer_--St. Helena and Napoleon Bonaparte--Abraham Thornton and the 'Assize of Battle'--Mr. William Clement and Illustrated Journalism--The Cato Street Conspiracy--Trial of Queen Caroline--The House of Commons in 1821--Coronation of George IV.--Royal Visits to Ireland and Scotland--Murder of Mr. Weare--Illustrations of the Murder in the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Observer_, and the _Englishman_--_Bell's Life in London_--Prize-Fight at Warwick--Liston as 'Paul Pry'--'Gallery of Comicalities,' &c.--_Pierce Egan's Life in London_--Death of the Duke of York--Death of Mr. Canning--Opening of Hammersmith Bridge, 1827--Mr. Gurney's Steam Coach--The Thames Tunnel--The Murder in the Red Barn--The Siamese Twins--Death of George IV.--Opening of New London Bridge, 1831--Coronation of William IV. and Queen Adelaide--Fieschi's Infernal Machine--Funeral of William IV.--Queen Victoria's First Visit to the City--Coronation and Marriage of the Queen--Christening of the Prince of Wales--The _Weekly Chronicle_--The Greenacre Murder--Mr. Cocking and his Parachute--The Courtney Riots at Canterbury--Burning of the Tower of London, 1841--The _Sunday Times_--Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1834--The _Champion_--The _Weekly Herald_--The _Magnet_--Removing the Body of Napoleon I.--The _Penny Magazine_--Charles Knight--Humorous Journalism of the Victorian Era. CHAPTER VIII 284 The _Illustrated London News_--The Early Numbers--The Burning of Hamburg--Facetious Advertisements--Bal Masque at Buckingham Palace--Attempted Assassination of the Queen--The Queen's First Trip by Railway--First Royal Visit to Scotland--Political Portraits--R. Cobden--Lord John Russell--Benjamin Disraeli--The French Revolution, 1848--The Great Exhibition, 1851--The Crimean War--Coloured Pictures--Christmas Numbers--Herbert Ingram--The _Pictorial Times_--Other Illustrated Journals. CHAPTER IX 315 How an Illustrated Newspaper is Produced--Wood-Engraving--Boxwood--Blocks for Illustrated Newspapers--Rapid Sketching--Drawing on the Block--Method of Dividing the Block for Engraving--Electrotyping--Development of the Printing Machine--Printing Woodcuts--Machinery for Folding Newspapers--Special Artists--Their Dangers and Difficulties--Their Adventures in War and Peace. CHAPTER X 355 Artists who have assisted in founding the Pictorial Press--Sir John Gilbert, R.A., G. H. Thomas, and others--Wood-Engraving and its Connexion with the Pictorial Press--Other Methods of producing Illustrations--Wood-Engraving in England before and after Bewick's time--Its wide Diffusion owing to the kindred Art of Printing--The resources of the Art developed by Pictorial Newspapers--Conclusion. Newspapers a Necessity of Civilised Life--The _Acta Diurna_ of the Romans--Early Newspapers in Venice, Germany, and the Low Countries--List of Illustrated Newspapers published Abroad. THE PICTORIAL PRESS: ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. CHAPTER I. The Pictorial Taste Universal--The Early 'News-books'--Development of the Newspaper Press--General use of Newspapers--Establishment of Illustrated Journals--Wandering Ballad Singers the First Newsvendors--The _English Mercurie_ of 1588--The Abolition of the Star Chamber and its Effect on the Press. The inherent love of pictorial representation in all races of men and in every age is manifest by the frequent attempts made to depict natural objects, under the most unfavourable circumstances and with the slenderest means. The rude drawing scratched on the smooth bone of an animal by the cave-dweller of pre-historic times, the painted rocks of the Mexican forests, and the cave-paintings of the Bushmen, are all evidences of this deeply-rooted passion. The child of civilised life looks with delight on his picture-book long before he can make out the letters of the alphabet, and the untutored Esquimaux treasures up the stray number of an illustrated newspaper left in his hut by the crew of some whaling ship, though he cannot understand one word of the printed page. But the pictures speak a universal language, which requires no teaching to comprehend. When the printing-press came into use this love of pictures had a wide field for development. Some of the first books printed in England were illustrated with woodcuts, and many of the tracts, or 'News-books,' which preceded regular newspapers, were adorned with rude engravings. It mattered not how graphic was the pen, its work was deemed incomplete without the aid of the pencil. It often happened that the pen was none the better for the fellowship, but the public taste was not fastidious, and the work sufficed for the occasion. In tracing the origin and progress of pictorial journalism we shall find in 'the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time' many curious illustrations of contemporary history. The subject is not without interest now that the illustrated newspaper has become a prominent feature in the journalism of every country. The development of the newspaper press and its unrestricted use as the exponent of public opinion is one of the most interesting signs of modern progress. When we consider the liberty of thought and action that prevails in our own day, it is difficult to believe that our forefathers were liable to the pillory and other degrading punishments when they ventured to publish their opinions without first obtaining the sanction of the ruling powers. We are accustomed to the daily exercise of the right which cost Prynne his ears and brought fines and imprisonment on Defoe. Newspapers have become almost as necessary to our daily life as bread itself. The mind demands its breakfast as well as the body; and to many a busy man the loss of his morning paper would be as great a deprivation as the want of his usual matutinal meal. In London, and in all our great centres of population, the newspaper has become the unfailing accompaniment of the City man's journey to business. At the railway stations journals of every kind tempt the loitering passenger, while the illustrated papers appeal to him in a language of their own. Whether in the railway carriage, the omnibus, or the steam-boat, the newspaper is eagerly conned, and its contents form the food of conversation. Most of these newspapers are cast aside at the end of the twenty minutes' or half hour's journey; and then, at second hand, they amuse the leisure moments of the railway porter, or, better still, they are collected together, and perhaps serve to solace the sick poor during many lingering hours in hospitals and refuges. Day by day the demand is made, and the supply is ready. The printing-machine never sleeps and is never tired. Its voice is one of the voices of the night--most unmusical, yet with a mysterious meaning. The daily newspaper, so potent in diffusing the light of knowledge, is itself the offspring of darkness. The busy brains and active fingers which create it turn night into day in the execution of their quickly recurring tasks, and with unflagging energy they labour on, that the slumbering world may be properly amused and instructed when it wakes. The intelligent foreigner who happens to reach our southern coast on a Monday morning in summer or autumn, and travels to London by one of the early trains, is astonished, when the train stops, to see most of the gentlemen rush from the carriages and surround a small boy, whom they appear to hustle and threaten with violent gesticulations. The boy appears to buy off the hostility of his assailants by dealing out to each a paper, which he takes from a large bundle under his arm, and with which the appeased passenger returns to his carriage. Cries of '_Times!_ _Daily News!_ _Telegraph!_ _Standard!_--Here, give us one--anything!' reach the ears of the wondering stranger, who beholds the boy at length take refuge in an empty railway carriage on the opposite side of the platform, and from that place of vantage he continues to deal out the mysterious papers. After a time the intelligent foreigner learns that these are the London papers of that morning, which are sent out to meet the trains, and are eagerly bought by the gentlemen who have been spending from Saturday to Monday at the seaside, and, having fasted from all newspapers during that time, they are now of course famishing for news. Such is their eagerness that politics are thrown to the winds. The Conservative will put up with a Liberal newspaper rather than have none at all; and he whose ill luck or inertness has left him without the coveted sheet is glad to borrow of his neighbour, that he may not be walking in the darkness of ignorance when he arrives at his place of business. As the train moves off, the intelligent foreigner, if he thrusts his head out of the carriage window, may behold in the distance the newsboy pensively counting his gains and endeavouring to make his receipts tally with the number of papers that have vanished. One of the most remarkable phases of newspaper history has been the establishment of illustrated journals. Though this idea, in an immature form, is as old as the newspaper itself, yet it was never fully developed till the late Mr. Herbert Ingram brought out the _Illustrated London News_ in 1842. Since that time the removal of the newspaper stamp and the repeal of the paper duty have imparted a freedom and a vigour to newspaper enterprise previously unknown. Journals of all kinds have sprung into existence, and cheapness has become the rule. Penny and even halfpenny papers compete with the leading journals in activity and enterprise. No expense is spared in obtaining the earliest and most authentic intelligence. Correspondents are sent to every part of the world where any information is to be gleaned, and the presence of the newspaper 'Special' is now expected at every great event. Each class has its organ, and 'he who runs may read.' When we consider the immense amount of printed matter that is published every day by the newspapers, we cannot but wonder at the public appetite. And this appetite is fed from one year to another upon a diet that is only varied when there occurs a war, a revolution, an unusually disastrous shipwreck, or a murder of uncommon atrocity. Then the monotony of ordinary life gives place to the temporary excitement. There is a run upon the newspapers, which are as susceptible as barometers, and rise or fall according to the state of public feeling. The calamities of nations and the misfortunes of individuals are sources of profit and prosperity to the newspaper. It was a happy idea to gather together the principal events of the week, to illustrate them with authentic pictures, and place them before the public in the form of a pictorial newspaper. Considering the great cost of production, and the restrictions under which newspapers lay at that time, to say nothing of the difficulty of bringing out news with appropriate illustrations, so that both should be fresh, the _Illustrated London News_ was a bold undertaking. Like most things that are successful, it soon had many imitators, and there are now few large cities in the civilised world that have not their illustrated newspapers. But the full development of illustrated journalism was immediately preceded by many significant symptoms. Several of the then existing newspapers, on the occurrence of any unusual or interesting event, introduced into their pages rough woodcut illustrations. A great fire--a remarkable murder--a fatal balloon ascent--these were the subjects seized upon at the moment to satisfy the public craving for illustrated news. All this seems to have been the working of an impulse or instinct which existed even before the days of newspapers; for, as I shall presently show, attempts were made to illustrate the news of the hour in tracts or 'News-books' before the beginning of regular newspapers in England. The idea of illustrated journalism may be traced from the earliest years of the seventeenth century to 1842, the date of the first number of the _Illustrated London News_. The art of wood-engraving had fallen very low in the seventeenth century, and the illustrations to be found in early newspapers are mostly of a very rude description; but they show the existence of a germ which eventually grew into full and flourishing life. The English newspaper, like many other great inventions, was a thing of gradual growth. The news that was sung or recited by wandering ballad-singers at the village cross, or in the court-yard of the squire's mansion, and the written newsletter furnished to the wealthy aristocracy, were the precursors of the early news-books and the periodical sheets of news. As the art of printing extended, many of the productions of the press assumed the character of news to attract readers. Sermons, satires, and travels, were all put forward under the name of _news_, and sometimes a single grain of truth was deemed sufficient to leaven a whole bushel of fiction. Most of these publications were small tracts, and published at irregular intervals. Some of them were adorned with engravings on the title-pages, which show that even at this early period the authors or printers of these papers were imbued with the pictorial spirit. The idea of illustrating current events had already taken root, and we find examples of it long before the establishment of regular newspapers. The earliest form of the newspaper is known to have come into existence during times of war and tumult, and it was for a long time believed that the first English newspaper was brought forth under similar circumstances. But when the _English Mercurie_ of 1588 was proved to be a forgery, the enthusiast in newspaper history received a heavy blow and sad discouragement. It seemed so highly probable, when this country was threatened with the descent of the Spanish Armada, that something like a newspaper might have sprung into existence, that people were only too ready to adopt the imposture. When the whole nation was greatly excited and anxious to learn something about the reality of their danger, nothing was more natural than for the sagacious minister of Queen Elizabeth to appeal to the people through the printing-press, and by its means endeavour to calm the public mind by circulating printed sheets of intelligence, 'for the contradiction of false reports.' But we were compelled to admit that Lord Burleigh had missed his opportunity, and neglected to use the most powerful means for exciting the patriotism or allaying the fears of his countrymen. The author of this remarkable imposition showed great skill and acuteness in constructing his false newspaper, and fixing the date of its supposed publication. The forgery has been attributed to Lord Hardwick; but what were his motives it is difficult to understand. Unlike Chatterton and Ireland, he never brought his imposture before the world, and if he intended it merely for an antiquarian _jeu-d'esprit_ he had the enjoyment of the joke entirely to himself. The abolition of the Star Chamber, in 1641, was an important event for the press of this country. The so-called newspapers then began to print English news and discuss home affairs, no longer dreading the fines, imprisonments, and mutilations, that had been so liberally dispensed by that obnoxious tribunal. There was not, however, any considerable increase in the number of newspapers till the Civil War reached its height. During that remarkable contest many hundreds of tracts and newspapers were published, some of them numbered consecutively and published at regular intervals; but the great majority bore no continuous title, and treated of one subject only. During the reigns of Charles II. and James II. the press was more or less under a censorship, from which it was not emancipated till the seventh year of William III. Lord Macaulay dates the commencement of English newspapers from this period, when a great many new journals made their appearance. They included political news amongst their contents; and they more nearly resembled in character, but not in appearance, what we now understand by a newspaper than anything that had preceded them. This press revival was not accompanied by any corresponding activity in the direction of pictorial illustration. Art of every kind was in a low condition in England at this time. Even if the art of popular illustration had been better understood, the means of production were exceedingly limited. Newspapers multiplied greatly, but illustrated journalism had to struggle with difficulties, and its existence was only made known by the occasional appearance of a rough woodcut or an indifferent copper-plate. CHAPTER II. Illustrated Broadsides--Sir Francis Drake's Operations against the Spaniards--Papers of News in the Reign of James I.--The first Periodical Newspaper published in England--Illustrated Tracts relating to Storms and Floods--Remarkable Murders favourite subjects with the early Newswriters--Murder of the Rev. Mr. Storre--Murder in Cornwall--Apparition of Three Skeletons--Visions in the Air--Attempt on the Life of the Duke of Buckingham--Fall of Meteors at Bawlkin Green, Berkshire--The _Swedish Intelligencer_--Passage of the River Leck by Gustavus Adolphus--The Sallee Rovers--The _Weekly News_ of 1638, an Illustrated Paper--The Irish Rebellion of 1641--The Plague in London--Murder on board an English Ship--The Earl of Strafford--His Execution on Tower Hill--Archbishop Laud--A Burlesque Play about him--Attack by the Mob on Lambeth Palace--Caricature of the Devil offering Laud a Cardinal's Hat. [Illustration: THE VALIANT EXPLOITS OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, 1587.] Before, and for a long time after, the general use of newspapers, illustrated broadsides were published relating to particular events, or satirising the vices and follies of the period. In a broadside adorned with a woodcut representing Death and Time, and entitled, _The Doleful Dance, and Song of Death_, allusion is made to the 'Fatal Assizes' of Oxford, when three hundred persons, including the High Sheriff, died of a distemper, which was supposed to have originated among the prisoners. A sheet of a later date refers to the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot; while a third, entitled, _Tittle-Tattle_, &c., satirises the gossiping habits of the fair sex, and contains many illustrations of manners, costume, and character. Such were the publications that did duty for newspapers in the days of Queen Elizabeth, whose subjects, however, were not left wholly without information as to passing events. In 1587 there was published an illustrated tract giving an account of the doings of Sir Francis Drake, who was employed by Queen Elizabeth to harass the Spaniards in their harbours, and hinder them in their preparations for invading England. These operations, which Drake himself described as 'singeing the King of Spain's beard,' delayed the sailing of the Armada, and gave Elizabeth time to prepare for defence. The tract referred to is entitled, '_The true and perfect Newes of the worthy and valiant exploytes performed and done by that valiant Knight Syr Frauncis Drake; Not only at Sancto Domingo, and Carthagena, but also nowe at Cales, and upon the Coast of Spayne, 1587_. _Printed at London, by J. Charlewood, for Thomas Hackett._' There is an account, in verse, written by one Thomas Greepe, of the doings of Sir Francis Drake and other sea captains. The author tells his reader, 'Here hast thou, gentle Reader, set forth unto thee the most worthy and valiant exploytes and enterpryses, lately atchieved and done by that valiant Knight Syr Frauncis Drake & others not pend in lofty verse, nor curiously handled, but playnly and truly, so that it may be well understood of the Reader.' There is no attempt made to illustrate the events related in the tract, but on the title-page there is a woodcut of a ship in full sail, which was perhaps intended to represent the admiral's own vessel. I have reproduced it on a reduced scale, as an early specimen of marine draughtsmanship. Thomas Greepe commences his poem with the following rhapsody:-- 'Triumph, O England, and rejoice, And prayse thy God incessantly For this thy Queene, that pearle of choyce, Which God doth blesse with victory! In countryes strange, both farre and neere, All raging foes her force doth feare. Yee worthy wights that doo delighte To heare of Novels strange and rare, What valors, woone by a famous knight, May please you marke I shall declare. Such rare exploytes performde and done As none the like hath ever woone.' He gives a list of the ships under Drake's command:-- 'Twenty-five ships were then preparde, Fifteene Pinnaces, brave and fine, Well furnished for his safe garde, Preventing foes that would him tyne. With Masters good and Marriners rare As ever tooke charge, I dare compare. * * * * * The _Bonaventure_, a ship royall, Cheefe Admirall then of the fleete, Sir Frauncis Drake, cheefe Generall, As by desertes he was most meete. Most worthy Captaynes of hand and heart In this boon voyage then tooke hys part. The _Primrose_ next, Vice-Admirall, Appoynted by thyre best device, Captayne Frobisher, Vice-Generall-- A valiant Captayne, ware and wyse. Captayne Carelell they did ordayne Lieftenant-Generall on the mayne.' The poem thus winds up:-- 'God save our Queene of merry England, His sacred word long to maintaine; Her Graces Navie and royall bande, Through his good Grace, may long remaine. Lord blesse her counsell, and keepe them aye With all true subjects night and day. Finis, quoth Thomas Greepe.' This curious poem is supplemented by a letter, written by Sir Francis Drake, 'To the right reverende, godly, learned Father, my very good friend, M. John Fox, preacher of the word of God.' This was John Fox, the Martyrologist, who died in 1587. The letter proceeds: 'Mister Fox, whereas we have had of late such happy successe against the Spanyardes, I do assure myselfe that you have faithfully remembered us in your good prayers, and therefore I have not forgotten, breefly to make you partaker thereof. The 19. of Aprill we arrived within the road of Calles, where we found very many shipping, but amongst the rest 32 of exceeding burden, lade and to be laden with provision, and prepared to furnish the King's Navie, intended with all speede against England, the which when we had boorded, and also furnished our severall ships with provision as we thought sufficient, wee burnt; and although by the space of two dayes and two nights that we continued there, we were still endangered, both with thundering shott from the towne, and assailed with the roaring Cannons of twelve galleys; yet we suncke two of them, and one great Argosey, and still avoyded them with very small hurt, and so at our departure we brought away foure ships of provision, to the great terror of our enemies, and honour to ourselves, as it may appeare by a most curteous Letter written unto me with a Flagge of truce by Duke Petro, Generall of the Galleys. But whereas it is most certayne that the king doth not onely make speedy preparation in Spayne, but likewise expected a very great Fleete from the Straytes, and divers other places, that should joyne with his forces to invade England; we purpose to sette apart all feare of danger, and by Gods furtherance to proceed by all the good means we can devise to prevent their coming; wherefore I shall desire you to continue faithfull in remembrance of us in your prayers that our purpose may take that good effect, as God may be glorified, his Church, our Queene and country, preserved, and these enemies of the trueth utterly vanquished, that we may have continuall peace in Israel. Fro aboord her Majesties good ship the _Elizabeth Bonaventure_. 'Your loving freende, and faythfull Sonne in Christ Jesus, 'FRAUNCIS DRAKE.' In the reign of James I. papers of news began to be published, but they only appeared occasionally, and were chiefly devoted to foreign intelligence. In 1619 we have 'Newes out of Holland,' followed by others in 1620, 1621, and 1622. These occasional tracts were afterwards converted into a regular weekly publication, entitled the '_Weekly News_,' printed by J. D. for Nichs. Bourne and T. Archer. This was the first periodical newspaper published in England. But long before this many illustrated tracts and pamphlets were published relating to events of recent occurrence. In one dated 1607 occurs the earliest instance I have met with of an attempt to illustrate the news of the day. It is entitled '_Wofull Newes from Wales, or the lamentable loss of divers Villages and Parishes (by a strange and wonderful Floud) within the Countye of Monmouth in Wales: which happened in January last past, 1607, whereby a great number of his Majesties subjects inhabiting in these parts are utterly undone_.' The writer of this news-book describes the flood, and then, taking it for his text, preaches a sermon upon it. It is printed in Old English, and is plentifully interspersed with pious exhortations and scriptural references. It has on the title a woodcut, a fac-simile of which is given on the next page. This interesting little tract has a preface, in which the author explains the difficulty he felt in producing it in the short time that was allowed him for the purpose:--'Reader, when these newes were brought, and an importunitie used to me that I would give the same forme, and bestow an exhortation on them, I was unwilling, both in regard of that short space (of lesse than one day which was limited to undertake the matter) and also in respect of the usual unfaithfulness of men ordinarily in reporting of such accidents as these bee; whereby it often falleth out that the relation of them reapeth much discredit. But when I could not have these just excuses taken, I began and finished this businesse, as the shorte space wold permit me.' The old story of the child washed away in a cradle, so often related as having occurred in great floods, and which Mr. Millais has immortalised in one of his pictures, is here told probably for the first time:--'Another little childe is affirmed to have bene cast upon land in a Cradle, in which was nothing but a Catte, the which was discerned, as it came floating to the shore, to leape still from one side of the Cradle unto the other, even as if she had been appointed steersman to preserve the small barke from the waves' furie.' [Illustration: GREAT FLOOD IN MONMOUTHSHIRE, 1607.] Another tract of the same date is illustrated with a woodcut similar to the one here copied, but it has in addition several more figures, including a cradle with a child in it floating on the water. This tract is entitled '_A true report of certaine wonderful overflowings of waters now lately in Summersetshire, Norfolk, and other places in England, destroying many thousands of men, women, and children, overthrowing and bearing downe whole townes and villages, and drowning infinite numbers of sheepe and other cattle_.' It is written in the same sermonising style, beginning by calling men to repent, and to take warning from these signs of God's anger. Then follows the narrative. The inundation was caused by an irruption of the sea, and many incidents are related of the flood. Here the cradle story is again told:--'An infant likewise was found swimming in a cradle, some mile or two fro' ye place where it was known to be kept, and so was preserved; for the cradle was not of wicker, as ours are here, but of strong, thicke bordes, closely joynted together, and that saved the infant's life.' This narrative of the Somersetshire flood was reprinted in another tract with '_An Addition of other and more strange Accidents happening by these Flouds, and brought to light since the first publishing of this Booke_.' This second edition is illustrated with the identical woodcut that is used in the tract relating the floods in Wales. The two tracts recounting the Somersetshire floods were 'printed at London by W. I. for Edward White, and are to be sold at the signe of the Gunne, at the North doore of Paules.' That describing the flood in Wales was 'printed for W. W., and are to be sold in Paules Church-yarde at the sign of the Grey-hound.' In those days printers frequently combined the functions of engraver and printer; and as regards the tracts under notice, we must conclude that the printer supplied each of his customers with the same woodcut, or that the booksellers of the time were in the habit of lending their woodcuts to each other. Storms, floods, and burnings were favourite themes with the early newswriters, and several illustrated tracts exist describing such calamities. They are more or less interspersed with pious exhortations, but the narrative is rarely allowed to flag, and every incident is minutely described. There is '_Woeful newes from the West parts of England of the burning of Tiverton_,' 1612; and a small quarto pamphlet of 1613, printed in old English, affords another good example of this kind of news. It is entitled--it will be observed how fond the old newswriters were of alliterative titles--'_The Wonders of this windie winter, by terrible stormes and tempests, to be losse of lives and goods of many thousands of men, women, and children. The like by Sea and Land hath not been seene nor heard of in this age of the world. London. Printed by G. Eld for John Wright, and are to be sold at his Shop neere Christ-Church dore._ 1613.' On the title-page is a woodcut, a copy of which is annexed. [Illustration: GREAT STORM, 1613.] The tract opens very much in the manner of a sermon, and declares the dreadful occurrences related are intended to 'move sinful mankind to repentance and newnesse of life.' It then goes on to describe 'that within these three fore-passed months of October, November, and December, the devouring gulfes of the Sea hath swallowed up above two hundred saile of ships, as well of our own Country as of neighbouring Nations, with great store of passengers, seafaring men, and owners of the same, adventuring their dear lives in the managing of the aforesaid ships, with all their goods, and merchandizes, making for our country all lost; yea, all, I say, in these three fore-passed months, hath been lost and drenched in the deep vaults of this watery world, a thing both lamentable and fearfull, that in so short a time, nay, in a small part of the yeare, even in an instant, so many heavy mischances should happen, and so many worthy vessels of adventure miscarrie, which had bin sufficient (if goodspeed had prevailed) to have inricht a whole Citie and bettered a kingdome; but such is the will of God, and such is His just indignation against us. 'By certification from men of good accompt and calling, it is reported and knowne for truth, that in the month of October last, a fleete of fourteene sayle of ships making from Newcastle towards London, laden with sea-coale and other commodities of those parts, had their passage, by the tyranny of the windes, most untimely stopt, and violently caste into the ocean's wombe, in which ships were perished to the number of a hundred and forty seafaring men, besides other passengers, both of men and women, which at that time made their watery graves in the deepe sea. This first strooke feare into the hearts of people, which hath been since seconded with many calamities, which lieth heavy upon the heart of the reporter.' The writer then goes on to relate that between 'Dover and Calice there hath been found floating upon the waters in one weeke of fowle weather above seven hundred drowned persons of divers nations, as of English, Dutch, French, and Spanish, with parts and parcels of many splitted ships.' Further details are given at great length, and in rather a wordy manner. For instance, the writer describes the great number of women who are made widows by the disasters at sea, 'besides fatherlesse children and children fatherlesse.' Several examples are related of the force of the wind. 'A man and his wife riding over Maidenhead Bridge upon one horse, by the fierceness of the wind, were blowne beside, and there drowned both horse and all. God be merciful unto us and preserve us from all such like mischances. The like mishap befell in November last unto two Yorkshire men, as it is verified by some gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chancery, which knew the parties, the one of them a tanner, named Francis Browne, the other a clothier, called Richard Smith, both dwelling in a towne neere Wakefield side called Thorby; which two countriemen falling out upon small occassions wilfully purposed to come up to London, and their put their causes of themselves to the Lawes tryall; yet notwithstanding came they up together, where in riding over a bridge about Bedfordshire, and conferring of their inward grudges, they were blowne both beside into the river, where, by the fierceness of the windes, they were most lamentably drowned, both horse and men; and thus by sodaine death ended their malice, to the fear and amazement of all such as well could witness their envious proceedings. These and such like accidents may be fearful examples for the world to behold, especially for rich men, shewing to them the certaintie of life and goods subject to the chances of death and fortune, according to the saying of a worthy philosopher, "Full little thinks the man at morning sun What hap to him befalls ere day be done."' A great many other instances are related of the fury of the tempests, all of which the writer feels certain 'have been laid upon us for our sinnes;' and winds up with a pious exhortation to take warning. [Illustration: FLOODS AND TEMPESTS, 1613.] Another tract of the same character and date, also printed in black letter, has a larger and more elaborate woodcut on the title-page, representing sinking ships, the shore strewed with dead bodies, and on the outside of a church tower the devil is seen throwing down the broken steeple. The following is the address to the reader:--'Reader, I do here present unto thee and to thy understanding (if thou hast any) some part of the lamentable losses and unrecoverable mischances that have happened by occassion of these late blustering stormes of winde, and an innumerable deal of rayne, the which a great many thousands have too true cause to beleeve, because they are sharers in the misfortunes that this outragious weather hath caused. Now, if thou hast sustained no loss thyselfe, perhaps thou wilt not beleeve these things to be true that I have written; but if thou wilt or doest beleeve, then pray to God that it will please Him to give them patience that are loosers, and humilitie that are winners, and give God thanks that he hath so blessed thee that thou hast no share in these mishaps. But if thou wilt not beleeve, goe and looke, or else remaine still in thy unbeliefe.' A copy of the woodcut is given on the preceding page. Another pamphlet, of 1613, has the annexed woodcut, and is entitled '_Lamentable Newes, shewing the Wonderful Deliverance of Maister Edmond Pet, Sayler, and Maister of a Ship, dwelling in Seething-lane, in London, neere Barking Church; with other strange things lately hapned concerning those great windes and tempestuous weather, both at Sea and Lande_. _Imprinted at London by T. C., for William Barley, dwelling over against Cree Church, neere Algate._ 1613.' It describes the wreck of a Newcastle ship on the east coast, and how 'Maister Pet,' after being exposed to the winds and waves for forty-eight hours, was rescued by a Dutch man-of-war, he being the only survivor from his ship. It will be seen the woodcut represents two seamen lowering what appears to be an arm-chair into the sea. This was probably the artist's notion of the safest and most comfortable way to rescue shipwrecked persons. The same tract relates other occurrences during the stormy weather, such as 'A man neere Bedford, being thaching a house, was blowne off and kild; trees blown up by the rootes, houses and chimnies quite blown downe,' &c. 'All which is for our sinnes.' [Illustration: RESCUE OF EDMUND PET, MARINER, 1613.] Remarkable murders were even more favourite subjects with the early news-writers than storms and floods, a partiality that has continued down to our own time. A tract of 1613 is devoted to the details of 'Three Bloodie Murders,' but it is mainly taken up with an account of the murder of the Rev. William Storre, of Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. The full title runs thus:--'_Three Bloodie Murders. The first committed by Francis Cartwright upon William Storre, M. Arts Minister and Preacher at Market Rasen in the countie of Lincolne. The second committed by Elizabeth James on the body of her Mayde, in the Parish of Egham in Surrie: who was condemned for the same fact at Sainte Margaret hill in Southwark, the 2 of July 1613, and lieth in the White Lion till her deliverie; discovered by a dombe Mayde and her Dogge. The third committed upon a stranger very lately near Highgate foure mile from London, very strangely found out by a Dogge. Also the 2 of July 1613._' The circumstances relating to the murder of the Rev. William Storre are given at great length and with much minuteness:--'Not long since, there happened some controversey between the Lords and the rest of the inhabitants of Market Raisin in the Countie of Lincolne concerning the Commons and Libertie in the Towne Fields; and the matter being mooted by one of them in the Church immediately after evening prayer on a Sabaoth day, divers hot intemperate speeches passed among them; whereupon their Minister, whose name was Mr. Storre, much disliking so indiscreete a course, wished them to have respect both to the time and place where they were: And further advised, seeing the cause in hand concerned a multitude, (amongst whom, some of the least government would always be the readiest to speake) that they would therefore make choice of two or three of the fittest and most substantial men, to answere and undertake for all the rest. This motion seemed to please them well, and therefore they intreated him, that he would first, as a man indifferent speake what he thought concerning the cause. But he not wishing to intermeddle in that matter, twice or thrice denied their request; and the rather, for that there was present one Francis Cartwright, a young man of an unbridled humour, the only Sonne and Heire to one of the same Lordes of the Towne, betwixt whom and himselfe, there was growne no small unkindnesse. Yet in the end being pressed thereunto by their importunities with the consent of both the parties he delivered his opinion, useing therein such discretion and reasons to confirme the same that they could not directly except against him. Notwithstanding, seeing him incline more to the right of the Freeholders and the rest of the Commons than to favour their intended purpose, they seemed to dislike his speaches, and to cavill at the same. 'Young Cartwright standing by, not able any longer to contain himselfe tooke occassion hereupon to breake forthe abruptly into these wordes: The Priest deserveth a good Fee, he speaketh so like a Lawyer. Maister Storre having often aforetime had experience of his hotte stomacke and hastinesse as well towards others as himselfe, thought it best to reply little against him for that present.' The Rev. Mr. Storre's forbearance was of no avail, for next day young Cartwright took occasion to renew the quarrel, and in the public market-place 'proclaymed that Storre was a scurvie, lowsie, paltrie Priest; that whoever sayd he was his friend or spake in his cause, was a Rogue and a Rascall, that he would (but for the Law) cut his Throat, tear out his Heart, and hang his Quarters on the May-pole.' These sanguinary threats caused Mr. Storre to seek the protection of the Magistrates; and he afterwards preached a sermon containing words which young Cartwright thought were purposely directed against him, so that he 'more and more thirsted for revenge.' 'About a week after, he espied Mr. Storre walking about eight of the clocke in the morning alone, by the south side of the Towne in his cloake, went to a cutler's shop, and tooke out of the same a short sword, formerly provided and made very sharpe for that purpose, and presently overtooke him.' The young man attacked the clergyman, and the pamphlet gives a minute account of the dreadful wounds he inflicted upon him until 'A Mayde coming that way by occassion of businesse, cried out, whereupon he fledde.' The clergyman died of the frightful wounds he received, and the murderer was taken and carried before a justice, 'where, either for lacke of their due information of the truth, or by the corrupt and favourable affection of the magistrate, or both, there was a very slender bayle taken, and the malefactor by this flight sent away.' Cartwright's friends 'laboured by corrupt dealing and wrong information' to procure his pardon; but so barbarous a murder could not be hushed up, and the culprit eventually 'fled beyonde the seas.' [Illustration: MURDER OF THE REV MR. STORRE, 1613.] On the title-page of the pamphlet is a woodcut representing the murder of the Rev. Mr. Storre, which is copied above. The two other murders are not related at such great length, and are not illustrated. This is the earliest example I have met with of a kind of illustrated news that is very popular even in our own day. From the pains taken to describe all the circumstances of the crime and its consequences, the author evidently regarded it as a subject of the highest interest, and worthy of all the elaboration he was capable of bestowing upon it. [Illustration: NEWS FROM PENRHYN IN CORNWALL, 1618.] There is a very curious and rare tract of the date of 1618, which describes the circumstances of another remarkable murder. It is entitled '_News from Perin (Penrhyn), in Cornwall, of a most Bloody and unexampled Murther very lately committed by a Father on his owne sonne (who was lately returned from the Indyes), at the instigation of a mercilesse Step Mother, together with their severall most wretched endes, being all performed in the Month of September last, Anno 1618._' On the title-page is a woodcut representing the discovery of the murder, which is reprinted in the body of the pamphlet. Another woodcut illustrates a scene before the murder is committed, where the son hands his bag of treasure to his step-mother. The story is a very minute history of a scapegrace son, who, after various adventures, returns to his father's house a penitent and reformed man. Many years having elapsed, the son is not recognised by his father, who has married a second wife and is in straitened circumstances. The son begs a night's lodging and resolves not to make himself known till next morning. In the meantime, to show that he will be able to recompense his host and hostess for their hospitality, he gives the latter a bag of gold and jewels to take care of for him till the morrow. The woman, excited by the possession of the gold, thinks how easy it would be to relieve themselves from their embarrassments by murdering their guest and keeping possession of his treasure. She urges her husband to do the deed. After many refusals he consents, and the father murders his own son. In the morning it is made known to him who his victim is, and, in a fit of remorse and despair, he kills himself; upon which the guilty wife also commits suicide, and the tract thus winds up:--'And to the end it may be a warning to all covetous step mothers, and a content for all easie Fathers to avoyde the like hereafter. At the entreaty of divers Gentlemen in the Countrey, It is as neere the life as Pen and Incke could draw it out, thus put in Print.' William Lillo, the author of _George Barnwell_, is said to have founded his play of 'Fatal Curiosity' on this tract. Lillo was a prosperous London jeweller and a successful dramatic author. He depicted the harrowing details of this tragic story with great power; and the agonies of old Wilmot, the father, constitute one of the most appalling and affecting incidents of the drama. A curious black-letter tract of 1616, which is illustrated with a fearful apparition of three skeletons, is entitled, '_Miraculous Newes from the cittie of Holdt, in the Lordship of Munster (in Germany), the twentieth of September last past 1616, wherein there were plainly beheld three dead bodyes rise out of their Graves, admonishing the people of Judgements to come_.' The truth of this miraculous news is vouched for by 'divers worthy Persons and Burgimasters of the same citty,' whose names are given. This miraculous appearance was preceded by a fearful tempest of thunder and lightning. 'When this great tempest of thunder and lightning was ceased, there was heard throughout all the parts and places of the citty a most hideous and dolefull clamour or outcry, striking terror into all the people, yet no man could perceive whence it came, or where this clamour should bee. The people came over all the citty after the noise, but could not finde it; for when they were at one corner of the citty they then heard it at another; and when they were come to that other corner there it seemed to them to be in the middle of the citty; and to them that were in the middest it seemed farther off. So that all heard it, but none could find where it was, or from whence it came. 'At length the people assembling in the churchyard behelde there so strange and incredible judgements sent by the Lord, that for the most part the beholders fell flatt on their faces to the ground, crying loude unto the Lord for mercy. For there they beheld coming out of their graves three most ghostly and fearfull dead bodyes. 1. 'Whereof the first that was seen to arise out of the earth, seemed very white, cleane, and cleere, who opening his mouth and beating his handes together spake thus: "Blessed be God in the highest Heaven, that our releasement is come, for we have wayted many a hundred yeare for this time." The people hearing this fell upon their knees and prayed unto the Lord with weeping and great lamentation, saying: O Lord beholde us with thy merciful eyes, and let us not be overwhelmed or smothered in our sinnes. 2. 'The second dead man that arose out of the earth caused farre greater feare and trembling then the former, for the beholders saw him altogether from the toppe to the toe, like unto a burning fire; he likewise opened his mouth, and wringing his handes, and tearing his haire, cryed with a loude voyce: Repent yee, Repent yee; Almighty God hath taken his chastising rodde in hand, to punish the people for their sinnes, for their great wealth, for their great talke or presumptious wordes, for their pompe, and for their pride: The which the Lord will no longer suffer nor endure, for the cry and complaint of these sinnes is asended up into his eares; Wherefore hee will destroy you with a suddaine sicknesse, and fiery Pestilence, so that you shall not have so much time as one houre, to utter one worde, to call upon God. [Illustration: MIRACULOUS NEWS FROM MUNSTER IN GERMANY, 1616.] 3. 'After this fiery apparition and threatening speech ended, there appeared likewise rising out of the grave a third dead man, grinding and gnashing his teeth together, striking his handes the one against the other, and crying with a most fearful and hideous voyce, insomuch that it seemed to all the multitude there present, that the earth would certainly have rent in sunder; and spake that all the people plainly heard and understood his wordes, which were these; Woe, woe, woe, to the wicked; this is the time that wee have long attended and looked for; wherefore (ye people) looke to it, and beware lest the great day of the Lord come upon you suddainly, and fall upon you unprovided; for the time of his comming is neerer than you thinke. 'After the uttering of these wordes, the three dead Bodyes vanished and the Graves were shut againe, the heavens became cleere, the Tempest ceased, and all the people being released of their present horror and feare, rejoyced, and assembling themselves together, gave glory and laude, and praise unto the Lord for his Fatherly mercy and unspeakable goodnesse, in the mitigation of his furie, and withdrawing his heavy hand for the present. And thereupon appointed a sett day of supplications, prayers, and fasting, with true and unfained Repentance to be proclaimed, and observed.' This account is supplemented by an 'apology,' setting forth that men must not be incredulous because they hear of miraculous occurrences--that God is able to bring back the age of miracles, &c. The writer evidently thought his readers might require to be strengthened by argument before they could place implicit faith in his narrative, and so he takes some pains in his 'apology' to convince them that however unnatural and uncommon may be the appearances he relates, the wickedness of the world was a sufficient justification for this and other extraordinary events. A copy of the woodcut that illustrates this curious production is shown on the preceding page. [Illustration: 'GOOD NEWES TO CHRISTENDOME,' 1620.] In 1620 Nathaniel Butter printed an illustrated tract entitled _'Good Newes to Christendome, sent to a Venetian in Ligorne, from a Merchant in Alexandria, Discovering a Wonderfull and Strange Apparition, visibly seene for many dayes together in Arabia over the place where the supposed Tombe of Mahomet (the Turkish Prophet) is inclosed; By which the learned Arabians prognosticate the Reducing and Calling of the great Turke to Christianitie. With many other Notable Accidents: But the most remarkable is the miraculous rayning of Bloud about Rome_.' This tract, which is very long and discursive, relates, among other things, the apparition of a woman in the air, with a book in her hand, being the same apparition that is described at great length in a tract of 1642, which I shall quote hereafter. In the tract under notice there is a woodcut representing an army in the clouds--the clouds raining blood over a city; a woman with sword and book; and a crowd of men below watching the aerial phenomenon. The writer, in winding up his narrative, thus addresses his reader:--'If you cannot beleeve it as truth, yet to make that use of it as if it were true; and then shall you know, there is but one way to happiness, and all the predictions, prophesies, visions, apparitions, comets, inundations, stormes, tempests, famine, warre, alteration, and subversion of kingdomes, with all the cabinet of mysteries, tend to this end that _premium_ and _poena_ be the mastering curbs of the world; that is, that God hath a _Magazine_ of judgements to inflict on the obstinate sinner with punishments: and a store-house of mercy to support the penitent soule with comfort.' In 1627 we come upon a very curious and literal example of illustrated news. In that year Charles I., having declared war against France, fitted out an expedition of a hundred sail and an army of 7000 men for the support of the Protestant cause in that country. The King's favourite, the self-confident and vainglorious Duke of Buckingham, took the command of the expedition, although he was totally unfit for that position. He was personally brave, but possessed no other quality of a commander. He had no knowledge or experience of the art of war, and was too proud and presumptuous to be guided by the advice of others. The expedition was destined for Rochelle, then in possession of the Huguenots; but Buckingham went to sea without any understanding with his allies; and, when he anchored off Rochelle, he was refused admission to the town. He then directed his course to the neighbouring Isle of Rhè, where he succeeded in landing his men under the fire of his ships, and defeated a small French force commanded by the governor of the island. Instead of immediately following up his success, Buckingham allowed the French commander to secure and strengthen the fortress of St. Martin; and when he did advance he foolishly left the enemy in possession of another fort in his rear. He besieged the Castle of St. Martin for many weeks, and then led his men to storm the place without having made a single breach in the walls. They were repulsed at all points with considerable loss, and attempted to retreat to their ships; but Marshal Schomberg with a French army had thrown himself between the Duke and the fleet, and had put a strong corps and artillery into the fort of La Prèe, which Buckingham had left in his rear. No precautions whatever had been taken, and they suffered great loss before they could re-embark. The expedition was a total failure, and Buckingham returned to England beaten and disgraced. While the Duke of Buckingham was besieging the citadel of St. Martin, an attempt was made, or was said to have been made, upon his life by a French Papist or Jesuit, with a thick four-edged knife. An account of the Duke's proceedings while in the Isle of Rhè appears to have been sent home, and was published probably with a view of influencing the people in his favour and showing to what dangers he was exposed in the national service. There is in the British Museum a tract entitled '_A Continued Journal of all the Proceedings of the Duke of Buckingham his Grace, in the Isle of Ree since the last day of July. With the names of the Noblemen as were drowned and taken in going to releeve the Fort. As also the Portraiture of the knife with which his Excellence should have been murdered, which very knife was brought over by Captaine Buckestone and delivered unto the Duchess of Buckingham her Grace on Monday night last. Published by Authoritie. London, Printed for Thomas Walkley, and are to be sold at his shop at the Eagle and Childe in Britaines Bursse, 1627._' The following account is given of the intended assassination of the Duke:-- 'Received the 27 of August. 'Here I have sent you all the remarkable Newes that I have upon the last of _July_. There was taken by a _Perdue_ of ours, in the night (a Frenchman), that was sent by _Monsieur de Thorax_, the Governour of the Citadell, with a full intent to kill my Lord Duke; and for the speedy effecting of the same he had prepared a strange and dangerous _Poynado_, which, although it was taken about him, he confidently denied that he came not with any intent to kill the _Duke_ untill he came to the Tortures, which being presented before him he promised to discover all to my _Lord_ if he would promise him life, the which he did, and doth so performe with him, like a noble and mercifull Generall.' The tract contains a large woodcut of a knife, a reduced copy of which is given above, and underneath the engraving is the following description:--'This is the true Portraiture of the poysoned knife, both in length and breadth, having foure edges, with which a Jesuited Vilaine was sent out of the Fort by Monsieur de Thorax, the Governour of that Island, with an intent to have killed his Excellence, but by God's providence was delivered. His Grace hath used the French so nobly in all respects that he rather deserved their love than any wayes to have his life thus treacherously sought after, under the pretence that it was a meritorious act. Which knife was brought over into England by Captaine Buckestone, and by him delivered unto the Dutches of Buckingham her Grace on Monday night last.' [Illustration: KNIFE INTENDED FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, 1627.] Whether the attempt on Buckingham's life was a reality or was got up for the purpose of endearing the court favourite to all good Protestants, it foreshadowed his ultimate fate. In the following year, while he was at Portsmouth, and about to embark on a second expedition to Rochelle, he was stabbed by Felton, who had served under him in the expedition to the Isle of Rhè. Besides the subjects already noticed, the old news-writers delighted in signs and portents in the air, and failed not to improve the occasion whenever they met with a text so much to their liking. There was a fall of meteorites in 1628, which was chronicled at the time in an illustrated pamphlet, entitled, '_Looke up and See Wonders: a miraculous Apparition in the Ayre, lately seen in Barke-shire, at Bawlkin Greene, neere Hatford, April 9th, 1628._' The author, like his fellow-chroniclers, already quoted, regards the occurrence as a sign of Heaven's displeasure, and addresses his readers thus:--'So Benummed wee are in our Sences, that albeit God himselfe Holla in our Eares, wee by our wills are loath to heare him. His dreadfull Pursiuants of _Thunder and Lightning_ terrifie vs so long as they haue vs in their fingers, but beeing off, wee dance and sing in the midst of our Follies.' He then goes on to tell how 'the foure great quarter-masters of the World (_the foure Elements_) ... haue bin in ciuill Warres one against another.... As for _Fire_, it hath denied of late to warme vs, but at vnreasonable rates, and extreame hard conditions. But what talke I of this earthy nourishment of _fire_? How haue the _Fires_ of Heauen (some few yeares past) gone beyond their bounds, and appeared in the shapes of Comets and Blazing Starres?... The _Aire_ is the shop of Thunder and Lightning. In that, hath of late been held a Muster of terrible enemies and threatners of Vengeance, which the great Generall of the Field who Conducts and Commands all such Armies (_God Almighty, I meane_) auert from our Kingdome, and shoote the arrowes of his indignation some other way, vpon the bosomes of those that would confound his Gospell.... Many windowes hath he set open in heauen, to shewe what Artillery hee has lying there, and many of our Kings haue trembled, when they were shewne vnto them. What blazing Starres (euen at Noone-dayes) in those times hung houering in the Aire? How many frightfull Ecclipses both of Sun and Moone?... It is not for man to dispute with God, why he has done this so often ... but, with feare and trembling casting our eyes vp to Heauen, let vs now behold him, bending his Fist onely, as lately he did to the terrour and affrightment of all the Inhabitants dwelling within a Towne in the County of Barkshire.... The name of the Towne is _Hatford_, some eight miles from _Oxford_. Ouer this Towne, vpon Wensday being the ninth of this instant Moneth of _April_, 1628, about fiue of the clocke in the afternoone this miraculous, prodigious and fearefull handy-worke of God was presented.... The weather was warme, and without any great shewe of distemperature, only the skye waxed by degrees a little gloomy, yet not so darkened but that the Sunne still and anon, by the power of the brightnesse, brake through the thicke clouds.... 'A gentle gale of wind then blowing from betweene the _West_ and _North-west_, in an instant was heard, first a hideous rumbling in the _Ayre_, and presently after followed a strange and fearfull peale of Thunder, running vp and downe these parts of the _Countrey_, but it strake with the loudest violence, and more furious tearing of the _Ayre_, about a place called _The White Horse Hill_, than in any other. The whole order of this thunder, carried a kind of Maiesticall state with it, for it maintayned (_to the affrighted Beholders' seeming_) the fashion of a fought Battaile. 'It beganne thus: First, for an onset, went off one great _Cannon_ as it were of _thunder_ alone, like a warning peece to the rest that were to follow. Then a little while after was heard a second; and so by degrees a third, vntil the number of 20 were discharged (or thereabouts) in very good order, though in very great terror. 'In some little distance of time after this was audibly heard the sound of a Drum beating a Retreate. Amongst all these angry peales shot off from Heauen, this begat a wonderful admiration, that at the end of the report of every cracke, or _Cannon-thundering_, a hizzing noyse made way through the _Ayre_, not vnlike the flying of _Bullets_ from the mouthes of great Ordnance; and by the iudgement of all the terror-stricken witnesses they were _Thunder-bolts_. For one of them was seene by many people to fall at a place called _Bawlkin Greene_, being a mile and a half from _Hatford_: Which _Thunder-bolt_ was by one Mistris _Greene_ caused to be digged out of the ground, she being an eye-witnesse amongst many others, of the manner of the falling. 'The forme of the _Stone_ is three-square, and picked in the end: In colour outwardly blackish, some-what like Iron: Crusted ouer with that blacknesse about the thicknesse of a shilling. Within it is soft, of a grey colour, mixed with some kind of minerall, shining like small peeces of glasse. 'This _Stone_ brake in the fal: The whole peece is in weight nineteene pound and a halfe: The greater peece that fell off weigheth fiue pound, which with other small peeces being put together, make foure and twenty pound and better.... 'It is in the Countrey credibly reported that some other Thunder-stones haue bin found in other places: but for certainty there was one taken vp at _Letcombe_, and is now in the custody of the _Shriefe_.' This curious account is illustrated with a quaint woodcut, in the foreground of which the thunder-bolt seen by Mistress Green is being 'digged out of the ground.' [Illustration: FALL OF METEORS AT BAWLKIN GREEN, BERKSHIRE, APRIL 9, 1628.] Amongst the many publications relating to the victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, there was one entitled the _Swedish Intelligencer_, printed at London, in 1632, for Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne, both of them names associated with the first establishment of newspapers in England. The _Swedish Intelligencer_ gives very full accounts of the exploits of Gustavus, and it is illustrated with his portrait, a bird's-eye view of the siege of Magdeburg, a plan showing how the King of Sweden and his army crossed the river Lech into Bavaria, and a plan or bird's-eye view of the battle of Lutzen, where Gustavus was killed. The portrait, the siege of Magdeburg, and the battle of Lutzen, are engraved on copper, but the passage of the Lech is a woodcut. I have copied the latter, the others being too elaborate for reproduction on a reduced scale. The three last named are very curious as illustrations of war news. Gustavus had crossed the Danube, and his troops overspread the country between that river and the river Lech. Field Marshal Tilly was in front of him, waiting for reinforcements from the army of Wallenstein, in Bohemia, and the junction of fresh levies raised in Bavaria, with which he hoped to drive the invaders back across the Danube. The account in the _Swedish Intelligencer_ of this celebrated passage of the River Lech is too long for quotation, but I give a condensed version of the circumstances from other sources. The Lech takes its rise among the mountains of the Tyrol, and, after washing the walls of Landsberg and Augsburg, falls into the Danube at a short distance from the town of Rain. The banks are broken and irregular, and the channel uncertain. Nor are there many rivers of the same size in Germany which can be compared with it in the strength and rapidity of its current. The united forces of Bavaria and the League, with this efficient means of defence in front, extended their right wing towards the Danube and their left towards Rain, while the banks of the river, as far as the city of Augsburg, were observed by their patrols, supported by detached bodies of infantry. Tilly had taken the precaution of breaking down the bridges over the Lech, and had thrown up field works at points where he judged the passage might be considered attended with fewest difficulties. That the Swedes would attack him in his main position was a pitch of daring to which, well as he was acquainted with the enterprising spirit of the king, he could scarcely suspect him of having yet attained. Such, however, was the full determination of Gustavus. After he had reconnoitred the course of the Lech for some miles, at the imminent peril of his life, he fixed upon a point between Rain and Thierhauppen, where the river makes a sweep to the eastward, as the spot for carrying his venturous design into effect. The king's first intention was to throw a floating bridge over the stream, but the attempt was no sooner made than it was found to be rendered hopeless by the rapidity of the current. It was then imagined that tressels might be sunk, and firmly secured by weights in the bed of the river, on which the flooring of the bridge might afterwards be securely laid. The king approved of this plan, and workmen were commanded to prepare the necessary materials at the small village of Oberendorf, situated about half a mile from the spot. During the night of the 4th of April the work was entirely finished, the supports fixed in the stream, and the planks for forming the bridge brought down to the water's edge. The king had, in the meantime, ordered a trench to be dug along the bank of the river for the reception of bodies of musketeers, and several new batteries to be constructed close to the shore, the fire from which, as they were disposed along a convex line, necessarily crossed upon the opposite side; those upon the left hand of the Swedes playing upon the left of the enemy, and those on the right upon the wood held by the Bavarians. Another battery, slightly retired from the rest, directed its fire against the entrenchments occupied by Tilly's centre. By daybreak on the 5th, all necessary preparations having been made, the bridge was begun to be laid, and completed under the king's inspection. Three hundred Finland volunteers were the first who crossed, excited by the reward of ten crowns each to undertake the dangerous service of throwing up a slight work upon the other side for its protection. By four in the afternoon the Finlanders had finished their undertaking, having been protected from a close attack by the musketry of their own party and the batteries behind them, from which the king is said to have discharged more than sixty shots with his own hand, to encourage his gunners to charge their pieces more expeditiously. The work consisted merely of an embankment surrounded by a trench, but it was defended both by the direct and cross fire of the Swedes. As soon as it was completed, Gustavus, stationing himself with the King of Bohemia at the foot of the bridge, commanded Colonel Wrangle, with a chosen body of infantry and two or three field-pieces, to pass over, and after occupying the work, to station a number of musketeers in a bed of osiers upon the opposite side. The Swedes crossed the bridge with little loss, and after a short but desperate struggle the Imperialists were routed. The whole of the Swedish army was soon upon the eastern bank of the Lech, where the king, without troubling himself with the pursuit of the enemy, commanded his army to encamp, and ordered the customary thanksgivings to be offered for his victory.[1] The account in the _Swedish Intelligencer_ is wound up in these words: 'And this is the story of the King's bridge over the _Lech_, description whereof we have thought worthy to be here in Figure imparted unto you.' Then follows an 'Explanation of the Letters in the Figure of the _Bridge_,' given below the illustration. The engraving does not appear to have been entirely satisfactory to the author, for on its margin the following words are printed: 'Our Cutter hath made the Ordnance too long, and to lye too farre into the River. The Hole also marked with R, should have been on the right hand of the Bridge.' [Illustration: PASSAGE OF THE RIVER LECH, BY GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. FROM THE 'SWEDISH INTELLIGENCER,' 1632.] REFERENCES TO PASSAGE OF THE RIVER LECH. 'A The King of Sweeden, and the King of Bohemia by him. B The Bridge. C A Trench or Brestworke, in which the Kings Musketeers were lodged, betwixt the severall Batteryes of the great Ordnance, which Musketeers are represented by the small stroakes made right forwards. D Divers little Field-pieces. E Plat-formes or Batteryes for the Kings greater Cannon. F The Halfe-moone, with its Pallisadoe or Stocket, beyond the Bridge, and for the guard of it. It was scarcely bigge enough to lodge a hundred men in. G A little Underwood, or low Bushy place. H A plaice voyd of wood; which was a Bache, sometimes overflowne. I A Brestworke for Tillyes Musketeers. K K Tilly and Altringer; or the place where they were shot. L The high wood where the Duke of Bavaria stood. M Tilleyes great Batteryes to shoot down the Bridge. N A small riveret running thorow the wood. O Tillyes great Brestworke; not yet finished. Begun at sixe in the morning; and left off when he was shot. P Some Horse-guards of Tillyes: layd scatteringly here and there all along the river from Rain to Augsburg. Q The kings Horse-guards, and Horse-sentryes. R A hole in the earth, or casual advantageable place; wherein some of the Kings Foot were lodged. S The Hill behind Tillyes great worke. T The fashion of the Tressels or Arches for the Kings Bridge.' In 1636 the Sallee Rovers had become very troublesome, and not only hindered British commerce, on the high seas, but even infested the English coasts. They had captured and carried into slavery many Englishmen, for whose release a 'Fleete of Shippes' was sent out in January, 1636. Assisted by the Emperor of Morocco, the nest of pirates was destroyed and the captives released. A full account of this expedition is given in a curious pamphlet, entitled, '_A true Journal of the Sally Fleet with the proceedings of the Voyage, published by John Dunton, London, Mariner, Master of the Admirall called the Leopard. Whereunto is annexed a List of Sally Captives names and the places where they dwell, and a Description of the three Townes in a Card. London, printed by John Dawson for Thomas Nicholes, and are to be sold at the Signe of the Bible in Popes Head Alley, 1637_.' This tract is illustrated by a large plan of Sallee, engraved on copper, with representations of six English vessels of war on the sea. After minutely describing the proceedings of the voyage, and giving a long list of the captives' names, the journalist winds up in these words: 'All these good Shippes with the Captives are in safety in England, we give God thanks. And bless King Charles and all those that love him.' At the end of the pamphlet is printed the authority for its publication: 'Hampton Court, the 20. of October, 1637. This Journall and Mappe may be printed.' There is an illustrated pamphlet of this period which I have not been able to see. It is entitled, '_Newes, and Strange Newes from St. Christopher's of a Tempestuous Spirit, which is called by the Indians a Hurrycano or Whirlwind; whereunto is added the True and Last Relation (in verse) of the Dreadful Accident which happened at Witticombe in Devonshire, 21. October, 1638_.' The _Weekly News_, begun in 1622, had been in existence sixteen years when the idea of illustrating current events seems to have occurred to its conductors; for in the number for December 20, 1638, there is, besides the usual items of foreign news, an account of a 'prodigious eruption of fire, which exhaled in the middest of the ocean sea, over against the Isle of Saint Michael, one of the Terceras, and the new island which it hath made.' The text is illustrated by a full-page engraving showing 'the island, its length and breadth, and the places where the fire burst out.' I have not been able to find a copy of the _Weekly News_ for December 20, 1638, either in the British Museum or elsewhere. My authority for the above statement is a letter in the _Times_ of October 13, 1868. As far as I have been able to ascertain, no other illustrations were published in the _Weekly News_, so that we must conclude the engraving of the 'prodigious eruption of fire' was an experiment, which in its result was not encouraging to the proprietor or conductors of the journal. [Illustration: TAKING OF THE CASTLE OF ARTAINE, IRELAND, 1641.] When the Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out, many news-books were published describing the transactions in that country, and several of them are illustrated. I may here remark that the illustrations of events in these pamphlets, as well as many of those contained in the numerous tracts published during the Civil War in England, appear to be works of pure imagination, and were, probably, invented by the artist just as a modern draughtsman would illustrate a work of fiction. Others, again, were evidently old woodcuts executed for some other purpose. A few instances occur, however, where drawings have been made from actual scenes, and sometimes maps and plans are given as illustrations of a battle or a siege. This rising of the Roman Catholics in Ireland began with a massacre of the Protestants, and, according to the tracts published at the time, the atrocities of recent wars in Bulgaria and elsewhere were equalled in every way by the Roman Catholics in Ireland in the seventeenth century. The illustrations in these tracts are very coarse woodcuts. One represents the arrest of a party of conspirators, and another is a view of a town besieged, while a third gives a group of prisoners supplicating for mercy. The best illustration that I have met with of this Irish news is contained in a pamphlet entitled, '_Approved, good and happy Newes from Ireland; Relating how the Castle of Artaine was taken from the Rebels, two of their Captaines kild, and one taken prisoner by the Protestants, with the arrival of 2000 foot, and 300 horse from England. Also a great skirmish between the Protestants and the Rebels at a place near Feleston, wherein the English obtained great renowne and victory: Whereunto is added a true relation of the great overthrow which the English gave the Rebels before Drogheda, sent in a letter bearing date the 27 of February to Sir Robert King, Knight, at Cecill house in the Strand. Printed by order of Parliament. London, Printed for John Wright 1641._' The woodcut on the title-page of this tract represents the taking of the castle of Artaine, but there is only the following very short paragraph relating to it:--'The last news from Ireland 7 March 1641. The 10 of February our men went to _Artaine_ against a castle so called, which had before done some mischiefe, to some of our men, the enemy being in it. But the enemy fled before our second coming, and left the Castle, and a garrison was left in it by us.' The other news is related more at length, and one of the paragraphs runs thus:--'On the 13 a man was brought to our City, being taken by some of our scattering men scouting about our City, who confest without constraint, that he had killed an _Englishwoman_ at a place called _Leslipson_, 6 Miles West of our City, and washed his hands in her bloud, being set on by the popish Priests so to doe; he was presently hanged, but dyed with much repentance and a protestant, which few do.' The concluding paragraph of this pamphlet shows the writer to have been a man of a commercial spirit:--'Tis to be feared that a famine is like to be in our City, in that still men come to us and provision is short, and none of yours that come to us bring any vittailes, great taxes are upon us, more than can be borne. He that had Butter, and Cheese, and Cloath, at between 6 and 14 shillings a yard here sent by any out of London might make a good trade of it. Cheshire Cheese is sould here for sixpence a pound already. Some of your Londoners are come hither (acquaintance of mine) that will send for such things, for great profit may be made by them and quicke returne.' Annexed is a facsimile of the woodcut representing the taking of the Castle of Artaine. Several other pamphlets relating to the Irish Rebellion are illustrated, but, with a few exceptions, the cuts bear very little relation to the subject, and were probably not executed for the purpose. One gives an account of a victory obtained by the English at Dundalk in 1642, and it has a woodcut of a man firing a cannon against a town, a copy of which is appended. [Illustration: VICTORY AT DUNDALK, 1642.] The description is in the following words:--'Newes from Ireland. On Monday morning came three Gentlemen to our City of Dublin from Sir Henry Tichbourne, who brought a message to the state of a great and happy victory obtained by the aforesaid Sir Henry Tichbourne with 2000 horse and foot marched to Ardee, and there put 400 of the Rebels to the sword, yet lost not one man of our side; from thence upon the Saturday following, he mustered up his forces against a place called Dundalke some 14 miles northward from Tredath, where the enemy was 5000 strong, and well fortified. At his first approach there issued out of the Towne 3000 of the Rebels who all presented themselves in Battallia, our Forlorne hopes of horse and foot had no sooner fired upon them, but they routed the Rebels. Captaine Marroe's Troope of horse setting on killed great store of the Rebels who thereupon retreated to the Towne, made fast the gates, and ran out at the other end to their boats beforehand provided: Our Army coming in fired the gates, entred, and killed those within. Captain Marroe followed the flying foe, and slew abundance of them upon the strand, and it is reported by them that if he had known the Fords and the River, he had cut them all off, if he had gained the other side of the River, but being a stranger, could not doe it (wanting a guide) without endangering the Troope. There was slaine of the Rebels in this sudden skirmish not less than 1100 besides what they took prisoners. Sir Philomy O'Neale fled with the rest of the Commanders; but 10 common soldiers were lost of our side. Sir Philomy O'Neale made speed away to a place called Newry, a chiefe garrison of the Rebels. Sir Henry Tichbourne hath sent 600 men more to Dublin, intending that place shall be the next he begins withall, which is granted, and tomorrow there goeth to him 500 men, if not 5000, for whose safety and prosperity in the meantime is the subject of our daily prayers that he may have as good success as in all his other designs from the first till this time; for no man was ever so beloved by his souldiers, that protest to follow him while they can stand. We are in great hope he will recover the Newry very shortly; it is credibly reported, that they got 20,000 pounds at least in pillage at Dundalke.' In another pamphlet, dated 1642, there is an account of a battle at Kilrush, which is also illustrated with a woodcut. The circumstances are related in detail, but they are sufficiently set forth in the title, without further quotation:--'Captaine Yarner's Relation of the Battaile fought at Kilrush upon the 15th day of Aprill, by my Lord of Ormond, who with 2500 Foot and 500 Horse, overthrew the Lord Mountgarret's Army, consisting of 8000 Foot and 400 Horse, all well armed, and the choyce of eight Counties. Together with a Relation of the proceedings of our Army, from the second to the later end of Aprill, 1642.' [Illustration: BATTLE OF KILRUSH, 1642.] Many other illustrated pamphlets relating to current events were published at this time. It would appear that in 1641 there was a visitation of the plague in London, and a tract of that date has reference to it. It is entitled:--'_London's Lamentation, or a fit admonishment for City and Country, wherein is described certain causes of this affliction and visitation of the Plague, yeare 1641, which the Lord hath been pleased to inflict upon us, and withall what means must be used to the Lord, to gain his mercy and favour, with an excellent spirituall medicine to be used for the preservative both of Body and Soule._' The 'spiritual medicine' recommended is an earnest prayer to heaven at morning and evening and a daily service to the Lord. The writer endeavours to improve the occasion very much like a preacher in the pulpit and continues his exhortation thus:--'Now seeing it is apparent that sin is the cause of sicknesse: It may appear as plainly that prayer must be the best means to procure health and safety, let not our security and slothfulnesse give death opportunity, what man or woman will not seem to start, at the signe of the red Crosse, as they passe by to and fro in the streets? And yet being gone they think no more on it. It may be, they will say, such a house is shut up, I saw the red crosse on the doore; but look on thine own guilty conscience, and thou shalt find thou hast a multitude of red crimson sinnes remaining in thee.' I have copied the illustration to this tract, and it will be seen that it is divided into two parts--one representing a funeral procession advancing to where men are digging two graves--the other showing dead bodies dragged away on hurdles. The first is labelled 'London's Charity.' The second 'The Countrie's Crueltie.' This was perhaps intended to impress the reader in favour of the orderly burial of the dead in the city churchyards, a subject on which public opinion has very much changed since that time. [Illustration: THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 1641.] We have already noticed that the vicissitudes of the sea and the accidents of maritime life, which supply so much material to modern newspapers, were not less attractive to the early news-writers. There is a very circumstantial account of the voyage and wreck of a ship called the _Merchant Royall_ in a pamphlet published in 1641. The engraving it contains is the same block used by Thomas Greepe in 1587. It is entitled, '_Sad news from the seas, being a true relation of the losse of that good Ship called the Merchant Royall, which was cast away ten leagues from the Lands end, on Thursday night, being the 23 of September last 1641 having in her a world of Treasure, as this story following doth truly relate_.' Another illustrated pamphlet, dated 1642, contains a long and minute narrative of how a certain ship called the _Coster_ was boarded by a native of Java, who, watching his opportunity, murdered the captain and several of the crew, but who was afterwards killed when assistance arrived from another ship. There is a woodcut representing the murders, and the title runs as follows:--'_A most Execrable and Barbarous murder done by an East Indian Devil, or a native of Java-Major, in the Road of Bantam, Aboard an English ship called the Coster, on the 22 of October last, 1641. Wherein is shewed how the wicked Villain came to the said ship and hid himself till it was very dark, and then he murdered all the men that were aboard, except the Cooke and three Boyes. And lastly, how the murderer himselfe was justly requited. Captain William Minor being an eye-witnesse of this bloudy Massacre. London: Printed for T. Banks, July the 18, 1642._' The very full particulars given in this pamphlet show how minute and circumstantial the old news-writers were in their narratives. It will be seen by the following extracts that the story has an air of truth given to it by careful attention to various small matters of detail:-- 'On Friday the 22 of October last 1641 towards night there came aboard an English ship called the _Coster_, in a small Prow (or flat Boat with one paddle) a proper young man, (a Java, which is as much as to say as a man born or native of the Territory of Java.) This man, (or devill in mans shape) with a pretence to sell some Hews, (hatching mischiefe in his damned minde,) did delay and trifle time, because he would have the night more dark for him to do his deeds of darknesse. At last he sold 6 Hews for half a Royall of 8 which is not much above two shillings. There came also another Java aboard, (with the like small Prow or Boat) to whom he gave the half Royall, sent him away and bade him make haste; he being asked for what the other Java went for, the answer was that he had sent him for more Hews and Goates to sell. 'Night being come, and very dark, (for it was the last night of the wane of the Moone) this inhumane dog staid lurking under the half deck having 2 Crests (or dangerous waving daggers) and a Buckler, of which he would have sold one and the Buckler with it, and as he was discoursing he took off one of the Crests hefts and put cloth about the tongue of the Blade, and made it sure fast: on the other Crest he rolled the handle with a fine linnen cloth to make it also sure from slipping in his hand; these things he did whilst the Master, Robert Start, Stephen Roberts, his mate, Hugh Rawlinson, Chirurgeon, William Perks, Steward, James Biggs, Gunner, and 3 Boys or Youths attending. At supper they were very merry, and this Caitiffe took notice of their carelessnesse of him to suffer him to sit on the quarter deck upon a Cot close by them. 'Supper being ended about 6 at night the Master went to his Cabin to rest, the Gunner asked leave to go ashore, (the ship riding but half a mile from landing.) Afterwards Robert Rawlinson and Perks walked upon the quarter deck; and the devilish Java perceiving the Master to be absent, he asked the Boyes where he was, who answered he was gone to sleepe. This question he demanded 3 or 4 times of the Boyes, and finding it to be so, he arose from the place where he sate, which was on the starboard side and went about the Table next the Mizzen Mast (where Roberts, Rawlings and Perks were walking) with his Target about his Neck for defence against Pikes, or the like; and his 2 Crests in his hand, and upon a sudden cries _a Muck_, which in that language is I hazard or run my death. Then first he stabd Roberts, secondly he stabd Rawlinson, thirdly Perks, all three at an instant. After that he let drive at the Boyes, but they leapd down, and ran forward into the forecastle, where they found the Cooke, to whom the Boyes related what had happened.' Further details are given at great length, showing how the savage continued his bloody work, and how he was finally overpowered. The narrative thus winds up:-- [Illustration: MURDERS ON BOARD AN ENGLISH SHIP, 1642.] 'It is observable that of all these men that were thus butchered, the Hel-hound did never stab any man twice, so sure did he strike, nor did he pursue any man that kept clear of his stand under the quarter-deck. So there dyed in all (in this bloody action) Robert Start, Master, Stephen Roberts, his Mate, Hugh Rawlinson, Chirurgeon, William Perks, Steward, Walter Rogers, Gunner's Mate, and Francis Drake, Trumpeter of the _Mary_. And after the Muck, Java, or Devill, had ended the first part of this bloody Tragedy, there was only left in the ship, the Cooke, 3 Boyes, and one John Taylor, that was almost dead with a shott he foolishly made. So that 7 men were unfortunately lost (as you have heard) and the Gunner escaped very narrowly through God's merciful prevention, from the like of these related disasters and suddaine mischiefs, Good Lord deliver us.' The engraving, like all those belonging to this period, is very rough; but it was evidently prepared specially for the occasion, and some care appears to have been taken to represent the '_Java_' as he is described. It is a genuine attempt to illustrate the story, and on that account is more interesting than some of the woodcuts in the early newspapers. The Earl of Strafford, who was executed on Tower Hill, May 12, 1641, forms the subject of more than one illustrated tract of this period. In 1642 was published a curious pamphlet, consisting of an engraved title and eight pages of illustrations, representing the principal events of 1641-2. There are sixteen illustrations, exclusive of the title, two on each page. They are all etched on copper, and are done with some freedom and artistic ability. I shall have occasion to refer to this pamphlet hereafter; but at present I have copied the engraving entitled, 'The Earle of Strafford for treasonable practises beheaded on the Tower-hill.' In this example of illustrated news the artist has faithfully represented the locality in his background, but there the truth of his pencil stops. Strafford himself, although his head is not yet severed from his body, lies at full length on the scaffold, and instead of the usual block used for decapitations the victim's head rests on an ordinary plank or thick piece of wood. There is no one standing on the scaffold but the executioner, whereas history asserts that the Earl was attended in his last moments by his brother, Sir George Wentworth, the Earl of Cleveland, and Archbishop Usher. These omissions, if they were noticed at all, were no doubt looked upon as trivial faults in the infancy of illustrated journalism, and before a truth-loving public had learnt to be satisfied with nothing less than 'sketches done on the spot.' What appears to be a more correct view of the execution was, however, published at the time. In the British Museum are two etchings by Hollar (single sheets, 1641), representing the trial and execution of the Earl of Strafford. They both look as if they had been done from sketches on the spot, that of the execution giving a correct view of the Tower and the surrounding buildings, but they are too crowded to admit of reproduction on a reduced scale. [Illustration: EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD, 1641.] The taste of the time tolerated the publication of satires and petty lampoons even upon dead men. Soon after Strafford's death a tract was published entitled '_A Description of the Passage of Thomas, late Earle of Strafford, over the River of Styx, with the Conference betwixt him, Charon, and William Noy_.' There is a dialogue between Strafford and Charon, of which the following is a specimen:-- '_Charon._--In the name of Rhodomont what ayles me? I have tugged and tugged above these two hours, yet can hardly steere one foot forward; either my dried nerves deceive my arme, or my vexed Barke carries an unwonted burden. From whence comest thou, Passenger? '_Strafford._--From England. '_Charon._--From England! Ha! I was counsailed to prepare myselfe, and trim up my boat. I should have work enough they sayd ere be long from England, but trust me thy burden alone outweighs many transported armies, were all the expected numbers of thy weight poor Charon well might sweat. [Illustration: STRAFFORD CROSSING THE STYX, 1641.] '_Strafford._--I bear them all in one. '_Charon._--How? Bear them all in one, and thou shalt pay for them all in one, by the just soul of Rhodomont; this was a fine plot indeed, sure this was some notable fellow being alive, that hath a trick to cosen the devil being dead. What is thy name? '(Strafford sighs.) '_Charon._--Sigh not so deep. Take some of this Lethæan water into thine hand, and soope it up; it will make thee forget thy sorrows. '_Strafford._--My name is Wentworth, Strafford's late Earle. '_Charon._--Wentworth! O ho! Thou art hee who hath been so long expected by William Noy. He hath been any time these two months on the other side of the banke, expecting thy coming daily.' Strafford gives Charon but one halfpenny for his fare, whereat the ferryman grumbles. Then ensues a conversation between Strafford and William Noy, part of which is in blank verse. The tract is illustrated with a woodcut, representing Strafford in the ferryman's boat with William Noy waiting his arrival on the opposite bank. [Illustration: A BURLESQUE PLAY ABOUT ARCHBISHOP LAUD. ACT I. 1641.] No man of his time appears to have excited the hostile notice of the press more than Archbishop Laud. The Archbishops of Canterbury had long been considered censors of the press by right of their dignity and office; and Laud exercised this power with unusual tyranny. The ferocious cruelty with which he carried out his prosecutions in the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission made his name odious, and his apparent preference for ceremonial religion contributed to render him still more unpopular. Men were put in the pillory, had their ears cut off, their noses slit, and were branded on the cheeks with S. S. (Sower of Sedition), and S. L. (Schismatical Libeller). They were heavily fined, were whipped through the streets, were thrown into prison; and all for printing and publishing opinions and sentiments unpleasing to Archbishop Laud, under whose rule this despotic cruelty became so prevalent that it was a common thing for men to speak of So-and-so as having been 'Star-Chambered.' No wonder, when the tide turned, that the long-pent-up indignation found a vent through the printing-press. Amongst the numerous tracts that were published after the suppression of the Star Chamber were many which held up Laud to public execration. He was reviled for his ambition, reproached for his cruelty, and caricatured for his Romish sympathies. During the four years between his fall and his execution, portraits of him and other illustrations relating to his career may be found in many pamphlets. I propose to introduce the reader to some of these, as examples of the kind of feeling that was excited by a man whose character and actions must have contributed not a little to bring about a convulsion which shook both the Church and the throne to their foundations. It must have been with a peculiar satisfaction that Prynne, one of the chief sufferers under Laud's rule, found himself armed with the authority of the House of Commons to despoil his old enemy. Probably a similar feeling caused many others to chuckle and rub their hands when they read, '_A New Play called Canterburie's Change of Diet_, printed in 1641.' This is a small tract illustrated with woodcuts, and is written in the form of a play. The persons represented are the Archbishop of Canterbury, a doctor of physic, a lawyer, a divine, a Jesuit, a carpenter and his wife. The doctor of physic is intended for either Dr. Alexander Leighton, or Dr. John Bastwick, both of whom had their ears cut off; the lawyer is Prynne; and the divine is meant for the Rev. Henry Burton, a London clergyman, who also suffered under Laud's administration. In the first act enter the Archbishop, the doctor, the lawyer, and the divine. Being seated, a variety of dishes are brought to the table, but Laud expresses himself dissatisfied with the fare placed before him and demands a more racy diet. He then calls in certain bishops, who enter armed with muskets, bandoleers, and swords. He cuts off the ears of the doctor, the lawyer, and the divine, and tells them he makes them an example that others may be more careful to please his palate. On the previous page is a copy of the cut which illustrates the first act. [Illustration: A BURLESQUE PLAY ABOUT ARCHBISHOP LAUD. ACT II.] [Illustration: A BURLESQUE PLAY ABOUT ARCHBISHOP LAUD. ACT III.] In the second act the Archbishop of Canterbury enters a carpenter's yard by the waterside, and seeing a grindstone he is about to sharpen his knife upon it, when he is interrupted by the carpenter who refuses to let him sharpen his knife upon his grindstone, lest he should treat him (the carpenter) as he had treated the others. The carpenter then holds the Archbishop's nose to the grindstone, and orders his apprentice to turn with a will. The bishop cries out, 'Hold! hold! such turning will soon deform my face. O, I bleed, I bleed, and am extremely sore.' The carpenter, however, rejoins, 'But who regarded "hold" before? Remember the cruelty you have used to others, whose bloud crieth out for vengeance. Were not their ears to them as pretious as your nostrils can be to you? If such dishes must be your fare, let me be your Cooke, I'll invent you rare sippets.' Then enters a Jesuit Confessor who washes the bishop's wounded face and binds it up with a cloth. There is also an illustration to this act which is here copied. [Illustration: ASSAULT ON LAMBETH PALACE, 1642.] In the third act the Archbishop and the Jesuit are represented in a great Cage (the Tower) while the carpenter and his wife, conversing together, agree that the two caged birds will sing very well together. The woodcut to this act represents a fool laughing at the prisoners. There is a fourth act in which the King and his Jester hold a conversation about the Bishop and the confessor in the cage. There is no printer's or publisher's name to this play, only the date, 1641. The pamphlet previously referred to as containing a picture of Strafford's execution, has also an engraving showing how the tide of public feeling had set against Archbishop Laud. The powerful Churchman had been impeached for high treason; he was deprived of all the profits of his high office and was imprisoned in the Tower. All his goods in Lambeth Palace, including his books, were seized, and even his Diary and private papers were taken from him by Prynne, who acted under a warrant from the House of Commons. The engraving under notice is entitled 'The rising of Prentices and Sea-men on Southwark side to assault the Archbishops of Canterburys House at Lambeth.' In a tract entitled '_A Prophecie of the Life, Reigne, and Death of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury_,' there is a caricature of Laud seated on a throne or chair of state. A pair of horns grow out of his forehead, and in front the devil offers him a Cardinal's Hat. This business of the Cardinal's Hat is alluded to by Laud himself, who says, 'At Greenwich there came one to me seriously, and that avowed ability to perform it, and offered me to be a Cardinal. I went presently to the king, and acquainted him both with the thing and the person.' This offer was afterwards renewed: 'But,' says he, 'my answer again was, that something dwelt within me which would not suffer that till Rome were other than it is.' It would thus appear that the Archbishop did not give a very decided refusal at first or the offer would not have been repeated; and that circumstance, if it were known at the time, must have strengthened the opinion that he was favourably inclined towards the Church of Rome. At all events, the offer must have been made public, as this caricature shows. Though Laud behaved with dignity and courage when he came to bid farewell to the world, if we are to believe the publications of the time, he was not above petitioning for mercy, while any hope of life remained. In 1643 a pamphlet was published with the following title, '_The Copy of the Petition presented to the Honourable Houses of Parliament by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, wherein the said Archbishop desires that he may not be transported beyond the Seas into New England with Master Peters in regard to his extraordinary age and weaknesse_.' The petition is dated 'From the Tower of London this 6th of May 1643,' and in it the petitioner sets forth that out of a 'fervent zeal to Christianity' he endeavoured to reconcile the principles of the Protestant and Roman Catholic religions, hoping that if he could effect this he might more easily draw the Queen into an adherence to the Protestant faith. He deplores that his endeavours were not successful, and he begs the honourable Parliament to pardon his errors, and to 'looke upon him in mercy, and not permit or suffer your Petitioner to be transported, to endure the hazard of the Seas, and the long tediousnesse of Voyage into those trans-marine parts, and cold Countries, which would soon bring your Petitioners life to a period; but rather that your Petitioner may abide in his native country, untill your Petitioner shall pay the debt which is due from him to Nature, and so your Petitioner doth submit himselfe to your Honourable and grave Wisdoms for your Petitioners request and desire therein. And your Petitioner shall humbly pray &c.' [Illustration: CARICATURE OF THE DEVIL OFFERING LAUD A CARDINAL'S HAT, 1644.] If Archbishop Laud was really the author of this petition he appears to have expected that his long imprisonment would end in banishment rather than death. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, January 10, 1645. There is a woodcut portrait of the Archbishop printed on the title-page of the petition. [Illustration: ARCHBISHOP LAUD.] FOOTNOTE: [1] _Life of Gustavus Adolphus_. Family Library. CHAPTER III. Ben Jonson's Ridicule of the Early Newspapers--Fondness of the Old News-Writers for the Marvellous--The Smithfield Ghost--The Wonderful Whale--The Newbury Witch--Satirical Tracts and Caricatures at the Commencement of the Civil War--Religion Tossed in a Blanket--Caricatures of the Pope and the Bishops--Pluralists and Patentees--Taylor, the Water Poet--_Mercurius Aulicus_--Activity of the Pamphleteers--Welshmen Satirised--Satires on Prince Rupert--On the King and Queen--The Ladies' Parliament--Illustrated Tracts relating to Social and Political Subjects--Sir Kenelm Digby's Duel--The King entertained by the City of London, 1641--Executions in 1641--The Liquor Traffic and Sunday Closing in 1641--Abuses of the Ecclesiastical Courts--Ritualism and Nunneries in 1641--Truths enforced by Lieing--Stage Players and the Plague in 1641--Bartholomew Fair in 1641--Destruction of Charing Cross and Cheapside Cross--Strange Apparition--Method of Enforcing their Views adopted by the Puritan Pamphleteers--Parodies of Roundhead Sermons--Matthew Hopkins the Witch-finder--_The Welsh Post_ of 1643--William Lilly the Astrologer--Three Suns seen in London on the King's Birthday. When Ben Jonson called the newspaper 'a weekly cheat to draw money,' and ridiculed the growing taste for news, he had some reason for satirising the journalism of the period. To satisfy the craving for news all kinds of impositions were freely circulated. Nothing was too wonderful for the credulity of the age, and people eagerly accepted what was placed before them, fully believing that whatever was in print must be true. It was not, however, till many years after Ben Jonson's death that the so-called newspapers put forward their full powers as purveyors of the marvellous. _Mercurius Democritus_ was the _Punch_ of that day. While he satirised men and things he laboured to satisfy the popular taste for the wonderful, as in the following account of a ghost that was said to haunt the neighbourhood of Smithfield:--'There is a great report of a ghoast that walks every Night amongst the Butchers at _Smithfield Barrs_, the _Shambles_, White-_Chappell_, and _Eastcheape_, in the habit of _Mallet_, the Lawyer, pulling the meat off the Butchers Tainters; many have adventured to strike at him with Cleavers and Chopping-knives, but cannot feel anything but Aire, every Saturday at night between 9 and 12, he walks his stations, in this very habit as you see, doing more mischiefe to the _Butchers_ than ever _Robin Goodfellow_ did to the Country Hindes.' [Illustration: THE SMITHFIELD GHOST. FROM 'MERCURIUS DEMOCRITUS,' 1654.] Another example of the marvellous occurs in a tract entitled, '_The Sea Wonder: a true and wonderful relation of a Whale pursued in the Sea, and incountered by multitudes of other Fishes as it was certified by divers Mariners of Weymouth, who, comming from France in the good ship called the_ Bonaventure, _did shoote the said Whale, which making to Land did strike upon the Shore, within three miles of Weymouth, where being opened there was found in the belly of it a Romish Priest, with Pardon for divers Papists in England and Ireland, whose names are here inserted_.' Great pains appear to have been taken to give an air of truth to the narrative, which begins thus:--'On the 19th of October being the Lord's Day the good Ship called the _Bonaventure_ of _Weymouth_ being bound for _England_ was bringing home her Merchandise from _France_ which was wines, linning cloth, and abundance of Wall-nuts, the day was very fair and no wind stirring, so that the ship for above three hours space lay hulling upon the Seas, being not able to move either one way nor other for want of wind, although she was full sayled and prepared to take the advantage of every gale.' The author gravely explains that the excitement of the fishes and their attacks on the whale were caused by their instinctively feeling the presence of the Popish Priest. Annexed is a copy of the woodcut on the title-page of this curious tract. [Illustration: THE WONDERFUL WHALE, 1645.] '_Newes, True Newes, Laudable Newes, Citie Newes, Country Newes; The World is Mad, or it is a Mad World my Masters especially now when in the Antipodes these things are come to pass._' Such is the lengthy title of a pamphlet containing an imaginary account of things at the Antipodes, and illustrated with a fanciful woodcut on the title-page. Then we have news from Boston in New England of a strange and prodigious birth of a child with two heads, also illustrated. _Mercurius Democritus_, besides such waggeries as giving an account of 'a sight seen in the air by a blind philosopher,' communicates '_Many strange wonders out of the World, in the Moon, the Antipodes, Maggy Land, Tenebris, Fary-Land, Greenland, and other adjacent countries_. _Published for the right understanding of all the Mad-merry-people of Great Bedlam._' Another example of the wonderful stories put forth to entertain the multitude relates to the discovery and punishment of a witch during the civil war. It occurs in a pamphlet entitled '_A most Certain, Strange and true Discovery of a Witch, being taken by some of the Parliament Forces, as she was standing on a small planck-board and sayling on it over the River of Newbury_.' The illustration is of the rudest description, and the story is told in a breathless sort of way, without a full stop in the whole narrative:-- 'A part of the Army marching through Newbury, some of the Souldiers being scattered by the reason of their loytering by the way, in gathering Nuts, Apples, Plummes, Blackberries, and the like, one of them by chance in clambring up a tree, being pursued by his fellow or comrade in waggish merriment, jesting one with another, espied on the river being there adjacent, a tall, lean, slender woman, as he supposed, to his amazement, and great terrour, treading of the water with her feet, with as much ease and firmnesse as if one should walk or trample on the earth, wherewith he softly calls, and beckoned to his fellows to behold it, and with all possible speed that could be to obscure them from her sight, who as conveniently as they could they did observe, this could be no little amazement unto them you may think to see a woman dance upon the water, nor could all their sights be deluded, though perhaps one might, but coming nearer to the shore, they could perceive there was a planke or deale overshadowed with a little shallow water that she stood upon, the which did beare her up, anon rode by some of the commanders who were eye witnesses, as well as they, and were as much astonished as they could be, still too and fro she fleeted on the water, the boord standing firm boult upright, indeed I have both heard and read of many that in tempests and on rivers by casualty have become shipwracked, or cast overboard, where catching empty barrells, rudders, boards, or planks have made good shift by the assisting Providence of God to get on shore, but not in this womans kind to stand upon the board, turning and winding it which way she pleased, making it pastime to her, as little thinking who perceived her tricks, or that she did imagine that they were the last she ever should show, as we have heard the swan sing before her death, so did this devilish woman, as after plainly it appeared make sport before her death, at last having sufficiently been upon the water, he that deceived her alway did so then, blinding her that she could not, at her landing see the ambush that was laid for her, coming upon the shore, she gave the board a push, which they plainly perceived, and crossed the river, they searched after her but could not find her she being landed the Commanders beholding her, gave orders to lay hold on her, and bring her to them straight, the which some were fearful, but one being more venturous than other some, boldly went to her and seized on her by the arms, demanding what she was? but the woman no whit replying any words unto them, they brought her to the Commanders, to whom though mightily she was urged she did reply as little; so consulting with themselves what should be done with her, being it so apparently appeared she was a _witch_, being loth to let her goe & as loth to carry her with them, so they resolved with themselves, to make a shot at her, and gave order to a couple of their souldiers that were approved good marksmen, to charge and shoot her straight, which they prepared to doe; so setting her boult upright against a mud bank or wall; two of the souldiers according to their command made themselves ready, where having taken aime gave fire and shot at her, but with a deriding and loud laughter at them she caught their bullets in her hands and chew'd them, which was a stronger testimony than the water, that she was the same that their imaginations thought her for to be, so resolving with themselves if either fire or sword or halter were sufficient for to make an end of her, one set his Carbine close unto her brest; where discharging, the bullet back rebounded like a ball, and narrowly he mist it in his face that was the shooter; this so enraged the Gentleman, that one drew out his sword and manfully run at her with all the force his strength had power to make, but it prevailed no more than did the shot, the woman still though speechless, yet in a most contemptible way of scorn, still laughing at them, which did the more exhaust their furie against her life, yet one amongst the rest had heard that piercing or drawing bloud from forth the veins that crosse the temples of the head, it would prevail against the strongest sorcery, and quell the force of Witchcraft, which was allowed for triall; the woman hearing this knew then the Devill had left her and her power was gone, wherefore she began alowd to cry, and roare, tearing her haire, and making pitious moan, which in these words expressed were: And is it come to passe that I must die indeed? Why then his Excellency the Earle of Essex shall be fortunate and win the field, after which no more words could be got from her; wherewith they immediately discharged a Pistoll underneath her ear, at which she straight sunk down and died, leaving her legacy of a detested carcasse to the wormes, her soul we ought not to judge of, though the evils of her wicked life and death can scape no censure.' [Illustration: THE NEWBURY WITCH, 1643.] On the outbreak of the great Civil War an immense number of tracts and pamphlets were published relating to social and political questions, many of which were illustrated. Satire was a weapon freely used, and many hard hits were made, the point and bitterness of which cannot now be understood. Caricatures, which are generally supposed to have made their appearance in England at a much later date, are of frequent occurrence. The wonderful and supernatural were freely dealt in, and many tracts were published which were not strictly news, yet had some reference to public men and passing events. The woodcuts in the tracts and pamphlets of this period were frequently repeated, being sometimes used where they had no relation to the subject treated. [Illustration: RELIGION TOSSED IN A BLANKET, 1641.] The minds of men being much exercised on questions of religion at this time, it was to be expected that the subject would not escape the notice of the satirist. Accordingly, many tracts were published relating to religious matters, some of which are illustrated with woodcut caricatures. There is one of the date of 1641 containing a woodcut of four men tossing Religion (represented by a Bible) in a blanket. The writer condemns the numberless sects which were perplexing men's minds and tearing the Church asunder:-- 'Religion is made a Hotch potch, and as it were tossed in a Blanquet, and too many places of England too much _Amsterdamnified_ by several opinions. Religion is now become the common discourse and Table-talke in every Taverne and Ale-house, where a man shall hardly find five together in one minde, and yet every one presumes hee is in the right. The Booke of Common prayer which was established by Act of Parliament by that good and Godly King Edward the sixth, and after reestablished by another Parliament by that unparaled and peerlesse princesse Queen Elizabeth, and continued since in the happy Raignes of two gracious kings in the church of England for the service of God these ninetie yeares; yet one would have it to be cast out now, holding it to be a false worship; another is angrie at the vestments and habits of the Ministry; one will not kneel, another will not stand, one will sit downe, one will not bowe, another will not be uncovered, one holds all good manners to be popery, another that all decencie is superstitious, another that railes are Romish (which is false for the papists have no railes in their churches, nor anything so convenient). One foolishly assumes and presumes to save himselfe and some of his Neighbours too, by his good workes; another will be saved by a bare and lazie Faith that will do no work at all, and thus religion is puft and blowne to and fro with every wind of doctrine, and as it were tost in a Blanquet; but of this more largely hereafter in another part which will suddenly be printed, till when and ever it shall be my hearty prayers that as there is but one Shepheard, that is God in his gracious goodnesse and mercie would make us all one sheepfold.' [Illustration: CARICATURE OF THE POPE, 1643.] The shafts of satire were frequently aimed at the Pope and the Bishops. One caricature represents the Pope seated, while a unicorn tumbles the triple crown from his head. The same woodcut illustrates a '_Letter from the Devil to the Pope of Rome_.' Another tract has a representation of the Pope riding upon a seven-headed monster and holding in his hand a scroll on which are the words 'Estote proditores'--'Betraye your Country.' This advice he is giving to a cavalier, a bishop, and a monk, and at the same time three devils are represented as leaving him and entering into them. This cut, which is repeated in other pamphlets, is curious as an early specimen of caricature, but its meaning is now lost. [Illustration: CARICATURE OF THE BISHOPS, 1642.] The Bishops were treated with as little ceremony as the Pope. In one caricature four of them are represented as falling to the earth, with the following lines underneath the woodcut:-- 'The tottering prelates, with their trumpery all, Shall moulder downe, like elder from the wall.' In a pamphlet called _The Decoy Duck_, printed in 1642, there is a quaint woodcut caricature and a satirical account of how the Bishops of Durham, Lichfield, Norwich, Asaph, Bath, Hereford, Oxford, Ely, Gloucester, Peterborough, and Llandaff were decoyed and deceived by the Bishop of Lincoln (Bishop Williams). I have copied the woodcut, but no quotation from the pamphlet would be understood unless given at great length. It doubtless refers to the charge of high treason against the twelve Bishops. The abuses of the Established Church in an age when the spirit of dissent was strong were pretty sure to attract the notice of the satirical writer and the caricaturist. Accordingly, we find representations of the pluralist holding a church in each hand and one on each shoulder; while the non-resident clergyman was compared to the locust:--'The Locust is given to spoile and devoure greene things; it was one of the plagues of Egypt. Non-residents devoure the tithes of many parishes in this kingdome; and they are not to be numbered amongst the least of those plagues that God inflicts upon us for our sins. The Locusts caused Pharaoh and his servants to cry unto Moses that he would entreat the Lord to take them away; and our Non-Residents cause all good people to cry mightily unto God, to the King's Majesty, and to the Honourable House of Parliament, to reform them or remove them; that there may not be any carelesse Non-Resident in all the coasts of England.... Some of our carelesse Non-Residents have a cure of soules in one place and live in another, like fugitive Captaines forsake their Ensigne and Company at Barwick, and flee to Dover; who being with Jonah commanded for Nineveh, flee to Tarshish; being placed in the Country they run to the Cathedrals, they leave their charge as the Ostrich doth her eggs in the earth and sands, forgetting that either the foot may crush them or that the wild beast may break them, or at the best they leave their Congregations, as the Cuckoo doth her eggs to be hatched of a sparrow or some other bird.' The following woodcut is copied from a pamphlet entitled '_A Purge for Pluralities, showing the unlawfulnesse of men to have two Livings, or the Downefall of Double Benifices_.' [Illustration: THE PLURALIST, 1642.] The abuse of the Crown's prerogative in the granting of patents and monopolies was very frequent in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and was not diminished under Charles the First. The practice did not fail to attract the notice of the satirical writers of the day, and caricature laid hold on the 'Projectors and Patentees,' and held them up to ridicule. '_A Dialogue or accidental discourse betwixt Mr. Alderman Abell, and Richard Kilvert, the two maine Projectors for Wine_, 1641, contains a woodcut showing 'The manner and forme how Projectors and Patentees have rode a Tylting in a Parliament time.' The wit of the illustration is a little obscure to the modern reader, but at the time of its publication it was no doubt understood, and relished accordingly. The pamphlet describes how Messrs. Abell and Kilvert laid their heads together to obtain the patent for wine; how they put the patent in force, and how, after the tide turned against them, they reviled one another. As the excitement of the Civil War increased, political animosity rose to a red heat. Cavaliers and Roundheads belaboured each other in many a merciless pamphlet, to which they often endeavoured to give additional bitterness by woodcut caricatures. Prominent individuals, such as Prince Rupert, became marks for the satirist's wit. Even the throne itself did not escape, and it was broadly hinted that the Protestant king was unduly influenced by the Roman Catholic queen. The curious subject of the growth of caricature might be illustrated by numerous examples from the publications of this period, but it will be sufficient to refer to two or three more woodcut satires of this date. The distractions of the times were epitomised by John Taylor, the Water Poet, in an illustrated rhyming pamphlet, published in 1642. It is entitled, '_Mad Fashions, Od Fashions, all out of Fashion, or the Emblems of these distracted Times_.' [Illustration: EMBLEMS OF THE DISTRACTED TIMES, 1642.] The author compares England to the engraving on his title-page, where everything is represented upside down:-- 'The Picture that is printed on the front Is like this Kingdome if you look upon 't; For if you well doe note it as it is, It is a Transform'd Metamorphasis. This Monstrous Picture plainly doth declare This land (quite out of order) out of square. His Breeches on his shoulders doe appeare, His doublet on his lower parts doth weare. His Boots and Spurs upon his Armes and Hands, His Gloves upon his feet (whereon he stands) The church o'erturned (a lamentable show) The Candlestick above, the light below, The Coney hunts the Dogge, the Rat the Cat, The Horse doth whip the Cart (I pray marke that) The Wheelbarrow doth drive the man (Oh Base) And Eeles and Gudgeons flie a mighty pace. And sure this is a Monster of strange fashion That doth surpasse all Ovids transformation. And this is England's case this very day, All things are turned the clean contrary way; For now, as when a Royall Parliament, (With King, and Peers, and Commons whole consent) Have almost sate two years, with paines and Cares, And charge, to free us from our Griefes and fears, For when many a worthy Lord and Knight, And good Esquire (for King and Countrey's Right) Have spent so much time with great Toyle and Heede All England's vicious garden how to weed, So like a wildernesse 'twas over run, That though much better hath been done; All is not done.' The Water Poet sided with the Cavalier party, and verse and prose flowed plentifully from his pen in favour of the Royal cause. His effusions provoked many replies, one of which is entitled, '_No Mercurius Aquaticus, but a Cable-Rope, double twisted for John Tayler, the Water Poet; who escaping drowning in a Paper-Wherry-Voyage, is reserved for another day, as followeth, viz._' Then follows the subjoined woodcut, with verses underneath. The hint that the poet was born to be hanged because he had escaped from drowning refers to his having undertaken to sail from London to Queenborough in a boat made of brown paper. In this foolhardy exploit Taylor and a friend who was with him nearly lost their lives. The tract under notice affords a good specimen of the sort of language used by the partisans of each faction against their opponents: 'I should be loathe to foule my fingers with any base Pamphlets that comes from Oxford, if the venom of their malicious spleens were darted against my particular self: But when through my sides they wound the honour of the Parliament and our Armies abroad, I cannot but set Pen to paper, and pay them back again in their own kinde. And who d'ye think I should meet abroad for a _Rogue-in-Print_ but one of our City Water-rats, the doughty John Taylor, who according to the knavish custom, changes his name upon every new paper-designe? Sometimes he calls himself _Thorney Ailo, Mercurius Aquaticus_, and now he entitles himself NO MERCURIUS AULICUS. I thought I had lately sent _rope_ enough for all the Parrots in Oxford; But I perceive they will be prattling still; and therefore I must unmaske the Mysterious Masters of the science of railing. There are three grand paper conspirators well known by the name of _Mercurius Aulicus, George Naworth_, and reverend Master _John Tayler_ the water-tankard, by whose sprinklings in this great dearth of Wit and Honesty the University is cherished and kept in credit. These three are they which pumpe and Pimpe about with their Prostitute Noddles in the behalf of Popery, Murder, and Rebellion against the state; they are Liars in all elements, _Aulicus_ for Land-lies, _Tayler_ for Water, and hungry _George Naworth_ for all between Heaven and Earth, where I doubt not but to see them all meet together to take their farewell of the world, where the _Parrots_ will find _Ropes_ made of stronger Lines than mine, and such as will _non-plus_ the very primest Wits in the University.' [Illustration: PREDICTED FATE OF JOHN TAYLOR THE WATER POET, 1644.] The pamphleteer goes on to give the Water-Poet what he doubtless considered a thorough drubbing, and at the end he leaves him 'to the Gallows, the proper cure for such Rebels.' The words 'London' and 'Oxford' on the woodcut have reference to another voyage which the Water-Poet performed in a sculler's boat between those places. [Illustration: MERCURIUS AULICUS IN THE PILLORY, 1645.] _Mercurius Aulicus_ was the organ of the Court party, and was published at Oxford. A curious satire upon this Court paper was printed in 1645, entitled, _Newes from Smith the Oxford Jaylor_. It consists of a dialogue between the author and the 'Oxford Jaylor,' and sets forth that 'Mercurius Aulicus' was sentenced, by a jury of women,' to stand in the pillory three market-days in Oxford, for his lies, libels, and deceitful glozings;' to have a written paper over his head announcing his shame; to beg forgiveness of 'Mercurius Brittanicus;' to be prevented from writing any more libels for one year. 'That before two months' expiration he be cut of the simples, and his braines be taken out, washt in white wine, and put in againe.' 'That for every morning during the said time he have one mess of stewd broth made of the interlinings of fower Court Parazites, and the braines of 26 Oxford Widgins boyld in the water of forgetfulnesse.' 'That he may never hereafter have so much as one graine of wit left him in his empty Hogshead (his brains being taken out and washed as before is ordered) to scandalize those whom if he had any grace he is bound to honour.' There is a woodcut of _Mercurius Aulicus_ in the pillory, which is supposed to represent Sir John Birkenhead, who acquired the title of the Loyal Poet, and suffered several imprisonments. This cut was used on several other occasions. The troubles of the times are constantly indicated in the pamphlets of the period. In one the State is represented as a two-headed serpent, with these lines underneath the engraving: 'This double-headed serpent is a wonder, It draws two ways and tears the womb in sunder; The wofull emblem of a troubled State Where civill warres doe threat to ruinate.' [Illustration: SQUARE CAPS TURNED INTO ROUND HEADS, 1642.] The partisans of the Parliament faction appear to have been much more active pamphleteers than the Cavaliers. '_Square Caps turned into Round Heads, or the Bishop's Vindication and the Brownist's conviction, being a Dialogue between Time and Opinion; showing the folly of the one and the worthinesse of the other_,' is a tract with an illustration representing Opinion turning a wheel, on which are five square caps and five round heads, while Time, with his scythe and hourglass, holds converse with Opinion. Under the woodcut are the following lines:-- 'Time doth Opinion call unto accompt, Who turns the Bishop's downe and Roundheads mount; Upon her lofty wheels their Noddles are, But her Camelion feedeth on his aire.' '_Cornucopia, or Room for a Ram head, wherein is described the dignity of the Ram head above the Roundhead or Rattlehead_,' is another tract, with a woodcut caricature representing a woman attempting to saw the horns from a man's head. The letterpress consists of a dialogue between a man and his wife, wherein the man humorously praises horns. It was a favourite joke to represent the Puritan as a 'cuckoldy Roundhead.' [Illustration: CARICATURE, 1642.] Another satirical pamphlet has a woodcut representing Cavaliers and Roundheads exciting their dogs to fight. It is entitled, '_A Dialogue or rather a Parly between Prince Rupert's Dogge whose name is Puddle, and Tobies Dog whose name is Pepper, &c._ _Whereunto is added the challenge which Prince Griffin's Dog, called Towzer, hath sent to Prince Rupert's Dog Puddle, in the behalfe of honest Pepper, Tobie's Dog. Moreover, the said Prince Griffin is newly gone to Oxford to lay the wager, and to make up the Match._' In this satire, which is very highly flavoured, both Cavaliers and Roundheads are pelted with very vigorous epithets, but in the end the Roundhead dog is converted by his opponent, and seals his recantation in a very striking manner. There is a tirade against the Jesuits entitled, '_A Peece of ordnance invented by a Jesuite, for Cowards that fight by Whisperings, and raise jealousies to overthrow both Church and State, which with the help of a private Ensign in the Cabbinet Councell, or Westminster Hall is able to doe more mischiefe at twentie miles distance, than a whole Regiment of stout Souldiers, at Musket-shot_. _Which grievance is by way of Remonstrance humbly presented to the consideration of the Parliament._' This tract has a woodcut of a man firing a cannon formed of the figure of a man. [Illustration: CARICATURE, 1643.] '_Hell's Hurlie-Burlie, or a Fierce contention between the Pope and the Devill_,' is illustrated; and there is a pamphlet, with a woodcut, entitled, '_The Devill's White Boyes: A Mixture of Malicious Malignants, with their much evill and manifold practises against the Kingdome and Parliament, with a bottomlesse Sack-full of Knavery, Popery, Prelacy, Policy, Treachery, Malignant Trumpery, Conspiricies, and Cruelties, filled to the top by the Malignants, laid on the shoulders of Time, and now by Time emptied forth, and poured out, to show the Truth, and shame the Devill_. Beneath, the woodcut are the following verses:-- 'Malignants are the Divell's Agents still, The Sack is _England_, which they strive to fill With misery and mischief, and this Sack Full stufft is laid upon Times aged back; _Time_ pours it out now in an angry mood That all their knaveries may be understood.' On the cut itself are printed the lines:-- '_Time_ now at the last pours out much knavery, The Devill holds down fast to hinder the discovery.' [Illustration: CARICATURE, 1644.] The Welshman came in for a share of the satirist's wit at the commencement of the Civil War. He generally figures under the name of 'Ap Shinkin,' and is made to speak English much the same as the Scottish Highlander does in Scott's novels. '_The Welsh mans Postures, or the true manner how her doe exercise her company of Souldiers in her own Country in a warlike manners_,' is a satire of a very broad character, and is illustrated with a woodcut representing men exercising with the pike. Shinkin is also ridiculed for the share he took in the battle of Edgehill, the first important engagement in the Civil War. There is an illustrated tract with the following title: '_The Welsh mans Complements: or the true manner how Shinkin wood his Sweetheart Maudlin after his return from Kenton Battaile_. _Also Fair Maudlin's reply and answer to all Shinkin's Welch complements, full of merry wit and pleasant mirth._' The 'merry wit' is certainly not refined, and the 'pleasant mirth' is founded on Shinkin's supposed hasty departure from the neighbourhood of the fight. The woodcut represents Shinkin and Maudlin in conversation. Prince Rupert is often the mark for the satirist's wit. In '_Rupert's Sumpter, and private Cabinet rifled, and a Discovery of a Pack of his Jewels, by way of Dialogue between Mercurius Brittanicus and Mercurius Aulicus_,' there is a discussion as to the Prince's merits and demerits, and he is charged with aiming at the crown. Both the King and Queen were brought under the caricaturist's lash. In 1644 there was an illustrated pamphlet published, representing the King, Queen, and a bishop, with the following title: '_The Sussex Picture, or an Answer to the Sea-gull_.' The address to the reader is headed: 'The Sceptre's Submission, the Distaffs Triumph, and the Crosiers Combination. Reader, If thou hast view'd that stately Picture, which was lately sent up to the Parliament by Collonel Morley, and was taken in a Flemish Ship upon the Sussex Shore; Thou hast beheld therein the weaker sexe triumphing over the stronger, and by the help of a Miter, thou hast seen a Scepter doing homage to the Distaffe. If thou hast never seen the Originall, yet here is to be seen a poore, rude, counterfeit of the chief part in it; use thy judgement freely, and impartially: let both the Peece itself, and that which is said by both sides, in judgement thereupon, be put into one equal ballance. If the Dutch Author be not to undergo censure, as if he intended an English Storie, yet neither art thou to be censured for doubting his intention, or for standing amazed at his phancie. Shadows which are not fashioned by some certain, neer, interposing body present nothing to the eye, and therefore work nothing upon the understanding. The language of a picture is to be borrowed from the veritie of the matter, if that be wanting, neither the Art of the Limner nor the imagination of the spectator can supply its vocall organs.' This caricature may have referred to the influence which the Roman Catholic Queen was supposed to exercise over the Protestant king under clerical guidance. [Illustration: THE PARLIAMENT OF LADIES, 1644.] Charles I. summoned a Parliament at Oxford in 1644, consisting of such members of both Houses as were devoted to his interests. There exists a satirical tract ridiculing this Parliament, and, in fact, representing it as a Parliament of old women. The tract is entitled '_An exact Diurnall of the Parliament of Laydes_,' and is illustrated with a woodcut. It sets forth that 'Countesses and other Ladies (on Monday morning early in a Prosopopia) being met in Mary Maudlins Hall in Oxford, they first made choyce of their speaker; and it was agreed by all that the Lady Oboney should have the chaire, the Lady Rivers was made Chancellor, Nurse Windham High Constable, the Countess of Derby High Treasurer, and the Countess of Essex High Chamberlain. These Ladies having all taken their places, Mrs. Powell was appointed cheefe Clerk to the House, and Mrs. Peele Chaire Lady to the Close Committee, and Moll Cut-Purse was made Sergeant at Arms.' Prince Rupert and others are tried and sentenced for various crimes, but the ladies afterwards relent, and pardon all the prisoners brought before them. I give on the preceding page a reduced copy of the rough woodcut which illustrates this curious burlesque. [Illustration: CARICATURE, 1644.] A writer of much verbosity satirised the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in another illustrated pamphlet, printed 'by Martin Claw-Clergy for Bartholomew Bang-Priest, and sold in Toleration-street, at the sign of the Subject's Liberty, opposite to Persecuting Court.' The author states on the title-page that his production displays 'many witty Synodian Conceits both pleasant and commodious,' and adorns his work with the above curious engraving, which probably had some reference to a Papal Bull, but at this distance of time we look in vain for the point and meaning of many of these old caricatures. Having glanced at the satirical side of illustrated journalism at the epoch of the Civil War, I will quote two or three examples relating to the social and political condition of the country before entering upon the stirring events of that time. A great variety of subjects are embraced in this section. There are accounts of apparitions, signs and portents in the heavens, monstrous births, duels and murders, criminal trials and executions, besides many tracts relating to the vices and follies of the age. One of the first illustrated pamphlets we come to in this division of our subject describes a duel fought in vindication of the good name of King Charles I. The pamphlet is entitled, '_Sir Kenelme Digby's Honour maintained by a most couragious Combat which he fought with the Lord Mount le Ros, who by base and slanderous words reviled our King_. _Also the true relation how he went to the King of France, who kindly intreated and sent two hundred men to guard him so far as Flanders. And now he is returned from Banishment, and to his eternal honour lives in England._' This is a tract written by an undoubted Royalist. It begins in praise of valour, which is divided into three kinds--that which is allied to rashness, that which is born of the fear of death, and temperate or true valour. It describes how Sir Kenelme Digby was dining with a French lord, who, having toasted most of the kings of Christendom, then proposed the health of the most arrant coward in the world; and on Sir Kenelme inquiring who that was, he was told, after he had drunk the toast, that it was meant for the King of England: 'At which the good knight seemed very much discontent, knowing in what nature his Soveraigne was wronged; yet very wisely did he seeme to pass it by untill dinner being ended, then did he desire the same lord the next day to come and dine with him, who promised him upon his honour that he would.' [Illustration: SIR KENELM DIGBY's DUEL, 1641.] The next day the French Lord repaired to Sir Kenelme's lodgings, where an entertainment befitting his rank was provided: 'Neither did Sir Kenelme seeme to remember the former daies discontent, but was very frolic and merry, and in the midst of dinner time desired them all to be bare, for he would beginne a health to the bravest king in the world. The French Lord asked whom that was, Sir Kenelme made answer that when it had gone about he should know; well, about it went and then Sir Kenelme said that it was the health of the bravest king in the world, which is the King of England, my royal Master, for although my body be banished from him, yet is my heart loyally linkt; the French Lord at those words seemed to laugh repeating the same words before mentioned, then was Sir Kenelme throughly moved in the behalf of our Soveraigne King Charles whereupon he whispered the Lord in the eare, telling of him how that twice he had reviled the best King in the world in the hearing of me which am his faithful subject, wherefore for satisfaction I require a single combate of you, where either you shall pay your life for your sawcinesse, or I will sacrifice mine in the behalfe of my King. The French Lord being of a resolute spirit condescended to fight, the place was appointed, dinner being ended, they both arise from table and privately went together, being in field off they pluckt their doublets, and out they draw their weapons. 'Mars would have bashful beene to have seene himselfe by Noble Digby there excelled, long work with the contemptible French Lord, he would not make, for fear lest any should lye in ambush and so he might hazard his own life, wherefore in four bouts he run his rapier into the French Lords brest till it came out of his throat againe, which so soon as he had done, away he fled to the Court of France, and made all knowne to the King thereof, who said the proudest Lord in France should not dare to revile his brother King. 'A guard was presently chosen to conduct Sir Kenelme into Flanders, which they did, where he tooke shipping for England, where he now is, where in peace and quietnesse may he still remaine. 'As for the French Lord he was paid according to his desert, and may all be so rewarded which shall dare to revile the Lords anointed, who suffers by other Nations, for the clemency he hath shown to his own Nation, _sed beati sunt pacifici_, but blessed is the peace maker; good king for thy patience in this world there are Crownes of immortal glory laid in store for thee in the world to come, there shall not traitors dare to show their faces, nor shall perplexity proceed from the great care of ruling of a kingdome, in the meanwhile may more such Noble Digbies increase to rebuke all cursing _Achitophels_ and reviling _Rabshakey's_. 'Let God arise and then shall the enemies of our gracious King be sure to be scattered. 'Now I conclude commanding fame to show Brave Digby's worthy deed, that all may know He lov'd his king, may all so loyal prove And like this Digby to their king show love.' Many portraits of Charles I. were published in tracts about this time. One of the best is contained in a poetical welcome to the King on his return from Scotland. '_King Charles his Entertainment and Londons Loyaltie_,' 1641, contains a precept issued by the Lord Mayor, directing how the aldermen and citizens shall meet the King, on his return from Scotland, at Shoreditch Church, and conduct him to the Guildhall to a banquet, and afterwards to Westminster. There is also a a very spirited woodcut of a City trumpeter in this pamphlet, which is copied above. City entertainments to sovereigns and princes have always been fruitful occasions for illustrated newspapers. [Illustration: CITY TRUMPETER, 1641.] The wholesale executions that used to take place at this period would astonish the modern newspaper reader. Sometimes as many as twenty-four persons were executed in one day at Tyburn. '_A Coppy of the Prisoners judgement condemned to dy, from Nugate on Monday the 13 of December, 1641_,' gives an account of eight Jesuits and several other prisoners who were executed. A descriptive list is given of the condemned, and amongst them are the following:-- 'Charles James, an handsome gentile young man, was convicted for Robery and Burglary. 'John Hodskins, a fine Scholler, a pretty fellow, yet wanted grace. 'John Davis, a lusty stout personable man. 'Francis Middlefield, a pretty youth, and a good Scholler, convicted of felonie.' Several highwaymen, horse-stealers, and coiners, are also included in this gloomy list, which is adorned with a woodcut of an execution. The regulation of the licensed victuallers' trade and the Sunday closing movement appear to have been as troublesome questions in the seventeenth century as they are now. As early as 1641 the publican was uttering the complaints which he still continues to utter. In a pamphlet of that date there is a dialogue between a tapster and a cook, which sets forth the grievances of both these worthies. The pamphlet is entitled, '_The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster and Rulerost the Cook, concerning the restraint lately set forth against drinking, potting, and piping on the Sabbath day, and against selling meate_.' The publican expresses himself thus:--'I much wonder Master Rulerost why my trade should be put downe, it being so necessary in a commonwealth; why the noble art of drinking, it is the soul of all good fellowship, the marrow of a Poet's Minervs, it makes a man as valiant as Hercules though he were as cowardly as a Frenchman; besides I could prove it necessary for any man sometimes to be drunk, for suppose you should kill a man when you are drunk, you shall never be hanged for it untill you are sober; therefore I think it good for a man to be always drunk; and besides it is the kindliest companion, and friendliest sin of all the seven, for most sins leave a man by some accident or other, before his death, but this will never forsake him till the breath be out of his body; and lastly a full bowle of strong beere will drown all sorrows.' To which master Cook rejoins:--'Master Nick, you are mistaken, your trade is not put downe as you seem to say; what is done is done to a good intent; to the end that poor men that worke hard all the weeke for a little money, should not spend it all on the Sunday while they should be at some church, and so consequently there will not be so many Beggars.' [Illustration: THE COMPLAINT OF THE LICENSED VICTUALLERS, 1641.] Froth--'Alack you know all my profit doth arise onely on Sundays, let them but allow me that privilege, and abridge me all the weeke besides; S'foot, I could have so scowered my young sparks up for a penny a demy can, or a halfe pint, heapt with froth. I got more by uttering half a Barrell in time of Divine service, than I could by a whole Barrell at any other time, for my customers were glad to take anything for money, and think themselves much ingaged to me; but now the case is altered.' Cook--'Truly Master Froth you are a man of a light constitution, and not so much to be blamed as I that am more solid: O what will become of me! I now think of the lusty Sirloines of roast Beefe which I with much policy divided into an innumerable company of demy slices, by which, with my provident wife, I used to make eighteene pence of that which cost me but a groat (provided that I sold it in service time,) I could tell you too, how I used my halfe cans and my Bloomsbury Pots, when occasion served; and my Smoak which I sold dearer than any Apothecary doth his Physick; but those happy days are now past, and therefore no more of that.' This pamphlet is illustrated with a woodcut showing the Cook and Tapster in confabulation, while in the background joints are roasting, and guests are seated in boxes, refreshing themselves with 'half-cans and Bloomsbury pots.' The abuses of the Ecclesiastical Courts did not escape the notice of the seventeenth-century pamphleteers. Doctors' Commons and the Proctors were quizzed in an illustrated pamphlet, wherein 'Sponge, the Proctor,' and 'Hunter, the Parator,' hold a long conversation, and express their opinion that the only way to make men live in quietness is to beggar them with long suits and large fees. Other evil-doers were shown up in a similar manner. A certain Edward Finch, Vicar of Christ-church, London, gave so much offence to the parishioners by his manner of life that a petition was presented to Parliament on the subject. The petitioners said they were offended by their Vicar's 'frequent and unreasonable bowings' before the altar, and by his 'scandalous life and conversation.' They set forth in the petition that they are 'troubled in their church with singing, organs, and other Instruments of Musicke, not understood by them, whereby they are greatly distracted in the service of God, the same being altogether unprofitable, and no way tending to their spirituall edification.' The Vicar is charged with drunkenness and incontinence--with exacting unreasonable fees--with being a non-resident; and the evidence in support of the petition shows that on one occasion he went to Hammersmith in a coach with certain loose companions and spent the day in a manner unfit for a clergyman. He is proved to have attempted to administer the Sacrament to a dying woman while he was in a state of drunkenness, and to have been guilty of many other disgraceful acts. The House of Commons passed a vote of censure on this graceless Ritualist; and the petition setting forth his misdeeds was printed and published, illustrated with a woodcut showing the journey to Hammersmith in a coach. Notwithstanding the condemnation of Parliament, the Rev. Edward Finch continued in his evil courses, and conducted his 'life and conversation' much the same as before. [Illustration: EVIL DOINGS OF THE REV. EDWARD FINCH, 1641.] From the 'perambulations' of a Ritualistic clergyman we come to a nunnery, in a pamphlet published in 1641, entitled, '_The Arminian Nunnery, or a briefe description and relation of the late erected Monasticall Place, called the Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire_.' The writer of this pamphlet gives a minute and by no means 'brief' description of the institution, which he evidently believes to be Roman Catholic, or a stepping-stone to it, though the 'Deacon' who attended him on his visit assured him to the contrary. He, however, sets down all the tapers and crosses, the bowings and prostrations, as so many proofs of idolatry, and marvels that, in a settled Church government, the Bishops should suffer any such institutions to exist; particularly that Archbishop Laud, professing to be such an 'Anti-Papist and enemy to superstition and idolatry, should permit this innovation and connive at such canting betwixt the barke and the tree in matter of Religion.' While censuring the prelates for their criminal slothfulness, the writer gave his countrymen the benefit of his own acuteness and energy, and published his description, illustrated with an engraving representing one of the nuns, with a portion of the nunnery in the background. [Illustration: NUNNERY AT LITTLE GIDDING, HUNTINGDONSHIRE, 1641.] The next illustrated pamphlet we come to is a curious attempt on the part of its author to satirise his literary contemporaries for the falsehoods contained in their writings, and he burlesques their productions by relating many things as lies which, however, he means to be understood as truths. It is called '_The Liar, or a contradiction to those who in the titles of their Books affirmed them to be true, when they were false; although mine are all true yet I term them lyes. Veritas Veritatis_.' 'There was an Englishman which travelled to the Swedish Army, and began to relate very strange passages which he had seen here in England, thinking that travellers might lye by authority; for said he in the County of Berke, at a place called Abingdon, when the Earle of Strafford lost his head, was such thundering and lightning, and earthquakes, that it is almost incredible. Surely I think it is incredible indeed, for I know 'tis no such matter. 'He told too that the very same day that my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury was committed to the Tower, there was a child born in the County of Somerset with a Mitre on its head, a marke on his breast like a Crucifix, and many other strange things which were there seene.' Having invented the travelling Englishman for a mouth-piece and selected the Swedish army for an audience, the writer goes on to relate many other strange things, which, though told as lies, are evidently intended to be taken as truths. [Illustration: THE LIAR ON THE RACK, 1641.] 'They heard him with patience till he had made an end of his lying, and then they asked him whether yea or nay he saw these things he spake of, he presently swore all the oaths of God that he saw these things with his own natural eyes, which he had reported, and he would maintaine it, though he spent his dearest blood in the doeing of it; well, they heard his protestations, and made a full account that they would prove his constancie whether he would be a Martyr yea or nay, in the meane time they horsed him, and this was the manner of it. 'There was a great high thing raised to the height of twelve or fourteen yards, made of Iron, whereon he was seated, with two great weights on his toes, and the like on his hands where he sate in great paine, if he should chance to ease himselfe upwards, there were sharp nailes over his head which would prick him, thus he sate and thus he suffered, till they had sufficiently made a laughing stock of him; well, when he had suffered enough they let him downe.' There is a woodcut representing the lying traveller on his 'horse,' and the tract winds up thus:-- 'Gentle Reader, I have heere related under the name of lies nothing but true tales, for if a man doth now speake truth he shall be sure to smart for it now-a-daies, either here or in other places: read gentlie and buy willingly.' When the Plague visited London in 1641 the theatres were closed and the players were thrown out of employment. This state of things is discussed in a dialogue between 'Cane of the Fortune and Reed of the Friars,' in a tract illustrated with a woodcut which was frequently used afterwards in broadsides. Bartholomew Fair, which was proclaimed for the last time in 1855, was in all its glory in the days of Charles I. A contemporary tract gives a graphic description of the fair, and is illustrated with a woodcut representing a man swallowing a serpent. This probably represented a picture hung outside one of the shows. The title of the tract is, '_Bartholomew Faire, or Variety of Fancies, where you may find a faire of wares and all to please your mind; with the several enormities and misdemeanours which are there seen and acted_.' The fair is described as beginning 'on the twenty-fourth day of August, and is then of so vast an extent that it is contained in no lesse than four several parishes, namely, Christ Church, Great and Little Saint Bartholomew's, and Saint Sepulchre's. Hither resort people of all sorts, High and Low, Rich and Poore, from cities, townes, and countreys; of all sects, Papists, Atheists, Anabaptists, and Brownists, and of all conditions, good and bad, virtuous and vitious.' It is said to be 'full of gold and silver-drawers; just as Lent is to the Fishmonger so is Bartholomew Faire to the Pickpocket; it is his high harvest, which is never bad but when his cart goes up Holborn. [Illustration: A BARTHOLOMEW FAIR WONDER, 1641.] 'It is remarkable and worth your observation to behold and hear the strange sights and confused noise in the Faire. Here a knave in a fool's coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drum beating, invites you and would fain perswade you to see his puppets; there a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an Antick shape like an incubus, desires your company, to view his motion; on the other side Hocus Pocus, with three yards of tape or ribbin in's hand, shewing his art of Legerdemain, to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cockoloaches. Amongst these you shall see a gray goose cap (as wise as the rest), with a what do ye lacke in his mouth, stand in his boothe, shaking a rattle, or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are so taken, that they presently cry out for these fopperies; and all these together make such a distracted noise that you would think Babell were not comparable to it. Here there are also your gamesters in action, some turning of a whimsey, others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into a three-halfpenny saucer. Long Lane at this time looks very faire, and puts out her best cloaths, with the wrong side outward, so turned for their better turning off. And Cloth Faire is now in great request; well fare the ale-houses therein; yet better may a man fare (but at a dearer rate) in the pig market, alias Pasty-nooke, or Pye Corner, where pigges are all hours of the day on the stalls piping hot, and would cry (if they could speak) come eate me.' [Illustration: PULLING DOWN CHEAPSIDE CROSS, 1643.] In 1641 an order of Parliament directed the removal of idolatrous pictures from churches and the demolition of crosses in the streets. It must have been on the passing of this order that '_The Doleful lamentation of Cheapside Cross_,' with a woodcut of the Cross, was published, 1641. Also, '_A Dialogue between the Crosse in Cheap and Charing Crosse_,' 1641, which has also a woodcut representing the two crosses, while a Brownist and an Anabaptist converse about their demolition. It was not, however, till 1643 that Charing Cross and Cheapside Cross were demolished. '_The Downfall of Dagon, or the taking down of Cheapside Crosse this second of May, 1643_,' is a mock lamentation for the destruction of the Cross on account of its being a symbol of idolatry. The Cross itself is made to describe its history and to lament its errors. Divers reasons are given for its demolition, and the tract concludes in these words: 'And so this Tuesday it is a taking down with a great deal of judgement and discretion, and foure Companies of the Traine Bands of the City to guard and defend those that are about the worke, and to keep others from domineering, and so I leave it to be made levell with the ground this second day of May 1643.' The tract is illustrated with a woodcut representing the demolition of the Cross; and, as the day of publication is the day after the event, the persons concerned in its production must have been unusually prompt and energetic. The destruction of Cheapside and Charing Crosses is also recorded, under the date of 1643, in '_A Sight of the Transactions of these latter yeares Emblemized with Ingraven Plates, which men may read without Spectacles_.' This pamphlet contains a reprint of the etched plates previously mentioned, together with six others, one of which represents the pulling down of Cheapside Cross, and a summary of the transactions of the reign of Charles I., in which occurs the following passage:--'Cheapside Crosse, Charing Crosse, and all other crosses, in and about London utterly demolished and pulled down, and that abominable and blasphemous book of tolerating sports and pastimes on the Lord's daies, voted to be burnt, and shortly after accordingly burnt, together with many crucifixes and popish trinckets and trumperies in the very same place where Cheapside Crosse stood.' I have copied the plate representing the demolition of Cheapside Cross. The affairs of Turkey would seem to have had an interest for the English public in the seventeenth century, if we may judge from a pamphlet printed in 1642, with the following lengthy title:--'_Strange and Miraculous Newes from Turkie, sent to our English Ambassadour resident at Constantinople, of a woman which was seen in the Firmament with a Book in her hand at_ Medina Talnabi, _where Mahomet's Tomb is_. _Also several visions of armed men appearing in the Ayre for one and twenty dayes together. With a prophetical interpretation made by a Mahomedan Priest, who lost his life in the maintenance thereof. London, printed for Hugh Perry neere Ivy Bridge in the Strand June 13, 1642._' There is a woodcut of the apparition, and a lengthy description, passages from which I have extracted:-- 'There came newes to Constantinople of a strange Apparition or Vision, which was seene at _Medina Talnabi_ in Arabia, whereat Mahomet their great Prophet was buried. To visit whose Tombe the Turkes used to goe in Pilgrimage, but they must first goe to _Mecha_, which is some few dayes journey off, and there they take a ticket from the Grand Seigniors Beglerbeg, else they are not allowed to go to Medina. 'This Vision continued three weeks together, which terrified the whole country, for that no man could discover the truth thereof. [Illustration: STRANGE VISION IN THE AIR, 1642.] 'About the 20 of _September_ there fell so great a Tempest and so fearful a Thunder about midnight, as the Heavens were darkened, and those that were awake were almost distracted, but the Vapours being disperst, and the Element cleere, the people might read in Arabian characters these words in the Firmament, _O Why will you believe in Lies_. Betweene two and three in the morning there was seen a woman in white compassed about with the Sun, having a cheerfull countenance, holding in her hand a Booke, coming from the Northeast, opposite against her were Armies of _Turkes_, _Persians_, _Arabians_, and other Mahometans, ranged in order of Battaile, and ready to charge her, but she kept her standing, and onely opened the Booke, at the sight whereof the Armies fled, and presently all the lamps about Mahomet's Tombe went out, for as soon as ever the Vision vanished (which was commonly an hour before sunne rising) a murmuring Wind was heard, whereunto they imputed the extinguishing of the lamps. The antient pilgrims of Mahomet's Race, who after they have visited this place, never use to cut their haire, were much amazed, for that they could not conceive the meaning of this vision, only one of the _Dervices_, which is a strict religious order among the _Turkes_ like unto the Cappuchins amongst the Papists, and live in contemplation, stepped up very boldly and made a speech unto the Company which incensed them much against him, so as the poore Priest for his plain dealing lost his life, as you shall hereafter heare.' Then follows the speech of the Dervish to the Turks, who became so incensed that they put him to death, 'the poore man crying to the last gaspe, O thou woman with the Booke save me, and so he died. At which time there was a feareful tempest.' It seems to have been a favourite method amongst the Puritan pamphleteers of inducing belief in a particular creed or doctrine by setting forth the awful consequences arising from adherence to an opposite faith. Thus, in 1645, in the parish of Kirkham, a Popish gentlewoman was said to have become the mother of a child without a head, because she wished she might bear a child without a head rather than her offspring should become a Roundhead. Again, it was related that in Scotland a woman wished she might become the mother of a monster rather than her child should receive the rites of the Church of England. Accordingly, the child was born with two heads, long donkey-like ears, &c. In all these cases the pamphlets recording these extraordinary occurrences are illustrated. The apparitions of deceased persons were also used as a means of enforcing certain views. For example, in 1642, the ghosts of King James, the Marquis of Hamilton, George Eglisham, and the Duke of Buckingham, were made to hold a conversation, wherein Buckingham was charged with having caused the deaths of the others by poison. Buckingham confesses his guilt and promises to weep repentant tears. This pamphlet is also illustrated. The sermons of the Roundhead preachers were sometimes parodied, as in the case of a humorous pamphlet entitled, '_A Seasonable Lecture, or a most learned Oration; disburthened from Henry Walker, a most judicious quondam ironmonger, &c._' There is a woodcut to this pamphlet representing a person holding forth from a tub to several others who are listening to him. In '_A Glasse for the Times, 1648_,' there is a woodcut representing the 'Orthodox true Minister' preaching in a church, while the 'Seducer, or False Prophet,' is holding forth to people in the open air; and the reader is instructed as to the difference between true ministers and false teachers. Amongst the numerous executions that took place about the beginning of the Civil War, some of the sufferers belonged to the Roman Catholic Religion, and went to the gallows for conscience sake. In 1643 a certain Father Bell, a Romish priest, was hanged; and a few days after the execution a pamphlet was published, entitled '_The Confession, Obstinacy, and Ignorance of Father Bell, a Romish Priest, wherein is declared the manner of his Tryall, Condemnation, and Execution on Munday December 11, 1643_.' There is a woodcut of the execution of Father Bell, and an account of his behaviour on the occasion, his speech at the gallows, and his disputatious conversation with the Sheriff. Though many persons were put to death for witchcraft during the Long Parliament, I have met with no illustrated record of any such event. Matthew Hopkins was 'witch-finder general' at this time, and he had a flourishing trade. He had a regular system for finding out witches; but it appears that it must have been called in question, for the objections to his system and his answers thereto were delivered to the Judges of Assize for the County of Norfolk in 1647. A pamphlet of that date contains a full account of Hopkins's rules for finding witches, and it is illustrated with a woodcut representing the interior of a house, with the witch-finder, two witches seated, and surrounded by their imps in the shapes of animals. _The Welsh Post_ of 1643 is a curious illustrated pamphlet which relates the news of the Civil War in language such as was supposed to be used by a Welshman speaking English. It begins thus:--'Whereas there hath beene many Tiurnals and Passages, the truth whereof hath beene much suspected, so tat her doth not be certaine to heare the true report of her pretherns proceeding; her hath terefore chosen to herselfe a fery true Printer (tat do scorne to print lie) to print a weekly Tiurnall for her dear Countryman of Whales to understand te fery truth marke you me tat now, for ferily her will not lye truly, but tell her te pare naked truth.' The news from Oxford is that 'te kings forces are fery weake there, and that the Countrey are fery glad of it, because of teir intolerable trouble and charge.' There is also news from Northamptonshire, Cheshire, Gloucester, Plymouth, Yorkshire, &c, all related in the same language. [Illustration: HOPKINS, THE WITCHFINDER, 1647.] _The Welsh Plunderer_ is another pamphlet, with a woodcut of a Cavalier, which is probably intended for Prince Rupert. It contains a rambling protestation from 'Shinkin' of his loyalty, and states what he will do in case Prince Rupert should visit Wales. William Lilly, the Astrologer, found a rich field for the exercise of his gifts during the progress of the Civil War. He was employed by both Royalists and Roundheads; and it is said he was even consulted by the King about signing the propositions of the Parliament. His advice was also sought respecting the King's projected escape from Carisbrook Castle. He kept his name before the public by publishing various almanacs and tracts, in one of which, _The Starry Messenger_, 1645, he gives an account of a strange apparition of three suns seen in London on the King's birthday. This is preceded by a long list of similar appearances, from the time of Christ to his own time, and the remarkable events which followed. In high-flown language, mixed with the jargon of astrology he vaguely hints at great events impending:--'I am clearly of opinion, These Sights, as well as many others, were caused by those tutelary Angels, who, by Gods permission, and under him, have the Government of the English Commonwealth. They are sensible of those many impending Miseries now too plentifully amongst us. Their conference with man now, as in the days of old, very few attain unto, it being a blessing sought after by many, attained unto by few: And yet there are some of opinion there lives in the world some, and of those some, a small Party in England, that know more than they utter, and either by Vision, or verball Colloquie, have the knowledge of future events, yea, even from the blessed Angels:'--which is as much as to say, I, William Lilly, am one of the favoured few! Come to me and I will teach you wisdom--I will unfold to you the mysterious future! The tract is illustrated with a woodcut; and a later tract published by Lilly contains an engraving of the three suns, together with a further exposition of his views on the subject:--'God many waves in these last times (though not by prophecy) yet discovers and signifies his intentions unto us, and especially in and at those times when his heavy judgments are imminent upon us; witnesse the many and frequent Appearances of severall Prodigies seen in this Kingdom of England within these four or five years, the like whereof for number are not recorded in any, either ancient or modern History, so that I might weary the reader, should I but mention the severall Letters which from sundry parts of this Kingdom have come to my hands, some mentioning strange sights in the ayre; others men fighting therein; others Guns shooting; others relating of three moons; others the apparition of two suns; some sending me letters, and including therein some part of that Corn which was rained down from heaven, &c. I forbear all further discourse hereof, assuring the kingdom, these Prodigies are the Premonitions, and assumed infallible Messengers of Gods wrath against the whole Kingdom, for our wicked transgressions, &c. God give us peace and grace to repent.' [Illustration: THREE SUNS SEEN IN LONDON ON THE KING'S BIRTHDAY, 1648.] CHAPTER IV. The Civil War--Flying Sheets of News--Disturbance at Kingston-on-Thames--Plot against London--Riotous Proceedings at York, and Conspiracy in Edinburgh--The House of Commons--The Royal Standard raised at Nottingham--Battle of Edgehill--Prince Rupert--The Lord Mayor of London--_Mercurius Civicus_--_The Scottish Dove_--_The Flying Post_--_The Kingdomes Weekly Post_--Cruelties of the Cavaliers--The 'Levellers'--The King's Escape from Oxford--Funeral of the Earl of Essex--The Great Seal Broken--Fairfax--Cromwell--Sea Fight in the Channel--The Prince of Wales's Squadron--Mutiny at Norwich--Siege of Colchester--Execution of Sir Charles Lucas--The King at Carisbrooke Castle--Execution of the King--Confession of Richard Brandon. The discontent which had been growing for so many years, and which had been strengthened and inflamed by the acts of Charles I. and his advisers in violating the principles of the Constitution, had now arrived at the point of rebellion. At the commencement of the Civil War the excitement was increased and sustained by the publication of flying sheets of news. Although the practice of publishing regular periodical papers had commenced, numerous fugitive tracts and pamphlets continued to be printed relating to particular events. Some of these papers were illustrated with woodcuts evidently executed on the spur of the moment, while others appear to have been taken from other sources and adapted to the occasion. An example of this latter kind occurs in a tract of 1642, which strikingly illustrates the state of the times:-- '_A true Relation of the late Hurleyburly at Kingston upon Thames on Wednesday the 12th of January caused by Collonell Lundsford and the rest of his company, and the Towne fearing they would rise up in Rebellion, one cam speedily to declare it at_ London, _upon which the Traine Band were raised and caused to watch all night for the safety of the City._' On the title-page is a woodcut of an officer and a soldier, which, however, was evidently not executed for this special occasion, the officer being in the costume of the preceding reign. A facsimile of it is subjoined. The tract describes the commotion made in Kingston by the appearance of Colonel Lundsford and three hundred troopers, who, 'about the middle of the Towne, went in to drink, and continued there part of that day, swaggering, and swearing blasphemous Oathes (which filled the Towne with feares) and some amongst the rest, to frighten the Towne, swore bitter Oathes that they should see bloody times ere long.' [Illustration: HURLEYBURLEY AT KINGSTON-ON-THAMES, 1642.] [Illustration: CAPTAIN VAUL, THAT CRUEL TYRANT, 1642.] A tract of the same date refers to a reported conspiracy of the same Colonel Lundsford:--'_A terrible plot against London and Westminster discovered, showing how Colonell Lunsford the Papist, that should have bin Lieutenant in the Tower, should in a Conspiracy among the Jesuits and other Papists have blowne up the City of London, placing the pieces of Ordinance against it. Also how the papists with their forces should have risen against Westminster, and burnt downe the parliament house. Likewise how by this Conspiracy the Arch-bishop of_ Canterbury _should have been transported into France, and how Bishop Wren with many other Bishops and popish Doctors should have bin conducted with him thither, where Canterbury should have bin Sainted, and Wren made Cardinall. With an exact Relation of the chiefe Cause of the Apprentices rising in Armes to defend the City of London from their treachery, Describing most succinctly the singular mercy of God towards us in defending this Kingdome from the manifold Plots of the Papists and their Treacherous Conspiracies._' On the last page is a woodcut of a Cavalier in a hat and feathers, entitled 'Captaine Vaul that cruell Tyrant.' As there is no mention of this person in the pamphlet it was perhaps a well-known nickname of Colonel Lundsford. I annex a copy of this cut. The same cut appears in a tract entitled '_Terrible Newes from York_,' detailing certain riotous proceedings in that city, where it is given as 'Mr. Holk, chief Agent in the uproar.' Its first appearance, however, is in an account of a '_Bloody Conspiracy at Edinburgh_;' and, from its frequent use, this rough woodcut must have been regarded as a good, bold representation of a truculent soldier, suitable for the times. While the King and the House of Commons were contending for the upper hand there was published '_A Perfect Diurnall of the Passages in Parliament_,' illustrated with a woodcut of the House of Commons, with Mr. Speaker in the chair. This is used as a heading to several numbers of the same _Diurnall_, and sundry varieties of it are printed as headings to other reports of Parliament. This old woodcut has been often copied, but my examples of illustrated journalism would not be complete unless I introduced it here. The printing-presses that are said to have been carried by both armies during the Civil War must have been used solely for the printing of Proclamations, General Orders, and suchlike documents. It seems to be an ascertained fact that Cromwell's soldiers set up a printing-press in Scotland, and printed a newspaper; but it is not so certain that the armies of Charles I. and of the Parliament issued printed 'news' from whatever town they chanced to occupy at the time. It does not follow that because a tract is entitled _News from Hull_ it was actually printed at that place. On the contrary, I have found nearly all the tracts I have examined bear the imprints of London printers. _The News from the North, The Last printed News from Chichester_, &c., were all sent up to London, and there printed and published. [Illustration: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1642.] In the words of Hume, 'The open signal of discord and civil war throughout the kingdom' was made at Nottingham on August 22, 1642, when the King erected his Royal standard and appealed to the loyalty of his subjects to support his authority by arms. Historians differ as to the precise day when this formal declaration of hostilities took place. Clarendon and Hume both fix it on the _25th_ of August, while Rushworth gives the _22nd_ as the date. The latter view is confirmed by a contemporary pamphlet, which gives an account of the raising of the Standard, and is illustrated with a woodcut representing the event. This pamphlet was written in the interest of the Parliament and against the King's party; but his Majesty is referred to in the most respectful language, as is generally the case in the pamphlets of the time. At the beginning of the struggle frequent hopes were expressed that the King would consent to be guided by the Parliament, while his Cavalier adherents were represented as his real enemies. The pamphlet referred to has the following title:-- '_A true and exact Relation of the manner of his Majesties setting up of His Standard at_ Nottingham _on Munday the 22 of August, 1642_. '_First, the forme of the Standard, as it is here figured, and who were present at the advancing of it._ '_Secondly, the danger of setting up of former standards, and the damage which ensued thereon._ '_Thirdly, a relation of all the Standards that ever were set up by any King._ '_Fourthly, the names of those knights who are appointed to be the King's Standard-bearers, with the forces that are appointed to guard it._ '_Fifthly, the manner of the Kings comming first to Coventry._ '_Sixthly, the Cavalieres resolution and dangerous threats which they have uttered, if the King concludes a peace without them, or hearkens unto his great Councill the Parliament; moreover how they have shared and divided London amongst themselves already. London, printed for T. Coles, 1642._' [Illustration: RAISING THE ROYAL STANDARD AT NOTTINGHAM, 1642.] The account of this interesting historical event is given in these words: 'Munday being the 22 of August in the morning, his Majesty left his forces before Coventry, and with some Lords and others in company rode to Leicester, where he dined that day at the Abbey House, the Countesse of Devonshire's house; however, so many printed intelligences doe falsely, though with much confidence aver (much like their other relations) that the king was with his Army in the field, at the time of the battell between them and the Lord Brookes forces, which was not untill the day following. Presently after dinner the King againe tooke horse, and with his company rode to Nottingham, where was great preparation for the setting up of the Standard that day as was formerly appointed. Not long after the Kings coming to towne, the Standard was taken out of the Castle, and carried into the field a little on the back side of the Castle wall. The likenesse of the Standard it is much of the fashion of the City Streamers used at the Lord Mayor's Show, having about 20 supporters, and is to be carried after the same way; on the top of it hangs a bloody flag, the Kings Armes quartered, with a hand pointing to the Crowne which stands above with this Motto: _Give Cæsar his due_. The names of those Knights Baronets who were appointed to beare the Standard, viz. The chiefe was Sir _Thomas Brookes_, Sir _Arthur Hopton_, Sir _Francis Wortley_, and Sir _Robert Darlington_. 'Likewise there was three troop of Horse appointed to waite upon the Standard, and to beare the same backwards and forwards with about sixe hundred foot Souldiers. It was conducted to the field in great state, his Majesty, the Prince, Prince _Robert_ (whom his Majesty hath lately made a Knight of the Garter), going along with divers other Lords and Gentlemen of his Majesties traine, beside great company of Horse and Foot, in all to the number of about two thousand, who came more to see the manner of the thing than any waie to offer assistance to his Majesty, as did afterwards evidently appear, for that upon the taking downe of the Standard, there were not above thirty of the trained bands that offered to come in to his Majesty, which, because their numbers were so inconsiderable his Majesty refused to accept of. 'So soon as the Standard was set up, and his Majesty and the other Lords placed about it, a Herauld at Armes made ready to proclaim a Proclamation declaring the Ground and Cause of his Majesties setting up his Standard namely to suppress the pretended Rebellion of the Earle of Essex in raysing forces against him, to which he required the aid and assistance of all his loving subjects. But before the Trumpeters could sound to make Proclamation his Majesty called to view the said Proclamation; which being given him he privately read the same over to himselfe, and seeming to dislike some passages therein called for Penne and Inke, and with his owne hand crossed out and altered the same in diverse places, (a thing well worthy the noting) and then gave it the Herauld, who proclaymed the same to the people, though with some difficulty after his Majesties corrections; after the reading whereof, the whole multitude threw up their hats, with other suchlike expressions, _God Save the King_. Not long after the reading of the said Proclamation, it being towards night, the Standard was taken downe, and again carried into the castle, with the like state as it was brought into the field. And the next day it was again set up, and his Majesty came along with it, and made proclamation as the day before, and the like also was done on Wednesday, his Majesty being also present. But since that it hath been set up with lesse ceremony, there being not a hundred persons as are yet heard of that have offered themselves to his Majesty since the first setting up of his Standard. 'Since which time his gracious Majesty hath pleased to send some propositions to both Houses of Parliament; and hath employed the Earle of Dorset, the Earle of Southampton, and Sir John Culpeper, and Sir William Uvedall to deliver his Majesties minde to the honourable Houses of Parliament for a fair Treaty and accommodation of Peace, and that all differences and mistakes might be ended, and all hostile manner of warre to cease in our Land and that it might be sent over to Ireland upon which report the Cavaliers which are about the Country are very desperate to heare that his Majesty will hearken to an accommodation of peace, or to apply or comply with his Parliament; telling his Majesty that it is dishonourable to stoop to his Subjects, and if his Majesty doth, they will either hang themselves, or kill and murther themselves, and doth vow private revenge to this Kingdome, if they do now misse of their hopes and enterprises, for they say they are sure to overcome us whom they called Roundheads, and call our Souldiers nothing else but a company of Shrove-Tuesday boyes, and idle headed prentices, who run away from their Masters under pretence of having this opportunity to get liberty from their hard service and cruelty. It is truly reported that the Cavaliers are all desperately bent against the City of London, and the inhabitants; they have already within themselves shared and divided it; some have allotted to themselves Gracious Street, others Lumbard Street, then others have shared Cheapside, and Pauls Church-yard, others do determine to seize upon the rich Aldermens houses and Persons, others to whom they owe or are indebted to by bond, or bill, or book, doe resolve when they come into the City to seize upon those persons first, to whom they are indebted, and to cut their throats, and then to seize upon Usurer or others, and to cut his throat for that money, so say they, we shall be both at once out of debt and have money to boot; these are the resolutions of the Cavaliers who doth but looke for such an advantage, so full of cruelty and malice they are, which God in his infinite and blessed mercy protect both our King and Kingdome from; and that their own swords may returne into their own bosoms that wish and long for such a day.' Then follows a notification from both Houses of Parliament that none shall proclaim the setting up of the King's Standard; and whoever shall suffer loss or damage through the Cavaliers shall receive reparation. According to Clarendon, the Royal Standard was set up under the most ill-omened and depressing circumstances: 'There was not one regiment of foot yet brought hither, so that the train-bands which the sheriff had drawn together were all the strength the King had for his person and the guard of the Standard. There appeared no conflux of men in obedience to the proclamation; the arms and ammunition were not yet come from York, and a general sadness covered the whole town. The Standard was blown down the same night it had been set up, by a very strong and unruly wind, and could not be fixed again in a day or two, till the tempest was allayed. This was the melancholy state of the King's affairs when the Standard was set up.' [Illustration: PRINCE RUPERT, GENERAL OF THE KING'S HORSE, 1643.] Soon after the King had unfurled his Standard at Nottingham the battle of Edgehill was fought, and an illustrated tract relates how the inhabitants of Kenton, a village near the battle-field, were disturbed at night by strange noises and the appearance of apparitions after the battle. The name of Prince Rupert begins to appear in the narratives of events, and his portrait frequently occurs in the illustrated sheets of this period. This dashing and impetuous Cavalier, whose rash courage excited the admiration of the Royalists, was regarded by the Roundheads as a cruel and bloodthirsty enemy, and he was often denounced by the Puritan preachers. In 1643 there was a pamphlet published called '_The Bloody Prince; or, a Declaration of the Most Cruell Practises of Prince Rupert and the rest of the Cavaliers in fighting against God and the true Ministers of his Church_.' Facing the title is a woodcut representing Prince Rupert on his charger, with the towns of Birmingham and Daventry in the background, both of which places were the scenes of conflict during the war, the former having been taken, partially burnt, and a heavy fine inflicted on the inhabitants by Prince Rupert. The City of London having taken the side of the Parliament, was naturally inclined to honour its chief magistrate when he was found to be an active and energetic promoter of its views. Isaac Pennington was Lord Mayor in 1643, and his portrait was published in a laudatory pamphlet, entitled '_A True Declaration, and just Commendation of the great and incomparable care of the Right Honourable Isaac Pennington_.' His Lordship is styled the Atlas of the city, bearing the weight and management of all civil affairs on his shoulders, and he is much commended for his great care in superintending the building of the fortifications round London under the direction of the Parliament. 'And herein,' says the writer, 'your honour hath shewed yourselfe an excellent Magistrate complying with the Parliament in all matters that concerne the publicke administration of the Commonweale; so that you have lookt upon the present state of this Citie and Religion with the cleare eye of justice; you have heard of the great pressures which the country hath endured by the cruelty of the Cavaliers; you have to the discouragement of malignants on the shoulders of fortitude, bore and suffered their false aspersions.... Your Honour hath in your present Magistracie walked uprightly, having clean and pure hands; nay, strong hands; for your Honour hath been the chiefest raiser and promoter of the workes and fortifications round about the Citie of London: you saw the times were dangerous, and that the King's Cavaliers gaped after nothing more than to get London, and make it a prey to the supplying of their necessities.' I have copied the portrait of the man who was thus distinguished by his fellow-citizens, not merely as an example of illustrated news, but as showing what a Lord Mayor of London looked like in Charles I.'s time. [Illustration: ISAAC PENNINGTON, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, 1643.] It was in the City of London, and during the second year of the Civil War, that the first illustrated newspaper came into existence. _The Weekly News_ had attempted on only one occasion to illustrate the news of the day, but the _Mercurius Civicus_ frequently gave illustrations, and it is therefore entitled to be ranked as the first illustrated newspaper. It is true that most of the engravings it contains are portraits, and sometimes the same woodcut is used to represent more than one person. Besides portraits of the King and Queen, there are portraits of the chief generals and commanders engaged in the war. There are Prince Rupert, the Lord General, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Marquis of Huntley, Sir Edward Deering, General Lesley, Lord Inchiquin, Lord Digby, Sir W. Waller, the Earl of Warwick, and others. '_The Mercurius Civicus, London's Intelligencer, or Truth impartially related from thence to the whole kingdom, to prevent misinformation, from Thursday July 13 to Thursday July 20, 1643_,' is the full title of No. 8; and it is curious to notice how nearly a portion of the title--_London's Intelligencer_--corresponds to the _London News_. It was a peculiar feature of the early newspapers that they were announced as being published 'to prevent misinformation,' or for the 'correction of false reports'--not so much for the diffusion of truth as for the correction of falsehood. [Illustration: CHARLES I. AND HIS QUEEN, FROM 'MERCURIUS CIVICUS,' 1643.] On the front page of Number 8 of the _Mercurius Civicus_ are small portraits of Charles I. and his Queen, engraved on wood. Over the woodcut is a sort of table of contents, thus:--'The King and Queen conjoyned, the Kentish news related, our Forces are united, A publique Fast appointed.' On the preceding page is given a facsimile of the cut of the King and Queen. [Illustration: WEAPON CALLED A ROUNDHEAD, FROM 'MERCURIUS CIVICUS,' 1643.] Similar portraits occur in other numbers, as well as several ornamental letters; but there is in Number 11 a very interesting illustration of the news of the hour. It is a woodcut of a weapon said to be intended for use against the Roundheads, and the following account is given of it:--'In the Danish Ship lately taken by the Earle of Warwicke, near Newcastle, were found Armes compleat for 5000 foot and for 500 horse, 500 barrels of Gunpowder, Great store of Match and Lead, beside a thousand of those weapons which the Papists call Round-heads, for that with them they intended to bring the Round-heads into subjection. Many such weapons were long since found in divers Papists' houses in Lancashire; it is a weapon with an ovall or round top, stuck full of iron spikes. The forme whereof for better satisfaction is here set downe.' Then follows a representation of the weapon, of which a facsimile is given on the opposite page. The same cut is reprinted in other numbers. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF PRINCE RUPERT, FROM 'MERCURIUS CIVICUS,' 1644.] In another number it is related that 'the Manchestrians have lately taken from severall Papists in that County many desperate weapons which they call Round-heads.' No. 22 has a portrait of a Cavalier in hat and feather, intended probably for Prince Maurice, as there is in the body of the number an allusion to a report of his death. In No. 42 there is a portrait of Prince Rupert and the following summary on the title-page:--'Prince Rupert's forces routed near Stratford-on-Avon. Generall King's Army dispersed by the Scots. Himselfe wounded and fled to Yorke. Banbury Castle besieged by Colonell Cromwell.' I give a copy of Prince Rupert's portrait, which is made to do duty for the Marquis of Newcastle in another number. This practice of making the same woodcut pass for the portraits of different individuals savours somewhat of impudence on the part of the editor, and shows a cool reliance on the good nature or the obtuseness of his readers. [Illustration: THE OXFORD JUNTA IN COUNCIL, FROM 'MERCURIUS CIVICUS,' 1644.] In the number of the _Mercurius Civicus_ for April 11, 1644, there is a curious woodcut representing the 'Oxford Junta in Council,' with the following paragraph referring to it:--'The news from his Excellencies generall Roundezvous at Ailsbury on Good-Fryday next, will no doubt cause the Oxonian Papists to whip themselves before the time, and to make the Oxford Junto to recall their late votes.' The lady and gentleman in the balcony were probably intended for the King and Queen. There is more variety in this number of _Mercurius Civicus_ than in any I have seen. In the war news there is the taking of Waltam House, in Hampshire; the taking of numerous men and horses at Christ-church, in Dorsetshire; then comes a paragraph stating that 'On Munday last, April 8, there were ten men and two women executed at Tyburne for the severall offences for which they were condemned the last weeke at the Sessions in the Old Bayley.' Mention is made of a fight between the Scots Army and the Marquis of Newcastle's forces near Hilton; the gathering of the King's forces in the neighbourhood of Marlborough, and an announcement that the Parliament intend to draw all their forces together, and, if possible, by fighting a decisive action 'to put a speedy end to these miserable distractions.' The trial of Archbishop Laud was at this time going on, and reference is made to his appearance before the House of Peers. Two Welshmen were taken into custody for talking in Welsh, while they were crossing the river from Westminster to Southwark, about firing the city in several places, they not knowing that the waterman understood their language. It is stated that a solemn day of thanksgiving had been observed in London for the victory obtained over Sir Ralph Hopton's forces, and an ordinance was read in the churches exhorting the citizens to contribute all their strength to bring the contest to a final issue. There is also some account of recent fires in the city, which are attributed to the treachery of Cavaliers and Malignants. 'But,' says the writer, 'which way soever these sad accidents are brought to passe, they may afford the whole City this caution: that if the firing of some few houses be so dreadful and fearfull, as I am sure this appeared to those that beheld them, notwithstanding they had all means convenient to quench them, and the multitude being industrious to set their hands to the worke: O how terrible would it be to see your houses set on fire by the enemy, and the cruell souldiers, instead of bringing buckets of water, should stand with their drawne swords threatening the death of those that should offer to quench the flame? Poore Ireland can give ample testimony of this.' From Yorkshire there is news that Fairfax had taken Cawood Castle; from Banbury that the Royalist garrison was withdrawn from that place, and 'that the Carriers of Banbury and Southam were robbed the last weeke neere Tossiter in Northamptonshire by divers of the Cavaliers Forces.' In the number for April 25, 1644, there is a figure of the King armed with a sword, and with this inscription:--'Fire and sword again menaced by his Majesty.' During the first years of the Civil War the newspapers contained many portraits of the King, some of which were carefully engraved on copper. It is noticeable that the _Mercurius Civicus_ and other papers published during the Civil War were in the habit of including on their title-pages a summary of the contents of the number. Sometimes it was put in the form of rhyme, as-- 'Tewkesbury is taken Yorke walls are well shaken.' [Illustration: HEADING TO THE 'SCOTTISH DOVE,' 1644.] The _Scottish Dove_ frequently indulged in these rhyming summaries. On the title-page of Number 39 for July 13, 1644, the following lines are printed:-- 'Rupert and Newcastle wholly Routed Rupert and Newcastle's jarres undoubted; Newcastle fled to Sea, Rupert to the King, Give God the Glory heavenly praises sing. A day of thankes the parliament hath set, Lord Gray with some of Hasting's troops hath met. From Oswestree Middleton the siege did raise And Barnstaples defence, doth Essex praise; The Queen Pendennis Castle liketh best. The King uncertain where to take his rest.' The _Scottish Dove_ was a small quarto numbered and paged consecutively like the _Mercurius Civicus_. On the front page of every number was printed a woodcut of a dove bearing an olive-branch in its mouth, and at the side of the woodcut was usually printed the rhyming summary. I annex a facsimile of this heading. Many of the journals of this period showed their hankering after illustrations by occasionally indulging in an initial letter, if they could do nothing more. The animosities of party often caused them to forget their original purpose of spreading true intelligence, and they were quite as ready to apply the lash to each other as to chastise public wrongdoers or 'correct false reports.' At this time first appeared the familiar newspaper heading of the man on horseback blowing a horn. It was on the front page of the _Flying Post_, the first number of which was published on May 10, 1644. The full title was '_The Flying Post, conveying Weekly Packets to all Forraigne Nations, of the Proceedings of both Houses of Parliament and the Armies in Great Brittain_,' and it was 'published for the cleere satisfaction of all Forraigners and others who desire Certain, and Weekly Information.' The introduction is as follows:-- 'Gentlemen,--The too many errours committed of late time, by the irregularitie of the Presse (which since by the wisdome of the Parliament, is in a great measure suppressed), which did run Weekly in severall channels to the greatest part of Europe in great dishonour to our English Nation; Have enforced this my Flying Post never to make stay, till it had intimated the same unto you, and fully vindicated this my Native Kingdome, by publishing a certain Weekly Intelligence of all Proceedings of our honourable Parliament and unhappy wars of this Kingdome; wherein (though a well wisher to his Excellencie the Earle of Essex, and the Proceedings of Parliament) I shall write with the greatest indifference, truth, and modestie, as shall satisfie the impartiallest that reades me; attributing to the Enemy no otherwise than Truth will warrant it, be it to their honour or shame according to their demerit. Therefore give me leave to beg your credence beyond Sea and elsewhere, as you find me.' The _Flying Post_ gives intelligence from York, then besieged by the Scots; from Hull, Newark, and Mansfield; some notes of the proceedings in Parliament, respecting which the journalist says cautiously:--'As for our proceedings in Parliament, I shall be very cautious and tender in divulging them.' It was 'Published according to order,' and printed at London for Bernard Alsop, 1644. [Illustration: HEADING TO THE 'KINGDOMES WEEKLY POST,' 1644.] The _Klngdomes Weekly Post_ had the same heading, which is here copied. In a tract entitled '_Strange true and lamentable news from Exeter and other parts of the Western Countreys_' there is a woodcut of a woman on her knees praying for mercy. The pamphlet relates the cruelties inflicted by the Cavaliers on the inhabitants of Exeter, Bristol, and other towns. Prince Maurice is charged with breaking the articles of agreement made with the city of Exeter, and both he and Prince Rupert are likened to 'Tigers or Savage Beares.' It is stated that in the city of Exeter 'the rude Souldiers would not forbeare upon the least discontent given to them to draw their Rapiers upon the Citizens, and wound them, but especially when they are in their cups, they swagger, roare, sweare, and domineere, plundering, pillaging, or doing any other kind of wrong; to break shops and houses they count as nothing, taking away Boots, Shoes, Stockings, Hats, or any other commodities they can lay their hands on, and no Justice dares to resist them, and by this means the City is in such a miserable condition that they are even terrified to the death.' At Cirencester, having entered the town by force, they slew all the men who opposed them, took the unresisting inhabitants prisoners, and pillaged the town. At Bristol 'They went into some Cellars, where was plenty of wine and beere, drank what their gormandising guts would hold, and let the rest run about the house, with many other antique tricks that they used, which I cannot omit to speak of; moreover, they breake the Covenant which was made in every respect the very first hour that they entered the city, and fell to plundering, pillaging, robbing, stealing, cutting and slashing, as if they had never been brought up to any other practice.' [Illustration: STRANGE NEWS FROM EXETER, 1643.] In an account of the defence of Plymouth against the Royalists there is a very elaborate map showing the fortifications of the town, 'with the workes and approaches of the enemy at the last siege.' The account of the siege is very long, but the following passage may be quoted:--'One remarkable passage of God's providence to us we must with all thankfulnesse remember and acknowledge, that after the Towne had been a long time strictly beseiged and no fresh victuall either flesh or fish could be had, whereby the poore people were grievously punished, there came in an infinite multitude of Pilchards into the Harbour, within the Barbican, which the people took up with great ease in baskets, which did not only refresh them for the present, but a great deal more were taken, preserved, and salted; whereby the poore got much money; such a passage hath not happened before. 'We cannot forget the humanity of the good women of Plymouth, and their courage in bringing out strong waters, and all sorts of provisions in the midst of all our skirmishes for refreshing of our souldiers, though many shot through the cloathes.' I have already made the remark that the military atrocities of recent times were equalled, if not exceeded, during the Civil War in England and Ireland. In a tract of 1644, containing various items of news, the following woodcut is given as an illustration of recent events. The same woodcut is found in another tract entitled '_Terrible and bloody Newes from the disloyall Army in the North_:'--'The proceedings of the Scots and Irish appears more visible and inhumane than formerly; their actions are tyrannical, their ways most insufferable, and executeth nothing but blood thirstinesse and cruelty tending only to utter ruin and desolation; they have burned down divers stately buildings in these parts, executed some of my Lord Wharton's tenants, and threatens others, which causeth the Country to rise and joyn with Lieu. Gen. Cromwell, insomuch that there will be a sudden engagement.' The sect called the 'Levellers' is thus alluded to in the same tract:--'Colonel Martin's approach with his Levellers in these parts hath alarmed the Country and put themselves into a posture to receive them, and for preservation of their ancient rights and liberties against their new design of levelling, who by their strange, politick, and subtill delusions have wrought into the hearts of divers people to ingage with them, especially among those who are of a desperate fortune, and mean condition, the basest and vilest of men resorting to them. They rob and plunder exceedingly wheresoever they come, saying they will levell all sorts of people, even from the highest to the lowest, and that he that hath the most shall be equall with him that hath the least.' [Illustration: CRUELTIES OF THE CAVALIERS, 1644.] In a pamphlet relating to the events of Charles I.'s reign there are some of the etchings previously noticed, together with nine others illustrating the history of the same period. They are:--1. The Court of High Commission and Star Chamber. 2. The Execution on Tower Hill of Sir Alexander Carew, Sir John Hotham, Captain Hotham, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. 3. The King's Escape from Oxford. 4. The Execution of the Duke of Hamilton, Earl of Cambridge, Earl of Holland, and Arthur Lord Capel. 5. The Coronation of Charles II. in Scotland, 1650. 6. A Meeting of Cavaliers. 7. A Seapiece illustrating Charles II.'s Escape from England after the Battle of Worcester. 8. Reading the Act of General Pardon and Oblivion, 1651. 9. The House of Commons in Session. The full title of the pamphlet is as follows:--'_A Brief Review of the most material Parliamentary Proceedings of this present Parliament, and their Armies, in their civil and Martial Affairs, which Parliament began the third of November, 1640, and the remarkable Transactions are continued untill the Act of Oblivion February 24, 1652. Published as a Breviary, leading all along successively, as they fell out in their several years. So that if any man will be informed of any remarkable passage, he may turne to the year and so see in some measure in what Moneth thereof it was accomplished. And for information of such as are altogether ignorant of the rise and progress of these times, which things are brought to pass that former ages have not heard of and after ages will admire. A work worthy to be kept in Record, and communicated to Posterity. London: Printed for Tho. Jenner at the South Entrance of the Royal Exchange._' From the above I have copied the etching of the escape of Charles I. from Oxford. [Illustration: ESCAPE OF CHARLES I. FROM OXFORD, 1646.] It is stated by Hume that when the King escaped from Oxford he was accompanied by two persons only--Dr. Hudson and Mr. Ashburnham--and that he rode before a portmanteau and called himself Ashburnham's servant. The engraving scarcely corresponds with this account; but the scene represented is evidently outside the city of Oxford, and other persons may then have joined the King's party. The city of Oxford surrendered to the Parliament on June 24, 1646, the King having signed a warrant for the surrender fourteen days previously. This event is recorded in a pamphlet entitled '_Good Newes from Oxford of the Treaty for the Surrender thereof, and how they are packing up to march away on Thursday next, June 18, 1646_.' The 'march away,' however, was not accomplished till the 24th. Amongst those who left the place were Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, and the King's second son, James, the young Duke of York. The illustration to this pamphlet has no relation to the event, and was used on other occasions. The funeral of the Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary General, who died in 1646, was made the occasion of a great display of pomp and ceremonial magnificence, which was duly chronicled and illustrated by the journalists of the time. '_The true manner and forme of the proceeding to the Funerall of Devereux, Earl of Essex_,' contains, besides a copperplate portrait of the Earl, numerous woodcuts of banners, and the funeral canopy. Several illustrated broadsides relating to this event were also published. In looking over the old newspapers we are frequently reminded of the truth of the saying that 'history repeats itself.' The Duke of Wellington's funeral in 1852 was a repetition, on a much more splendid scale, of the funeral of the Earl of Essex in 1646, with such differences as arose from the taste and circumstances of the time. Portraits of the Earl of Essex are of frequent occurrence in the pamphlets of this period. In the pamphlet containing the escape of the King from Oxford there is an etching of the burning of the Book of Sports on the site of Cheapside Cross, which is thus described:--'10 of May the Booke of Sportes upon the Lords Day was burned by the Hangman in the place where the Crosse stoode and at Exchange.' There is also in the same pamphlet a representation of breaking the Great Seal:--'The Great Seale broken before the Lords and Commons, on Tuesday, the 11 of August, 1646.' Some authorities say the Great Seal was not broken till January, 1649, new style. [Illustration: THE GREAT SEAL BROKEN, 1646.] Sir Thomas Fairfax succeeded the Earl of Essex as commander of the Parliamentary army, and had Oliver Cromwell for his Lieutenant-General. Though a Presbyterian, he suffered himself to become the tool of the Independent party, and followed the councils of Cromwell until the Army had become master both of the Parliament and of the kingdom. All that related to a person of so much importance must have had uncommon interest for the popular mind, and accordingly we find Sir Thomas Fairfax and his military council form the subject of an engraving in a pamphlet of 1647. It is entitled '_The manner of His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax and the officers of his Army sitting in Council_.' In this engraving it will be seen that Fairfax, though farthest removed from the spectator, is made the largest figure in the picture, apparently for the purpose of giving him proper importance. Note also the huge pens, and the mysterious way in which the foreground figures appear to grow _out_ of the benches instead of sitting _on_ them. [Illustration: SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX AND HIS MILITARY COUNCIL, 1647.] Though Cromwell was at this time the real director of the army, and ere long became its acknowledged head, I have met with no representation of him in the illustrated news of the period. The art of 'interviewing' had not then been developed, and the 'Special Artist' did not exist. The most enterprising correspondent would probably have hesitated to intrude upon that stern and resolute leader of a revolutionary army, if he had no better excuse than to describe how he looked and what he said. Fancy the Special Artist of the _Mercurius Civicus_, for instance, sending in his card to Oliver Cromwell with a polite request that the General would give him five minutes of his valuable time for the purpose of making a sketch for the next number of his journal! And fancy how the uncomely countenance of the _ci-devant_ brewer would redden at the request, and how, probably, the unlucky artist would be consigned to the custody of the sentinel at the door! There is not much said about naval matters in the newspaper chronicles of the Civil War. The earliest account of a sea-fight that I have met with occurs in a pamphlet published in 1647. It is illustrated with a woodcut representing ships of war in action--which woodcut, by-the-by, afterwards appears in other pamphlets. The narrative is in the form of a letter, dated at sea, off Dover, May 4th, 1647; and, as the pamphlet is dated May 10th, we have another example of the extreme eagerness of the news-writers to supply the public with early intelligence. The combatants were not at war, and the fight appears to have arisen out of a mere question of naval etiquette. The following account is given of the transaction:-- 'A full Relation of a late Sea-Fight, betwixt the Parliament Ships and the Queene of Sweathlands, upon the Coast of England, neere Portsmouth, May 1. 'Sir, 'On the 2 of this instant moneth, being the Lords day, our Commander in chiefe of the Sea Forces, received a packet from a small Frigat, that came from the Rear-Admirall who had been in Fight the day before with five of the Queen of Swethlands ships, which they conveyed, being all laden with salt from Tubey in Portingale. 'The reason of the fight was, the Swedish ships wore flags, viz., Admirall, Vice-Admirall, and Rear-Admirall, which they refused to take in, or to low their top-sales (although commanded by Cap. Owen, Capt. of the Parliaments Reare-Admiral so to do) whereupon the said Capt. Owen gave them a broadside, insomuch that divers shots past betweene them, and great execution done upon the Switzers, scouring their upper decks with small shot severall times. Captain Owen lost not above 8 men, besides some few wounded, the fight continued sixe hours, til night began to aproach, where the Swedish Fleet tooke their opportunity, and got away. But so soon as Vice-Admirall Batten[1] heard of it, he set saile with the St. Andrew, Garland, Convertine, and Mary-Rose, and stood over for the coast of France in the night; and in the morning about 8 of the clock, being the 3 of May near Bulloign, he came up with the Admiral of the Swedes ship whose names was Martin Tysin, the ship was called the Leopard and had 32 guns; the Vice-Admiral Daniel Johnson, a lusty stout ship, called the Angel Raphael, and had 24 guns; the Rear-Admiral the Neptune, Moris Cook Captain, with 18 guns; the other two ships of 22 guns apiece, one being called the Anne-Free, the other the Neptune. 'The Captaines of all these ships, hee commanded aboard, and asked them what they had done with his Rear-Admiral; they at first denied that they saw him, but he pressing it so hard upon them, at length confessed, that they had been in fight with him, and that the reason was, because they would not take in their flags, being so commanded by their Queen, and had instructions to that purpose, which he caused them to send for, and took copies of them, which appeared to be true in a high manner. 'And they further told our Commander Vice-Admiral Batten, that they would rather die in honour, than to go home and be hanged, for disobeying their commissions; a brave resolution, and I could wish it were imprinted in the hearts of all our commanders; they further told him, that if these flaggs were then abroad, they would die before they made one shot at him, though he shot never so many at them, yet would not take them in, and indeed were very respective to him. But they did much blame the Rear-Admiral, for that all the shot he made was at their Vice-Admiral and Rear-Admiral, and not at their Admiral, whom he ought first to have commanded, the others being subordinate to his commands; and although he was 4 or 5 hours by the Admirals side never shot gun at him, but sent his Boat 3 times aboard. Our Vice-Admiral demanded of them, where the Rear-Admiral left them, they told him off Beachey which to him did seem strange, that he should begin a quarrell and not follow them, till he came neer where the Vice-Admiral was, having sent a Frigot to him, to give him intelligence, and might undoubtedly expect his relief. 'All Munday was spent in taking of Examinations, and Copies of Commissions; the Swedish Commanders being detained aboard by our Vice-Admiral as prisoners, but used with great civilitie. 'At length a Councell of Warre was called by our Commander in chiefe with his Captaines, the result whereof was, that the Swedes Vice-Admiral, who had been the man which was most active was with his ship to be carried into the Downes, till the pleasure of the Parliament be further known which was done accordingly, and the next day we arrived in the Downes, being the 4. instant; the rest of the Swedes in regard of their shortness of Victuall, and having charge of the Convoy, were left to their own dispose, and this was performed without shooting so much as a Musket; but truly, if the Queene of Swethland leave not out that peremptory command in her instructions, not to strike to any of our Commanders, enjoyned to keep the Sovereignty of the Seas, and to expect homage from all, even to sinking, or burning, this must in time breed ill-bloud between the two Kingdomes, which might be wisht might be prevented, by a letter from our Parliament to the Queen of Swethland. Thus have I given you a perfect Relation of the whole proceedings. Sir, I have not else at present, but to let you know, I am your most humble servant and kinsman, 'R. B. [Illustration: NAVAL BATTLE, 1647.] 'Dated at Sea off Dover the 4. of May 1647.' Another piece of illustrated news bearing upon naval affairs is entitled, '_News from the Royall Navie, Colchester, and Portsmouth, declaring the proceedings and intentions of the Prince of Wales, &c._' [Illustration: THE PRINCE OF WALES'S SQUADRON, 1648.] 'We have received intelligence from the _Brill_ in Holland, that his Highness the Prince of Wales since his arrival there hath embarked himself in a great Vessell for England, the Earl of Newcastle, the Lord Gerhard, the Lord Culpepper, and divers others Lords and Gentlemen, being now floating upon the Neptune Seas towards the North of England, accompanying of his Royall person; we hear that they intend to land about Berwick, or else on the South side of the Holy-Island, and to march in the Van of the English Army. It is likewise said that divers Scottish Lords hath been with his Highnesse, and have treated with his Councell declaring the grounds and reasons of their engagement with England, and their resolution to redeem their dread Sovereign from imprisonment, to re-invest His Royall Person, and to make both him and His Posterity happy, and so Peace and Unity may flourish throughout all His Majesties Realms and Dominions. Severall urgent invitations were also presented to his Highness for his speedy and personal appearance in the North of England. The like to the Duke of York for his hastening with the Royal Navie towards the Downs, which unexpectedly is now come to pass; for we hear that the Prince with a great number of Royalists are sayled from the Brill in Holland towards the North of England, and that the Duke is come upon the Downs with a great and numerous Fleet, consisting of about 10 of the Kings great ships, and 30 Flemings, but they have not meddled on either side as yet; six of the Dukes ships, on Saturday last strook sayle before the town and Castle of Deal, and by their churlish tokens they sent us made it appear what they were, for they shot very neer 100 great Pieces at us, which killed 8 or nine of our men.' This account is illustrated with the woodcut on the opposite page. Some of the rough woodcuts to be found in many of the Civil War tracts would be unworthy of notice, did they not show the constant efforts that were made to illustrate the news of the hour. Such is the illustration to a tract entitled, '_A true Relation of the late Great Mutiny which was in the City of Norwich April 24, 1648_.' This gives an account of the explosion of ninety-eight barrels of gunpowder, whereby 200 mutineers were slain, and the woodcut is intended to show the effects of the explosion. _Bloody Newes from the Scottish Army_ contains a woodcut representing two men on horseback charging each other. The description gives an account of the advance of the Scottish army on the English near Penrith, intending to surprise the latter; 'but by the vigilance of our scouts they were discovered.' After a 'furious conflict gallantly maintained on both sides, we gained ground, and beat them out of the field. This action happened upon Sunday morning last about 2 of the clock in the morning.' [Illustration: EXPLOSION AT NORWICH, 1648.] During the last struggles between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, the latter, under Lord Goring, were driven into Colchester by Fairfax, and there besieged for more than two months. There are several pamphlets detailing incidents of this siege, one or two of which are illustrated. One of them is in the form of a letter to the writer's brother, and it has a quaint woodcut of 'Colchester Leaguer.' Another tract, dated July 27, 1648, is entitled '_A great Fight at Colchester upon Tuesday night last, being the 25 of this instant July, and the advancing of General Lucas and his forces to the very Guards of the Parliamenteers, with the particulars of the Fight, and the number that were killed and taken prisoners on both sides, and the springing of a Mine to blow up part of the Leaguer. Likewise a letter from Colchester concerning the marching of an Army to London. And Message from Prince Charles to Gen. Lucas. And a bloudy Fight at Deal Castle in Kent. London. Printed for R. Woodus, and are to be sold at the Royall Exchange in Cornhill, 1648._ The letter describing this fight contains so much curious matter that it is worth transcribing entire:-- [Illustration: COLCHESTER LEAGUER, 1648.] 'Sir, we have received information from Yarmouth, Harwich, and other places, that there is great fear of the Prince of Wales landing in those parts with a very considerable Army, and that he is resolved to advance towards Colchester, to raise the siege, and to let those Birds at liberty, which he esteems to be the only instruments to advance his Father's Cause. We hear that the L. Gerrard is designed Lieutenant Generall of the new Eastern Army, and the Lord Culpepper Major Generall, and that his Highnesse will repose no trust in either of the Princes Rupert or Maurice, or any other Foreign Personage whatsoever. This morning a Corporall of a troop of horse deserted the Colchestrian service, and humbly submitted himself to the Lord Generall, who upon examination touching their numbers and victualling said that the last Muster Rolls made mention of above 6000 Horse and Foot, and for victualling, they had plenty of Rye and bread-corn, but for flesh-meat they had none at all left, being constrained to kill Horses to satisfie their hungry appetites, which causeth many of the young Soldiers to desert their hard commons. 'He further said, that at the last Muster upon Munday last the E. of Norwich and Sir Charles Lucas rode to the head of each Regiment, and read a paper to the Soldiery (which they said was a Message from the Prince of Wales) intimating that his Highnesse were resolved immediately to land his Forces about Yarmouth, and from thence to march downe to Colchester to raise the siege, and set them at liberty, and that if they could but hold out till Satterday, he doubted not of the day, and should take it as an acceptable service from them. 'But I conceive the truth of this to be as palpable falsehood as the late report of the Royalists in these parts, who would not stick to say, _that Colchester was relieved by the ship called the Swallow, and that they shot in above 500 Holland cheeses out of Mortar pieces &c._ 'Some who are come out of the Town reports that the enemy within are springing a Mine, and doth intend to blow up the Lord Lucas his house (in our possession) which doth very much annoy them; their great Ordnance plaid very hard this morning, and did some execution, ours answered them again from the Great Mount, and plaid upon them for the space of one hour. 'They are in very great streights for provision, and have eaten horse-flesh these six or seven dayes, but as resolute as formerly. 'A party came out to cut Barley which was repulsed without losse, two only wounded of the party; some horse grazing under the City walls were snapt by some of Col. Whalleyes Forces, some shot, 38 taken, no way serviceable at present, unlesse good keeping recover them. 'On Satterday last the Lord Generall gave Order that several Papers should be shot into the town out of Arrows, offering the private Souldiers quarter, and passes to go home, if they will deliver up Goring, Capel, Lucas, Loughborough, Farre, &c. [Illustration: GENERAL LUCAS AT THE SIEGE OF COLCHESTER, 1648.] 'This morning betwixt three and four of the clock, we received some tokens from the besieged, a party of them sallied out, and advanced up a narrow Lane neer to one of our Guards, thinking to surprise them unawares; but an Eagle ey'd Centinel discovering them, presented her bill, and fired; whereupon the rest of the Guardians received an allarm and immediately man'd the Line, the Colchestrians advanced and charged with great fury, this action was disputed by both parties with great courage and resolution, the enemy fell on without mercy, and fought it with much violence, but our Forces bodying, they retreat, our men pursues with great execution, killed about 20. and took as many prisoners, with the losse of 12. men; the like dispute hapned the last night; we expect every hour when we shall have Orders to fall on, the work will be difficult, and the storming dangerous, the town being disadvantageous for such a Military action. '_Colchester Leaguer July 26. at 8. in the morning._' This tract is illustrated with a portrait of General Lucas on horseback, which is copied on the previous page. Colchester surrendered to the Parliament on Aug. 27, 1648, when Fairfax determined to make an example of Sir Charles Lucas. This unexpected severity was attributed to Ireton, who had been set by Cromwell to watch Fairfax. There was a strong protest made against the intended execution, but it nevertheless took place. Lucas was shot, together with Sir George Lisle. The former suffered first, and he himself gave the order to the soldiers to fire, with as much coolness as if he had been a mere spectator. It is said that Lisle ran and kissed the dead body of his friend, and then presented himself to a like fate. Thinking that the firing party was too far off, he called to them to come nearer; one of the soldiers replied, 'I'll warrant you, Sir, we'll hit you.' 'Friends,' said the gallant Royalist, smiling, 'I have been nearer you when you have missed me.' Other tracts describe the proceedings of the Prince of Wales in his attempts to retrieve his father's fortunes. One of them has a portrait of the Prince, and contains a message sent by him to the Mayor of Yarmouth concerning the landing of his forces there for the relief of Colchester. Another is adorned with a very elaborate title-page, and describes 'The Resolution of the Prince of Wales, concerning the landing of his Army in the Isle of Loving-Land, within the County of Suffolk, and his Propositions to all Englishmen concerning his Engagement for King, City, and Kingdom, against the Army, and to fight for their Liberties, Freedom, and Privileges. Likewise, the further proceedings of the Royal Navie, under his Highness the D. of York, and the Declaration of the Seamen in the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, concerning the Kings Majesty and the Fleet Royall, 1648.' The contest between the Royalists and the Parliament was now drawing to a close. The King was a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, and while he lay there he continued to occupy the pens of the pamphleteers and journalists. One writer addressed an exhortation to the nobility, clergy, and civil magistrates, in favour of the imprisoned Monarch; and he adorned his work with the above representation of the King in prison, which afterwards appeared in other pamphlets. [Illustration: CHARLES I. IN CARISBROOKE CASTLE, 1648.] It is remarkable that such important events as the trial and execution of Charles I. should not have tempted the newspapers of the day to illustrate subjects of so much interest. It may have been that such a terrible termination of the Civil War in some degree paralysed men's energies, and drove all thoughts of trading on such an event from their minds. I have met with two very rough woodcuts professing to represent the execution. One is contained in the Confession of Richard Brandon, the Hangman, and the other forms half of a woodcut frontispiece to a broadside describing the execution of the Regicides, which I shall refer to in its proper place. The Confession of Richard Brandon was published in 1649, the same year in which the King was executed, and purports to be a death-bed statement concerning that event. There were two Brandons, Gregory and Richard, father and son. The former beheaded Lord Strafford, and was believed by Charles II. to have been the executioner of his father. According to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, George Selwyn, 'that insatiable amateur of executions,' told the story of King Charles's execution from information which he professed to have obtained from the Duchess of Portsmouth, who, he said, always asserted, on the authority of Charles II., that the King, his father, was not beheaded by either Colonel Joyce or Colonel Pride, as was then commonly believed, but that the real name of the executioner was _Gregory_ Brandon; that this man had worn a black crape stretched over his face, and had no sooner taken off the King's head than he was put into a boat at Whitehall Stairs, together with the block, the black cloth that covered it, the axe, and every other article that had been stained with the Royal blood. Being conveyed to the Tower, all the implements used in the decapitation had been immediately reduced to ashes. A purse containing one hundred broad pieces of gold was then delivered to Brandon, and he was dismissed. He survived the transaction many years, but divulged it a short time before he died. 'This account,' Wraxall adds, 'as coming from the Duchess of Portsmouth, challenges great respect.'[2] Popular belief, however, at the time pointed to Richard Brandon, son of the above-named Gregory Brandon, whose confession, published immediately after his death, I here quote:-- 'The Confession of Richard Brandon the Hangman (upon his Death bed). 'The Confession of the Hangman concerning his beheading his late Majesty the King of Great Brittaine (upon his Death bed) who was buried on Thursday night last, in White Chappell Church-yard, with the manner thereof. 'Upon Wednesday last (being the 20 of this instant June, 1649) Richard Brandon, the late Executioner and Hangman, who beheaded his late Majesty, King of Great Brittaine, departed this life. But during the time of his sicknesse his conscience was much troubled, and exceedingly perplexed in mind, yet little shew of repentance, for remission of his sins, and by past transgressions, which had so much power and influence upon him, that he seemed to live in them and they in him. And upon Sunday last, a young man of his acquaintance going in to visit him, fell into discourse, asked him how he did, and whether he was not troubled in conscience, for cutting off of the King's head? 'He replied by reason that (upon the time of his tryal, and at the denouncing of Sentence against him) he had taken a vow and protestation, _wishing God to perish him body and soul, if ever he appeared on the scaffold to do the act or lift up his hand against him_. 'Further acknowledging, _That he was no sooner entered upon the scaffold, but immediately he fell a trembling, and hath ever since continued in the like agony_. 'He likewise confessed that he had 30 pounds for his pains, all paid him in half-crowns, within an hour after the blow was given, and that he had an orange stuck full of cloves, and a handkircher out of the King's pocket, so soon as he was carried off from the scaffold; for which orange he was proffered 20 shillings by a gentleman in Whitehall, but refused the same, and afterwards sold it for ten S. in Rosemary-lane. 'About 6 of the clock at night he returned home to his wife living in Rosemary Lane, and gave her the money, saying, _That it was the deerest money that ever he earned in his life, for it would cost him his life_. Which prophetical words were soon made manifest; for it appeared that ever since he hath been in a most sad condition, and upon the Almightie's first scourging of him with the Rod of meeknesse, and the friendly admonition of divers friends, for the calling of him to repentance, yet he persisted on in his vicious Vices, and would not hearken thereunto, but lay raging and swearing, and still pointing at one thing or another, which he conceived to appear visible before him. 'About three dayes before he died he lay speechlesse, uttering many a sigh and heavy groan and so in a most desperate manner departed from his bed of sorrow. For the buriall whereof great store of wines were sent in by the sheriff of the City of London, and a great multitude of people stood wayting to see the Corps carried to the Church-yard, some crying out _Hang him Rogue, bury him in the Dung-hill_; others pressing upon him saying, _They would quarter him, for executing of the King_; insomuch, that the Church Wardens and Masters of the Parish were fain to come for the suppressing of them, and (with great difficulty) he was at last carried to White-Chappell Church-yard, having (as it is said) a bunch of Rosemary at each end of the coffin, on the top thereof, with a Rope tyed crosse from one end to the other. 'And a merry conceited Cook, living at the sign of the Crown, having a black Fan (worth the value of 30 shillings) took a resolution to rent the same in pieces, and to every feather tied a piece of packthread dy'd in black ink, and gave them to divers persons, who (in derision) for a while, wore them in their hats. 'Thus have I given thee an exact account and perfect relation of the life and death of Richard Brandon, to the end, that the World may be convinced of those calumnious speeches and erroneous suggestions which are dayly spit from the mouth of envy, against divers persons of great worth and eminency, by casting an _odium_ upon them for the executing of the King; it being now made manifest that the aforesaid Executioner was the only man that gave the fatal blows, and his man that wayted upon him was a Ragman, living in Rosemary Lane.' Subjoined is a copy of the cut on the title-page of this tract. [Illustration: EXECUTION OF CHARLES I., 1649.] The death of Richard Brandon is entered in the register of St. Mary's, Whitechapel, under date June 21, 1649. To the entry is appended a note, evidently of about the same date, to the effect that 'this R. Brandon is supposed to have cut off the head of Charles the First.' The 'calumnious speeches and erroneous suggestions' had indicated several persons as having struck the fatal blow on that dismal morning in January. Amongst them, besides those already named, were 'Squire Dun,' William Walker, Hugh Peters, Lord Stair, and William Hewlett. The last-named person was actually tried for the crime at the Restoration. The evidence against him went to show that 'his voice was heard upon the scaffold, and his Breeches were seen under his Frock, that he confest he was to have £100 and preferment in Ireland to doe it; that being asked whether he cut off the King's head or no, he said what he had done he would not be ashamed of; and if it were to doe again he would doe it; more to the same purpose was witnessed by several witnesses, and by one, who being sworn, said that the Common-Hangman profest he did not doe it.' This sort of evidence was not fit to hang a dog; and, though Hewlett was found guilty and sentenced to death, the sentence was never carried into effect--a proof that public opinion must have been too strong even for the hardihood of those who had foredoomed Hewlett to the gallows. The Government had evidently determined to fix the treason on this man with the sanguinary idea that some person ought to be made to expiate the deed, even though that person might be innocent. The prevalent belief, however, was that it was the common executioner who had been employed; and it is highly improbable that a mere amateur would have been permitted to officiate on such an important occasion. Although I have met with no native contemporary production representing the execution, other than the rude woodcuts before mentioned, there is in the British Museum a collection of broadsides relating to the period of the Civil War, one of which has a large and well-executed copperplate engraving representing the execution of Charles I. It was published at Frankfort, and the descriptive text is in German. The view of Whitehall is correctly given, and the engraving looks like a genuine representation of the event. FOOTNOTES: [1] There is an Admiral Batten often mentioned by Pepys. If this is the same man who was an active commander under the Parliament he must have trimmed his sails well to hold a place in the Navy office under Charles II. [2] _Old and New London._ By Edward Walford. CHAPTER V. Decrease of Newspapers after the Civil War--_Mercurius Democritus_--_The Faithful Post_--_The Politique Post_--Broadsides for the People--The Hollow Tree at Hampstead--Prodigious Monster taken in Spain--The Restoration--Trial of the Regicides--Execution of the Regicides--Licenser of the Press appointed--Popular Taste for the Supernatural--Apparition in the Air in Holland--Revival of _Mercurius Civicus_--Murder of Archbishop Sharpe--_The Loyal Protestant_--Frost Fair on the Thames--Monmouth's Rebellion--The Bloody Assizes--Funeral of Queen Mary, Consort of William III.--Increase of Newspapers after the Revolution. When the Civil War was over the newspapers it had called into existence disappeared. The printing-press was, of course, not idle during the rule of Cromwell, but its productions were narrowly watched, and there is reason to suppose the newspapers were to a great extent under the influence of the party in power. Examples of illustrated journalism during this period are rare. We have '_A terrible and bloudy Fight at Sea_' between Blake and Van Tromp, and '_A great and wonderful Victory_' obtained by the English in the West Indies, each illustrated with a woodcut that had done duty in the pamphlets of the Civil War. A rough representation of an owl seated at a table writing in a book heads a tract ridiculing Lilly, the astrologer; while '_Black Monday, or a full and exact description of the great and terrible Eclipse of the Sun_,' is adorned with a representation of 'the true Figure of the Eclipse.' The grim and unsocial character of the times is set forth in '_The Vindication of Christmas_,' a pamphlet illustrated with a woodcut representing Old Christmas welcomed on one hand and forbidden on the other. After a pitiful lament for the misery of the times, Christmas sets out on a pilgrimage to London, where he enters a fair house that had once been an Alderman's, but is now inhabited by a sour-tempered miser. Here he meets with such a cold reception that he is fain to take himself off, 'and wandering into the country up and down from house to house, found small comfort in any.' [Illustration: THE VINDICATION OF CHRISTMAS, 1653.] I have spoken of _Mercurius Democritus_ as being the _Punch_ of the seventeenth century. It is singular that such a publication as this should have existed under a Puritanical Government. The humour is so exceedingly broad that it is difficult to understand how it could be circulated at a time when the rulers of the land professed a stern and rigid morality. Unlike the modern _Punch_, who is refined and courteous even when he is most severe, _Mercurius Democritus_ could seldom be facetious without being coarse and even indecent. In the same number that contains the cut of the Smithfield ghost, referred to in Chapter III., occur the following jests, which are comparatively mild specimens of the humour of _Mercurius Democritus_:--'The last Monday a Herd of Swine being driven through Long Lane 600 Jews were suddenly converted by them; some think it was for fear those Rumford Cattell should serve them as they served the Devill in the country of the _Gergesens_ when they carried him headlong into the sea.' 'A Mad Country Parson coming riding up to London between Islington and the Red Bull met with a small-coale man, very black, with his sack of small coale at his back. The pitiful Parson minding to put a jeer on the small-coale man, made a sudden stop with his Horse, saying with a loud voyce, that those that rid after him might partake of the jest, Fellow, fellow (quoth he) I prithee tell 's some news from Hell, I see thou hast a whole sack full at thy back. Truly quoth the small-coale man, I can tell you but very little news from Hell, only the Devill wants a Chaplaine, and you ride but a little faster you may perchance have the place.' Much of the news printed continued to be circulated by means of pamphlets and broadsides, but some regular newspapers were also published. An illustrated example of the latter occurs in the _Faithful Post_ of 1653. The full title of the number for April 8, 1653, is '_The Faithful Post Impartially communicating the Proceedings of the Parliaments forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland, comprising the sum of Intelligence from the English and Dutch Fleets; with the Affairs and Designs now on foot in France, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and all other parts of Europe_.' It has a woodcut portrait of Admiral Van Gallen, and contains the following news from Amsterdam relating thereto:-- 'Wednesday, April 6. 'From Amsterdam thus; Van Gallen Admiral of the Dutch Fleet in the Streights, has a golden chair sent him for his little great gallantry in the last service. And the Commons forsooth adore him extremely; insomuch that many of the Bores have erected his Statue and Portraiture, and hung it up as a memorial in the most eminent places of their Low country Fabrics, according to the figure following; with two silver keys in his hands; which, say they, are to unlock the Treasury of their enemy. _Pure Youths_.' (Here follows the portrait.) 'And as we are informed, hath a golden Leg delicately set forth by Mr. Painter, in lieu of that shot off in the fight.' [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ADMIRAL VAN GALLEN. FROM THE 'FAITHFUL POST,' 1653.] [Illustration: FLAG OF COL. CHARLES JAMES. FROM THE 'POLITIQUE POST,' 1653.] In the foregoing _Faithful Post_ there is a good deal of news about the English and Dutch fleets; and in the news from Lubeck it is reported that the English have printed a 'picture of Admiral Van Tromp represented with a man opening his breast to find his heart; but, searching, it was found in the Calf of his Leg, whereas, saith the Dutch Print, they know very well that Tromp behaved himself most gallantly, and like a man of courage.' In another number of the _Faithful Post_ is an illustration of a comet or 'Blazing Star' seen in Germany. The foregoing portrait of Admiral Van Gallen, and the blazing star, together with a map showing the effects of a great storm and flood in Holland, are printed in the _Politique Post_ for January 4, 1653; but there is no reference made to the engraving of Van Gallen; and the blazing star is described as having been seen at Pembroke, in Wales. In the same number of the _Politique Post_ is a woodcut of the flag of Colonel Charles James, which is thus alluded to:--'By the last Post and intelligence from the Navie, we have received very certain and credible intelligence, that Colonel Charles James having received a commission from the King of Scots, is launched forth into the deep with the Brest men of war who has now struck sail upon the Coast of Brittain, and there set up his Flag on the Poop of the Patrick, called the Vice-Ambral as here represented in the ensueing Figure.' [Illustration: THE HOLLOW TREE AT HAMPSTEAD, 1654.] In 1654 there was a remarkable tree at Hampstead, which was visited as a curiosity. It was called 'The Hollow Tree,' and was probably the central attraction of a place of entertainment. In a broadside of 1654 there is an etching of it by Hollar, with descriptive and other verses. There was a door in the trunk of the tree, and a turret on the top, the ascent to which was in the hollow of the tree. The turret was large enough to seat six, 'and round about roome for fourteene more.' The following is a specimen of the verses accompanying Hollar's etching:-- 'THE SALUTATION. 'Welcome, before! welcome all you that follow! Our heart is sound although our Tree be hollow, Yet know nor age, nor weaknesse did distresse Its willing bulk into this hollownesse: But a desire markt out for noble ends, To finde more room to entertain fast friends, And in the compasse of itself to try Laws of true Mirth and Hospitality. In such a Hollow, Musick dwells; thus love Laies forth itself, yet ne'er doth bankrupt prove. And having read the riddle doth impart Things sometimes hollow have the soundest heart.' [Illustration: PRODIGIOUS MONSTER TAKEN IN THE MOUNTAINS OF ZARDANA IN SPAIN, 1655.] This broadside was an agreeable change from the prodigies and monstrosities with which the public were so liberally supplied. A specimen of the latter was published in 1655, which must have tried the faith of even the most credulous. It is described as '_The True Portraiture of a prodigious Monster, taken in the Mountains of Zardana_; the following Description whereof was sent to Madrid October 20, 1654, and from thence to Don Olonza de Cardines, Ambassador for the King of Spain now resident in London. Its stature was like that of a strong well set man, with 7 heads, the chief of them looking forward, with one eye in its front; the other heads have each two eyes in their natural situation, the ears of an Ass; with its principal head it eates, drinks, and cryes with an extraordinary and terrible voice; the other heads are also moved to and fro; it hath seven Arms and Hands of a Man, very strong in each of them; from the middle downward it is like a Satyr, with Goats feet, and cloven,' &c. This broadside has a very well-executed copperplate engraving of the monster; and another sheet of the same date has a woodcut copy of the same engraving, together with a long account in verse 'to the tune of Summer Time,' and the following additional particulars: 'The News of this Satyrical Monster being noysed abroad throughout all Spain, France, and Italy, made a desperate fear, and general distemper amongst all the Popish Prelates, Cardinals, Jesuites, Monks, and Fryers; yea, the very Pope himself trembled to hear this strange Report. There is a Prophesie in the 13 of the Revelation, of a great Red-Dragon and a Beast with seven heads that should arise out of the Sea, that should continue 42 moneths, which was to come to pass before the great and terrible day of judgement; which by the appearing of these strange Monsters is neer at hand now.' At the Restoration several broadsides of news were published containing engravings. There is one giving an account of the coronation of Charles II., which is illustrated with a copperplate engraving of the King seated on his throne, robed and crowned, with the following complimentary lines:-- 'The Second Charles, Heire of the Royal Martyr Who for Religion and his Subjects Charter Spent the best Blood, that unjust Sword ere dy'de Since the rude Souldier pierced our Saviours side. Who such a Father had'st, and such a Son; Redeem thy people and assume thy own, Ascend thy Ancestors Imperial seat Of Charles the Good, thou second Charles the Great, That adds the worth; this lustre to the Crown, Whose solid Glorious weighed Usurpers down. Such Majesty as never was profan'd While Tyrants rul'd 'twas only Charles that reigned.' Another broadside of the same date (1660) is entitled '_A Looking-Glass for Traytors, being the manner of the Tryall of those Barbarous Wretches at Justice-Hall in the Old-Baily, who contrived and compassed the Death of his late Sacred Majesty King Charles the First, of ever blessed memory; with an Account of their Severall Araignments, Conviction, Condemnation, and Execution_.' This sheet is also illustrated with a copperplate engraving, representing the Old Bailey Court at the trial of the Regicides, which is interesting if it truly represents the appearance of the court at that time. Numerous letters of reference are given under the engraving to explain its different parts, and a short summary is given of the trial: 'His Majesty (in pursuance of an Act of Parliament which had left the persons following to be tried according to Law, for being the principal Actors in the said Tragedy of his Father's death) issued out a special Commission of _Oyer_ and _terminer_ to the Judges and other Commissioners for that purpose; and accordingly _Wednesday_ the 10th of _October_ they met at the Sessions house in the _Old-Baily_, and the same morning the following persons were ordered to be brought from the _Tower_ to _Newgate_, and a way was made from the Press-yard backwards to the Sessions house, privately to convey them to and again, to keep them from the pressing of the people.' Then follows a list of twenty-eight persons, including Major-General Harrison and Hugh Peters, 'all which being brought to the Bar, were indicted and arraigned to the following effect:-- '_That they not having the fear of God before their eyes, but being led by the instigation of the Divel had maliciously, traiterously, and advisedly imagined, consulted, contrived, and compassed the death of his late Majesty Charles the first of ever blessed memory, and that they had aided, procured, abetted, assisted, and comforted a certain person with a vizard upon his face, and a frock upon his body for that purpose._ 'Major-General _Harrison_ in his Pleadings carried himself so confidently to the Court as if he thought himself Careless and Unconcerned in the businesse, and seemed to justify not only the Power under which he Acted but also the Act itself, saying that Kings had formerly been privately Assassinated and Murthered, but what they had done was in the face of the Sun and in the fear of the Lord; whereat the Court was much troubled to see that he should make God the Author of that Horrid Murther.' Harrison was found guilty at once, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The like fate awaited Hugh Peters. The sort of evidence that was brought against the prisoners is exemplified in this broadside, where it is stated that 'Mr. _Hugh Peters_ stood strangly amazed and could say nothing for himselfe against that Jury of witnesses that appeared against him; as that he said, _England_ could not be settled till 150 were taken away which he said were L L L viz. the Lords, the Levites, and the Lawyers; that he was often conspiring privately with Oliver Cromwell the King's death, that he could even reverence the High Court of Justice, it lookt so like the judgement of the world which should be at the last day by the Saints; with many other blasphemies too large to enumerate.' Amongst the prisoners arraigned on this occasion was the William Hewlett already referred to. In the other cases the jury promptly found the prisoners guilty without leaving the court; but it was a proof of the weakness of the evidence in Hewlett's case that 'they did withdraw themselves, and after a little consultation they found him guilty, and accordingly sentence was pronounced against him.' This sentence, however, as before stated, was never carried into effect. The engraving of this historical trial at the Old Bailey is too crowded to admit of reproduction here. Other broadsides relating to the trial of the regicides were published at the time, but they are more of the nature of caricatures than illustrations of news. It is well known that General Harrison, Hugh Peters, and others were executed with all the barbarous circumstances indicated in the words of their sentence. Peters was made to sit upon the scaffold, exposed to the jibes and jeers of the mob, and compelled to witness the mutilation of his fellow-victims. The executions were continued day after day both at Charing-cross and at Tyburn, and were stopped at last, not for lack of victims, or disinclination for more slaughter on the part of the authorities, but from a dread of the effect such bloodthirsty proceedings might have on the minds of the people. The horrors of such a scene, of course, attracted the sensational news-writer of the day; and a broadside of the time gives us a picture and description of the executions, coupled with a representation of the execution of Charles I. This broadside was evidently intended to exhibit at one view the commission of a great crime and its just punishment. The engraving shows on one side the execution of the King and on the other the punishment of the regicides. The description of the latter is preceded by an account of the trial and death of Charles. The title runs thus: '_A true and perfect Relation of the Grand Traytors Execution, as at severall times they were Drawn, Hanged, and Quartered at Charing-Crosse, and at Tiburne. Together with their severall Speeches and Confessions which every one of them made at the time of their Execution. London, printed for William Gilbertson, 1660_.' [Illustration: EXECUTION OF THE REGICIDES, 1660.] The following account is given of the execution of Major-General Harrison: 'The next day being _Saturday_ Major-Gen. _Harrison_ was drawn upon a Hurdle from Newgate to the Round, or railed Place near Charing-Crosse, where a Gibbet was set upon which he was Hanged. Many of his acquaintance did seem to triumph to see him die so Confidently; whiles numbers of true Christians did grieve in earnest to see him die so impenitently. We have been told that when he took his leave of his wife, he comforted her, and told her that he would come again in three days; but we hear nothing as yet of his Resurrection.' In describing the execution of Hugh Peters, it is said, 'He came to the Ladder unwillingly, and by degrees was drawn up higher and higher. Certainly he had many Executioners within him; he leaned upon the Ladder being unwilling to part from it, but being turned off, the spectators gave a great shout, as they did when his Head was cut off, and held up aloft on the point of a Spear. The very souldiers themselves whom heretofore he did animate to slaughter, and a thorough execution of their Enemies were now ashamed of him, and upon the point of their Spears showed that guilty head which made them guilty of so much blood.' Pepys, in his Diary, says, under date October 13, 1660:--'I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there were great shouts of joy. It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again. Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the King at Charing Cross.' It will be seen by the copy made from this woodcut that the design is of the rudest possible description, and must have been the work of a common ballad illustrator, whose fee was probably on a par with his ability. He evidently thought that, in such a scene as the execution of Charles I., the Church should be paramount, for he has made Bishop Juxon a much more prominent figure than the King. The reign of the 'Merry Monarch,' though not the most creditable period in English History, would have supplied abundant materials for the journalist if there had been any newspapers. The Great Plague, the Fire of London, the sea-fights with the Dutch, were splendid opportunities for the pencil of the 'special artist' or the pen of 'our own correspondent.' A law had been passed prohibiting the publication of newspapers without being duly licensed. Sir John Birkenhead was appointed Licenser of the Press, and he was succeeded by Sir Roger L'Estrange. There was scarcely anything that could be called a newspaper except the _London Gazette_, and it only contained such news as the Government thought proper to make public, and it was never illustrated. The little that was done in the way of pictorial journalism was of a satirical or humorous character, or had reference to foreign affairs, and was either published in the form of broadsides or was put before the public in such a questionable shape that it was difficult to tell whether it was truth or fiction. As soon as the people were released from the domination of Puritanism a reaction set in, and the humours of _Mercurius Democritus_ were supplemented by the still broader fancies of _Mercurius Fumigolus_. Occasional entertainment of a more serious character was supplied, such as '_A True and Perfect Relation of the Happy Successe and Victory obtained against the Turks of Argiers at Bugia_.' The popular taste for the mysterious and supernatural was touched by '_A true and perfect Relation, of a strange and wonderful Apparition in the Air, the Fourteenth of August, near Goeree in Holland_.' This was an illustrated broadside containing the following account:--'On the fourteenth of August this year 1664, towards the evening near Goeree in Holland, there was seen by many Spectators an Apparition upon the Ocean of two several Fleets of Ships engaged in a Fight, which lasted for the space of about half an hour, and then vanished. Afterwards there appeared two Lyons, who with great fury and violence, assaulted each other three several times, neither of them prevailing against the other, till at length both of them wearied with their continual striving, did, as it were, give over for breath, when on a sudden a third Lyon of a very great and huge stature appeared and falling first upon the one, and then on the other, destroyed them both. They being vanished, there appeared a King, with a Crown upon his head, and he so plainly and visibly discerned as that the spectators did discover the very Buttons on his Coat. After all was vanished, the said Spectators continueing there, and walking too and fro upon the sands, the Ocean, so far as they could see, seemed to be Blood. On the next morning, the same Apparition, in all its Circumstances, was seen again, and the truth thereof attested upon Oath, before the Magistrates of Goeree, by the said Spectators; so that there is no doubt made of the truth thereof. And this happening in this juncture of time, begets some strange apprehensions; for that about six Months before Van Trump was slain in the former Wars with England, there was seen near the same place, an Apparition of several Ships in the Air, as it were fighting with each other.' [Illustration: APPARITION IN THE AIR AT GOEREE IN HOLLAND, 1664.] This broadside was printed at London, 'by Thomas Leach in Shooe Lane in the Year 1664. _With Allowance_ October 13, 1664. Roger L'Estrange.' The illustration is an etching, very well and freely executed. Amongst other things which appear to have been revived at the Restoration was the _Mercurius Civicus_. In Dr. Burney's collections in the British Museum there is preserved a copy of Number 4 of _Mercurius Civicus_, dated May 1, 1660. On the title-page it is stated to be 'published by order of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen;' but it is not illustrated, as was its predecessor of the time of the Civil War. [Illustration: THE MURDER OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP, 1679.] One of the most atrocious deeds of the time, and one that had a powerful effect upon public feeling, was the murder of Archbishop Sharp in 1679. This prelate was held to have betrayed the Presbyterians at the time of the Restoration, and was hated accordingly. This hatred had been manifested by an attempt on his life in the streets of Edinburgh in the year 1668; but on that occasion the Archbishop escaped, and another person was wounded. On May 3, 1679, Archbishop Sharp was returning in his coach to St. Andrews from Kennaway, where he had passed the night, when, at a place called Magus Moor, he was set upon by nine men, who murdered him with pitiless barbarity in the presence of his daughter, who accompanied him. This dreadful event was commemorated in a broadside entitled '_The Manner of the Barbarous Murther of James, late Lord Archbishop of St. Andrews, Primate and Metropolitan of all Scotland and one of his Majesties most Honourable Privy Council of that kingdom, May 3, 1679_.' A copperplate engraving represents the murder, and some verses are printed underneath. I have copied the engraving on this broadside, which forms part of the Luttrell collection in the British Museum. In 1681 there existed a newspaper entitled _The Loyal Protestant and True Domestic Intelligencer_. In the number for April 2, 1681, there is printed the following curious news from Rome:-- 'Rome, March 6. There did appear here about the middle of Dec. last, a strange and wonderful Comet near the Ecliptick in the sign of Libra, and in the body of the Virgin. At the same time a Prodigious Egge was laid by a Young Pullet (which had never laid before) with a perfect Comet in it, and as many stars, and in the same form as the enclosed figure shows. All the great ones of Rome have seen it, even the Queen and the Pope. What you see in the enclosed Paper is within the Egge most clearly exprest, and not upon the Shell. The Roman Wits are now very busy in guessing at what this Comet and Egge may portend.' This account of the egg is printed on the front page of _The Loyal Protestant_, in the midst of Court news from Oxford, municipal news from Leicester, news from Edinburgh, &c, and is illustrated with a woodcut, which I have copied. A further description is appended to the representation of the egg:--'The true form of a Prodigious Egg brought forth at Rome the 11th of Dec. last in the year 1680 in which the Commet here printed does continue to appear.' 'The aforesaid 11th of Dec. about 8 of the Clock in the morning, a Hen Chicken, with a great Noise, crying extraordinarily, that never had laid an Egge before this day, brought forth an Egge of an extraordinary greatness, with all these several Forms as you see here exprest, to the great amazement of all those that have seen it. This is an exact draught of the Egge as it was printed in Italy. But all persons are left to their own choice whether they will believe either this or any of our own late home-bred Miracles or visions.' [Illustration: EXTRAORDINARY EGG LAID AT ROME. FROM THE 'LOYAL PROTESTANT AND TRUE DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCER,' 1681.] Supernatural occurrences and uncommon events, even when traceable to natural causes, have always had great attractions for both the ignorant and the educated. We therefore find the talents of the old newsmen were most frequently exercised on mysterious appearances in the air, floods, fires, and frosts, earthquakes and upheavings of the sea. Having already quoted examples dealing with some of these subjects, I now come to two broadsides which describe and illustrate the great frost of 1683-4, when the river Thames was covered with ice eleven inches thick, the forest trees, and even the oaks, in England were split by the frost, most of the hollies were killed, and nearly all the birds perished. According to the testimony of an eye-witness, 'The people kept trades on the Thames as in a fair, till February 4, 1684. About forty coaches daily plied on the Thames as on drye land.' The broadsides under notice give representations of the fair held on the Thames, and describe it in doggerel verse. The one containing the engraving I have copied is entitled '_Great Britain's Wonder; London's Admiration. Being a True Representation of a Prodigious Frost, which began about the beginning of December, 1683, and continued till the Fourth Day of February following. And held on with such violence, that Men and Beasts, Coaches and Carts, went as frequently thereon as Boats were wont to pass before. There was also a street of Booths built from the Temple to Southwark, where were sold all sorts of Goods imaginable--namely Cloaths, Plate, Earthen Ware; Meat, Drink, Brandy, Tobacco, and a Hundred sorts of other Commodities not here inserted. It being the wonder of this present Age, and a great consternation to all the Spectators._' The description opens thus:-- 'Behold the Wonder of this present Age A Famous River now become a stage. Question not what I now declare to you, The Thames is now both Fair and Market too. And many Thousands dayley do resort, There to behold the Pastime and the Sport Early and late, used by young and old, And valued not the fierceness of the Cold.' The illustration is a roughly executed woodcut, and represents a street of booths opposite the Temple, looking towards the Middlesex shore. On one side are men skating, sliding, riding on sledges, and playing at football; whilst bull-baiting, skittle-playing, &c, go on on the other side. Coaches are driven across the ice, boats are dragged as sledges, and an ox is roasted whole in one corner. [Illustration: FROST FAIR ON THE THAMES, 1683.] The other broadside has a woodcut of the same scene, but taken from a different point, and looking _down_ the river, with London Bridge, the Tower, Monument, &c, in the distance. In addition to a description of Frost Fair, there is an account of all the great frosts from the time of William the Conqueror. Some curious particulars of this great frost are recorded by contemporary writers. Evelyn describes the whole scene, and says that he crossed the river on the ice on foot upon the 9th, in order to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth; and again in his coach, from Lambeth to the horse-ferry at Millbank, upon Feb. 5th, when 'it began to thaw, but froze again.' Hackney-coaches plied between Somerset House and the Temple to Southwark. There was a printing-press set up in one of the booths, 'where the people and ladys tooke a fancy to having their names printed, and the day and year set down, when printed on the Thames. This humour took so universally that 'twas estimated the printer gained about £5 a day for printing a line onely at sixpence a name, besides what he got by ballads, &c.' A specimen of this printing has been preserved. It was executed for Charles II., who visited Frost Fair accompanied by several members of his family. It contains, besides the names of the King and Queen, those of the Duke of York, Mary his Duchess, Princess Anne (afterwards Queen Anne), and Prince George of Denmark, her husband. The last name on the list is 'Hans in Kelder,' which literally means 'Jack in the Cellar,' and is supposed to have been suggested by the humour of the King in allusion to the interesting situation of the Princess Anne; and we can fancy the swarthy face of the 'Merry Monarch' smiling in the frosty air as this congenial joke was perpetrated. In the Luttrell collection of broadsides there is one with a large woodcut representing the battle of Sedgemoor and other incidents of Monmouth's rebellion. The letterpress is in wretched verse, and is entitled, '_A Description of the late Rebellion in the West. A Heroic Poem._' The unfortunate issue of Monmouth's rising excited the sympathy of the common people, to whom he was endeared by his many amiable qualities and his handsome person. Though this broadside was evidently written in the interest of the Government it was likely to have a ready sale, and it was sought to increase the interest by pictorial representation. The engraving, which is on an unusually large scale, is very rough, like all the woodcuts of the period. The slaughter at Sedgemoor and the execution of the Duke of Monmouth were partly forgotten in the greater horror excited by the unsparing severity of Judge Jefferies in condemning to death hundreds of persons who were charged with being concerned in the rebellion. I have met with one illustrated tract relating to the 'Bloody Assize.' It is inserted at the end of the volume of the _London Gazette_ for 1685, and has apparently been added by Dr. Burney, the collector, as bearing upon the events of the time. It forms no part of the _London Gazette_, though bound up with it. There is a rough woodcut on the title-page containing eleven portraits, and the title is as follows:-- '_The Protestant Martyrs; or the Bloody Assizes, giving an account of the Lives, Tryals, and Dying Speeches, of all those eminent Protestants that suffered in the West of England by the sentence of that bloody and cruel Judge Jefferies; being in all_ 251 _persons, besides what were hanged and destroyed in cold blood. Containing also the Life and Death of James Duke of Monmouth; His Birth and Education; His Actions both at Home and Abroad; His Unfortunate Adventure in the West; His Letter to King James; His Sentence, Execution and Dying-words upon the Scaffold; with a true Copy of the Paper he left behind him. And many other curious Remarks worth the Readers Observation. London, Printed by F. Bradford; at the Bible in Fetter Lane._' At the end of the pamphlet is printed this curious sentence:--'This Bloody Tragedy in the West being over our Protestant Judge returns for London; soon after which Alderman Cornish felt the Anger of Somebody behind the Curtain.' Alderman Cornish was afterwards executed at the corner of King Street, Cheapside, for alleged participation in the Rye House Plot. [Illustration: MARTYRS OF THE BLOODY ASSIZES, 1685.] This fragment of contemporary history shows that if there were no regular newspapers to supply the people with illustrated news they obtained it in the shape of cheap fly-sheets and broadsides--the form in which it was supplied to them before newspapers began. Macaulay describes the unlicensed press at this period as being worked in holes and corners, and producing large quantities of pamphlets which were a direct infraction of the law subjecting the press to a censorship. 'There had long lurked in the garrets of London a class of printers who worked steadily at their calling with precautions resembling those employed by coiners and forgers. Women were on the watch to give the alarm by their screams if an officer appeared near the workshop. The press was immediately pushed into a closet behind the bed; the types were flung into the coal-hole, and covered with cinders; the compositor disappeared through a trap-door in the roof, and made off over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens were manufactured treasonable works of all classes and sizes, from halfpenny broadsides of doggerel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrew quotations.'[1] The pamphlet I have just quoted probably issued from a press of this kind; but he must have been a bold printer who dared to put his name and address to a work wherein Jefferies was openly referred to as 'that bloody and cruel Judge Jefferies.' Large broadsides continued to be the favourite form of illustrated journalism for some time after this. One gives a 'true and perfect relation' of a great earthquake which happened at Port Royal, in Jamaica, on Tuesday, June 7th, 1692, and is illustrated with a large woodcut. On the death of Queen Mary, the consort of William III., an illustrated broadside was published, plentifully garnished with skulls and cross-bones, entitled, '_Great Britain's Lamentation; or the Funeral Obsequies of that most incomparable Protestant Princess, Mary, of ever Blessed Memory, Queen of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, who departed this life the 28th of December, at Kensington, 1694, in the Thirty-second Year of her Age. She Reigned Five Years, Eight Months, and Seventeen Days. And was conducted from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey, in an open Chariot of State, on black cloath, by the Nobility, Judges, and Gentry of the Land, on Tuesday, the 5th of March, 1694-5._' The large woodcut shows the funeral procession, and I have copied that part of it containing the funeral car, with the body of the deceased queen resting under a canopy. [Illustration: FUNERAL OF QUEEN MARY, 1695.] In a few years after the Revolution newspapers began to increase rapidly. The censorship of the press ceased in 1695, and was immediately followed by the appearance of great numbers of periodical papers. At first they were small in size, were wretchedly printed on the commonest paper, and each number contained only a small quantity of matter. The art of wood-engraving, the readiest and least expensive method of illustration, was now in the lowest possible condition; and the newspapers at the end of the seventeenth century contain scarcely any illustrations, except, perhaps, a heading of a rudely executed figure of a man blowing a horn, flanked by a ship or a castle, and numerous small woodcuts to advertisements. [Illustration] FOOTNOTE: [1] _History of England._ CHAPTER VI. Constant Attempts at Illustrated News--Increase of Caricatures--The _Postman_, 1704--Fiery Apparition in the Air, seen in London--Caricature against the Jacobites--The South-Sea Bubble--Eclipse of the Sun, 1724--The _Grub Street Journal_ an Illustrated Paper--The _Daily Post_--Admiral Vernon's Attack on Porto Bello--The _Penny London Post_--Henry Fielding and the _Jacobite's Journal_--_Owen's Weekly Chronicle_--_Lloyd's Evening Post_, and the Trial of Lord Byron for the Murder of Mr. Chaworth--The _St. James's Chronicle_--Illustrated Account of a Strange Wild Beast seen in France--The _Gentleman's Journal_ of Anthony Motteux--The _Gentleman's Magazine_ of Edward Cave--The _London Magazine_--The _Scot's Magazine_. In glancing at the early newspapers it is apparent that the idea, in some shape, of illustrating the news of the day was never quite absent from the minds of newspaper conductors. Sometimes it took the form of a rude map of the country where some war was going on, or the plan of some city which was being besieged. In the _London Post_ for July 25, 1701, is a map of the seat of war in Italy, which is reprinted in other numbers, and the _Daily Courant_, for Sept. 8, 1709, contains a large plan of Mons. In the absence of other means, even printers' lines were used to represent a plan of some place, or an event of unusual interest. Such an attempt at illustrated news was made in the _Dublin Journal_ for May 14, 1746, where there is a plan, set up in type and printers' lines, of the battle of Culloden; and in the number for March 28, 1747, there is a similar plan of the trial of Lord Lovat. This is doubly interesting as being _Irish_. Engraving on copper, though it involved the expense of a double printing, was sometimes resorted to for the purpose of enlivening the pages of the early newspapers, and we have seen that it was also employed in broadsides. There was so much enterprise that even penny papers sometimes introduced engravings into their pages. About the beginning of the eighteenth century caricatures began to increase in England. Religious animosities and political intrigues, always keen incentives to satire, had opened a wide field to the caricaturist in the years which followed the Revolution. But religious bigotry and party spirit, strong as they were at this period, were exceeded by the social follies which came afterwards. The trial of Dr. Sacheverell occasioned the publication of numerous songs, squibs, and caricatures; but the South-Sea Bubble surpassed it as a fruitful source of lampoons and pictorial satire. The spirit of ridicule was fed by the political intrigues, the follies and the vices of the Georgian era, and reached its highest development in the days of George III. Amongst other early channels for circulation we find caricatures making their appearance in newspapers, and as we proceed I shall give one or two examples from the illustrated journalism of this period. On March 14, 1704, _The Postman_, one of the papers that was started on the expiration of the censorship (and which Macaulay says was one of the best conducted and most prosperous), published what was called a Postscript for the purpose of making its readers acquainted with a prodigy seen in Spain in the air so far back as the year 1536. It is illustrated with a woodcut representing two men fighting in the air; and the following account is given of it:--'The success of the expedition of K. Charles III. being now the subject of all Publick Discourses, the Reader, we hope, will excuse the following Postscript, which must be confest to be of an extraordinary nature, as containing some things hardly to be parallelled. All the states of Christendom being concerned some way or other in this great quarrell, it is not to be wondered at if the discovery of a Prodigy, which seems to foretell the decision of it, has made so much noise at Rome, and that we insert it in this place. The French Faction grew intolerably insolent upon account of the storms which have so long retarded the Portuguese expedition, and represented these cross accidents as a manifest declaration that God did not approve the same; and this way of arguing, though never so rash and impertinent in itself, prevailed over the generality of the people, in a City which is the Centre of superstition. The Partizans of the House of Austria were very much dejected and had little to say, when they happily discovered in the Library of the Vatican a Book printed at Bazil in the year 1557 written by Conradus Lycosthenes, wherein they found an argument to confute all the reasons alledged by their adversaries, and a sure Presage in their opinion of the success of K. Charles III. This made a great noise at Rome, and his Grace the Duke of Shrewsbury sent an account thereof. The Book perhaps is not so scarce as they thought at Rome; and the learned Doctor Hans Sloane having one in his Library, and having been so obliging as to give me leave to transcribe that passage, I present it here to the reader, leaving it to everyone to make his own observations. The Book is thus Intituled: "_Prodigiorum Ostentorum Chronicon, &c., per Conradum Lycosthenem, Rubeaquensem. Printed in Folio at Bazil per Henricum Petri 1557_," and amongst the infinite number of Prodigies he relates in his collection, which extends from the beginning of the world to his time, he has the following, page 558 (here follows the description on each side of the woodcut in Latin and English). 'In a certain place of Spain on the 7th of Feby, 1536, 2 hours after the setting of the sun as Fincelius relates it after others, were seen in the Air, which was rainy and cloudy, two Young Men in Armour, fighting with Swords, one of them having in his left hand a Shield or round Buckler, adorned with an Eagle, with this inscription, I SHALL REIGN, and the other having on a long Target with these words, I HAVE REIGNED. They fought a Duel, and he who had the Eagle on his Buckler beat down his enemy and was conqueror.' The whole affair refers to the war of the Spanish Succession between the partisans of Louis XIV. and the House of Bourbon, and the House of Austria, and is made to foretell the downfall of the former. As the Bourbons did eventually obtain the Crown of Spain, this interpretation of the supposed prodigy may be referred to the same class as the prophecies of _Old Moore's Almanack_. I have copied the engraving, which is the only illustration I have found in _The Postman_. [Illustration: PRODIGY SEEN IN SPAIN. FROM THE 'POSTMAN,' 1704.] We have already noticed that no class of marvels were so attractive to the early news-writers as apparitions in the air. Another example of this is found in a pamphlet, published in 1710, entitled '_The Age of Wonders: or, A further and particular Description of the remarkable, and Fiery Apparition that was seen in the Air, on Thursday in the Morning, being May the 11th, 1710_.' It is illustrated with a rough woodcut, and has the following description:-- .... 'As for the strange Appearances which were seen on the 11th of May in the Morning, I suppose there is by this time few that do not give Credit to the same, since so many creditable People in several parts of the Town have apparently testified the same, and are ready still to do it upon enquirey, as in Clare Market, Cheapside, Tower-hill, and other places; it was likewise seen by several Market Folks then upon the Water, who have since agreed in Truth thereof, most of which relate in the following manner:-- 'On Wednesday Night, or rather Thursday Morning last, much about the Hour of two a Clock, several People, who were then abroad, especially the Watchman about Tower Street, Clare Market, Cheapside, and Westminster, plainly and visibly saw this strange Comet, it seem'd a very great Star, at the end of which was a long tail, or streak of Fire, very wonderful and surprizing to behold. It did not continue fix'd, but pass'd along with the Scud, or two black Clouds, being carried by a brisk wind that then blew. [Illustration: FIERY APPARITION IN THE AIR, SEEN IN LONDON, 1710.] 'After which follow'd the likeness of a Man in a Cloud of Fire, with a Sword in his hand, which mov'd with the Clouds as the other did, but they saw it for near a quarter of an Hour together, to their very great surprize, and related the same the next Morning, which they are ready now to affirm if any are so curious to go and Enquire, particularly John Smith, near Tower-street, Abraham Wilsley, on Tower-hill, John Miller, near Clare Market, John Williams, in Cheapside, George Mules and Rebeccah Sampson upon the Water, and Mr. Lomax, Watchman of St. Anns, with many others too tedious to insert.' Amongst the many newspapers that had sprung into existence the following so far improved upon their small and dingy predecessors as to be adorned with pictorial headings:--The _Post Boy_, 1720; the _Weekly Journal_, 1720; the _London Journal_, 1720; the _Weekly Journal, or Saturday's Post_, 1721; _Applebee's Weekly Journal_, 1721; _Read's Journal, or British Gazetteer_, 1718-31. The last named appeared for many years as the _Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer_; but the _Weekly Journal_ was a favourite title, and was borne by so many other papers that after a time the publisher altered the title of his paper to _Read's Journal; or British Gazetteer_, and gave it an engraved heading. Read was a man of enterprise, and surpassed his contemporaries in endeavouring to make his journal attractive by means of illustrations. In his paper for Nov. 1, 1718, there is a caricature engraved on wood. It is levelled against the Jacobites, and is called 'An Hieroglyphick,' and is introduced to the reader with the following rhymes:-- 'Will _Fools_ and _Knaves_ their own Misfortune see And ponder on the _Tories_ villany Behold this _Hieroglyphick_, and admire What _Loyalty_ do's in true Souls inspire! Whate'er the _Figures_ mean we shan't declare, Because the _Jacobites_ will curse and swear; But if our _Readers_ will this piece explain, Their Explanation we shall not disdain.' [Illustration: CARICATURE AGAINST THE JACOBITES. FROM 'READ'S WEEKLY JOURNAL,' 1718.] Nobody appears to have responded to the invitation conveyed in the verses, for in the succeeding numbers of the paper there is no attempt to explain the 'hieroglyphick.' A copy of this early newspaper caricature is given on the opposite page. In the same journal for May 20, 1721, there is a large woodcut entitled 'Lucifers Row-Barge,' which I have also copied. It is a caricature on the South-Sea Bubble, and appears, from what follows, to have been first published in the previous week: 'The Call for this Journal (last week) being very extraordinary, upon account of the delineation of Lucifer's Row-Barge in it, we are desired by several of our Correspondents both in City and Country, to present them with it in this week's paper, with an Explanation of every Representation in the aforesaid Cut, adapted to Figures; with which Request we have comply'd, as supposing it will be acceptable not only to them with such a Design, but likewise pleasing to all our Readers in General.' The different parts of the engraving are described under the illustration on the following page. Each of these divisions of the subject is further described in verse. In concocting this satire the author has allowed some symptoms of journalistic jealousy to appear by dragging in the correspondent of the _London Journal_ (which was a rival paper), and describing him as the common hangman. The feeling about the South-Sea Bubble must have been very strong to have made this caricature acceptable. It was intended to satirise Mr. Knight, the cashier of the South-Sea Company, who fled the country when it became too hot for him. The verses which accompany the engraving, though by no means models of poetic elegance, might be commended to the attention of some directors of our own day:-- 'Then what must such vile Plunderers expect When they upon their Actions do reflect; Who barely have three Kingdoms quite undone From aged Father to the Infant Son? From many Eyes they've drawn a briny Flood, But Tears to ruined People do no Good.' [Illustration: SOUTH SEA BUBBLE CARICATURE. FROM THE 'WEEKLY JOURNAL AND BRITISH GAZETTEER,' 1721. '1. The Cashire of the South Sea Company 2. The Horse of an Accomptant to the South Sea Company 3. The Correspondent of the Author of the _London Journal_ 4. A Stock Jobber, or Exchange Broker, whipt by the Common Hangman 5. Belzebub prompting a Director of the South Sea 6. Satan prompting the same Director in t'other Ear 7. The Worm of Conscience fastens on the above said Director 8. The Cup of Indignation 9. A Director's Sacrifice, which is a Villanous Heart 10. A Director in the Pillory 11. The Superscription over the pillory'd Director paraphras'd from the prophet Ezekiel. Chap. XXII. Ver. 12, 13, and Chap. XXIII. Ver. 25, 26, 27 12. A Director decyphered by the Knave of Diamonds Hanged 13. A Director wafting to Hell with the tide 14. Lucifers Row-Barge for first rate passengers 15. Moloch sounds his trumpet for Joy of meeting with a good Fare 16. Belial playing on the Violin to the Director 17. Mammon takes a trip at Helm for him 18. The South Sea 19. Lucifer rowing his own Barge 20. The Entrance into Hell, represented by the Mouth of the Leviathan, or great Whale, belching flames of sulphurous fire.'] There was a total eclipse of the sun in 1724, which appears to have excited much attention, and several notices of it occur in the newspapers. Parker's _London News_ gives a long account, with a woodcut, which I have copied. This paper was published three times a-week--on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In the number for Monday, May 4th, 1724, is the woodcut referred to, together with the following explanation:-- 'Of the Eclipse of the Sun which will happen in the Afternoon on Monday, the 11th of this inst. May 1724. 'The Sun, the glorious Lamp of the Universe, being a large round Body of Light, is fixt in the Centre of the _Creation_; so that all parts thereof might be partakers of his vivifying Rays, which otherwise would be shut up in perpetual Darkness. 'The Earth is a dark round Ball, which turneth round on its own Axis, from West to East, once in twenty-four Hours Time, causing thereby Day and Night, also at the same Time, the Earth with the Moon, going round in its Orbit in 365 Days and some Hours, constituting thereby the true Length of our Year. 'The Moon is likewise a round dark Ball, void of Light, and circumvolveth the Earth once a Month; so that whenever she passeth in her Orbit, in a direct line between the Sun and Earth, she Eclipses the Earth not the Sun, by depriving us of a Sight thereof; And whenever the Earth happens to be between the Sun and Moon, at such times the Earth obstructs the Light of the Sun from the Moon, and then the Moon is Eclipsed by the dark Body of the Earth. 'Now to prevent any Consternation, which People, through Ignorance may fall under, by means of that great Eclipse which is now approaching; at which time it will be so dark, that the stars, (if the Air be clear) will be seen; and the Planets Mars, Venus, and the seldom to be seen Mercury, will appear a little above the Sun, towards the South; also Venus a little higher to the Left of Mercury, and Mars in the S.S.W. Parts of the Heavens; The several Appearances of this Eclipse will be according to the Types before inserted. 'The beginning of this Eclipse, according to the nicest Computation of the most Judicious, will happen at 39 Minutes past 5 in the Afternoon when the Limb of the Moon will just touch the Sun's Limb, as it is represented by the Uppermost Figure to the Right Hand. At 44 Minutes after 5 it will be enter'd the disk, and so much darkened as the 2d Scheme on the Right Hand shews. At 48 Minutes past 5 as the 3d denotes. At 53 Minutes past 5 as the 4th shews. At 58 Minutes after 5, as the 5th represents. At 3 Minutes past 6, as in the 6th Scheme. At 7 Minutes after 6, as in the 7th. At 12 Minutes past 6, as is shewn by the 8th Figure. At 17 Minutes past 6, as the 10th Figure shews. At 26 Minutes past 6, as the next succeeding Scheme denotes, beginning always to number from the Right Hand. At 31 Minutes after 6, so much of the Sun's Body will be darkened, as the 12th represents: and at 36 past 6, will be the greatest darkness, when only a small thread of Light will be seen at _London_, on the upper part of the _Sun_ as the 13th Scheme informs; but to all the Southern parts of the Kingdom, it will be totally darkened. 'After this the _Sun_ will begin to shew its Light, which will appear first on the lower part of that Glorious Body, towards the Right Hand; and the darkness will gradually lessen, as the several Figures represent, till the Sun's Body be perfectly clear of the Shadow, which will be at 27 Minutes past 7 a-clock that Afternoon.' This description is reprinted, together with the woodcut, in the same paper for May 8th, and to it is added the following:--'Directions for the better viewing the Eclipse that will happen on Monday next'--'Take a Piece of Common window Glass and hold it over a Candle, so that the Flame of the Candle may make it black, through which look upon the Sun, and you will behold the _Eclipse_ without Danger to the Eyes.' Or thus Take a Piece of thick writing Paper, and prick a hole in it with a fine Needle, through which the _Eclipse_ may be seen.' [Illustration: ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. FROM 'PARKER'S LONDON NEWS,' 1724.] The same paper (May 8th, 1724) contains some advertisements about the eclipse, which seems to have been for the moment the absorbing topic, and was apparently made the vehicle for advertising the shops of different tradesmen. The notices were published ostensibly 'to lessen the consternation of ignorant people,' but it is evident the advertisers had an eye to business. 'An exact curious Draft' was to be 'given _gratis_ at Mr. Garway's original shop, the Sign of the Practical Scheme at the Royal Exchange Gate, on Cornhill Side. Up one pair of Stairs at the Sign of the celebrated Anodyne Necklace for Childrens' Teeth, next the Rose Tavern without Temple Bar. At Mr. Gregg's Bookseller, next to Northumberland House, at Charing Cross; and at R. Bradshaw's the author's Servant, at his House, next to the King's Head, in Crown Street, right against Sutton Street End, just by Soho Square. Note, it will not be given to any Boy or Girl.' The cut and description are again reprinted in the number for May 11th, where, amongst other items of news, is the following:--'His Royal Highness went last Monday to Richmond, as did also the Right Hon. the Lord _Chancellor_, Judge Fortescue, and other persons of note; some of the Judges went to Hampton Court, and other gentlemen of Learning and Curiosity to more distant places, to make their Observations, as 'tis said, upon the great Eclipse of the Sun that happen'd in the Evening, and exactly answered the _Calculations_ made of it by our Astronomers.' In the number for May 18th are accounts of how the eclipse was observed in the country. It is stated:--'We are advised from the Isle of Wight that the Eclipse on the 11th instant, which was Total, and caused very great Consternation there lasted about a Minute and a half; but that the chief sufferers thereby were the gentry of that Island, who by the great concourse of Strangers to their Houses, had but very little French Claret left upon their hands; But the comfort is, they have frequent opportunities of running some more.' _Parker's London News_ blended amusement with instruction. The following items of news occur in the same number that contains the account of the eclipse, and show how our forefathers were entertained by the newspapers 160 years ago:--'The Papers of the week, from the highest to the lowest rank have killed one Sir Nicholas Raymond in the Isle of Wight; but as no such knight ever inhabited therein, we can impute it to nothing but want of home news.' 'Last Saturday Night, two Servant Maids at a Snuff Warehouse, at Mile End took _so much Snuff_, that they quarrell'd, and one of them stabbed the other in so many places with an Iron Scuer, that 'twas thought she could not live. The other therefore, was instantly apprehended and committed.' 'Last week an Apothecary was attacked by two Highwaymen, between Winchester and Southampton, who robbed him of his money, and finding two Vials of Purging Potions in his Pocket, that he was carrying to a _Patient_, they were so inhuman as to force him to swallow 'em himself.' 'Last Sunday Night, Sir Basil Firebrass, noted for his humanity to young Vintners, whom he first set up, and afterwards upon Default of payment took execution against 'em, departed this life.' _The Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer_ for May 9th, 1724, contains an account and illustration of the same eclipse that is described in _Parker's London News_. The illustration is a diagram, and is called, 'A Representation of a Solar Eclipse. The Time of the Beginning, Middle, and End of the Eclipse and the continuance of Darkness, together with its Appearance at London and Bristol.' The celebrated _Grub Street Journal_ now comes upon the scene; and we find it not only surpassing its contemporaries in wit and satire, but it also comes out as an illustrated paper. In No. 43, for Oct. 29th, 1730, a whole page is occupied with woodcuts of the arms of the City Companies, which are reprinted about the time of Lord Mayor's Day in succeeding years. In No. 48 there is a very well-executed copperplate portrait, presumably of the Lord Mayor of London. As it is printed on the same page with type (involving two printings), and the journal was sold for twopence, it shows some enterprise for the year 1730. On the front page of No. 95, for Oct. 28th, 1731, there are very rude woodcuts of the Lord Mayor's procession, surrounded by the arms of the City Companies before referred to. No. 147 has a curious copperplate at the head of an article entitled, '_The Art and Mystery of Printing Emblematically Displayed_.' The engraving represents human figures with animals' heads at work in a printing-office. An ass is setting up the types, a pig is using the inking-balls, a horse is acting as pressman, a sheep is arranging the printed sheets, while a two-faced man and a many-horned devil are watching them all. This, like the portrait of the Lord Mayor, is printed on the same page with the type, with no printing at the back of the engraving. The article is a satirical conversation between certain printers' devils, and is continued in the next number, where the engraving is also reproduced. The _Grub Street Journal_ is the first example I have met with of a newspaper employing the expensive process of copperplate engraving for illustrations, and printing the plate in the body of its pages. It was probably thought to be too costly, for we find the conductors recurring to the almost extinct art of wood-engraving. In the number for Oct. 25th, 1733, there is a coarsely executed woodcut heading a satirical allegory, entitled, _The Art of Trimming Emblematically Displayed_. The _Daily Post_ of March 29th, 1740, is interesting as being an early example of a daily paper attempting to illustrate current events. The _Daily Post_ consisted of a single leaf, with the page divided into three columns. In the number referred to there is a long account of Admiral Vernon's attack on Porto Bello, illustrated with a woodcut, which the writer says will give the reader a clearer idea of the position of the town, castle, and ships engaged. The narrative is introduced by the editor in these words:--'The following is a letter from a gentleman on board the Burford at Porto Bello to his friend at Newcastle, which, as it contains a more particular account of Admiral Vernon's glorious achievement at that place than any yet published here, we thought we could not in justice to the Bravery of our English Officers and Sailors, refuse it a Place in our Paper.' [Illustration: ADMIRAL VERNON'S ATTACK ON PORTO BELLO. FROM THE 'DAILY POST,' 1740. A. The Iron Castle on the North side of the Mouth of the Harbour with 100 Guns. B. The Castle Gloria, with 120 Guns, on the South side of the Harbour, and a Mile from the Iron Castle. C. The Fort of Hieronymo, with 20 Guns. D. The Town of Porto Bello lying along the Extremity of the Harbour. E. The station of the Spanish Ships. F. The Hampton-Courts place of Action, Commodore Brown. G. The Norwich's ditto, Cap. Herbert. H. The Worcester's ditto, Cap. Main. I. The Admiral's Ship, the Burford.] 'On the afternoon of the 21st about two o'clock we came up with Porto Bello Harbour, where the Spaniards had hoisted upon the Iron Castle the Flag of Defiance; and, as we were told by themselves afterwards, they wished earnestly for our attempting to come in, as believing they could sink us all immediately, but said they feared we were only making a second Bastimento Expedition, and would not give them the pleasure of engaging us.' Then follows a long and circumstantial account of the conflict. 'Notwithstanding they had discharged very few Guns for some Minutes before we came up; yet as if they had resolved to summon up all their Courage against the Flag, they welcomed us with a terrible Volley, which being at so short a Distance, took Place with almost every Shot. One struck away the Stern of our Barge; another broke a large Gun upon our upper Deck; a third went thro' our Foretop-Mast; and a fourth, passing thro' the Arning within two Inches of our Main-Mast, broke down the barricado of our Quarter-Deck, very near the Admiral, and killed three Men in a Moment, wounding five others which stood by them. This look'd as if we should have bloody work, but was far from discouraging our brave Fellows.' The Spaniards being driven from their guns, the English landed:--'One man set himself close under an Embossier, whilst another climbed upon his Shoulders and enter'd under the Mouth of a great Gun. This so dismay'd the Spaniards that they threw down their Arms and fled to the Top of the Castle; from whence scaling backwards we could see them run into the woods by hundreds and fly for their lives.' The place being taken, the writer gives a minute account of the damage done and the booty taken. He says:--'We have also had the good luck to find about 10,000 Dollars belonging to the King of Spain, which I had the Pleasure of being present at the searching for, when we found it in the Customhouse,' &c. The writer of the above account signs himself Wm. Richardson, and gives the explanations to the letters on the woodcut, a facsimile of which is engraved. To account for the enthusiasm with which Admiral Vernon's victory at Porto Bello was received we must remember that the nation had previously been wrought up to a high state of fever about Spain, and the declaration of war had been received in the most jubilant manner. We can therefore understand that the conductors of the _Daily Post_, infected by the popular fervour, would gladly seize the opportunity of producing in their pages the drawing and description by an eye-witness of this naval victory. This early example of illustrated news, though it has nothing pictorial about it, is extremely interesting, showing as it does the tendency of newspapers, in times of excitement, to call on the artist's pencil to aid the writer's pen. It was in reference to this war that Walpole said, when the bells were ringing joyfully, 'They may ring the bells now, but they will soon be wringing their hands.' To the preceding example of a _daily_ paper attempting to illustrate current events I will add an instance of a _penny_ paper doing a similar thing at about the same period. _The Penny London Post, or, The Morning Advertiser_, was a paper published three times a-week, and in the number for Jan. 9th, 1748-9, there is given 'A view of the Public Fireworks to be exhibited on occasion of the General Peace concluded at Aix La Chapelle the 7th Day of October 1748.' The engraving is little more than a diagram, and accompanies a description of the arrangements made for the occasion, amongst which there was to be a band of a hundred musicians to play before the fireworks began, 'the Musick for which,' says the _Penny London Post_, 'is to be composed by Mr. Handel.' We are accustomed to think of the immortal author of _Tom Jones_ as a novelist only. Henry Fielding was, however, also a journalist, a pamphleteer, and a justice of the peace for Middlesex and Westminster. Amidst his other labours he found time to edit the _Jacobite's Journal_, a paper started to support the House of Hanover after the Rebellion of 1745. It was a sheet of four pages, published every Saturday, and the first twelve numbers were adorned with a woodcut heading which has been attributed to Hogarth. This heading was discontinued after the twelfth number, and in number 13 there is an elaborate article, replete with sarcastic humour, explaining the reasons for its discontinuance. The _Jacobite's Journal_ purported to be edited by 'John Trott-Plaid, Esq.,' and was essentially satirical in its tone. In the second number there is the following reference to the engraved heading:-- 'As my Wife appears in her Plaid on _Ass-back_ behind me at the Head of this Paper, it will not I hope be imagined that I have brought her abroad only to take the Air, without assigning to her any share in this undertaking. 'The _Mystery of Jacobitism_ doth not, like that of _Free Masonry_, exclude the Female World; for tho' all Jacobites are not, as some wicked Whigs have represented us, _old women_, yet women we have in great Numbers among us, who are as learned in the knowledge of our Mysteries, and as active in the celebration of our Rites, as any of the Male Species; and many of these are so far from deserving the name of _old_, that their age scarce yet entitles them to the name of _women_.' As I before stated, the heading is left out after the twelfth number. Whether it had sufficiently served its purpose as a caricature of the Jacobite party, and was no longer needed, or whether it really took up too much room, as stated by the editor, its discontinuance was made the occasion of publishing a leading article, part of which I am tempted to transcribe as an excellent specimen of Fielding's satire. 'There is scarcely anything more provoking than to be totally misunderstood, and by that means to have our compliments received as Affronts, and our Panegyrick converted into Satire. 'It cannot therefore be wondered at, if I am not well pleased with that gross misunderstanding of the Emblematical Frontispiece so long prefixed to my Paper, which hath generally prevailed, and which, among other good Reasons, hath at length induced me to displace it for the future. By this Error of the Public, a Contrivance of mine (the expense of much laborious thinking) to do Honour to the Jacobite Party, hath been represented as the Means of vilifying and degrading it. 'But, seriously, could the Art of Man have carried the Glory of Jacobitism higher than it was carried in this print, where a Jacobite of either Sex was seen cloathed in Mystery, and riding on one of the most honourable Beasts in the Universe, while Popery servilely attends, leading it by the Halter, and _France_ and the Republican Party are dragged after Heels. Is not here depictured that notable and mysterious Union of _French_ Interest, Popery, Jacobitism, and Republicanism; by a Coalition of all which Parties this Nation is to be redeemed from the deplorable State of Slavery, under which it at present labours? 'It would be endless to enumerate all the Mistakes and ridiculous Conceits entertained on this occasion. Some have imagined we intended to insinuate that the Protestant Jacobites were led by the Nose by Popery, and spurr'd on by _France_ and the Republicans; whereas nothing can be more certain in Fact, than that Popery and _France_, and the Republicans, have ever been the mere Dupes and Fools of the said Jacobites. 'Many have endeavoured to discover Resemblances to real Persons in the figures there exhibited. By the Popish Priest, it hath been said we design to represent the old Chevalier; and by the Figures on the Ass, the young Chevalier his Son and the famous _Jenny Cameron_. 'Others have found out Likenesses of less Importance, and several Squires and Country Gentlewomen of _Staffordshire_ and other Counties, who never travel beyond the limits of a Fox chace, have been supposed to ride, once a week, Post all over the Kingdom in this Paper. 'But the most egregious Errors have been committed in Misconstructions concerning the Ass. Several ingenious and witty Printers of News Papers have very facetiously taken occasion to call the Author himself an Ass; supposing probably, that as Scripture informs us an Ass once spoke, so certain Descendants of the same Family might write, which Faith, perhaps something within their own Experience, might sufficiently encourage them to receive. 'To mention no more of these absurd Conjectures, I must here inform my Reader, that by the Body of the Ass we intend to figure the whole Body of Jacobitical doctrine. 'Now as there was no Symbol among the Antients, of which the Emblematical Meaning was so plain and easy to be discovered, our Party could never have so universally mistaken it, had it not been for that want of Learning among us, which I lamented in my last Paper. Hence being misled by those erroneous opinions, which the Moderns have propagated to the great disadvantage of Asses, the Jacobites have been unwilling to discover any Resemblance between themselves and an Animal which the wise Antients saw in so respectable a Light, and which the ignorance of latter Ages hath highly dishonoured by odious Comparisons with certain Individuals of the Human Species. 'Thus _Homer_ is well known to have liken'd one of his principal Heroes to this noble Animal; which was in such Esteem among the antient _Jews_, that he was not only an object of their Devotion, but they are said to have preserved his Figure in massy Gold in the Temple of _Jerusalem_. 'If the Transfiguration of _Midas_ in the _Metamorphosis_ doth but little Honour to the Ears of our Symbol, the Story of _Lotis_ which the same Poet tells in his Fastorum, is greatly in praise of his Braying, by which the Chastity of that Nymph was rescued from the wicked Designs of her insidious Lover. 'In such esteem hath this noble Beast been held among the Learned, that I have seen a Book composed in his Favour and entitled _Laus Asini_: not to mention the celebrated performance of _Apuleius_ to which he hath given the Name of the _Golden Ass_. 'Instead therefore of being displeased with the Emblem, our Party have great Reason to be vain on this Occasion, nor do I think there can be a greater Comparison than of a Protestant Jacobite to an Ass, or one more to the Honour of the former. 'First, what can so well answer to that noble and invincible obstinacy, which I have more than once celebrated in our Party, as the intractable and unalterable Nature of this Animal, which gave rise to an antient Proverb alluded to by _Horace_ in his Satires:-- '"---- Your Art As well may teach an Ass to scour the Plain And bend obedient to the forming Rein." 'And again in his Epistles:-- '"Democritus would think the writers told To a deaf Ass their story ----" 'Which may most strictly be applied to all those writers, who have endeavoured to convince the Jacobites by argument. 'Again what can give us a more adequate Idea of that Firmness, with which we have supported all the ill-usage of the worst of Sovereigns without Resentment, than the laudable Indifference which an Ass hath for the same; whom you may beat, whip, kick, and spur as long as you are pleased, he still trudges on without altering his Pace. 'To omit many other obvious Resemblances, such as Braying, &c, the famous story of the Countryman and the Ass, briefly touched upon by _Horace_ in the Epistle addressed to his own Book, is so perfect a Picture of Jacobitism, that I have been inclined to think as the Antients are known to have inveloped all their Mysteries in Fable and Allegory, that no less than Jacobitism itself was intended to be couched under this story: "A certain Countryman observing an Ass making towards a Precipice, ran to him, and catching hold of his Tail, endeavoured with all his Might to withhold him from Destruction; but the more the Countryman attempted to preserve him, the more obstinately the Ass contended against his kind Preserver, and the more eagerly was bent upon accomplishing his fatal Purpose. The Countryman at last, wearied out with his Endeavours to save an obstinate Beast against his own will, and having probably received some Thanks from his Heels for his intended kindness, instead of pulling any longer, gave the Ass a Push, and tumbled him headlong down the Precipice which he had been so industriously pursuing." 'I make no doubt but many of our good Enemies the Whigs, who have well imitated this Countryman in the former part of his Behaviour, would imitate him likewise in the latter, was it not that they cannot precipitate us without tumbling down themselves at the same time. 'These are the Mysteries, then, which have been couched under my Frontispiece, and which, tho' their meaning must now appear to have been so plain, have nevertheless stood exposed so long at the Head of this Journal, without having been, as I can find, understood by any. 'Perhaps I shall be asked, why I have now displaced them, since, after so large and full an Explanation, they cannot fail of being highly agreeable to that Party for whose use chiefly this Paper is calculated; and who would, for the future, worship my Ass with the same Veneration with which the _Jews_ of old did theirs. 'Now, tho' the Indignation which I have exprest in the Beginning of this Essay at the many gross and absurd Misconceptions which have been vented by the Public, would alone very well justify the Discontinuance of my Emblem so much abused, there are, to say the Truth, two other Reasons which have had a stronger Weight with me in producing this Determination. The former of these is, that the Ass and his Retinue do indeed take up too much room, and must oblige us either to suppress Part of our Lucubrations, or some of those material articles of News which we weekly transcribe from others; or lastly those pieces of Intelligence called Advertisements, which tho' not always most entertaining to our Reader, do afford very agreeable Entertainment to ourselves. 'A second and a very strong Motive with us, is to lend all the Assistance in our Power to a very worthy and willing, tho' weak Brother, the learned and facetious Novelist, Mr. _Carte_; whose great Romance, tho' in our Court of Criticism, where we shall always act impartially, we have been obliged like other Judges, to condemn, contrary to our own Inclinations, to be grubb'd, we shall always privately esteem as a work calculated solely for the use of our Party. As we have therefore, to our great Concern, received very credible Information that the said work begins already to be considered only as a Heap of Waste Paper, we have thought proper to lend our Frontispiece to our good Brother, in order that it may be prefixed to the future Volumes of that great Work advising him to omit the words _London Evening Post_, and to insert _English History_ in their stead. This will not fail of greatly recommending his Performance to our Party, who never willingly read anything but what an Ass may at least be supposed to have bray'd. 'I could wish, moreover, that the learned Novelist would take our Advice in another Instance, and for the future deal forth his excellent work in weekly Portions or Numbers; I do not mean in such a Form as the real History of _England_ is now publishing by Mr. Waller; but in the same manner with those true and delectable Histories of _Argalus_ and _Parthenia_, _Guy_, Earl of _Warwick_, the _Seven Champions_, &c., in which Form, at the price of 1d. each, when embellished by our Frontispiece, I make no doubt of assuring him as universal a Sale as the inimitable Adventures of _Robinson Crusoe_ formerly had throughout this Kingdom.' The 'Mr. Carte' to whom Fielding proposed to lend his 'Frontispiece' was Thomas Carte, the historian, who had just brought out the first volume of his _History of England_, in which he showed such decided Jacobite predilections that his work was ruined in consequence. He professed to be acquainted with the case of a person who had been cured of the King's Evil by the Pretender, then an exile in France, and this so disgusted many of the subscribers to his book that they withdrew their names and abandoned the author and his work together. He, however, brought out two more volumes, and a fourth was published after his death. It was probably in allusion to this story of the Pretender curing the King's Evil that Fielding speaks of Carte as 'the learned and facetious novelist;' and doubtless the 'great Romance' referred to was intended for his history of England. Fielding and Carte both died in the same year, 1754. [Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF FORT FOURAS, AS IT APPEARED IN THE SHIPS FROM THE CHARENTE, FROM 'OWEN'S WEEKLY CHRONICLE,' 1758.] During the next ten years I have found no illustrations in the newspapers of that period. In 1758 there was a newspaper published entitled _Owen's Weekly Chronicle, or Universal Journal_, a sheet of eight pages, size of the _Athenæum_, price two-pence halfpenny. About this time the English Government, in carrying on the war against France, despatched several expeditions to the French coast, none of which redounded much to the credit of the British arms. One of these expeditions was against Rochfort, and it turned out a failure, which caused much dissatisfaction. _Owen's Weekly Chronicle_ for June 3, 1758, published a long article on the subject, illustrated with a woodcut view of Fort Fouras. The writer concludes, with true newspaper vehemence, in the following words:--'Where is the glory of the British name? Where are the terrors that used to accompany our fleets and armies? Let it not be said the treasures of the country are poured forth in vain by an united and willing people; that our enemies are become invulnerable; and every blow our Ministers meditate impracticable. The Duke of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville are gone with Lord Anson and Sir Edward Hawke upon the present grand expedition; and we hope their courage and experience will revive the sinking honour of their country; and show that France is both vulnerable and impotent when the power of Britain is properly exerted.' Unfortunately, the sinking honour of the country was not much revived by the 'grand expedition' here referred to; for, after an ineffectual attempt on St. Maloes, the Duke of Marlborough embarked in such haste that he left his tea-spoons behind him: and these were afterwards sent home in a cartel-ship by the Duke d'Aiguillon in polite contempt. I have copied the woodcut above referred to, which is entitled, 'A Perspective view of Fort Fouras as it appeared in the ships from the Charente,' and the following description is given of it:--'Fouras was the tower of an old parish church, which, soon after the foundation of Rochefort, in 1688, Louis XIV. purchased of the proprietors to make a Tour de Garde, for repeating signals from the Isles of Oleron and Aix up to Rochefort, which is one of its present uses. A fort and garrison being established in the isle of Aix, Fouras was found to be the nearest and most secure communication in all weathers with that island; so that in process of time barracks and lodgments were built therein, and it was fortified to the sea by a strait curtain.' For the view of Fort Fouras _Owen's Weekly Chronicle_ must have been indebted to some one on board one of the British ships. Naval and military officers in all parts of the world are among the most valued correspondents of the modern illustrated newspaper; and it is interesting to notice that so long ago as the taking of Porto Bello and the attack on Rochefort there were men engaged in those expeditions whose spirit and intelligence prompted them to supply the newspapers of the day with sketches and information. The view of Fort Fouras is the earliest attempt I have seen in a newspaper to give a pictorial representation of a place in connexion with news. Wood-engraving was the only cheap method of illustration within the reach of newspapers, but the art barely existed at this time. The few woodcuts published in newspapers were not only coarsely and rudely executed, but sometimes the efforts of the illustrator did not get beyond a rough plan or map, and even this, as I have before remarked, was not always engraved. In further confirmation of this statement I may refer to _Lloyd's Evening Post_ of April 17, 1765, where one of the pages is taken up with a plan representing the trial of a Peer in Westminster Hall. This is done entirely with lines, type, and printer's ornaments. Although there is no account given of this trial in _Lloyd's Evening Post_, the plan must have referred to the case of Lord Byron, who was tried in Westminster Hall for the murder of Mr. Chaworth, April 16 and 17, 1765. In the winter of 1764-5 a strange wild beast was said to have appeared in France, devouring women and children, and spreading dismay and terror through the whole of Languedoc. What this ferocious creature was, or whence it came, no one knew; but the fear inspired by its presence was universal. The district which it specially haunted procured for it the name of the Wild Beast of the Gévaudan, by which designation it became famous not only in the South of France but throughout the country, and even in foreign lands. The earliest account of this ferocious monster appeared in the official journal of Paris in the following words:-- 'A very strange wild beast has lately appeared in the neighbourhood of Langagne and the forest of Mercoire which has occasioned great commotion. It has already devoured twenty persons, chiefly children, and particularly young girls, and scarcely a day passes without some accident. The terror he occasions prevents the woodcutters from working in the forests; so that wood has become dear. Those who have seen him say he is much higher than a wolf, low before, and his feet are armed with talons. His hair is reddish, his head large, and the muzzle of it is shaped like that of a greyhound; his ears are small and straight; his breast is wide, and of a grey colour; his back streaked with black; and his mouth, which is large, is provided with a set of teeth so very sharp that they have taken off several heads as clean as a razor could have done. He is of amazing swiftness; but, when he aims at his prey, he crouches so close to the ground, that he hardly appears to be bigger than a large fox; and at the distance of some one or two toises, he rises upon his hind legs and springs upon his prey, seizing it by the neck or throat. He is afraid of oxen, which he runs away from. The consternation is dreadful throughout the district where he commits his ravages, and public prayers are offered up on the occasion. The Marquis de Marangis has sent out four hundred peasants to destroy this fierce beast; but they have not been able to do it.' In spite of the efforts made to capture or destroy it the wild beast of the Gévaudan continued its ravages. In a letter from Meude, dated December 21, 1764, it is stated, 'The wild beast, which hath ravaged several provinces, has been for some time in ours. He was seen a few days ago near St. Flour, ten leagues from hence, and he is now in our neighbourhood. The day before yesterday he devoured a little girl who looked after cattle. A detachment of dragoons has been out six weeks after him. The province has offered a thousand crowns to any person who will kill him.' On the 8th of February, 1765, the following statement was sent from Montpellier:--'On the 12th ultimo the wild beast attacked seven children, five boys and two girls, none of whom exceeded eleven years of age. The beast flew at one of the boys; but the three eldest of them by beating him with stakes, the ends of which were iron, obliged him to retire, after having bitten off a part of the boy's cheek, which he ate before them. He then seized another of the children; but they pursued him into a marsh which was close by, where he sunk in up to his belly. By continually beating him, they rescued their companion; who, though he was under his paw for some time, received only a wound in his arm, and a scratch in the face. A man at last coming up, the creature was put to flight. He afterwards devoured a boy at Mazel, and, on the 21st, flew on a girl, who, however, escaped with some dangerous wounds. The next day he attacked a woman, and bit off her head. Captain Duhamel, of the dragoons, is in pursuit of him, and has caused several of his men to dress themselves in women's apparel, and to accompany the children that keep cattle.' The eyes of all France being fixed upon the doings of this wild beast, the attention of Louis the Fifteenth himself was called to the bravery of the boys in the preceding account. 'The King having been informed of the bravery with which the young Portefaix attacked the beast on the 12th of January last, at the head of his companions, and being willing to reward such gallant behaviour, has given him a recompense of four hundred livres, and has ordered three hundred to be distributed among his companions.' The Government also offered a reward for the destruction of the wild beast. The following placard was fixed up in all the cities and towns of Languedoc:--'By the King and the Intendant of the province of Languedoc. Notice is given to all persons, that His Majesty, being justly affected by the situation of his subjects now exposed to the ravages of the wild beast which for four months past has infested Vivarais and Gévaudan, and being desirous to stop the progress of such a calamity, has determined to promise a reward of six thousand livres to any person or persons who shall kill this animal. Such as are willing to undertake the pursuit of him may previously apply to the Sieur de la Fout, sub-deputy to the Intendant of Meudes, who will give them the necessary instructions agreeably to what has been presented by the ministry on the part of his Majesty.' A letter from Paris dated the 18th of February, 1765, gives the following circumstantial description of the wild beast:-- 'You know how I acquainted you, some months ago, that Monsieur Bardelle, his son and I, designed going by the Diligence, and opening the New Year at our old friend Monsieur Dura's chateau, near Babres, in Languedoc. We spent the time very agreeably, our host and his family having done all in their power to make us welcome. The party broke up and took leave the first of this month, amongst whom was Monsieur Lefevre, a counsellor, and two young ladies, who were engaged to pass a week at Monsieur de Sante's, the curé of Vaistour, about three days' journey distant from the chateau of Monsieur Dura. The company went away in a berlingo and four, and the footman Michel, on a saddle-horse; the carriage, after the manner here, being drawn by four post-horses, with two postilions, the berlingo having no coach box. The first night the party lay at Guimpe, and set out next morning at nine, to bait half way between that and Roteux, being four posts, and a mountainous barren country, as all the Gévaudan is. The parish of Guimpe had been greatly alarmed by the frequent appearance of, and the horrid destruction made by, the fiery animal that has so long been the terror of the Gévaudan, and is now so formidable that the inhabitants and travellers are in very great apprehension. The bailiff of Guimpe acquainted the party that this animal had been often lurking about the chaussée that week, and that it would be proper to take an escort of armed men, which would protect the carriage; but the gentlemen declined it, and took the ladies under their protection, and set out, on the 2nd of February, very cheerfully. When they had made about two leagues, they observed at a distance a post-chaise, and a man on horseback, coming down the hill of Credi, and whipping the horses very much; and at the descent unfortunately the wheel-horse fell down, and the postilion was thrown off; whereupon the horseman who followed the chaise, advanced to take up the boy, in which moment, when he had got down, we perceived the wild beast so often described make a jump towards the horses, and on the footman's raising his right hand to draw a cutlass and strike the creature, it pricked up its ears, stood on its hind feet, and, showing its teeth full of froth, turned round and gave the fellow a most violent blow with the swing of its tail. The man's face was all over blood; and then the monster, seeing the gentleman in the chaise present a blunderbuss at its neck, crept on its forehead to the chaise-step, keeping its head almost under its forelegs, and getting close to the door, reared upright, vaulted into the inside, broke through the other side-glass, and ran at a great rate to the adjoining wood. The blunderbuss missed fire, or it is possible this had been the last day this brute-disturber had moved. The stench left in the carriage was past description, and no cure of burning frankincense, nor any other method removed, but rather increased the stink, so that it was sold for two louis; and though burned to ashes, the cinders were obliged, by order of a commissary, to be buried without the town walls. We came up very well in time; for the beast would doubtless have destroyed some one, had it not espied three of us advancing with guns. It certainly jumped through the chaise to get away from us.' These accounts appear to have been received with some incredulity abroad. In the same number of _Lloyd's Evening Post_ that contains the plan of Lord Byron's trial there occurs the following passage about this curious wild beast: 'One of the Dutch Gazetteers by Monday's mail says:--"The accounts of the wild beast seen in the Gévaudan are of such a nature that it is hardly possible to give any credit thereto, and yet most of them have appeared in the _Paris Gazette_, a paper whose authors, known to be men of letters, are too judicious to be suspected of credulity, too prudent, too well informed of what passes at the Court of the King their master, one should think, to attribute to his Most Christian Majesty a reward for an action which never had any existence--an action which was only a fable."' This is, no doubt, an allusion to the reward of 400 livres bestowed upon the boys who beat off the ferocious monster. While the interest and excitement about this terrible wild beast was at the highest, the _St. James's Chronicle_ published an engraving and description of it. The _St. James's Chronicle; or the British Evening Post_, was a folio of four pages, published three times a-week, price twopence-halfpenny. In the number for June 6, 1765, there is printed the following description and woodcut:-- 'For the _St. James's Chronicle_. 'Of this beast, which has already devoured upwards of seventy Persons and spread Terrour and Desolation throughout the whole Gévaudan, the Sieur de la Chaumette, who lately wounded it, has given us the following Description. It is larger than a Calf of a year old, strongly made before, and turned like a Grayhound behind. His Nose is long and pointed, his Ears upright and smaller than a wolf's, his Mouth of a most enormous size, and always wide open; a Streak of Black runs from his Shoulders to the Beginning of his Tail. His Paws are very large and strong; the Hair on his Back and Mane thick, bristly, and erect; his Tail long and terminating in a Bush, like that of a Lion; his Eyes small, fierce, and fiery. From this description it appears that he is neither a Wolf, Tiger, nor Hyena, but probably a Mongrel, generated between the two last, and forming, as it were, a new Species. All the accounts lately received agree in assuring that there are several of them.' [Illustration: STRANGE WILD BEAST SEEN IN FRANCE. FROM THE 'ST. JAMES'S CHRONICLE,' 1765.] The _St. James's Chronicle_ does not state from whence the portrait was obtained. A representation of the wild beast of the Gévaudan was sent in April, 1765, to the Intendant of Alençon, and a description of that picture corresponds with the woodcut in the _St. James's Chronicle_, so that the latter was probably a copy of the former. About three months after the publication of the woodcut and description in the _St. James's Chronicle_, the career of this much dreaded animal was brought to a close. On Sept. 20th, 1765, it was encountered in the wood of Pommières by a certain Monsieur Beauterme, a gentleman of a distant province and noted as a successful hunter. He had come into the district on purpose to seek out this notorious wild beast, and having found it, shot it in the eye at the distance of about fifty paces. The animal, however, though wounded, showed fight, and was rushing on Monsieur Beauterme with great fury, when he was finally dispatched by a gamekeeper named Reinhard. Several inhabitants of the Gévaudan who had been attacked by the beast declared it to be the same which had caused such consternation in the country, and Monsieur Beauterme set out with the body to Versailles in order to present it to the King. The animal was found to be thirty-two inches high, and five feet seven and a half inches long including the tail. The surgeon who dissected the body said it was more of a hyena than a wolf, its teeth being forty in number, whereas wolves have but twenty-six. The muscles of the neck were very strong; its sides so formed that it could bend its head to its tail; its eyes sparkled so with fire that it was hardly possible to bear its look. Its tail was very large, broad, and thick, and bristled with black hair, and its feet armed with claws extremely strong and singular. In Paris it was thought that this mysterious animal was a cross between a tiger and a lioness, and had been brought into France to be shown as a curiosity. It is not unlikely that it had escaped from some travelling show, and was probably a hyena. The imagination of the country people would easily transform it into any shape suggested by their terrors. That such fancies easily begin and rapidly grow was proved in the case of Captain Sir Allan Young's pet Esquimaux dog, which was either stolen or wandered from the Arctic ship _Pandora_ as she lay in Southampton harbour after returning from the Polar regions. Quite a panic arose in that part of Hampshire where this most valuable and harmless animal was wandering about, and every sort of story was circulated of the ravages and dangers the country was exposed to. The people began to think that besides their sheep and pigs their children were in danger. Some said it was a gigantic black fox, others that it was a Canadian wolf. Expeditions were organized to attack it, and after being chased for some miles by people on horseback, it was ultimately shot and exhibited at sixpence a head in Winchester market-place. There could be no doubt about the dog's identity, for Sir Allan Young afterwards got back his skin. Before concluding my sketch of illustrated journalism in the eighteenth century I must refer to a class of publication that possessed many of the characteristics of the newspaper, without exactly belonging to that category. This kind of journal is represented by the _Gentleman's Magazine_; but, although Edward Cave considered himself the inventor of the magazine form of publication, the _Gentleman's Magazine_ was not the first journal of the kind. Nearly forty years before it came into existence a monthly publication was started in London with the following title:--'_The Gentleman's Journal; or, the Monthly Miscellany_. _By way of Letter to a Gentleman in the country, consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Music, Translations, &c. January_, 169½.' Its projector and editor was a refugee Frenchman, one Peter Anthony Motteux, and the design appears to have met with considerable success, but it did not last more than four years. In the second number of the _Gentleman's Journal_ appeared the following:--'The author desires to be excused for not answering the many ingenious letters that have been sent to him that he may have the more time to apply himself to this journal; he judges that he answers them enough when he follows the advice they give him, or inserts what is sent to him, which he will always be very careful to do. But such things as any way reflect upon particular persons, or are either against religion or good manners, he cannot insert. He will take care to settle correspondence both abroad and at home, to inform his readers of all that may be most worthy their knowledge; and if anything offers itself that deserves to be engraved, he will get it done. But it being impossible he should know by himself a thousand things which the publick would gladly know, such persons as have anything to communicate may be pleased to send it to him, at the Black Boy Coffee House in Ave Maria Lane, not forgetting to discharge the postage.' It would appear by the above that Peter Anthony Motteux had a vague perception that engravings might increase the attractions of his journal; but it does not seem that much came in his way that 'deserved to be engraved.' I have found only two small woodcuts in the _Gentleman's Journal_. They both occur in the volume for 1694. One is a representation of snow crystals, and the other is a diagram of a mock sun. Motteux tells us that his journal was patronised by the Queen, and was much favoured by the ladies generally. He had amongst his contributors Dryden, Matthew Prior, Sedley, and Tom Durfey. Charles Wesley, brother of the famous John, sent serious verses, as did also Tate, of 'Tate and Brady' celebrity. All these contributions were introduced into a long letter, which, as the title indicates, was the shape in which the _Gentleman's Journal_ was written, and in this respect it was modelled upon the early manuscript newsletters. Peter Anthony Motteux, the editor of the first English magazine, was also the author of several songs, plays, and prologues, and he also published a translation of _Don Quixote_. He kept a large East India warehouse in Leadenhall Street, and afterwards obtained a situation in the Post Office. He was found dead on the morning of his fifty-eighth birthday, in a low drinking-house in Butchers' Row, near Temple Bar, and had either been murdered or had lost his life in a drunken frolic. The _London Gazette_ of the succeeding week contained the offer of a reward of fifty pounds for the discovery of the murderer, and the King's pardon to any but the actual criminal; but the mystery was never cleared up, and the bones of the clever exiled Frenchman lie unavenged and forgotten in the vaults of St. Andrew Undershaft, Leadenhall Street, celebrated amongst City churches as the burial-place of John Stowe.[1] Edward Cave, the early patron and friend of Dr. Johnson, projected and brought out the _Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1731. It was printed at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, a view of which place embellished its title-page. The full title was, '_The Gentleman's Magazine, or Monthly Intelligencer_, containing Essays, Controversial, Humorous, and Satirical; Religious, Moral, and Political; collected chiefly from the Publick Papers. Select Pieces of Poetry. A Succinct Account of the most remarkable Transactions and Events, Foreign and Domestick. Births, Marriages, Deaths, Promotions, and Bankrupts. The Prices of Goods and Stocks, and Bill of Mortality. A Register of Books. Observations on Gardening.' It will thus be seen that the Magazine possessed many of the characteristics of a newspaper. On the front page of the earlier numbers were printed the names of the various newspapers from which it derived its information. It was some time before illustrations began to appear. The most important subjects were engraved on copper, and rough woodcuts were sprinkled here and there among the type. Sometimes the most incongruous subjects were engraved on the same plate, such as the section of a man-of-war and the figure of a locust. There was occasionally an illustration of news, as in the volume for 1746, where there is a map of the country round Carlisle, showing the route of the Scottish rebels; and in the same volume there is a portrait of Lord Lovat. The frontispiece to this volume is a portrait of the Duke of Cumberland, with the motto _Ecce Homo_. Portraits, plans, and bird's-eye views are of frequent occurrence. In the volume for 1747 is a very elaborate bird's-eye view of the city of Genoa, illustrating an account of an insurrection there. The same volume contains a view of Mount Vesuvius, with a description of the last great eruption. In the volume for 1748 are views of Amsterdam, the Mansion House, London, Greenwich Hospital, the Foundling Hospital, &c. The volume for 1749 contains an engraving of the fireworks on the occasion of the Peace, and views of Blenheim House and Covent Garden. In the volume for 1750 there is a woodcut with 'J. Cave sc.' in the corner. This was probably a son or some other relative of the proprietor, who was either in training as an engraver, or was trying his hand merely as an amateur. His name does not appear again, and I have never met with it elsewhere in connexion with the art of wood-engraving. In the number for November, 1750, there occurs the following amongst the list of deaths:--'Mr. Edward Bright, at Malden in Essex, aged 30; he was supposed to be the largest man living, or perhaps that ever lived in this island. He weighed 42 stone and a half, horseman's weight; and not being very tall, his body was of an astonishing bulk, and his legs were as big as a middling man's body. He was an active man till a year or two before his death, when his corpulency so overpowered his strength that his life was a burthen, and his death a deliverance. His coffin was three feet six inches over the shoulders, six feet seven inches long, and three feet deep; a way was cut thro' the wall and staircase, to let the corpse down into the shop; it was drawn upon a carriage to the church, and let down into the vault by the help of a slider and pulleys.' In the number for the following February there is a woodcut of Mr. Bright, and the reader is referred back to the November number for the above description. This seems to show that the _Gentleman's Magazine_ did not consider it of vital importance, in illustrating news, to follow very close upon the heels of events. I have copied this engraving as a specimen of the woodcut illustrations of the _Magazine_. [Illustration: EDWARD BRIGHT. WEIGHT 42½ STONE. FROM THE 'GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE' FOR FEBRUARY, 1751.] The _Gentleman's Magazine_ attracted the notice and admiration of Dr. Johnson before he came to London as a literary adventurer. He afterwards became a regular contributor to its pages, and for many years it was his principal source of income. His first contribution was a complimentary Latin poem addressed to Sylvanus Urban, and when Cave died Johnson wrote an account of him in the magazine. Dr. Johnson told Boswell 'that when he first saw St. John's Gate, the place where that deservedly popular miscellany was originally printed, he "beheld it with reverence."' Edward Cave was born at Newton, in Warwickshire, Feb. 29th, 1691; he died Jan. 10th, 1754. 'He was peculiarly fortunate,' says Boswell, 'in being recorded by Johnson; who of the narrow life of a printer and publisher, without any digressions or adventitious circumstances, has made an interesting and agreeable narrative.' The _Gentleman's Magazine_ still exists, but retains nothing of its original character beyond the name. Within a year the success of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ brought into being the _London Magazine_, and, in 1739, the _Scots Magazine_, published in Edinburgh. In the second volume of the latter, under date March, 1740, there is a larger version of the woodcut of the taking of Porto Bello, already described. The account also is given, quoted, however, from the _London Evening Post_, and not from the _Daily Post_, where the woodcut appeared. Maps, plans, and views of places occasionally occur in other volumes of the _Scots Magazine_. In vol. iii. there is a plan of the harbour, city, and forts of Cartagena, and the number for July, 1743, contains a plan of the battle of Dettingen. FOOTNOTE: [1] _New Quarterly Magazine_, January, 1878. CHAPTER VII. Revival of Wood-engraving by Thomas Bewick--The _Observer_ started, 1791--The _Times_ an Illustrated Paper--Illustrations of News in the _Observer_--St. Helena and Napoleon Bonaparte--Abraham Thornton and the 'Assize of Battle'--Mr. William Clement and Illustrated Journalism--The Cato Street Conspiracy--Trial of Queen Caroline--The House of Commons in 1821--Coronation of George IV.--Royal Visits to Ireland and Scotland--Murder of Mr. Weare--Illustrations of the Murder in the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Observer_, and the _Englishman_--_Bell's Life in London_--Prize-Fight at Warwick--Liston as 'Paul Pry'--'Gallery of Comicalities,' &c.--_Pierce Egan's Life in London_--Death of the Duke of York--Death of Mr. Canning--Opening of Hammersmith Bridge, 1827--Mr. Gurney's Steam Coach--The Thames Tunnel--The Murder in the Red Barn--The Siamese Twins--Death of George IV.--Opening of New London Bridge, 1831--Coronation of William IV. and Queen Adelaide--Fieschi's Infernal Machine--Funeral of William IV.--Queen Victoria's First Visit to the City--Coronation and Marriage of the Queen--Christening of the Prince of Wales--_The Weekly Chronicle_--The Greenacre Murder--Mr. Cocking and his Parachute--The Courtney Riots at Canterbury--Burning of the Tower of London, 1841--_The Sunday Times_--Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1834--_The Champion_--_The Weekly Herald_--_The Magnet_--Removing the Body of Napoleon I.--_The Penny Magazine_--Charles Knight--Humorous Journalism of the Victorian Era. There appears to have been little or nothing done in the way of illustrated journalism during the remaining years of the eighteenth century. It was during this period that Thomas Bewick revived the almost extinct art of wood-engraving, and about the time he brought out the first of his illustrated natural history books a weekly newspaper was started in London which afterwards became the pioneer of modern illustrated journalism. This was the _Observer_, the first number of which came out on Sunday, Dec. 4th, 1791. It is the oldest of our existing weekly newspapers, and is one of the rare instances of a Sunday paper becoming established.[1] Many years had to elapse before wood-engraving began to be used as a means of popular illustration; but when some of Bewick's numerous pupils began to diffuse the fruits of their master's teaching the _Observer_ was the first newspaper that availed itself of the restored art. Before this, however, there were symptoms of the reawakening of a dormant idea. In looking back to the early years of the present century it is curious and interesting to notice that the _Times_ was occasionally an illustrated paper. The battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson stirred the national heart to such a degree that the _Times_ of that day was induced to introduce into its pages engravings of Nelson's coffin and funeral car, when the hero's remains were carried to St. Paul's. In the number for Jan. 10th, 1806, there is an account of the State funeral, which is illustrated with the above-named woodcuts. They are very rudely executed, and plainly show that the influence of Bewick's labours had not yet penetrated into the region of journalism. Annexed is a copy of what the _Times_ of 1806 presented to the public in response to the intense interest felt by the whole of the British nation about Nelson's death and funeral. It is a noteworthy example of renewed effort in the direction of illustrated news at a time when insufficient means of production clogged the spirit of enterprise. Like the _Swedish Intelligencer_ of 1632, the _Times_ did not hesitate to point out its shortcomings in the following notice at the foot of the engraving:--'The only difference in the appearance of the Funeral Car from the engraving is, that, contrary to what was at first intended, neither the pall nor coronet appeared on the coffin. The first was thrown in the stern of the Car, in order to give the public a complete view of the coffin; and the coronet was carried in a mourning-coach. We had not time to make the alteration.' [Illustration: NELSON'S FUNERAL CAR. FROM THE 'TIMES,' JAN. 10, 1806.] To the above engraving the following description was appended:--'The Car, modelled at the ends in imitation of the hull of the Victory. Its head towards the horses, was ornamented with a figure of Fame. The stern carved and painted in the naval style, with the word "Victory" in yellow raised letters on the lanthorn over the poop. The coffin placed on the quarterdeck with its head towards the stern, with the English Jack pendent over the poop lowered half-staff. There was an awning over the whole, consisting of an elegant canopy supported by four pillars, in the form of palm-trees, as we have already mentioned, and partly covered with black velvet. The corners and sides were decorated with black ostrich feathers, and festooned with black velvet, richly fringed, immediately above which, in the front, was inscribed in gold the word "Nile" at one end; on one side the following motto, "Hoste devicto, requievit;" behind was the word "Trafalgar;" and on the other side the motto "Palmam qui meruit ferat," as in the engraving. The carriage was drawn by six led horses, in elegant furniture.' In 1817 the _Times_ also illustrated the projects of Robert Owen, who laboured long and ardently to promote the doctrines of Socialism. In the number for Aug. 9th, 1817, there is a large woodcut called Robert Owen's agricultural and manufacturing villages of Unity and Mutual Cooperation. In those days a page of the _Times_ was not so valuable as it is now, or probably the enthusiastic Socialist would not have found it so easy to enlist that journal in helping to propagate his doctrines. In 1834 Owen made in London another attempt to put in practice the principles he had so long advocated. He died in 1858, aged ninety. I have mentioned that the _Observer_ was the first newspaper that availed itself of the revived art of wood-engraving; but it had previously essayed the then difficult task of illustrating the news of the day by the more costly means of engraving on copper. The island of St. Helena having been selected as the place of residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, the _Observer_ of Oct. 29th, 1815, published a large copperplate view of the island, with a descriptive account. The plate is printed on the same page with the letterpress, so that there must have been two printings to produce this specimen of illustrated news. Three years later the _Observer_ produced another copperplate example of news illustration, also printed on the letterpress page. This was a portrait of Abraham Thornton, whose remarkable case attracted much public attention. He was tried for the murder of a young woman, Mary Ashford, with whom he was known to be acquainted, and in whose company he was seen shortly before her death. He was, however, acquitted, the jury probably believing it to be a case of suicide. The brother of the girl then appealed, and Thornton claimed his right to defend himself by wager of battle. This claim was allowed, after long arguments before the judges. It was found, much to the surprise of the general public, that by the law of England a man in an appeal of murder might demand the combat, thereby to make proof of his guilt or innocence. In the present case the girl's brother refused the challenge, and Thornton escaped. This was the last appeal to the 'Assize of Battle' in this country; and the attention of the Legislature being drawn to the obsolete statute, it was repealed by 59 Geo. III., 1819. It was during the progress of the arguments in this case, and while the public interest was very great, that the _Observer_ published the portrait of the accused. After this the _Observer_ became remarkable for its illustrations of news. Mr. William Clement, the proprietor, was a man who early saw the attractiveness of illustrated journalism. I am not aware when he first became associated with the _Observer_; but under his management frequent illustrations of news were given in that paper. In 1820 _Bell's Life in London_ was started, and very soon Mr. Clement became the proprietor of that paper also. In 1821 he purchased the _Morning Chronicle_, which, however, turned out a bad speculation. Having invested a very large sum of money in the latter paper, Mr. Clement spared no effort to make it profitable, and the _Observer_ was neglected. It suffered in consequence, and fell in circulation. Frequently the illustrations of news that were printed in the _Observer_ were published the day previously in the _Chronicle_. They were also occasionally printed in _Bell's Life_ and the _Englishman_, a fourth paper belonging to Mr. Clement. All four papers were carried on together; but it is the _Observer_ that stands out as the prominent representative of illustrated journalism at this period. Other journals came into existence which took up the idea of illustrating the news of the day; among them the _Sunday Times_, started by Daniel Whittle Harvey in 1822, when he was member for Colchester. Another paper which for a time rivalled, if it did not excel, the _Observer_ in the frequency of its news illustrations was the _Weekly Chronicle_. It flourished a few years before the birth of the _Illustrated London News_, but has long been extinct. Mr. Clement sold the _Morning Chronicle_ in 1834, and soon restored the _Observer_ to its old position. The _Morning Chronicle_ started in 1769 and expired in 1864. The _Englishman_ has long been defunct, but I am not acquainted with the date of its disappearance. There was a paper called the _Englishman_ in 1714, and the name was again revived by the late Dr. Kenealy. The _Observer_ and _Bell's Life_ were both published at the same office for many years, but their companionship was terminated in 1877, when they left the office in the Strand where they had so long lived amicably together, the great sporting journal migrating to Catherine Street, and the _Observer_ seeking a new home in the Strand further west. One or two other newspapers occasionally published engravings during the few years immediately preceding the _Illustrated London News_, and of them I will speak in the proper place. The most prominent, however, were the _Observer_, _Bell's Life in London_, and the _Weekly Chronicle_, and to these three I propose first to direct attention as being the main supporters of the pictorial spirit until it culminated in the _Illustrated London News_. It was during the ten years preceding 1842 that the founder of that journal noticed the growing inclination of the people for illustrated news, and it was chiefly in the pages of the _Observer_ and the _Weekly Chronicle_ that he thought he saw the growth of a hitherto uncultivated germ. In 1820 all England was startled by the discovery of a mysterious plot of some political desperadoes who planned the assassination of the Ministers of the Crown and the overthrow of the Government. This came to be known as the Cato Street Conspiracy, the place of meeting of the conspirators being in Cato Street, Marylebone. The extravagance of the Prince Regent, the high price of bread, and the heavy taxation, had brought about a feeling of discontent among the lower orders which, unhappily, was greatly increased by the Spa Fields riots, and the collision between the soldiers and the people in Lancashire, at what was called the massacre of Peterloo. Thistlewood, the leader of the conspirators, had already been tried for treasonable practices, but acquitted. He had also been in trouble for his connexion with the Spa Fields riots. The sanguinary plan of the conspirators was to murder the Cabinet Ministers while they were all assembled at dinner at Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square. They were to seize certain pieces of cannon, take the Bank of England, destroy the telegraph to Woolwich, set fire to different parts of London, and then establish a provisional government at the Mansion House, sending emissaries to the outports to prevent the escape of obnoxious persons. They reckoned on large numbers of the discontented joining them as soon as they had destroyed the tyrants and oppressors of the people, as they termed the Ministers. They had provided pikes, pistols, sabres, knives, blunderbusses, and hand-grenades; and one of the gang, a butcher, had furnished himself with a heavy butcher's knife, to cut off the heads of 'Castlereagh and the rest as he came at them.' Adams, one of their number, turned informer, and the conspirators were surprised by the police at their meeting-place in Cato Street. After a conflict in which one of the police-officers was killed, several of the gang were secured, and others were taken soon afterwards. Thistlewood, the leader, escaped in the first rush, but was captured next day. The place where the seizure was made is described as a hayloft over a deserted stable with a step-ladder leading from the stable to the loft above, with two apertures in the floor of the loft, opening on the racks in the stable below; opening from the loft were two small inner rooms. On the evening of the 23rd of February, 1820, the conspirators were assembled in this stable, where they were arming themselves for the bloody work they had planned, when the police, aided by a party of the Coldstream Guards under Lieut. Fitzclarence, broke in upon them. Police-officers Ruthven, Ellice, and Smithers, were the first to mount the ladder, and enter the loft. 'There were about five-and-twenty men in the room, eating bread and cheese, and drinking porter, or selecting arms from a long carpenter's bench which stood close by the wall. Just at that juncture, Thistlewood, hearing a noise, and some one calling, "Hallo! Show a light!" took a candle, and looked down the stairs to see who was coming, and, on seeing that there was a surprise, he put the candle back on the bench, seized a sword, and with three or four others retreated stealthily to the further of the inner rooms--the one that had a window looking out into Cato Street. At that moment one of the men seized below called out to warn his comrades, "Look out there above!" 'At the same time, two of the constables, at first almost unnoticed, appeared at the top of the ladder, and presenting their pistols, said, "Hallo, is anybody in the room? Here's a pretty nest of you!" 'Then another of the patrol cried, "We are officers; seize their arms." 'And a third, "Gentlemen, we have got a warrant to apprehend you all, and as such we hope you will go peaceably." 'Just then Smithers, distrusting further parley, and believing, in his staunch way, in promptitude, before the conspirators could discover the scantiness of the assailing numbers, or could muster courage to use their arms, cried, "Let me come forward," and pushed towards the door of the inner room, where Thistlewood stood thrusting with a very long sword. The leader of the conspirators instantly rushed forward, and struck Smithers through his right side. The constable threw up his hands, his head fell back, he staggered against Ruthven, cried, "O my God, I am done!" and fell dead near the opening of the stairs. Ellice held up his staff at Thistlewood, and threatened to fire with the pistol in his right hand, unless he instantly surrendered. The lights were immediately dashed out, and a voice cried in the darkness, "Kill the ---- at once! Throw them down-stairs! Kill them!" 'Then there were twenty or thirty pistol-shots fired, and a tremendous headlong rush was made at the stairs, driving the Bow Street men backwards; the conspirators leaping down into the manger through the holes in the floor, or by the window, others firing at the officers on the stairs, or up through the manger, all making for the archway in John Street.'[2] It would appear the conspirators were closely watched for some time before they were arrested. Indeed, it was suspected that Government emissaries were employed to foment the conspiracy in order that a terrible example might be made for the benefit of the disaffected. However this may have been, the plot excited the most intense interest among all classes. Thistlewood and the other prisoners were tried at the Old Bailey, April 17th, 1820, and found guilty of high treason. Six were transported for life, the other five, including Thistlewood, were hung on May 1st, and their heads severed from their bodies--the quartering, the usual doom of traitors, having been graciously forgiven. [Illustration: A. Door to the cart-house. B. Door by which the officers entered. C. Stable window. D. Loft-door. STABLE WHERE THE CATO STREET CONSPIRATORS MET. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' MARCH 5TH, 1820.] The _Observer_ for March 5th, 1820, published some illustrations of the Cato Street Conspiracy. One is an exterior view of the stable in Cato Street where the conspirators met, which is copied on the opposite page. [Illustration: SECTION OF GRENADE PREPARED BY THE CATO STREET CONSPIRATORS. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' MARCH 5TH, 1820. A. Cylindrical tin Box containing gunpowder. B. Pitched tow. C. Bullets, old nails, Spikes, &c. D. Tin Tube a Fuze filled with damp powder.] There was also an interior view of the hayloft, together with sections of some of the grenades, daggers, &c., large quantities of which were found in the loft. These cuts, which are roughly done, were reprinted in the _Observer_ for March 12th, and two new ones were added, 'Interior view of the Hayloft at the moment when Smithers received his Death Wound,' and a view of the interior of the stable. They are all interesting as examples of illustrated news at a time when the means of producing such things were extremely limited. [Illustration: DAGGER PREPARED BY THE CATO STREET CONSPIRATORS. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' MARCH 5TH, 1820. A. Dagger made out of a bayonet to use singly or on top of a pike handle. B. Dagger with hole in the middle to receive dagger A. when screwed on, to be used right and left. C. Section of the transverse dagger B.] Mr. Clement, the proprietor of the _Observer_, gave a remarkable proof of his enterprising spirit when the Cato Street conspirators were tried. At that time newspapers were prohibited under a penalty of 500_l._ from publishing reports of cases in the courts of law before they were concluded. Mr. Clement, seeing the universal interest excited by the trial, determined to publish a report without waiting for the verdict. He accordingly sent reporters to the court, and published the whole in the _Observer_ before the verdict was given. This was a contempt of court for which he expected to have to pay, and, though the penalty was duly inflicted, it was never exacted. The _éclat_ attending this proceeding was of immense value to the _Observer_, and the sale of that number was so great that the proprietor could easily have paid the penalty of 500_l._, and he would still have been a gainer.[3] The Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), whose unhappy marriage with Caroline of Brunswick produced so much scandal and excitement in this country, had long been separated from his wife, who was residing abroad at the time her husband became King. Her Majesty announced her intention of returning to England; and though the King's Ministers endeavoured to dissuade her from her purpose, she persisted in her resolution, and on June 6th, 1820, she landed at Dover. Her journey through London was one long triumph, thousands of people escorting her to her temporary residence, and giving her the warmest possible welcome, for they looked upon her as an ill-used and persecuted woman. The question of omitting her name from the Liturgy had been debated in Parliament, and afterwards a 'Bill of Pains and Penalties' was brought in, which was in effect placing the Queen upon her trial. Contemporary newspapers show what intense excitement filled the public mind upon this subject, and how the nation ranged itself on the side of the King or Queen--by far the greater number being for the latter. Nothing was talked of but the 'Queen's trial,' and the wrongs and indignities that had been heaped upon the head of an innocent woman. On Aug. 16th, the married ladies of the metropolis presented Her Majesty with an address, and three days after the trial commenced, the defence being conducted by Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman. When the Queen attended the House of Lords large crowds accompanied her through the streets, and manifested by their cries their sympathy for her cause. The Bill of Pains and Penalties was carried on a second reading by a majority of twenty-eight, but it sank on the third reading to a majority of nine, and was finally abandoned owing to the threatening attitude of the populace. Great rejoicings ensued, London was illuminated for three nights, and on Nov. 29th the Queen went in state to St. Paul's. On this occasion William Hone, who had distinguished himself as one of the Queen's champions, displayed a transparency at his house on Ludgate Hill, which was painted by George Cruikshank, and is engraved in Hone's collected pamphlets. The _Observer_, having to some extent laid itself out for 'illustrated news,' the occasion of so much interest and excitement as the Queen's trial was not likely to pass unnoticed. Accordingly, we find in the number for Sept. 17th, 1820, a large woodcut, entitled, 'A Faithful Representation of the Interior of the House of Lords as prepared for the Trial of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Caroline.' This was published at the time the excitement was at the highest, and no doubt the eager public properly appreciated the enterprise of the conductors of the paper. In 1821 the House of Commons contained many notable politicians and eminent men who afterwards became leaders and champions among the ranks of Whig and Tory. Amongst the most prominent were Canning, Brougham, Peel, and Palmerston. The question of Reform was becoming more and more pressing, and the House of Commons as then constituted was tottering to its fall. The conductors of the _Observer_, ever on the look-out for what would interest their readers, published on Jan. 21st, 1821, two views of the interior of the House of Commons, one looking towards the Speaker's Chair, the other looking from it. In one the House is empty, but in the other most of the leading politicians of the day are introduced. The figures, however, are on too small a scale to be likenesses of the persons intended, but the reader is assisted by references showing the places occupied by the most prominent members of the House. The national excitement about Queen Caroline's trial was dying out when the first gentleman in Europe prepared for his coronation. On this occasion the _Observer_ gave the lieges appropriate pictures of the august ceremony. The best draughtsmen and engravers on wood, then very few in number, were employed to prepare views of Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hall during the coronation ceremony and the banquet which followed. The _Observer_ of July 22nd, 1821, contains four engravings, which, considering the limited artistic means at command, are by no means discreditable to the management of the paper. On this occasion a double number was published, the price of which was fourteen pence, and the publisher evidently thought it was very cheap. He announced that he would keep the number on sale for ten days after publication, so that no one might be disappointed in getting a copy. All these engravings of the coronation of George IV. were done on what was then considered a large scale, though none of them exceed a half-page of the present illustrated newspapers, and were finished as regards light and shade, according to the best ability of the artist. The coronation number of the _Observer_ produced a great sensation, and it had a very large sale. Nothing like it had ever been done before, and the public eagerly paid the double price for the sake of the engravings. Fourpence was paid for stamp duty on each sheet, amounting on the whole to 2000_l._ paid to Government for stamp duty, exclusive of paper duty. The number consisted of two sheets, each of which had a sale of 60,000 copies. This was a very good stroke of business, and Mr. Clement had fair reason to congratulate himself on his successful enterprise. It prompted him to further efforts; but, unfortunately, he had not the wisdom to confine his energies to one channel, and what he gained by one speculation he lost by another. It was at this time he purchased the _Morning Chronicle_ for 42,000_l._; but, as I have before stated, this turned out a disastrous investment, and also injured for a time the otherwise successful _Observer_. Soon after his coronation George IV. visited Ireland, and while on his way received the melancholy intelligence of the death of his consort, the unfortunate Queen Caroline, which, however, did not prevent His Majesty from continuing his journey. The _Observer_ of Sept. 2nd, 1821, published 'A correct View of his Majesty King George the Fourth landing from the _Lightening_ Steam Packet, Capt. Skinner, on the Pier of the Harbour of Howth, on Sunday, the Twelvth of August, 1821.' In describing this event the _Observer_ spoke of it as the opening of a new era for Ireland, and of the highest importance both in an historical and political point of view. In the following year the King went to Scotland; but, though the _Observer_ published long and elaborate descriptions of His Majesty's visit, the occasion was not deemed worthy of illustration. The opportunity, however, must have been far richer than the visit to Ireland in affording subjects for sketches. It would have been curious to see what a contemporary 'special artist' would have made of Sir Walter Scott; and posterity would have been glad to have had handed down to it the 'varra effigies' of George IV. and Alderman Curtis in the kilt! In 1823 the city of Cadiz, in Spain, was invested by the French, who took possession of the place on Oct. 3rd in that year. The _Observer_, in its issue of Oct. 5th, printed a plan and view of Cadiz, the plan first appearing in the _Morning Chronicle_ of the day before. The view of Cadiz is well engraved, in the manner of that day, by W. Hughes. The plan is also well done, and very complete. Towards the end of 1823 a murder, unparalleled in the history of crime, excited immense public interest, and the _Observer_ at once took up the case, and described and illustrated it with a particularity and minuteness of detail that must have satisfied the most ardent sensationalist. The incidents of this remarkable crime have been long forgotten; but I will give an outline of the story in connexion with the engravings published on the occasion by the _Observer_. Mr. William Weare was an attorney in Lyon's Inn, who added to his legal practice the business of a bill-discounter, and enlivened the dulness of both pursuits by indulging occasionally in the excitement of gambling. He counted amongst his friends one Mr. John Thurtell, a notorious betting-man; and it was to keep an appointment with this friend that he left his chambers in Lyon's Inn on Friday, Oct. 24th, 1823. The two friends had agreed to go on a short shooting excursion to a lonely cottage on the St. Albans road, about fourteen miles from London. Thurtell was respectably connected, but had an evil reputation, he and his brother being then in hiding to avoid a charge of arson. Two other men were concerned in the murder, Hunt, a public singer, of doubtful character, and Probert, a spirit merchant, a fraudulent bankrupt, who lived at the cottage to which Thurtell and his friend were going. In the gambling transactions between Thurtell and Weare the former conceived himself to have been cheated of 300_l._, and in revenge he determined to murder Weare, and by robbing him recoup himself as far as possible for his losses. The crime was coolly premeditated, and Hunt appears to have been an accessory before the fact, having arranged to meet Thurtell on the road, and to assist in despatching the victim. For this purpose the shooting excursion to Probert's cottage was planned, but, owing to a mistake of Hunt's, he did not join Thurtell as agreed, and the latter committed the murder alone. Thurtell and Weare were seen driving in a gig towards Edgeware about five o'clock in the evening on Oct. 24th, and they afterwards called at the 'White Hart,' Edgeware, for refreshment. After they were gone Probert and Hunt, also driving in a gig, called at the same inn, where they had some brandy and water, and afterwards drove away. Gill's Hill Cottage, the place where Probert lived, was about two miles from Elstree, and was approached by a narrow road called Gill's Hill Lane. Some country people passing in the neighbourhood of this lane about eight o'clock in the evening heard a shot fired and deep groans as if some one was injured. They also heard voices and the wheels of a cart or gig moving. Near nine o'clock Thurtell arrived at the cottage _alone_, and giving the horse and gig to the servant, went out to meet Probert and Hunt, with whom he soon afterwards returned. Hunt being a stranger, was formally introduced to Mrs. Probert and a Miss Noyes who was staying at the house. The whole party supped together, and spent the evening in jollity. Hunt sang several songs, and Thurtell produced a gold hunting-watch which afterwards proved to be Weare's, and, taking off the chain, offered it to Probert for his wife, but he declining it, Thurtell put it round the lady's neck himself. It was after midnight before the ladies retired, and the sleeping accommodation being limited it was arranged that Thurtell should sleep on some chairs and Hunt was to occupy the sofa. A drawing of the sofa forms one of the illustrations in the _Observer_, and proves how thoroughly every circumstance of the horrid tale was followed up and exhibited to the public. All this time the body of the murdered Weare was lying behind a hedge in the lane. Mrs. Probert's suspicions had been aroused by several strange circumstances. A vague and horrid alarm took possession of her, and when she retired to bed she stole to the head of the stairs and listened to the talk that was going on below in the parlour. She heard her husband and his two visitors apparently dividing money, burning papers, and making mysterious plans to conceal something dreadful that had been done. Then the parlour door was opened, and the frightened woman stole back to her room. She heard two of the men go to the stable and bring out the horse. Afterwards, hearing a noise in the garden, she looked out of the window, and it being a moonlight night, she saw a man dragging something large and heavy along the garden walk towards the fishpond. Then followed a hollow sound as if something had been thrown into the pond. That night, when Probert went to bed, he found his wife sitting up and crying. She questioned him about the mysterious sounds she had heard, but he told her that he and his companions had only been out trying to net some game. In the morning she renewed her inquiries, but he only replied, 'Don't torment me; you make my life miserable.' He seemed in low spirits, and went moping round the garden and about the pond. Going into the kitchen Mrs. Probert observed the gig cushion drying at the kitchen fire, although there had been no rain the night before, and the cook was surprised to see in the stable a wet, ripped-up sack hanging on a nail. [Illustration: THE COUCH ON WHICH HUNT SLEPT AT GILL'S HILL COTTAGE. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' NOV. 10, 1823.] Early on Saturday morning two labouring men were busy in Gill's Hill Lane repairing the road, when two gentlemen passed them on foot. At the bend of the lane they stooped down and appeared to be looking for something among the dead leaves and brambles. Coming back they had some conversation with the road-menders, and afterwards passed on up the lane towards the cottage. A short time afterwards one of the labourers found at the spot where the gentlemen had been looking an open penknife covered with blood, and a little further on a pistol with hair sticking to it, and also bloody. These articles the man gave to his master the same morning when he came round to inspect their work. About noon they saw the two gentlemen from Probert's drive away in a gig. They both looked hard at the spot where the knife and pistol had been found, but said nothing. Mr. Nicholls, the road surveyor, to whom the knife and pistol had been handed by the man who found them, went to the magistrates at Watford and told how and where the articles had been found. The magistrates at once sent information to Bow Street, and two of their number immediately went to Gill's Hill Lane, where they discovered spots and gouts of blood on the bank and under the leaves, and there was a gap in the hedge where a body seemed to have been dragged through. The field was also much trampled. They at once came to the conclusion that a murder had been committed, and took instant measures to trace the guilty parties. The police seized Probert and Thomas Thurtell at Gill's Hill, and searched the house and premises. John Thurtell was apprehended at the 'Coach and Horses,' in Conduit Street. Marks of blood were found on different articles of clothing belonging to him. At Hunt's lodgings various articles belonging to Weare had been found. Weare being missing it was suspected he had met with foul play at the hands of these men. A billiard-table keeper in Spring Gardens proved that Mr. Weare had called upon him about three o'clock on Friday, October 24th, and told him he was then on his way to join Thurtell in the Edgeware Road, as they were going down to Hertfordshire for a few days' shooting. Thurtell, on being questioned, admitted he knew Mr. Weare, but said he had not seen him for eight days. It appeared by the disclosures afterwards made by Thurtell's two confederates that Thurtell had shot Weare while they were riding in the gig down Gill's Hill Lane, leading to the cottage where Probert lived. Weare jumped out of the gig, crying he would pay Thurtell all he owed him if he would only spare his life. Thurtell jumped out of the gig and ran after him. He got Weare down and cut his throat with a penknife, and then struck him on the head with a pistol. He then dragged the body through the hedge and left it there. The same night Thurtell and Hunt went out from Probert's cottage to bring the body away, but they found it too heavy. Probert and Thurtell then went and brought the body on the horse, and put it in the fishpond with stones in the sack to keep it down. They afterwards removed the body from the fishpond and sunk it in a deep pond by the side of the Elstree road. The cold-blooded indifference of the perpetrators of this atrocious crime was most extraordinary. The murder was committed on Friday night, and on Saturday Thurtell and Hunt returned to London and dined with Thomas Thurtell and Mr. Noyes, Probert's brother-in-law, at the 'Coach and Horses,' in Conduit Street. They were very jovial, and next day (Sunday) the whole party met again at Proberts' house in Gill's Hill Lane, when the afternoon was spent in playing at cards. On Sunday night Thurtell and Hunt went to dig a grave to bury the body, but the dogs were barking, and they were afraid some one was about. On Monday, while Hunt engaged Mrs. Probert in conversation, Thurtell and Probert got the body out of the fishpond, and cut off the clothes. Then they all three carried it to the garden-gate and put it into the gig. A grave half dug was found in Probert's garden, but the soil was hard, and it is supposed that Thurtell and Hunt were afraid of the noise pickaxes would make. Hunt, to save his own neck from the halter, confessed that he knew where the body was, and went with four men in a hackney coach to a bridge on the Elstree Road, near which was a deep pond by the side of the road. In this pond the body of Weare was found tied in a sack, with stones to keep it down. [Illustration: POND IN WHICH THE BODY OF MR. WEARE WAS FOUND. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' NOV. 10, 1823.] Thurtell, Probert, and Hunt were tried at Hertford on January 6, 1824. Probert was admitted King's evidence, and so escaped for that time, but he was afterwards hung at the Old Bailey for horse-stealing. Thurtell and Hunt were condemned to death, but only Thurtell was hung, Hunt being reprieved on the morning of execution, and transported for life. In those days prize-fighting was in much favour, and a great fight was coming off between Spring and Langham, two noted pugilists. To show the ruffianly and impenitent character of Thurtell, it is related that he said, a few hours before his execution, 'It is perhaps wrong in my situation; but I own I should like to read Pierce Egan's account of the great fight yesterday.' Some of the incidents of the trial were appalling, others ludicrous. The production of the weapon with which the murder was committed, stained and rusted with blood, made every one shudder except the prisoners. The oft-quoted reason for a man being respectable 'because he kept a horse and shay' occurred during this trial; and when Probert's cook was asked whether the supper at Gill's Hill Cottage was postponed, she answered, 'No; it was pork.'[4] The murder of Mr. Weare was committed on October 24, and discovered a few days afterwards. On November 10 the _Observer_ published five illustrations of the murder:--1. Probert's cottage and garden. 2. The scene of the murder in Gill's Hill Lane. 3. The pond in which the body of Weare was found. 4. Front view (from the road) of Probert's cottage. 5. The parlour and the couch on which Hunt slept. On December 7 the _Observer_ published a view of the interior of the Crown Court at Hertford at the moment the prisoners were brought up to plead; and, having found that the public had eagerly purchased the illustrations already issued, the editor announced the publication of two sheets with additional engravings on the occasion of the trial:--'The Trials of the prisoners at Hertford having been put off till Tuesday, Jan. 6, the publication of the intended Supplement of this Journal, containing the plates illustrative of the facts to be disclosed in the evidence, has been deferred till Sunday, January 11, on which day Two Sheets instead of one will be published. Booksellers, Postmasters, &c., are requested to give their orders through their respective Agents in London, as no papers whatever are on any occasion forwarded through the Publisher.' Accordingly, at the appointed time two sheets came out, containing the cuts already enumerated together with three fresh ones, the latter being the stable-yard of Probert's cottage with the murderers conveying the body by the light of a lantern to the stable; a front view of the cottage, showing the murderers dragging the body to the pond; and a ground-plan of the country round the scene of the murder. The conductors of the Journal appear to have had some misgivings as to the good taste of their proceedings, but were unable to resist the temptation of a large and profitable sale. The engravings are thus introduced to the reader:--'The unparalleled interest which has been created in the public mind by the mysterious circumstances attending the death of Mr. Weare has induced us, with a view to the gratification of our readers, to use every exertion in our power, not only to give a faithful and copious Report of the Trial of the persons charged with this most foul and atrocious deed, but, with the assistance of competent Artists, to obtain such Plates as appear to us best calculated to illustrate the detail of circumstances disclosed in the evidence before the jury. We are aware that by some these illustrations will be condemned as inconsistent with good taste; and we are ready to acknowledge that on all occasions their adoption would be extremely injudicious. In a case, however, where the feelings and the curiosity of the public have been so much excited, and where so singular and ardent an avidity has been displayed to obtain every possible light upon a subject so interesting, we trust that those who may entertain, perhaps, a well-founded objection to our plan, will, for a moment, grant us their indulgence, and permit us to meet the wishes of persons who may not be so fastidious as themselves. The strongest argument which we can adduce in favour of the continued pursuit of this plan--is the fact, that of three of the plates which we now feel it necessary to republish, many thousand impressions have been already sold, and yet the number, though high, has been insufficient to supply the continued demand. The necessity imposed on us, however, for breaking up our formes, forced us to refer the recent applicants to the present publication, which will be found to contain the most minute and correct particulars of everything connected with this extraordinary affair.' Then follows a long and minute description of all the plates, when it is stated, 'For the sake of effect the artist has given all the views as they would appear in daylight; but, with the exception of Plate II. (finding the body of Weare in the pond), the scenes ought to have been represented as at night.' Some of the engravings illustrating the murder of Mr. Weare appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ the day before their publication in the _Observer_, and they were also published simultaneously in the _Englishman_, which appears to have been in substance another edition of the _Observer_ without the advertisements. The name of W. Hughes is attached to them as the engraver. The _Observer_ was loudly condemned for publishing the Weare and Thurtell illustrations, and it did not for some time bring out any more engravings; but this was probably owing more to the commercial depression prevailing at the time than to the strictures that had been passed upon newspaper morality. About this time _Bell's Life_ came into Mr. Clement's hands, and henceforth it shared, with the _Morning Chronicle_ and the _Englishman_, in the illustrations prepared for the _Observer_. It had, however, a distinct series of illustrations of its own, which was continued for several years. But before describing them I must refer to one or two characteristic engravings which appeared in _Bell's Life_ in its early days. On November 28, 1824, the first large woodcut was published, representing a prize-fight on a raised stage, and entitled the 'Tip Top Milling at Warwick.' According to the account accompanying the engraving, this prize-fight was a most brutal exhibition, without any display of what boxers call 'science'--a mere exchange of hard blows, ending in one of the combatants being carried insensible from the stage. The coming fight was made known far and wide, so that when the day arrived vehicles from all parts of the country brought hundreds of spectators to the scene. The fight took place, openly and without fear of interruption, on the race-course at Warwick, the grand stand being crammed with spectators, and a ring of waggons, on which clustered crowds of eager gazers, surrounded the stage. This is all shown in the engraving in _Bell's Life_; and the different objects in the background, such as the church, the keep of Warwick Castle, the cemetery, &c., are pointed out by figures of reference with the most conscientious care. There is a very long account of the battle, couched in language only understood by members of the 'fancy.' In 1825 the town was being amused by Liston, as 'Paul Pry,' then a recent creation of the stage. On November 8 in that year _Bell's Life_ published a woodcut representing the comedian in that character, which I have copied as an early example of the illustrations of the great sporting journal. [Illustration: LISTON AS PAUL PRY. FROM 'BELL'S LIFE,' 1825.] In 1827 _Bell's Life_ commenced a series of caricature sketches by Cruikshank, Seymour, and Kenny Meadows, entitled a 'Gallery of Comicalities.' This continued at intervals, along with other sketches entitled 'Phizogs of the Tradesmen of London' (half-lengths of Butchers, Cobblers, &c., commencing in 1832); 'Kitchen Stuff, or Cads of the Aristocracy' (heads of gentlemen's servants); 'Portraits down the Road' (heads of characters seen on a stage-coach journey, such as the Landlady, the Commercial Traveller, the Chambermaid, &c.); 'The Sporting Album' (sketches from life, commencing 1834). These caricature subjects were continued to the end of the year 1840. The greater number are much too coarse, cynical, and vulgar for the taste of the present day. Sometimes a series of sketches extended through several consecutive weeks, such as 'The Pugilist's Progress' and 'The Drunkard's Progress,' both by Seymour. 'The Drunkard's Progress,' which appeared in 1829, consisted of twelve scenes, and embodied the same idea that was many years afterwards more fully developed by George Cruikshank in his series of large plates entitled 'The Bottle.' Now and then appeared a sporting subject by Harvey, such as Coursing, Hunting, Bull-Baiting, &c. In the number for February 8, 1829, appeared a curious woodcut representing a view in the Isle of Anglesea, which was said to have excited the attention and surprise of passing travellers from its presenting an excellent profile of the Marquis of Anglesea, who was then very popular. In 1831 portraits of Young Dutch Sam and Ned Neal, the famous pugilists, were published; and in 1838 the initials of John Leech began to appear to some of the cuts. Portraits of prize-fighters, race-horses, representations of racing-cups, &c., were given at intervals until 1851, when the last illustration, a monument to Tom Cribb, appeared. [Illustration: THE MAN WOT LOST THE FIGHT. THE MAN WOT WON THE FIGHT. FROM 'BELL'S LIFE,' 1831.] As further examples of the illustrations in _Bell's Life_, I copy two, which were published in 1831. About 1825 there was another sporting paper in existence, conducted by the celebrated author of 'Tom and Jerry.' It was called _Pierce Egan's Life in London_, and, like _Bell's Life_, had its sporting and other columns decorated with little woodcut headings, and sometimes published an engraving of a racing-cup. At the beginning of 1827 the _Observer_ resumed its illustrations of news, and on the death of the Duke of York published a long memoir of his Royal Highness, accompanied by an equestrian portrait of the Duke, 'taken during his last visit to Newmarket.' In the number for January 21 are engravings of the remains of his Royal Highness lying in state in St. James's Palace, and a view of the interior of the Royal Mausoleum at Windsor. The above were engraved by Slader, and were published simultaneously in the _Englishman_ and _Bell's Life_. The number published on Aug. 13, 1827, contains a large portrait of Mr. Canning, then just deceased. This portrait has the names of Jackson and Smith attached to it as the engravers. In the number for Sept. 30 there is a 'correct view of the Suspension Bridge, Hammersmith, to be opened to the public on Saturday, Oct. 6, 1827.' This is engraved by Slader, and appears also in _Bell's Life_ the same week. The following week the _Observer_ published a large plan showing the alterations proposed in St. James's Park in connexion with the building of Buckingham Palace; and on Nov. 18 appeared a plan of the port of Navarino, accompanying an account of the naval battle at that place. In December was published a view of 'Mr. Gurney's new Steam-Carriage, as it appeared in the Regent's Park on Thursday, Dec. 6, 1827,' and later in the same month a representation of Mr. D. Gordon's new steam-coach. Both these engravings are curious and interesting, as showing the attempts that were made fifty years ago to apply steam to the propulsion of carriages on common roads. [Illustration: HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF YORK, TAKEN DURING HIS LAST VISIT TO NEWMARKET. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' JAN. 8, 1827.] Mr. Gurney was a medical man, but gave up his practice and devoted himself to scientific studies, and particularly to the construction of locomotive engines for turnpike travelling. He had seen Trevithick's engine, and when a youth had frequently met Trevithick himself. He had thus become imbued with a conviction of the practicability of making a steam-carriage that would travel on common roads. Other inventors succeeded in doing the same thing, but Mr. Gurney attained the greatest amount of success. With his steam-carriage he made a journey from London to Bath on July 28, 1829, performing the return journey at fourteen miles an hour, or the eighty-four miles in nine hours and twenty minutes, stoppages for fuel and water included. In 1831 he established a regular steam conveyance between Gloucester and Cheltenham, a distance of about nine miles. The steam-carriages commenced plying on Feb. 21, 1831, and continued running four times a-day for four months, with tolerable regularity and without accident. The project, however, received such determined opposition from coach proprietors and turnpike trusts that it was abandoned. The tolls exacted were so heavy that at one gate they amounted to eight guineas. Mr. Gurney is said to have expended 36,000_l._ on his enterprise, but without any permanent beneficial result. His inventive genius, however, contributed to develope the high speed of the locomotive and the subsequent success of railways. He died Feb. 28, 1875, aged eighty-two years. [Illustration: MR. GURNEY'S NEW STEAM-CARRIAGE AS IT APPEARED IN THE REGENT'S PARK ON THURSDAY, DEC. 6, 1827. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' DEC. 9, 1827.] Mr. Gordon took out a patent for a steam-coach in 1822, and constructed two different machines. One had its wheels surrounded by cogs, or projecting teeth. This engine was to be placed within a large rolling drum, about nine feet in diameter and five feet wide, the inside of which should be fitted with circular rack-rails fitting the wheels of the steam-engine. Thus the motion of the engine would cause the drum to roll forward, on the same principle that a squirrel causes a cylindrical cage to revolve; and the rolling of the drum was to move a carriage connected with it. The other machine had two long propellers or legs, intended to obviate the supposed tendency of wheels to slip when ascending a slope. The Thames Tunnel, which was begun in 1825 by Mr. Brunel, was on more than one occasion threatened with destruction by irruptions of water. On Jan. 12, 1828, six workmen perished by a sudden rush of water into the workings, and on the 20th the _Observer_ published an engraving representing the catastrophe. On the 9th of June appeared 'A correct view of Ascot Heath Race Course, taken by an eminent artist on Thursday last.' This 'eminent artist' was William Harvey, and the cut bears the names of Jackson and Smith as the engravers. A sheet containing a selection of comic sketches from _Bell's Life_ was issued with the _Observer_ of July 20, 1828, accompanied by a statement that the sketches (twenty-seven in number) cost one hundred and forty-two pounds, drawing and engraving. This sounds very trivial when contrasted with the large sums now paid by illustrated newspapers. In 1827 another exciting murder was committed, and the _Observer_, undeterred by former censures, published a portrait of the criminal and a view of the scene of his crime, but did not on this occasion deal with the case in the elaborate way in which the murder of Mr. Weare was treated. The story of the Red Barn is well known to provincial playgoers in the Eastern Counties, where it still sometimes figures in theatrical programmes on Saturday nights. William Corder was a farmer's son residing not far from Ipswich. He had for some time carried on an intrigue with a country girl named Maria Marten, whom he at last enticed into a barn not far from her father's cottage, and there murdered her, and buried her body under the floor of the barn. After this he continued to visit her father's cottage, and by various falsehoods accounted for the girl's continued absence. Months went by, and Corder wrote several letters to the girl's parents, in which he told plausible stories about her being at the seaside with relatives of his own. The girl's mother, however, had had her suspicions aroused by several circumstances, and at length she dreamed three times that her daughter had been murdered and her body hid under the floor in the Red Barn. The woman's mind was so worked upon by the recurrence of this dream that she induced her husband to search under the floor of the barn, and there, sure enough, the murdered body of the girl was found. In the meantime Corder had advertised for a wife in the _Morning Herald_ in the following terms:--'A private gentleman, aged twenty-four, entirely independent, whose disposition is not to be exceeded, has lately lost chief of his family by the hand of Providence, which has occasioned discord among the remainder, under circumstances the most disagreeable to relate. To any female of respectability, who would study for domestic comfort, and is willing to confide her future happiness to one in every way qualified to render the marriage state desirable, as the advertiser is in affluence. Many happy marriages have taken place through means similar to this now resorted to. It is hoped no one will answer this through impertinent curiosity; but should this meet the eye of any agreeable lady, who feels desirous of meeting with a sociable, tender, kind, and sympathising companion, they will find this advertisement worthy of notice. Honour and secrecy may be relied on. As some little security against idle application, it is requisite that letters may be addressed, post-paid, A. Z., care of Mr. Foster, stationer, 68 Leadenhall Street, with real name and address, which will meet with most respectful attention.' [Illustration: WILLIAM CORDER. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' AUG. 10, 1823.] Through this advertisement Corder became acquainted with a lady who kept the Grove House Academy at Ealing, near London. They were married, and he went to reside with his wife at Grove House, where he was arrested one morning in the spring of 1828. Various circumstances pointed to him as the murderer of Maria Marten, and he was tried for the crime at Bury St. Edmunds on Aug. 6, 1828. The crowd was so great that the counsel and officers of the court had to fight their way to their places. Corder appeared at the bar dressed in a new suit of black, and with his hair combed over his forehead. He wore a pair of blue French spectacles, through which he eyed the witnesses smilingly. Being called on for his defence, he read a statement which amounted to charging Maria Marten with having committed suicide. He said that in consequence of a quarrel they had in the Red Barn she shot herself with one of two pistols which he had with him:--'The instant the mischief happened, I thought to have made it public; but this would have added to the suspicion, and I then resolved to conceal her death. I then buried her in the best way I could. I tried to conceal the fact as well as I could, giving sometimes one reason for her absence, and sometimes another.' He was found guilty and sentenced to death, and the night before his execution he made the following confession:--'I acknowledge being guilty of the death of poor Maria Marten, by shooting her with a pistol. The particulars are as follows: When we left her father's house, we began quarrelling about the burial of the child, she apprehending that the place wherein it was deposited would be found out. The quarrel continued for about three quarters of an hour upon this and about other subjects. A scuffle ensued, and during the scuffle, and at the time I think that she had hold of me, I took the pistol from the side pocket of my shooting-coat.... I have been guilty of great idleness, and at times led a dissolute life, but I hope through the mercy of God to be forgiven.--W. CORDER.' This murder excited great and marked interest, not only in Suffolk, but through the whole country. On Aug. 10, 1828, the day before the execution, the _Observer_ published a portrait of Corder and a view of the Red Barn, which are here copied. The excitement showed itself in the streets, where puppet shows represented the scene of the crime, and Methodist preachers held forth in the fields near the barn to thousands of attentive listeners. The Red Barn itself was nearly pulled to pieces by curiosity seekers. [Illustration: THE RED BARN. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' AUG. 10, 1828.] On the Monday of the execution all the workmen in Bury struck work in order to see the murderer hanged, and persons came from long distances for the same purpose. One man was pestered by every one he met on his return by inquiries whether Corder had really been hung that morning. This was repeated so often that he became quite weary of the constantly recurring question, 'Is Corder executed?' In the evening, in order to get rid of the gloomy feelings created by what he had witnessed, he went to the theatre, where he arrived somewhat late. The play ('Macbeth') had advanced to the fourth scene of the first act as he seated himself in the pit. The newcomer, who was better acquainted with the details of the murder in the Red Barn than with the plays of Shakespeare, was not a little astonished when King Duncan entered, and, fixing his eye upon him, repeated what he thought was the same question that had been so often addressed to him that day, 'Is execution done on Cawdor?' [Illustration: THE SIAMESE TWINS. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' NOVEMBER 22, 1829.] The _Observer_ continued its illustration of events as they occurred, sharing the engravings with _Bell's Life_ and the _Englishman_. St. Katharine's Docks were opened on Oct. 25th, 1828, and on the following day the _Observer_ published a bird's eye view of the docks, showing the ceremonies attending the opening. In January, 1829, appeared two views of Buckingham Palace, then building for George IV.; and in August a cut of the 'Post-Office Accelerator,' a carriage for conveying London postmen to their several districts. A portrait of Rowton, the winner of the Great St. Leger for 1829, was given in September. This year the lovers of wonderful shows were attracted to an exhibition in London of two Siamese youths who were united together by a short cartilaginous band at the pit of the stomach, but with no other connexion existing between them. They were perfectly straight and well made, and walked with a gait like other people; being perfect in all their parts, and having all their functions distinct. Their names were Chang and Eng; and they were first discovered on the banks of the Siam river, fishing, by Mr. Hunter, an American, by whom they were taken to New York, where they were exhibited, and were afterwards brought to England. They were supposed to be about eighteen years old when they were exhibited in London in 1829. The _Observer_ of November 22, 1829, published a long account of the Siamese Twins, with a woodcut representing them as they were exhibited to the public. After having been exhibited for several years in London and the provinces, the Siamese twins went to America, where they settled on a farm, and married sisters. In the year 1869 they returned to London, and were as elderly men again exhibited; but they soon went back to America, where in a few years they died, both together. A similar exhibition was made in London about 1868 of twin girls, named Millie-Christine, or the 'Two-headed Nightingale,' and it was probably the appearance of these two 'black birds' that suggested the idea of the Siamese twins appearing again in public. In June, 1830, George the Fourth died, and the _Observer_ published several engravings connected with the event. On June 24th appeared a portrait of 'His Majesty George the Fourth as he last appeared in his Pony Phaeton in Windsor Park;' and on July 18 three illustrations of the lying-in-state and the funeral were published. 'The King is dead! Long live the King!' So said the citizens of London when they invited William IV. and Queen Adelaide to a banquet at Guildhall on the following November 9; and on the 1st, eight days before the entertainment came off, the _Observer_ duly supplied the public with 'A correct view of the grand civic entertainment,' as it was to be. On Aug. 1, 1831, new London Bridge was opened by the King and Queen, and two engravings illustrative of the event were published in the _Observer_, the _Morning Chronicle_, _Bell's Life_, and the _Englishman_. One of them is interesting, as it shows the relative positions of the old and the new bridge. The view was taken from the tower of St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, looking towards Fish Street Hill. [Illustration: HIS MAJESTY GEORGE IV., AS HE LAST APPEARED IN HIS PONY PHAETON IN WINDSOR PARK. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' JUNE 29, 1830.] The _Observer_ of Sept. 11, 1831, contained four illustrations of the coronation of King William IV. and Queen Adelaide, together with long and elaborate descriptions. There was another paper in existence at this time called the _United Kingdom_, which also illustrated the coronation. This was the period of the great Reform agitation, when the newspapers were absorbed in political excitement; and after this the _Observer_ for a time ceased to give any illustrations. On July 28, 1835, a diabolical attempt was made in Paris to shoot Louis-Philippe, king of the French. The assassin, whose name was Fieschi, constructed an infernal machine, consisting of twenty-five barrels, charged with various kinds of missiles, and lighted simultaneously by a train of gunpowder. The machine was fired from a window as the King rode along the lines of the National Guard, on the Boulevard du Temple, accompanied by his three sons and suite. The King and his sons escaped, but Marshal Mortier was shot dead and many officers were dangerously wounded. Amongst the spectators upwards of forty persons were killed or injured. In its number for August 9, 1835, the _Observer_ gave a sketch of the attempted assassination, a portrait of the criminal, and a representation of the infernal machine. The actual infernal machine, with a waxen effigy of Fieschi, formed for many years a prominent attraction at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. The reign of William IV. was a short one, and soon the _Observer_ had to illustrate his funeral, as it had done that of his predecessor. The number for July 3, 1837, contained three engravings of the royal obsequies, and ere long the brief rule of the Sailor King was forgotten in the dawning glories of the Victorian era. The epoch of railways was opening. The Greenwich Railway was the first railway out of London, and the next was the North-Western, or the London and Birmingham as it was then called. On July 24, 1837, the _Observer_ published a large woodcut of the 'Grand entrance to the London and Birmingham Railway at Euston Square.' Mr. Hardwick's massive structure was then in progress, and formed the entrance to the first of the great London railway stations--vast buildings, some of which have swallowed up whole streets, and contributed greatly to alter the appearance of London in their vicinity. [Illustration: GERARD, _ALIAS_ FIESCHI, AND THE INFERNAL MACHINE. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' AUGUST 9, 1835.] On July 24, 1837, a balloon ascended from Vauxhall with a parachute attached, in which was Mr. Cocking, who in descending was killed. The _Observer_ published illustrations of this event, which excited great interest at the time. Other papers illustrated Mr. Cocking's death, which I will recount more at length when I come to treat of the _Weekly Chronicle_, which contained more illustrations of the event than any other paper. A large engraving appeared in the _Observer_ for August 20, 1837, representing the Waterloo shield, given by Lord George Bentinck, and run for at Goodwood Races, 1837. When Her Majesty Queen Victoria paid her first visit to the City of London after her accession, the _Observer_ came out with larger engravings than it had ever before produced. Two large views of the interior of Guildhall were given, together with a panoramic sketch of the royal and civic procession, and a portrait of the youthful Queen, 'surrounded by a beautiful Emblematic Design, in which innocence and strength are happily portrayed by the playfulness of the Doves and the fearless defiance of the Lion.' Such was the flowery language of the _Observer_ in those days. The _Observer_ of July 2, 1838, was a double number, price tenpence, and contained several illustrations of the coronation of Queen Victoria, which were also printed in _Bell's Life_. I have copied one of them, not because it is particularly good, but simply to mark an important historical event, which ought to have some record in an account of illustrated journalism. [Illustration: THE CORONATION OF QUEEN VICTORIA. FROM THE 'OBSERVER,' JULY 2, 1838.] On the occasion of Her Majesty's marriage, the _Observer_ published a wedding number, containing several engravings, which were introduced to the reader thus:--'Little in the way of explanation is necessary to render the sketches in the opposite page, with which we have illustrated our account of the splendid ceremonials of Her Majesty's Nuptials on Monday last, intelligible. Our readers will no doubt make due allowance for any imperfections which may be discovered, when they reflect on the fact that the whole of the labours of the artists and the engravers have been accomplished in less than a week, and this under circumstances of difficulty, in obtaining admission to the scenes to be sketched, almost insurmountable. We should not be doing justice to our engraver were we not to state that it is to Mr. Orrin Smith we owe the consummation of our desire to gratify our patrons.' On October 30, 1841, a fire occurred in the Tower of London, when the Armoury and 280,000 stand of arms were destroyed. On November 7 the _Observer_ published three illustrations of this great fire. On November 14 it presented its subscribers with a large emblematic engraving on the occasion of the birth of the Prince of Wales. In the following January, when the Prince of Wales was christened, it published a large page engraving designed by W. B. Scott, and engraved by Smith and Linton, containing the ceremony of christening in St. George's Chapel, the banquet in St. George's Hall, illustrations of the history of the Princes of Wales from the presentation of the first Prince of Wales to the Welsh, to the religious instruction of Edward VI. by Archbishop Cranmer, including the battle of Cressy with the feats of the Black Prince, and the subsequent pageantry attending the introduction of the King of France as a prisoner into London over London Bridge; following this is the dismissal of Falstaff and his profligate companions by Henry V., with views of Windsor, &c. From this time until 1847 the _Observer_ published no more engravings. In the interval the _Illustrated London News_ commenced its career. On July 12, 1847, the _Observer_ published the last of its illustrations. This was on the installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. The engravings have the name of W. J. Linton attached to them, and are on a larger scale, and are better done than anything hitherto appearing in the same paper. The _Weekly Chronicle_, the first number of which was published September 18, 1836, started with the idea of illustrating the news of the day as one of its principal features. The price was threepence, and with it was incorporated the _Weekly Times_. In the first number the public were 'requested to be on their guard against the substitution of any other paper.' This probably had reference to some threatened rivalship, for exactly a year later appeared _Holt's Weekly Chronicle_, a paper which also gave illustrations of current events. It published engravings connected with the rebellion in Canada, and also illustrated the burning of the Royal Exchange in 1838. It appears to have had only a brief existence. The first number of the _Weekly Chronicle_ contained an engraving of 'the new grand Balloon which ascended from Vauxhall Gardens with nine persons on Friday, September 9th, engraved by W. C. Walker, from a drawing made by a gentleman who ascended expressly for this paper.' Number 2 contained a page of comic sketches, apparently by Seymour, and with the number for October 30, 1836, was presented gratis an almanack containing a view of the new Houses of Parliament, not quite as the design was eventually carried out. Very early in its career the _Weekly Chronicle_ selected the criminal records as favourite subjects for illustration. Perhaps some memory of the profits realised by the _Observer_ on the occasion of the Weare murder induced the conductors to cultivate this class of news. Certainly nothing more repulsive ever figured in the pages of an illustrated newspaper than some of the woodcuts published by the _Weekly Chronicle_. Towards the end of 1836 another attempt was made on the life of the King of the French, and on January 8, 1837, the _Weekly Chronicle_ published a portrait of the criminal. A month or two later the public were enlightened as to the personal appearance of another murderer, one Pegsworth, who had his portrait taken in Newgate on the morning of his execution. The annals of crime were varied by the exploits of war, and a view of the heights of Amelzagame illustrated the career of the Spanish Legion under the command of General Evans. In the spring of 1837 occurred the Greenacre murder, and the _Weekly Chronicle_ at once went into the case with an evident determination to do full justice to its sensational merits. From the first examination of the murderer before the magistrates to his final exit in the Old Bailey the artists of the paper were on the alert, pencil in hand. It is a painful fact that the numbers of the _Weekly Chronicle_ containing the illustrations of the Greenacre murder had a very large sale. The details of the crime are too shocking to recapitulate, but I will give a list of the woodcuts published in connexion with it. April 2, 1837.--A sketch of Greenacre taken while under examination at the police-office. Head of the murdered woman as preserved in spirits at Paddington Workhouse. April 9.--Greenacre taking notes at his examination before the magistrates at Marylebone Police Office. Exterior of Greenacre's house in Carpenter's Buildings, Windmill Lane, Camberwell. View of Pineapple Gate, Edgware Road, where the body was found. Matthew Hale, lock-keeper, who found the head. Rear of Greenacre's house. A back room looking into the garden. Portraits of Mrs. Gale and child taken while under examination at Marylebone Police Office. Room where the horrible mutilation was committed. Osierbed in Cold Harbour Lane, where the legs were found. April 16.--Trial of Greenacre. April 23.--Chapel in Newgate, sketched during the preaching of the condemned sermon to Greenacre. April 30.--Greenacre in condemned cell. [Illustration: CHAPEL IN NEWGATE: THE CONDEMNED SERMON. FROM THE 'WEEKLY CHRONICLE,' APRIL 23, 1837. 1. Sheriffs' Pew. 2. Governor's Pew. 3. Condemned Pew.] On May 7 the _Weekly Chronicle_ wound up this series of illustrations by publishing a large cut, which it entitled, 'A scene in the Old Bailey, immediately before the execution, engraved expressly for the _Weekly Chronicle_ by a distinguished artist.' According to an announcement in the paper itself, the sale of the _Weekly Chronicle_ during the publication of these engravings was 130,000. [Illustration: THE CONDEMNED CELL, NEWGATE. FROM THE 'WEEKLY CHRONICLE,' APRIL 30, 1837.] On May 14, 1837, the _Weekly Chronicle_ published portraits of Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Leader, the former of a superhuman length, with a shocking bad hat. In the following number, as if the public had not been sufficiently supplied with horrors, there was printed 'a sketch of Eliza Davis as she lay on the mattress after the murder.' This was known as the Frederick Street murder, and was remarkable from the circumstances, and from the fact that the murderer was never discovered. This paper now commenced 'The Pictorial Gallery, illustrating every object of interest and curiosity in Art, Science, Literature, and Amusement. (To be continued weekly.)' In this series were published a view of the Euston Railway Station, a portrait of Madame Taglioni, a sketch of a novel mode of propelling balloons, representations of the Bedouin Arabs, the City of London School, the Adelaide Gallery, the Hippodrome at Bayswater, proclamation of Queen Victoria at Temple Bar, portraits of the Queen, the late King, the Earl of Durham, and the Duchess of Kent. Then followed a view of the Royal Mausoleum at Windsor, and several illustrations of Mr. Cocking's fatal descent in a parachute. Mr. Cocking was an enthusiast in aerostation--he was, in fact, balloon mad, and had spent years in inventing a parachute which he believed to be perfectly safe, and in which he ascended from Vauxhall Gardens on July 24, 1837, attached to Mr. Green's Royal Nassau balloon. The experiment was widely advertised, and when the day and hour arrived the poor enthusiast faithfully appeared, and ascended in his fatal machine for more than a mile. He then himself liberated the parachute from the balloon. For a few seconds he descended steadily; the parachute then collapsed, broke, turned over, and shot straight down to the earth a hopeless ruin. Poor Cocking was still in the basket of the parachute when he reached the earth, but was quite insensible, and in ten minutes he was dead. The parachute fell at Lee; and it is recorded that not only was the machine itself carried away piecemeal, but the dead man's purse was stolen from his pocket, his watch, his snuff-box, his eye-glass were taken, even the cap was stolen from his head, the shoes were pulled from his feet, the buttons from his dress. Such statements seem incredible, and for the credit of human nature one could wish they were false; but they have been seriously made, and never contradicted. [Illustration: MR. COCKING IN HIS PARACHUTE AT THE MOMENT OF ASCENSION. FROM THE 'WEEKLY CHRONICLE,' JULY 30, 1837.] The _Weekly Chronicle_ published several illustrations of this event. They represent Mr. Cocking in the car of the parachute at the moment of ascension; the Nassau balloon as it appeared from the Royal Gardens, Vauxhall; the parachute in its various stages in its descent; and Mr. Cocking as he lay for the inspection of the jury in the room at the Tiger's Head, at Lee. The first of these I have copied. This rash adventure was wound up by the opening of a subscription list for the benefit of Cocking's widow, which was headed by the Queen with 50_l._ The Gas Company that had supplied the gas for the disaster gave 30_l._, and the proprietors of Vauxhall gave the gardens for a benefit. Thus the friends who ought to have restrained the vanity of the enthusiast and the speculators who led him on to his fate did their best in the way of atonement; but it was clearly a case where the civil power ought to have interposed to prevent the fatal catastrophe. The _Chronicle_ varied its illustrations of events by an occasional portrait of a public man, such as Mr. T. Wakley, Mr. Roebuck, Lord John Russell, and Daniel Whittle Harvey. The Queen's first visit to the City, and her Majesty delivering her speech to her first Parliament, furnished subjects for large woodcuts. Early in the year 1838 the Royal Exchange was burnt, and this historical event was made the subject of an engraving in the number for January 14, 1838. This year the _Weekly Chronicle_ also published several engravings illustrative of the rebellion in Canada, including a portrait of Papineau, the insurgent leader, and views of Quebec and Montreal. The murder of Eliza Grimwood in the Waterloo Road furnished another opportunity for sensational sketches, and in the same number that contained them (June 10, 1838) appeared three illustrations of the Courtney Riots at Canterbury. In 1833 an eccentric person, calling himself Sir William Courtney, appeared at Canterbury and attracted much attention by his half-crazed appearance and his frequent harangues on the grievances of the poor. He presented himself as a candidate to represent the city of Canterbury in Parliament, but this ambition was frustrated by his being tried and found guilty of perjury, an offence he had committed on behalf of some smugglers on the Kentish coast. He was sentenced to imprisonment and transportation; but, being proved insane, the sentence was commuted, and he was confined in a lunatic asylum. Here he remained four years, and was then liberated under the belief that he was restored to a rational state. He was, however, madder than ever, having while in confinement brooded over his supposed wrongs and the sufferings of the oppressed poor until he fancied himself a prophet and a deliverer sent from heaven. With the cunning of madness he counterfeited sanity, and thus was able to resume what he considered his prophetic mission. He harangued about the new poor law, promised cheap bread to all who would follow him, and on May 29, 1838, he gathered together a band of about twenty men, with whom he marched from one place to another, proclaiming that he would make May 29 more memorable than it had ever been in connexion with the restoration of Charles II. This went on for a day or two, when a farmer, named Curtis, having his field-work stopped by the leading away of his men, went to a magistrate and obtained a warrant to apprehend them. In an attempt to execute this warrant a constable was killed by Courtney, who now broke into a rhapsody of exultation, declared that a second Gideon was come to slay the ungodly, and that all should perish who opposed the prophet. With outstretched sword he cried, 'I am the only Saviour of you all. You need not fear, for I will bring you through all.' The excitement had now become so general, and the menaces of Courtney and his armed party so alarming, that the magistrates resolved on the instant capture of this dangerous maniac and his ignorant followers. They came up with the rioters at a place called the Osier Bed, where Courtney's men threatened the magistrates and constables with bludgeons and fire-arms. After firing his pistol at one of the party who attempted to arrest him, Courtney and his men broke away to Bossenden Wood, and the magistrates, seeing no other resource, sent at once for a detachment of the 45th Regiment from Canterbury Barracks. Courtney had now proclaimed to his followers that he was no other than Jesus Christ returned to earth, and that they were safer with him than if they were in their beds; therefore they must resist the soldiers, and they were sure of victory. In the meantime a hundred men of the 45th Regiment, headed by Lieutenant Bennett, surrounded Bossenden Wood. Accompanied by the civil magistrates, they advanced to close round the rioters, when Courtney fired at the young Lieutenant commanding the party, and shot him dead. The next minute the prophet himself was slain by a soldier, who covered him with his musket as he fired at Lieutenant Bennett. Then ensued a hand-to-hand fight, which resulted in the death of seven of the rioters and one constable, besides several persons seriously wounded. The illustrations of these riots in the _Weekly Chronicle_ of June 10, 1838, consist of the following:-- 1. 'Courtney with his troops leaving Bossenden Farm.' 2. 'The death of Lieutenant Bennett. Courtney in the act of exhorting his men to advance.' 3. 'Interior of the Red Lion stables, with the bodies as they were laid out after the conflict.' Courtney, whose real name was John Thom, was undoubtedly mad. He never could have found followers, except amongst the most degraded and ignorant; and it is hoped he did better service to his countrymen than he ever dreamt of by drawing attention to the dreadful evils arising from the want of education among the rural population. Most of his followers could neither read nor write, and were so totally unacquainted with the simplest truths of Christianity that they believed him when he asserted that he was Gideon, Samson, and Jesus Christ all in one, and that he had descended from heaven to redress the wrongs of the poor, but more especially to reduce the price of bread! [Illustration: THE DREADFUL RIOT AND LOSS OF LIFE AT BOSSENDEN WOOD, EAST KENT. FROM THE 'WEEKLY CHRONICLE,' JUNE 10, 1838. 1. Courtney. 2. Lieutenant Bennett. 3. Sergeant Langley making a thrust at Courtney with a bayonet, and was knocked down with a bludgeon. 4. Six Magistrates. 5. Soldier who stepped forward and shot Courtney. 6. Major Armstrong. 7. Detachment of the 45th Regiment loading. 8. Lieutenant Bennett's detachment. 9. The man Wills, who knocked down Sergeant Langley. 10. Courtney's flag. 11. J. N. Knatchbull firing at Courtney.] The _Weekly Chronicle_ illustrated the coronation of Queen Victoria by a view of 'The interior of the Abbey at the moment of Her Majesty assuming the Crown,' and a full-page engraving of the Coronation Procession. Two pages of engravings were given on the occasion of the Queen's marriage; and on November 1, 1841, a large 'view of the Tower of London as it appeared on fire on the morning of Sunday, the 31st ult., from a drawing by a distinguished artist.' On January 29, 1842, the same paper illustrated the christening of the Prince of Wales, with its attendant ceremonies and festivities; and later in the same year were published the last of its illustrations, relating to the employment of women and children in coal-mines. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS, LOOKING FROM THE ENTRANCE TO THE SPOT LATELY OCCUPIED BY THE THRONE. FROM THE 'SUNDAY TIMES,' NOV. 2, 1834.] The _Observer_, _Bell's Life_, and the _Weekly Chronicle_, which during more than twenty years had been the chief representatives of pictorial journalism, gradually abandoned the practice of giving illustrations after the _Illustrated London News_ was established. Two or three other newspapers occasionally published engravings, but they were very few, and appeared at long intervals. The _Sunday Times_ illustrated the trial of Thurtell for the murder of Mr. Weare, and on Nov. 2, 1834, it published several engravings of the destruction of the Houses of Parliament, two of which, representing the ruins, are of sufficient interest to introduce here. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. FROM THE 'SUNDAY TIMES,' NOV. 2, 1834.] The _Champion_ of Nov. 13, 1836, has an engraving of the interior of a cotton-factory; and the _Weekly Herald_ in the same year issued two engravings illustrating the story of Wat Tyler:--'1. Workshop scene; Wat Tyler knocking the Tyrant Tax-gatherer's brains out;' the principal characters equipped in boots, buckles, and belts, in true theatrical style 2. 'Smithfield scene; the assassin Walworth treacherously murdering the brave but too-confiding Wat Tyler.' The same paper also issued this year a view of St. Peter's, Rome. The _Magnet_, a paper started in 1837, illustrated the proclamation of Queen Victoria, William IV. lying in state, the Canadian rebellion, burning of the Royal Exchange, coronation of Queen Victoria, and on Jan. 4, 1841, the removal of the remains of Napoleon I. from St. Helena. There are two engravings of this interesting historical event. The first is entitled, 'A correct view, taken on the spot, of the interior of the tent at St. Helena, after the disinterment of the body of Napoleon, at the instant of the removal of the lid from the coffin; the remains of the Emperor appearing (as one of the spectators remarked) as if he were asleep.' I have copied the second cut, which represents the embarkation of the body, and is one of the last examples of pictorial journalism before the birth of the _Illustrated London News_. Before concluding this part of my subject it is fitting that I should include the _Penny Magazine_ amongst the pictorial journals which immediately preceded the establishment of a regular illustrated newspaper. The _Penny Magazine_, though not a newspaper, was intended to supplant the cheap and pernicious contraband newspapers that then existed in large numbers. It was the most successful experiment that England had then seen of the art of illustration in combination with the steam press, and was the best attempt that had been made in a cheap form to elevate the public taste. [Illustration: THE REMOVAL AND DELIVERY OF THE REMAINS OF THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON BY THE GOVERNOR OF ST. HELENA TO THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE, ON THE 16TH DAY OF OCTOBER, 1840. FROM THE 'MAGNET,' JAN. 11, 1841.] Mr. Charles Knight, who thus, in the _Penny Magazine_, led the way in combining literature with art in a popular form, was a staunch advocate of education, and he never ceased in his endeavours to improve the condition of the masses. He said, 'the poor man must be made a thinking man--a man capable of intellectual pleasures; he must be purified in his tastes, and elevated in his understanding; he must be taught to comprehend the real dignity of all useful employments; he must learn to look upon the distinctions of society without envy or servility; he must respect them, for they are open to him as well as to others; but he must respect himself more. The best enjoyments of our nature might be common to him and the most favoured by fortune. Let him be taught how to appreciate them. Diminish the attractions of his sensual enjoyments by extending the range of his mental pleasures.'[5] With such convictions, Mr. Knight, in 1827, joined the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a new educational movement then just started by the Reform Party. He brought out, under its auspices, a great number of useful works, most of which were profusely illustrated. In 1832 Mr. Knight resided in the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath. One of his neighbours was Mr. M. D. Hill, an active member of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It was a time of great political excitement, and the town was flooded with unstamped weekly publications, which in some degree came under the character of contraband newspapers, and were nearly all dangerous in principle and coarse in language. Mr. Knight and Mr. Hill often walked to town together, and their conversation naturally turned to a subject in which they both felt a special interest--the means of improving the condition of the people by the diffusion of cheap literature, and so counteracting the dangerous and offensive publications which then abounded. One morning in early spring their talk was of this kind, when Mr. Hill exclaimed, 'Let us see what something cheap and good can accomplish! Let us have a Penny Magazine!' Mr. Knight immediately adopted the suggestion, which was cordially approved by the Lord Chancellor Brougham; and on March 31, 1832, appeared the first number of 'the _Penny Magazine_ of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.' It was necessary to avoid making the new periodical anything like a newspaper lest it should become liable to stamp duty, and at first very little expense was incurred for illustrations, most of the engravings in the early numbers being reprinted from other works of the Society. It was not till six months had elapsed that Mr. Knight ventured into the wide field of illustration, and made the public familiar with great works of art, such as the 'Laocoon,' the 'Apollo Belvedere,' the 'Dying Gladiator,' the 'Cartoons,' &c. The best pictures of the old masters were intermingled with scenes at home and abroad, with places of renown and illustrious men of all nations and of every age. The success of the _Penny Magazine_ was a surprise to the publisher and an astonishment to most persons. At the end of 1832 it had reached a sale of 200,000 in weekly numbers and monthly parts, and it soon produced a revolution in popular art throughout the world. Stereotype casts of its best cuts were supplied for the illustration of publications of a similar character which appeared in Germany, France, Holland, Livonia, Bohemia, Italy, Ionian Islands, Sweden, Norway, Spanish America, and the Brazils. The entire work was also reprinted in the United States from plates sent from this country.[6] It continued its prosperous career for nine years, when a new series was commenced, with considerable improvements in engraving and printing. Five volumes of the new series were published, but the sale declined, owing to the commencement of illustrated newspapers, and the _Penny Magazine_ in its old form came to an end in 1845, three years after the commencement of the _Illustrated London News_.[7] _Knight's Penny Magazine_, a smaller miscellany, commencing in January, 1846, kept up the old name for six months longer, and then it ceased to exist. In announcing its discontinuance, Mr. Knight thus closes this interesting chapter of literary history:--'The present series of the _Penny Magazine_ is closed, after an experience of only six months. The editor has no reason to complain of the want of public encouragement, for the sale of this series has exceeded that of its predecessor in 1845. But the sale, such as it is, is scarcely remunerative; and there are indications that it may decline rather than increase. This is a hint which cannot be mistaken. It shall not be said of his humble efforts to continue, upon an equality with the best of his contemporaries, a publication which once had a decided pre-eminence, that "Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage." He leaves this portion of popular literature to be cultivated by those whose new energy may be worth more than his old experience. The _Penny Magazine_ shall begin and end with him. It shall not pass into other hands.' Mr. Knight attributed the falling off in the sale of the _Penny Magazine_ to the extended sale of newspapers and the application of wood-engravings to their illustration; and in his _Passages of a Working Life_ he relates how he first heard of the journal that was destined to succeed the _Penny Magazine_ in the field of popular art:--'In 1842, having occasion to be in attendance at the Central Criminal Court, my curiosity was excited by an unusual spectacle--that of an artist, seated amongst the civic dignitaries on the bench, diligently employed in sketching two Lascars, on their trial for a capital offence. What was there so remarkable in the case, in the persons, or even in the costume of the accused, that they should be made the subject of a picture? The mystery was soon explained to me. The _Illustrated London News_ had been announced for publication on the Saturday of the week in which I saw the wretched foreigners standing at the bar. I knew something about hurrying on wood-engravers for the _Penny Magazine_, but a newspaper was an essentially different affair. How, I thought, could artists and journalists so work concurrently that the news and the appropriate illustrations should both be fresh? How could such things be managed with any approach to fidelity of representation unless all the essential characteristics of a newspaper were sacrificed in the attempt to render it pictorial? I fancied that this rash experiment would be a failure. It proved to be such a success as could only be ensured by resolute and persevering struggles against natural difficulties.' Charles Knight was born at Windsor in 1791. The son of a bookseller, he very early became connected with the press. At the age of twenty-one he conducted the _Windsor and Eton Express_, and a few years later he became the editor of the _Guardian_, a London weekly paper. He afterwards started a monthly magazine called the _Etonian_, and amongst his contributors were Macaulay, Praed, and other clever young men who had been educated at Eton, some of whom supported him in a later venture, _Knight's Quarterly Magazine_. In the midst of his varied duties as author and publisher he never lost sight of the great question of popular education, and heartily joined in the movement for repealing the taxes on knowledge. He gave expression to his views in _The Struggles of a Book against Excessive Taxation_ and _The Case of the Authors as regards the Paper Duty_. He paid the enormous sum of 16,500_l._ for paper duty on the _Penny Cyclopedia_ alone, and on the same work he expended 40,000_l._ for literature and engravings. When this great and useful work was completed Mr. Knight was entertained at a public dinner presided over by Lord Brougham, when the leading men in literature and art united to do him honour. The _Penny Cyclopedia_ was not a commercial success, solely because of the paper duty. Of the numerous illustrated works published by Mr. Knight, the _Pictorial Bible_ was the most successful in a pecuniary sense, and he considered the _Arabian Nights_ the most beautiful as regards illustrations. He was so ardent a promoter of illustrative art, that he invented a press for printing in colours, from which issued many coloured engravings for his various works, such as _Old England_, the _Farmer's Library_, &c. Mr. Knight died at Addlestone, Surrey, March 9, 1873, and was buried in his native town of Windsor. A marble bust of him was placed by public subscription in the Council Chamber of that town, and two scholarships, bearing his name, were founded in the school of the Stationers' Company. It was well said of Charles Knight on the occasion of unveiling his bust at Windsor, that he set out in life with the desire to make knowledge a common possession instead of an exclusive privilege. He laboured for the good of his fellow-men rather than for the rewards of fame or fortune, and no man was more worthy of honour for his public services and his private virtues. The last time I saw him was at the grave of an old friend of his and mine; and as I recall the remembrance of his grey hair tossed in the wintry wind, I adopt in all seriousness what Douglas Jerrold said in jest, that two words would suffice for his epitaph--'good Knight.' It is curious that the printing-press, which has worked such mighty changes, should have reproduced in another form the ancient jester who stood in cap and bells behind his master's chair, and the merry-andrew who made the rustics laugh upon the village green. The numerous satirical and humorous publications of the Victorian era represent a distinct kind of illustrated journalism, through which runs an amusing commentary on passing events, combined with a vein of satire always good-humoured and often instructive. At the head of this array of wit and wisdom stands _Punch_, who, however, was preceded by _Figaro in London_, conducted by Mr. Gilbert A'Beckett, afterwards one of _Punch's_ strongest supporters. Mr. A'Beckett faithfully acted up to his motto:-- 'Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's hardly felt or seen;' but the constitution of _Figaro_ was not strong, and he died young. While the _Penny Magazine_ was yet in vigorous life, and the _Illustrated London News_ was as yet unborn, there used to be a weekly gathering of authors, actors, and artists, at a tavern in Wych Street, Strand, where the late Mr. Mark Lemon presided as the genial host. This company of merry men were mostly on the sunny side of life, and disposed to look upon the world and the world's cares with a laughing eye. They were ever ready to go out of their way for the sake of a joke, and a pun, good or bad, was pleasant to them. In this congenial atmosphere _Punch_ germinated, and in July, 1841, that shrewd observer and good-humoured satirist appeared. Mr. _Punch_, like some other great men, had a hard struggle in his early days; but prosperous times came, and he now combines in his own person the dignity of age with the vivacity of youth. _Puck_, _Diogenes_, and numerous other imitators of _Punch_, attempted to obtain a share of public favour, but most of them died after a brief existence. The best of these that survive are _Fun_ and _Judy_, which, with the _Hornet_, _Vanity Fair_, _Figaro_ (a revival of the name), _Moonshine_, _Funny Folks_, and others, continue their weekly budgets with a smartness and vigour not unworthy of their great prototype. FOOTNOTES: [1] There was another Sunday paper in existence about this time, the _Sunday Reformer and Universal Register_. In the number for Dec. 29th, 1793, there is a copperplate portrait of Robert Lowth, D.D., Lord Bishop of London, then recently deceased. [2] 'Old Stories Retold,' in _All the Year Round_. [3] Grant's _Newspaper Press_. [4] 'Old Stories Retold,' in _All the Year Round_. [5] _Passages of a Working Life._ [6] At this time there was another illustrated weekly magazine in existence--the _Mirror_, which began about 1822. The engravings it contained were chiefly of a topographical character. [7] The _Saturday Magazine_ was started in imitation of the _Penny Magazine_, and, like its prototype, had a considerable popularity for some years. CHAPTER VIII. The _Illustrated London News_--The Early Numbers--The Burning of Hamburgh--Facetious Advertisements--Bal Masque at Buckingham Palace--Attempted Assassination of the Queen--The Queen's First Trip by Railway--First Royal Visit to Scotland--Political Portraits--R. Cobden--Lord John Russell--Benjamin Disraeli--The French Revolution, 1848--The Great Exhibition, 1851--The Crimean War--Coloured Pictures--Christmas Numbers--Herbert Ingram--The _Pictorial Times_--Other Illustrated Journals. Having traced the idea of illustrating the news of the day from the early 'news-book' through its various stages of growth and development, we come to the first regular illustrated newspaper that was established. The projector had long held the opinion, founded on his experience as a newsvendor at Nottingham, that such a publication would succeed. He had noticed that when the _Observer_ and the _Weekly Chronicle_ contained engravings, there was a much larger demand for those papers than when they were without illustrations, and he conceived the idea of starting a paper whose chief attraction should be its _pictures_. He thought if he could combine _art_ and _news_ together, he would be adding greatly to the ordinary attractions of a newspaper, and would probably secure a widely extended circle of readers. His customers at Nottingham often asked for the 'London news' when anything of interest was astir in the Metropolis, and his observant shrewdness led him to conclude that this would be a good name for his paper. He accordingly called it the _Illustrated London News_, and under that title the first number appeared on May 14th, 1842. It contained sixteen printed pages and thirty-two woodcuts, including all the little headings to the columns, price sixpence, and it equalled in size the _Atlas_ which was then sold for a shilling, without engravings. It was printed by R. Palmer (at the office of Palmer and Clayton), 10 Crane Court, Fleet Street, and published by J. Clayton, 320 Strand. The introductory address is written in a florid and inflated style; but it shows a correct perception of the wide and varied range that would have to be taken by an illustrated newspaper. [Illustration: THE BURNING OF HAMBURGH. FROM THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' MAY 14, 1842.] [Illustration: HEADING TO 'COURT AND HAUT TON,' COLUMN, 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' MAY 14, 1842.] The well-known engraved heading represents a view of London from the Thames, as it was then,--St. Paul's towering in the centre, and the Lord Mayor's procession in State barges passing up the river. The first engraving is a 'View of the Conflagration of the City of Hamburgh,' which began on May 5th, and continued for several days. A great part of the city was destroyed, and more than one hundred lives were lost. As marking an epoch in the history of the Pictorial Press, I reprint this engraving and some others from the early numbers. The next cut is apparently a view of some town in Italy or France; but there is no name to the engraving or any reference to it in the surrounding text, which is all about the dreadful railway accident between Paris and Versailles which had then just occurred, whereby fifty persons were killed, and one hundred and fifty were more or less injured. On the next page are views of the city of Cabul and the fortress of Ghuznee, just then the seat of stirring events. The columns of 'Foreign Intelligence,' 'The Court and Haut Ton,' 'Births, Marriages, and Deaths,' were each headed by a small woodcut, an example of which is given here. There is also an illustration of ladies' fashions, accompanied by a gushing, descriptive letter from Paris, beginning: 'Dear Mr. Editor, I feel an inexpressible delight in inditing my first communication to your lady readers, upon the fashions of the _haut ton_ of this _ville de gaitè_. So suddenly and with such power has the sun lately shot forth, that there is no end to invention in our spring fashions.' [Illustration: FASHIONS FOR MAY, 1842. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' MAY 14, 1842.] It would appear that illustrated police reports were to have formed part of the attractions of the paper, and several small cuts dealing with humorous subjects are scattered through the early numbers. The cases were evidently selected with a view to provoke merriment rather than to indulge a morbid taste for criminal records, and seem to show that the paper in its early days possessed something of the frolicsomeness of youth, and did not consider a joke beneath its dignity. It had its wild oats to sow, and was not indisposed to emulate its contemporary _Punch_, then also a young joker. The first illustrations of the kind relate to a case at the Mansion House before Sir Peter Laurie, where the manager of a matrimonial institution sought to defend his establishment from the strictures of that celebrated 'putter-down.' A few pages further on we come upon two facetious advertisements, one of them professing to have been called forth by the report of the above case at the Mansion House:-- 'MATRIMONY.--A _professional_ gentleman, who has for some time past enrolled the category of his multitudinous graces, accomplishments, and _prospects_, in the portfolio of the "Matrimonial Alliance Establishment," fearing that, under the influence of Sir Peter Laurie's recent animadversion they will waste their sweetness unseen--unknown in the rose-tinted volume of the modern Hymen, avails himself of the glorious opportunity afforded to advertisers by the proprietors of the _Illustrated London News_, "and boldly and unhesitatingly submits his picture in little," to the approving smiles of the fair daughters (and _widows_) of Albion's Isle, conscious of his perfect sincerity in stating that he has no _insurmountable_ objection to fortune being combined with beauty, taste, lively disposition, and cheerful temper; he feels assured that the lovely creature whose eyes shall be fortunate enough, first to meet this advertisement (and then the advertiser), will secure to herself a perfect amenity, if truth be truth, and manners--not money--make the man. Address, with portrait (miniature set in gold, pearls, or other precious stones, not refused), A. Donis Slim, Esq., 320 Strand.' [Illustration: A. DONIS SLIM, ESQ. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' MAY 14, 1842.] The other advertisement referred to is of an entirely different character, being addressed to the commercial world:-- 'CAPITAL SPEC! Safe as the Bank!--Wanted a partner in a snug, genteel little concern, with an airy and pleasant corner situation in one of the most densely crowded thoroughfares of the Metropolis, and doing a good, ready-money business, without much risk; which an increase of capital would considerably extend. The returns exceed the outlay, and the Sunday custom alone covers the rent. The taxes are redeemed, and there is a long unexpired term of the lease, which is held at a lolly-pop. The coming into a half-share, including plant and stock, very moderate--say a trifle above 0000_l._ Any person who can command the above sum will not only find this a decided bargain, but a very desirable opportunity of commencing business, and well worthy the attention of an industrious person of small means and less family. References exchanged. Address, prepaid, to B. B. (Brandy Ball), Pieman's Alley.' [Illustration: PARTNERSHIP WANTED. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' MAY 14, 1842.] The principal engravings in this first number illustrate the first Bal Masque given by Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. They were drawn by Sir John Gilbert, then at the beginning of his career, and it was most fortunate for the new enterprise that an artist of such great and varied abilities was found at the very outset to give his powerful aid to the undertaking. His wonderful facility and bold picturesqueness were exactly suited to the requirements of an illustrated newspaper. The first enabled him to do his work with marvellous quickness, and the second was an excellent counterpoise to the damaging effects of hurried engraving and rapid printing. The illustrations of the Queen's Bal Masque are eight in number, including character portraits of Her Majesty and the Prince Consort. There are two cuts from a book under review, and the last illustration in the number represents a long line of men carrying advertising boards 'to proclaim the advent of this important publication.' The first number sold well, probably because the public was curious to see what the new paper was like. Twenty-six thousand copies were disposed of, but there was a great falling-off in the sale of the second number, which opened with a leading article explaining the principles that were to guide the paper in its future career. The cut on the front page represents the ceremony of taking the veil, and was evidently drawn by Gilbert. The next engravings illustrate Waghorn's Overland Route to India, then recently organized, followed by an illustrated account of the sale at Strawberry Hill, and a portrait of a then notorious criminal, Daniel Good, which is accompanied by an editorial apology disclaiming all intention of joining the 'raw-head and bloody-bones' school, but in the interests of science commending the portrait to the disciples of Lavater. This is the only instance of such an engraving being inserted in the paper (with the exception of the portrait of MacNaghten, who shot Mr. Drummond), and it is evident the editor's better feeling revolted against it, although he was only following the example of the _Observer_ and the _Weekly Chronicle_. [Illustration: HER MAJESTY AS QUEEN PHILIPPA. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' MAY 14, 1842.] The first engraving in No. 3 is a portrait of Mehemet Ali, which is given in connexion with further illustrations of the Overland Route to India. But the most important picture in this number is a portrait of the Queen with the baby Prince of Wales in her lap, drawn by Gilbert. There is also the first example of a sporting illustration--a portrait of Attila, the winner of the Derby, which accompanies an account of Epsom Races, with several other engravings. [Illustration: THE QUEEN'S FIRST RAILWAY JOURNEY. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' JUNE 19, 1842.] [Illustration: ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF THE QUEEN. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' JUNE 5, 1842.] [Illustration: MR. R. COBDEN, M.P. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' JULY 2, 1842.] An event now occurred which afforded the first important opportunity of illustrating the news of the hour. This was the attempt on the life of the Queen, who was fired at as she was driving up Constitution Hill by a young man named Francis. The public excitement on this occasion was very great, and it is a little surprising that the _Illustrated London News_ did not make more of it. In No. 4 there are two illustrations in connexion with this event, one representing the attempted assassination, the other the examination of the prisoner before the Privy Council. The engravings are not very imposing, but large blocks had not then come into use; and as the event occurred on a Monday there was not too much time, with the limited means then at command, to produce them on a large scale. In No. 6 there is a small cut entitled 'The Queen's first trip by Railway,' which illustrates an account of her Majesty's first journey by railway from Windsor to London. With the exception of the drawings by Gilbert most of the illustrations in these first six numbers are of an inferior character, and show that the conductors of the paper had not yet obtained the best artistic help. Indeed it was a long time before the higher class of artists and engravers would believe that an illustrated newspaper was worthy of their professional attention. Illustrations of the Police Reports continued to be scattered through the early numbers, mingled with such subjects as a ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, a public dinner, a launch, a horserace, and sketches of the Chartist riots at Preston. The Queen's first visit to Scotland was very copiously illustrated, and a series of 'Popular Portraits' was begun which included most of the prominent politicians of the day. In No. 11 the fatal accident to the Duke of Orleans is illustrated; and further on the hand of Gilbert is visible in the drawings representing the funeral of the Duke of Sussex, the Lord Mayor's Show, and the grand Polish Ball at Guildhall. With No. 19 the office was removed to 198 Strand, where it has remained ever since. The first Cattle Show illustrations occur in No. 31, and it is evident that the artists by whom they were executed had not made that kind of art their special study. The approach of Christmas is heralded by the introduction of various laughable sketches; the Pantomimes are illustrated by Alfred Crowquill, and Christmas himself is welcomed in a 'Song of the Wassail Bowl.' Kenny Meadows finishes the volume with a party of Cupids carrying the _Illustrated London News_ through the air, while a literary and artistic Cupid, cap in hand, makes his bow to the reader. The first volume ends with the year 1842, and it has for a frontispiece a large view of London, a title-page drawn by Gilbert, and headings to preface and index by Kenny Meadows. The preface is written in the florid style of the introductory address in the first number; but the following passage refers, not inappropriately, to the value and interest of the work to the future historian:-- 'What would Sir Walter Scott or any of the great writers of modern times have given--whether for the purposes of fiction or history, or political example or disquisition--for any museum-preserved volume such as we have here enshrined. The life of the times--the signs of its taste and intelligence--its public monuments and public men--its festivals--institutions--amusements--discoveries--and the very reflection of its living manners and costumes--the variegated dresses of its mind and body--what are--what _must_ be all these but treasures of truth that would have lain hid in Time's tomb, or perished amid the sand of his hour-glass but for the enduring and resuscitating powers of art--the eternal register of the pencil giving life and vigour and palpability to the confirming details of the pen. Could the days of Elizabeth or others as bright and earlier still be unfolded to us through such a mirror, what a mint of wisdom might we gather in from such dazzling periods of the past! Of just as much captivating value then is such a book to the future. It will pour the lore of the Antiquarian into the scholar's yearning soul, and teach him truth about those who have gone before him, as it were, with the Pictorial Alphabet of Art! It is in this sense that we regard the greatness of our design, and are proud of its envied and unexampled success; and it is for this end that we shall strain every nerve to perfect it into order and completeness that may accord with the beauty and brilliancy which many episodes of its execution have already been fortunate to display. Scott might carry Elizabeth to Kenilworth through the regions of his fine imagination, backed and supported by books, and we may take _cum grano salis_ the Antiquarian's and the Poet's word, but the year two thousand will be ten times better assured of all the splendid realities of our own Victoria's visit to the native land of the Northern Magician who enshrined in fiction the glories of Queen Bess. This volume is a work that history _must_ keep.' At the end of the preface is printed the following 'Dedicatory Sonnet:'-- 'To the great public,--that gigantic soul Which lends the nation's body life and light, And makes the blood within its veins grow bright With gushing glory,--we this muster-roll Of all the deeds that pass 'neath its controul Do dedicate,--the page of simple news Is here adorned and filled with pictured life, Coloured with thousand tints--the rainbow strife Of all the world's emotions--all the hues Of war--peace--commerce;--agriculture rife With budding plenty that doth life infuse And fair domestic joy--all--all are here To gild the _new_, and from the bygone year Present a gift to take--to cherish and to use.' The second volume began with several improvements. A 'Romance of Real Life,' by Henry Cockton, illustrated by Kenny Meadows, was the first attempt to infuse a new interest into newspaper literature by the introduction of fiction. Stories by Thomas Miller and others followed. This feature of the paper was continued for some time until _fiction_ was crowded out by _fact_. The popular portraits were done on a larger scale and were of a more ambitious character. In No. 40 there is one of Lord John Russell, which is reprinted here as an example of the improved portraiture of the period. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LORD JOHN RUSSELL. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' 1843.] In the following year was commenced a series of 'Parliamentary Portraits,' one of which I have selected to accompany the portrait of Lord John Russell. It is that of Mr. Disraeli, and it will perhaps interest the reader to compare the present estimate of Lord Beaconsfield with what was said of Mr. Disraeli in 1844. The following is a portion of the article which accompanies the portrait:--'The most remarkable speeches in the recent debates have been those of Mr. Disraeli, the Member for Shrewsbury. He has lately made himself more prominent in the sphere of literature and politics as the expounder of the views and opinions of that section of the Conservative party which has received the name of "Young England." His opinions however are too peculiar, have too much individuality ever to become those of a party. We scarcely think "Young England" capable of holding as points of belief the startling paradoxes to which Mr. Disraeli occasionally gives utterance. His speeches abound with happily turned sentences, in which a clever sarcasm is thrown into the antithetical form; they also contain a large amount of historical information, on which he draws almost as often as Macaulay himself. He rarely announces a positively new principle, but he often places old ones in a strange and startling light, and states the most extraordinary inconsistencies with an air of such perfect earnestness and conviction that his auditors are sometimes puzzled whether to admire or laugh at him. But he is not one of those men who can be laughed at; we have seen him turn the laugh most sorely against those who thought themselves securely trenched behind form and precedent. He can hit hard, and none have suffered more from his sarcasm than the present Premier and the Home Secretary. He seems to mangle them with peculiar gusto, and deals with them as if he was annihilating the Tadpole or Taper of his own "Coningsby." His speeches have not much metaphor, nor does he indulge in rhetorical glitter and ornament; we cannot call him impassioned, nor say he is eloquent; but he interests, informs, and amuses. A speech from Disraeli is sure to command attention. His manner is not calculated to set off his matter to the best advantage. His delivery is heavy, and of action he has none whatever. He thrusts his hands deep into his side-pockets, leans forward a little, or turns from side to side according to whom he may be addressing. But that is all. Though he sets the House cheering or laughing for minutes together, his countenance remains impassive; he says a good thing as if perfectly unconscious of it.' The paper rapidly advanced in public favour and soon reached a circulation of 66,000. It celebrated the completion of the first year of its existence by the publication of a double number, profusely illustrated by Gilbert, Harvey, and Kenny Meadows. [Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' JUNE 22, 1844.] The _Illustrated London News_ was not established without many misgivings as to its ultimate success. Its founder probably did not at first realise all the difficulties that lay in his way, but as fast as they appeared he met them with characteristic courage and energy, and overcame them by perseverance. He seized on every opportunity to consolidate the strength of the paper, and paid a great amount of personal attention to its management, often denying himself sleep one or two nights a-week. As the profits increased he kept on increasing the scope and number of its attractive features. He made it a rule to spare no expense in every department of the journal; whatever money could command for its success he resolved to have. After a time he was able to act on this wise resolve to the fullest extent, and in the end he achieved a great success. In describing the _Illustrated London News_ during the first year of its existence, I have directed attention chiefly to the pictorial portion of its contents, that being the characteristic feature of the paper by which it was distinguished from its purely literary contemporaries. The engravings I have reprinted from it are given as curiosities and not as specimens of excellence. The succeeding volumes contain abundant evidence that the highest talent was afterwards employed in producing the best examples of art as well as in the illustration of news. In its sixth year the course of public events opened up new and stirring scenes for its pages. So great was the interest felt in the exciting events of the year 1848, that the sale of the _Illustrated London News_ was more than doubled in three months. The vigorous sketches of the French Revolution published week after week were so eagerly bought that the publisher was not always able to meet the demand. On one occasion he was freely pelted with flour and other harmless missiles because the London 'trade' could not get their supply soon enough to satisfy their impatience. The noisy newsboys, in mocking imitation of the Paris mob which was then making the streets of that city ring with cries of 'à bas Guizot!' vented their indignation against the publisher of the _Illustrated London News_ by shouting 'à bas Little! à bas Little!' But though the year of revolutions was so rich in materials for pictorial journalism, the year of the Great Exhibition was yet more fruitful. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a perfect novelty, and was hailed as the harbinger of peace on earth and good-will among men. Coming so soon after the convulsions of 1848, the peaceful display was more enchanting from the contrast. Such a golden opportunity was not lost upon the pictorial press, and every stage of the construction of the first Crystal Palace was represented. The very plan of the building was first made public in the pages of the _Illustrated London News_, the first design adopted by the Commissioners having been superseded by Sir Joseph Paxton's Palace of Glass. The building was shown in progress from the raising of the first column, and its removal was illustrated to the clearing away of the foundations. In this 'Festival of Labour' the _Illustrated London News_ took a prominent place. An edition was printed in the Exhibition building by one of Applegarth's vertical printing-machines, then the quickest method of printing in use. At this time the paper was distinguished by the number and excellence of its illustrations, and the '_London News_' printing-machine was one of the attractions of the 'World's Fair.' In three years more the dreams of universal peace created by the Great Exhibition were rudely swept away by the declaration of war with Russia and subsequent invasion of the Crimea. The long and disastrous siege of Sebastopol, the assaults on the Redan and the Malakoff, the battles of Balaclava and Inkermann, supplied the most exciting subjects for illustration. It was the first great war since Waterloo, and the national excitement being intensified by the maladministration of the Government, the British public eagerly bought the war sketches. The sale of the paper at this time was very great, yet it is a curious fact that it never reached so high a figure as during the peaceful exhibition of 1851,--a proof that, after all, the arts of peace are more attractive than the excitement of war. At Christmas, 1855, a novel feature was introduced into the _Illustrated London News_. For some years a Christmas number had been published, and it was now for the first time printed in _colours_. It is true the coloured pictures were little more than ordinary woodcuts with tints printed over them, but their imperfections were principally owing to the breakdown of machinery and the great hurry in which they were produced. In after years much better things were done, and the coloured Christmas pictures which have been for many years produced at the chromatic press of Leighton Bros. take rank among the best work of the kind. They have proved exceedingly popular, and always sold well. That of 'Little Red Riding Hood,' after J. Sant, R.A., published in 1863, was reprinted again and again, until the blocks were utterly worn out. They were then re-engraved, and again reprinted. The Christmas picture issued in 1882 ('Cinderella') was specially painted by Mr. Millais, R.A., at the price of 3000 guineas. When it is noted that the large coloured reproduction of this picture, together with seventeen highly finished full-page engravings by some of the best artists of the day, were sold for a shilling, it will be seen that the pictorial press is no unimportant factor in diffusing the purifying and softening influence of art. During the forty-two years that have elapsed since the first illustrated newspaper was founded, there has never been any long interval of peace. War of some kind, big or little, has broken out, like a volcano, on some part of the earth's surface, and kept the Argus-eyed newspaper editor on the alert. From Alma to Tel-el-Kebir and the desert warfare of the Soudan, there has been a succession of conflicts, with only a short interval of a few years between; so that the food on which picture newspapers thrive best has been abundantly supplied, and this remarkable offspring of the printing-press has consequently increased and multiplied, and is now found in every corner of the earth, 'from China to Peru.' The reader may form some idea of the magnitude of the operations in connexion with illustrated journalism when I state that at the marriage of the Prince of Wales the _Illustrated London News_ of that week consisted of three sheets, and 930,000 sheets were printed of that issue in one week. These sheets, if placed side by side, would cover 660 miles, so that, as they were printed on both sides, they represent a printed surface of, after deductions for margin, more than 1115 miles in length. Nearly eighty tons of paper and twenty-three hundredweight of printing-ink were used in the production of that number. Larger quantities have been printed of some issues, but the production was spread over a longer period of time. 930,000 sheets is the largest quantity ever printed _in one week_. It will thus be seen what an amount of business this represents to the paper-maker, the ink-maker, the wood-draughtsman, the engravers, the electrotypers, the compositors, printers, machine-men, roller-makers, warehousemen, and the numerous other workers in a newspaper printing-office. The first editor of the _Illustrated London News_ was Mr. Bailey, who was nicknamed 'Alphabet Bailey' on account of the great number of his Christian names, and the consequent multiplicity of his initials. He was also called 'Omnibus Bailey' from his having edited a periodical called the _Omnibus_. These names were given to him to distinguish him from Mr. Thomas Haynes Bayley, the sentimental song-writer, author of 'I'd be a Butterfly,' 'The Soldier's Tear,' &c. Dr. Charles Mackay became the literary and political editor of the paper in 1848, and in 1852 he took its entire management and control, in which position he continued till 1859, when he resigned. The late John Timbs was for many years on the editorial staff, and his familiar figure is well remembered in the old room at 198 Strand, where he sat with paste and scissors, undisturbed by the noises which surrounded him both inside and outside the house, for in this one room the whole business of the paper was at one time conducted. Here the young literary or artistic aspirant, who thought he saw in the new journal an opening for his hitherto unappreciated talents, had to explain his proposals before the eyes and in the hearing of rivals who were waiting for their turn. The place was open to all comers, and was at once the centre of managerial, financial, and editorial affairs. But the founder of the paper received all who came with good-humour and generous feeling, and never disregarded a useful hint or refused the proffered assistance of a good man. Herbert Ingram, the founder of the _Illustrated London News_, was born at Boston, Lincolnshire, on the 27th of May, 1811. He lost his father very early, and being sent to the Boston Free School, he there obtained all the school education he ever received. The course of instruction through which he passed was of the most circumscribed character, making his success in after-life all the more remarkable. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to Mr. Jos. Clarke, then a printer living in the Market Place, Boston. His master soon found that he possessed industry, patience, and perseverance in a high degree, qualities which unquestionably lay at the root of his subsequent success in life. He was always ready to work all night when orders were plentiful, and was unwilling to abandon anything he began until it was entirely complete. He established a character for punctuality and trustworthiness, while he carefully looked after the interests of his employer. At the expiration of his apprenticeship he came to London and worked for about two years as a journeyman printer. He then settled in Nottingham, and commenced business as a printer, bookseller, and newsagent. It was at this time Mr. Ingram was struck with the evident partiality of the public for _illustrated news_. He found such an extraordinary demand for the numbers of the _Weekly Chronicle_ containing the engravings of the Greenacre murder that he set seriously to work on the scheme of an illustrated newspaper, and put himself in communication with Mr. Marriott, who was then the manager of the _Weekly Chronicle_. But at the outset it appeared impossible to overcome the difficulty of producing pictures quick enough and in such numbers as would furnish forth a paper while the news was fresh. In the gradual development of the first illustrated newspaper it was, however, found that the draughtsmen and engravers of the day were fully equal to the demands made upon them, and a system of quick production was soon established which kept the paper on a level with current events. Mr. Ingram, who had settled in London before he started the _Illustrated London News_, entered heart and soul into his new enterprise. He had much to learn, and many things to do that were neither easy nor pleasant, but he had the rare faculty of picking out the right men to help him. It was his wise policy to employ the best talent, and in order to have it to pay its possessor munificently. He was brought closely into connexion with the artistic and literary world, by whom he was sincerely respected, and with whom his dealings were uniformly marked by kindness and liberality. Though he had not himself received the advantages of literary or artistic culture, he was able to do much in diffusing a knowledge and love of art amongst the people. His enterprise helped to change the character of public taste, and allured it into channels which were previously open only to the wealthy and the refined. His practical knowledge as a printer and newsagent were of infinite value in organizing and conducting the varied details of newspaper business. He was ever on the watch, and made opportunities where other men would have been indifferent and inactive. When a new Archbishop of Canterbury was installed the number of the paper containing an engraving of the ceremony was sent to every clergyman in England, and this was followed by a large and permanent increase in the number of subscribers--the first large rise in the sale since the paper began. At a much later date--long after the paper had become firmly established--the French authorities stopped the sale of the _Illustrated London News_ in Paris on account of some article reflecting on the Emperor Napoleon. Mr. Ingram happened to be in Paris at the time, and he immediately showed that the old energy and perseverance of the Nottingham newsvendor had not forsaken him. He used great exertions to get the paper released, in which he at length succeeded, and he himself afterwards went round in a cab and delivered the numbers to the various subscribers. When he was at Nottingham he walked five miles (and of course five miles back) to supply a gentleman with a single paper; and on one occasion he got up at two in the morning, and travelled to London to get some papers, the ordinary post not arriving soon enough to satisfy the curiosity of his customers. His exertions were rewarded by the sale of more than 1000 copies of that paper in Nottingham alone. This was probably one of the occasions which struck him so forcibly when the Nottingham public manifested such an eager interest in _illustrated news_. Throughout his life Mr. Ingram was devoted to the interests of his native town, and in return the people of Boston, in 1856, elected him as their representative in Parliament. At the general election which occurred after the dissolution in 1857 he was returned again. Amongst other social and political questions in which he took an active interest he was prominent in the agitation for the repeal of the stamp duty on newspapers. He also exerted himself zealously for the repeal of the paper duty, but he died before that important movement was brought to a successful issue. In 1848 Mr. Ingram started a cheap daily paper--the _Morning Telegraph_--upon which he spent a large amount of money. He was, however, before the time in this instance. The era of cheap daily papers had not begun, and after a time the new speculation was abandoned. He was one of the original shareholders of the _Great Eastern_ steamship, and was on board the giant vessel when the accident occurred on her trial trip from the Nore to Portland Harbour. It is a remarkable circumstance that the dreadful catastrophe in which he lost his life happened on the anniversary of this accident on board the _Great Eastern_. [Illustration: HERBERT INGRAM, FOUNDER OF THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.'] In 1860 Mr. Ingram visited America accompanied by his eldest son. They left Liverpool in the _North American_ on the 9th of August, and landed at Quebec in time to witness, after traversing the Lower St. Lawrence, the knocking in of the 'last wedge' of the Victoria Bridge at Montreal by the Prince of Wales. They then went on to Niagara, where they stayed some days. From Niagara Mr. Ingram proceeded to Chicago, intending to cross the prairies, and to follow the Mississippi to New Orleans, and thence to New York, but more especially to Boston, which old associations of history had determined him to make the conclusion of his sojourn in the United States. He altered his plans, however, and decided to visit Lake Superior, and to prolong his stay in America, proposing to return to England about the end of October. Mr. Ingram left Chicago at midnight on the 7th of September, accompanied by his son, in the _Lady Elgin_ steamer, bound on an excursion up Lakes Michigan and Superior. Nearly four hundred persons were on board. The wind blew hard from the north-east, and a heavy sea was running, but no one thought of danger, and there was music and dancing in the saloon. Thirty miles from Chicago and ten miles from land, about two o'clock on the morning of the 8th, there came a sudden crash. The schooner _Augusta_, sailing at the rate of eleven knots an hour, had struck the _Lady Elgin_ on the midships gangway, and then, having her sails set, and the wind blowing freshly, drifted off in the darkness. At first it was not thought that any serious damage had been done to the steamer, but those on board soon found that she was settling fast. The captain ordered parts of the woodwork of the vessel to be cut adrift to serve as rafts, and made such other provisions as the hurry would allow. In less than half-an-hour the hurricane deck floated off, and the hulk with the machinery went to the bottom with a tremendous noise. When the vessel parted all lights were extinguished, and the unfortunate passengers were left struggling amid the waves in total darkness. The steamer sank in three hundred feet of water, the sea was running high, and the land was ten miles away. Some of those who survived to see the dawn were drifted towards the shore on pieces of the wreck, and were drowned in the surf in the sight of hundreds of spectators. Out of 393 persons on board only 114 were saved. Among the drowned were Mr. Ingram and his son. The body of Mr. Ingram was washed ashore about sixteen miles from Chicago, and every effort was used to restore animation, but in vain. The body of his son was never found. The citizens of Chicago were profoundly impressed by the melancholy fate of father and son, so far away from home and friends. Mr. Ingram's remains were escorted from the Brigg's House Hotel to the railway station by a procession of more than eight hundred of the British residents in the neighbourhood. The body was taken to Quebec and conveyed on board the _Bohemian_ steamer, which arrived at Liverpool on the 2nd of October. From thence the remains were removed to Boston, and interred in the new cemetery at Skirbeck, about a mile from the centre of the town. On the day of the funeral all the shops and places of business in Boston were closed, the inhabitants filled the streets and followed the procession up to the gates of the cemetery. It was in every sense a public funeral, and afforded the strongest testimony of the respect in which the memory of the deceased was held by his fellow-townsmen. Two years afterwards, on October 6th, 1862, a statue of Mr. Ingram, raised by public subscription, was unveiled in the market-place at Boston. The life that began in the quaint old Lincolnshire town and ended amid the stormy waters of Lake Michigan, has now an enduring memorial standing not far from the spot where Herbert Ingram was born. The _Illustrated London News_ no sooner became an assured success than it was imitated. The _Pictorial Times_ was the first competitor that entered the field, and a very strong literary staff was collected to contend for the new path that had been opened. Douglas Jerrold wrote the leading articles; Thackeray was critic and reviewer, in which capacity he reviewed Macaulay's _Essays_ and Disraeli's _Coningsby_; Mark Lemon was dramatic critic, Peter Cunningham art critic, while Gilbert A'Beckett was the humorous contributor; the managing editor was Henry Vizetelly, and Knight Hunt, author of the _Fourth Estate_, afterwards editor of the _Daily News_, was the sub-editor. One man who has since become famous as a journalist was amongst the artists employed on the new paper. Those who only know Mr. George Augustus Sala as a brilliant writer will be surprised to learn that he is also a facile draughtsman, and was on the artistic staff of the _Pictorial Times_ in 1847. The _Pictorial Times_ was continued for several years, but it never achieved such a measure of success as to become permanently established. A story used to be told in connexion with it which gave some countenance to the popular belief that some of the sketches in illustrated newspapers were evolved from the inner consciousness of the artists. I cannot answer for the truth of the anecdote, but I know it served to amuse the world of Bohemia at the time. When the Queen and Prince Albert went first to Scotland, the newspapers in recording the movements of the royal party related, among other things (quoting a Scottish contemporary), that Her Majesty and the Prince had gone one day to 'see the shearing.' The conductors of the _Pictorial Times_ seeing this, and being anxious to present their readers with a perfect record of the royal doings, forthwith set an artist to work to produce a pleasant pastoral scene, with a group of shepherds _shearing their sheep_--not knowing that 'shearing' in Scotland means _cutting the corn_, and forgetting for the moment that sheep-shearing is not usually done in the autumn. Much energy and capital have been expended on several other attempts to found pictorial journals in London, but most of them failed to secure a profitable footing. _Pen and Pencil_ contained some capital cuts by Linton; and the _Illustrated Times_, a threepenny paper, was well done. The _Illustrated News of the World_, in addition to numerous woodcuts, issued portraits engraved on steel. _The Ladies' Newspaper_ was started to fill a supposed void in journalism, but was ultimately absorbed by the _Queen_, in which connexion it still flourishes. The _Illustrated Midland News_ was brought out in Manchester, but it could not find in that city and its neighbourhood sufficient sustenance to subsist beyond a brief period. The _Illustrated London and Provincial News_ in its title endeavoured to attract both town and country, but it only had a short career. While these different ventures were in progress, the _Penny Illustrated Paper_ appealed to a lower stratum of the public with great success, and it has now a very large sale, having combined the _Illustrated Times_ with its original title. In some of these enterprises the promoters appear to have been unable to shake off, in choosing their titles, the fascinating influence of the word 'illustrated.' A joint-stock company broke the spell, and started a paper with the very original title of the _Graphic_ on the eve of the great war between France and Germany. It was a most favourable time for establishing a new paper, and the conductors handled the opportunity with great ability and success. The printing and general _get-up_ of the _Graphic_ are excellent, and it has earned for itself a wide popularity. The _Pictorial World_ was started as a threepenny paper, and after existing several years at that price it became the property of a company and was raised to sixpence. During the Egyptian War it made strenuous efforts to obtain a footing on the same platform with the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Graphic_. The large lithographic portraits published by the _Pictorial World_ were very good. As the public taste improved under the influence of the pictorial press new fields were opened up for cultivation by the enterprising journalist. The _Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News_ addressed itself not only to the sportsman and actor, but also to that section of the public which finds amusement in the incidents and humours of the sporting world and the stage. It has deservedly obtained a good position. The last new comer on the journalistic stage is the _Ladies' Pictorial_, which has recently been enlarged and greatly improved. Its light and elegant contents are well suited to the tastes of its numerous patrons. All the existing illustrated papers in London have their publishing offices in the 'Line of Literature,' as Fleet Street and the Strand have been called. In the streets and courts in the neighbourhood are housed numbers of engravers and draughtsmen, who find it mutually convenient to work in the vicinity of the head-quarters of pictorial journalism. Many of the same fraternity consume the midnight oil in distant suburbs, their work gravitating to the great centre in the morning. All the countries of Europe, the United States, some of the cities of South America, the Colonies of Canada and Australia, have now their illustrated newspapers. Some of them supplement their own productions by reproducing the engravings from the English papers, and many have attained a high degree of artistic merit. The American journals are especially noteworthy for their excellent engravings. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. How an Illustrated Newspaper is Produced--Wood-engraving--Boxwood--Blocks for Illustrated Newspapers--Rapid Sketching--Drawing on the Block--Method of Dividing the Block for Engraving--Electrotyping--Development of the Printing Machine--Printing Woodcuts--Machinery for Folding Newspapers--Special Artists--Their Dangers and Difficulties--Their Adventures in War and Peace. In describing the production of a modern pictorial newspaper, I take the _Illustrated London News_ as the type of its class, because it was the first paper of the kind that was ever established. The art of wood-engraving, to which the illustrated newspaper owes its existence, has been fully described by competent authors. The best work on the subject is that produced by the late John Jackson in 1839; but since that date the resources of the art have been greatly developed, chiefly through the influence of illustrated newspapers. The material used for wood-engraving is box-wood, which is preferred to all other kinds of wood on account of its close grain, hardness, and light colour. It admits of finer and sharper lines being cut upon it than any other wood, and great quantities are consumed in producing the engravings of an illustrated newspaper. According to Mr. J. R. Jackson, Curator of the Kew Museum, the box-tree is at the present time widely distributed through Europe and Asia, being found abundantly in Italy, Spain, Southern France, and on the coast of the Black Sea, as well as China, Japan, Northern India, and Persia. The box of English growth is so small as to be almost useless for commercial purposes. What is called Turkey box-wood is the best, and this is all obtained from the forests that grow on the Caucasus, and is chiefly shipped at Poti and Rostoff. The forests extend from thirty to a hundred and eighty miles inland, but many of them are in the hands of the Russian Government and are closed to commerce. Within the last few years a supply of box-wood has been obtained from the forests in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea; but Turkey box is becoming dearer every year and inferior in quality. After the wood is cut in the forest, it is brought down on horseback to the nearest river, put on board flat-bottom boats, and floated down to the port of shipment. It arrives in this country either at Liverpool or London, chiefly the former, and is usually in logs about four feet long and eight or ten inches across. [Illustration: BACK OF A BLOCK, SHOWING THE WAY IN WHICH THE PARTS ARE FASTENED TOGETHER.] The wood intended for engraving purposes is first carefully selected and then cut up into transverse slices about an inch thick. After being cut, the pieces are placed in racks something like plate-racks, and thoroughly seasoned by slow degrees in gradually heated rooms. This seasoning process ought to last, on an average, four or five years; but the exigencies of trade seldom allow of so long a time. They are then cut into parallelograms of various sizes, the outer portion of the circular section near the bark being cut away, and all defective wood rejected. These parallelograms are then assorted as to size, and fitted together at the back by brass bolts and nuts. By this means blocks of any size can be made, and they possess the great advantage of being capable of being taken to pieces after a drawing is made, and distributed among as many engravers as there are pieces in the block. This invention of making bolted blocks was brought forward just about the time the _Illustrated London News_ was started, when large blocks and quick engraving came to be in demand. In the days of the _Penny Magazine_, blocks were made by simply glueing the pieces of wood together, or they were fastened by means of a long bolt passing through the entire block. The cut given on the opposite page represents the back of a half-page block of the _Illustrated London News_, and shows the way in which the bolts and nuts are used for fastening the different parts of the block together. For the production of a pictorial newspaper a large staff of draughtsmen and engravers is required, who must be ready at a moment's notice to take up any subject, and, if necessary, work day and night until it is done. The artist who supplies the sketch has acquired by long practice a rapid method of working, and can, by a few strokes of his pencil, indicate a passing scene by a kind of pictorial shorthand, which is afterwards translated and extended in the finished drawing. The sketch being completed on paper, the services of the draughtsman on wood come into requisition, for it is not often that the drawing on the block is made by the same person who supplies the sketch. Sometimes the sketch to be dealt with is the production of an amateur, or is so hastily or indifferently done that it has to be remodelled or rearranged in drawing it on the wood. Faulty or objectionable portions have to be left out or subdued, and perhaps a point in the sketch that is quite subordinate, is brought forward and made to form a prominent part of the picture. All this has to be done without doing violence to the general truth of the representation, and with due consideration for the particular conditions of the moment, such as the amount of finish and distribution of light and shade suitable for rapid engraving and printing. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF SKETCH: SURRENDER OF SEDAN.] [Illustration: THE SURRENDER OF SEDAN. FROM THE 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,' SEPT. 17, 1870.] An example of the adaptation of a rapid sketch occurs in the engraving of the surrender of Sedan, published in the _Illustrated London News_, September 17, 1870. This sketch, which carries with it the strongest evidence of being taken 'under fire,' came to hand a few hours before the engravings for the current week were to be ready for the printer. The cream or heart of the sketch, representing an officer waving a white flag over the gate of Sedan attended by a trumpeter, was taken for the subject, while the comparatively unimportant part of the sketch was left out. The drawing was rapidly executed and as rapidly engraved, and was ready for press at the usual time. I give a reduced copy of the engraving, together with a facsimile reduction of the original sketch, which will show the reader the way in which hurried sketches are sometimes adapted to the purposes of a newspaper without at all impairing their original truth. Sometimes more than one draughtsman is employed on a drawing where the subject consists of figures and landscape, or figures and architecture. In such a case, if time presses, the two parts of the drawing are proceeded with simultaneously. The whole design is first traced on the block; the bolts at the back of the block are then loosened, the parts are separated, and the figure-draughtsman sets to work on his division of the block, while another draughtsman is busied with the landscape or architecture, as the case may be. Occasionally, when there is very great hurry, the block is separated piece by piece as fast as the parts of the drawing are finished--the engraver and draughtsman thus working on the same subject at the same time. Instances have occurred where the draughtsman has done his work in this way, and has never seen the whole of his drawing together. The double-page engraving of the marriage of the Prince of Wales in the _Illustrated London News_, March 21, 1863, was drawn on the wood by Sir John Gilbert at 198 Strand, and as fast as each part of the drawing was done it was separated from the rest and given to the engraver. Considering that the artist never saw his drawing entire, it is wonderful to find the engraving so harmonious and effective. Photographing on the wood is now in general use for portraits, sculpture, architecture, and other subjects where there is a picture or finished drawing on paper to work from. The drawing on wood being completed, it passes into the hands of the engraver, and the first thing he does is to cut or set the lines across all the joins of the block before the different parts are distributed among the various engravers. This is done partly to ensure as far as possible some degree of harmony of colour and texture throughout the subject. When all the parts are separated and placed in the hands of different engravers each man has thus a sort of _key-note_ to guide him in the execution of his portion, and it should be his business to imitate and follow with care the colour and texture of the small pieces of engraving which he finds already done at the edge of his part of the block where it joins the rest of the design. The accompanying cuts represent a block entire and the same subject divided. [Illustration: A BLOCK BEFORE IT IS TAKEN TO PIECES.] [Illustration: THE SAME SUBJECT DIVIDED.] Though this system of subdividing the engraving effects a great saving of time, it must be admitted that it does not always result in the production of a first-rate work of art as a whole. For, supposing the subject to be a landscape with a good stretch of trees, the two or three engravers who have the trees to engrave have, perhaps, each a different method of rendering foliage; and when the whole is completed, and the different pieces are put together, the trees perhaps appear like a piece of patchwork, with a distinct edge to each man's work. To harmonise and dovetail (so to speak) these different pieces of work is the task of the superintending artist, who retouches the first proof of the engraving and endeavours to blend together the differences of colour and texture. This is often no easy task, for the press is generally waiting, and the time that is left for such work is often reduced to minutes where hours would scarcely suffice to accomplish all that might be done. Or the block to be engraved may be a marine subject, with a stormy sea. In this case, like the landscape, two or three engravers may be employed upon the water, each of them having a different way of representing that element. Here it is even more difficult than in the landscape to blend the conflicting pieces of work, and requires an amount of 'knocking about' that sometimes astonishes the original artist. All this is the necessary result of the hurry in which the greater part of newspaper engravings have to be produced. When the conditions are more favourable better things are successfully attempted, and of this the illustrated newspapers of the day have given abundant proofs. It is obvious that when a block is divided and the parts are distributed in various hands, if any accident should occur to one part the whole block is jeopardised. It is much to the credit of the fraternity of engravers that this rarely or ever happens. I only remember one instance of a failure of this kind within my own experience. An engraver of decidedly Bohemian character, after a hard night's work on the tenth part of a page block, thought fit to recruit himself with a cheering cup. In the exhilaration that followed he lost the piece of work upon which he had been engaged, and thereby rendered useless the efforts of himself and his nine compatriots. When the block is finished the parts are screwed together by means of the brass bolts and nuts at the back of the block. It is then delivered to the electrotyper, who first takes a mould of the block in wax, which mould is then covered with a thin coating of blacklead, that being a good conductor of electricity. The mould is then suspended by a brass rod in a large bath filled with a solution of sulphate of copper and sulphuric acid. A strong current of electricity, obtained from a dynamo-electric machine close at hand, is conducted to the wax mould in the bath and also to a sheet of copper which is placed near the mould. The electricity decomposes the copper and deposits it in small particles on the mould, on which a thin coating of copper is gradually formed, producing an exact facsimile of the original engraved block. This copper reproduction of the woodcut is filled in at the back with metal, mounted on wood, and is then ready for the printer, who has his 'overlays' all ready, and the business of printing begins. There is nothing more wonderful in the history of printing than the rapid development of the printing machine and the extraordinary increase of its productive power. The ordinary press, though greatly improved, was found quite inadequate to the demands made upon it; and, the attention of practical men being directed to some more rapid means of production, the steam printing machine was invented. As early as 1790 Mr. W. Nicholson obtained letters patent for a machine very similar to those since in use; but it was not till 1814 that any practical use was made of the steam printing machine. In that year a German named König constructed a machine for the _Times_ newspaper, which worked successfully; but, though highly ingenious, the machine was very complicated, and it was soon superseded by the invention of Messrs. Applegarth and Cowper, possessing several novel features. This machine, again, was replaced by another where the type was arranged vertically. Then came Hoe's American machines, and finally the Walter Press, the principle of which last invention has, in the Ingram Rotary Machine, been successfully applied to the printing of cheap illustrated newspapers. By the old 'two-feeder' machines the engravings were printed on one side of the sheet, and, by a second printing, the type on the other side. They turned out 1500 impressions of the engravings in an hour, while the type side was printed (by a six-feeder American machine) at the rate of 12,000 impressions an hour. The _Penny Illustrated Paper_ is printed by the Ingram Rotary Machine at the rate of 6500 an hour. It prints both sides of the sheet at once, cuts each number to its proper size, folds it, and turns it out complete. It occupies no more space than an ordinary perfecting machine, and only requires four men to attend to it, while thirty men and five 'two-feeders' would be required to do the same amount of work by the old system. If a block be well engraved and carefully used in printing there is practically no limit to the number of impressions that may be taken from it. The blocks in the Christmas number of the _Illustrated London News_ of 1882 had 425,000 impressions taken from them, and they are still good for a new edition of the like number. After the paper is printed each sheet is neatly folded by folding machines, which fold the entire edition in a few hours. One double-action folding machine will fold fifty sheets in a minute. As it is found that machinery for folding newspapers works much better at a moderate speed, in the case of the Ingram Rotary Machine it has been arranged in duplicate, so that each folder only works at half the speed of the printing machine. The folding machine completes its work by inserting the paper in its cover; but as the _Illustrated London News_ has not sufficient space for machines to carry out the whole of this part of the business, a number of women and girls are employed, whose nimble fingers supplement the work of the folding machines. [Illustration: THE EVE OF A BATTLE: NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS SLEEPING ON THE FIELD.] In these days of electric telegraphy Puck's notion of putting 'a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes' is not so very far from being realised. The London citizen as he sips his coffee at his villa in the suburbs runs his eye over the pages of his morning paper, and reads of events that took place yesterday many thousand miles away. Before he starts for business he is informed of what is passing on every side of the inhabited earth. This rapid transmission of intelligence is somewhat damaging to the illustrated newspaper, for by the time it can publish sketches of interesting events in far distant countries the freshness of the news is gone, and the public mind is occupied with later occurrences. Until some method is invented of sending sketches by electricity the pictorial press must endure this disadvantage, but in the meantime it spares no pains to overtake the march of events. Wherever there is any 'moving accident by flood or field' the 'special artist' of the illustrated newspaper is found 'takin' notes.' No event of interest escapes his ever ready pencil. He undergoes fatigues, overcomes formidable difficulties, and often incurs personal danger in fulfilling his mission. On the eve of a battle he will sleep on the bare ground wrapped in a blanket or waterproof sheet, and he will ride all night through a hostile country to catch the homeward mail. He is equally at home in the palace and the hovel, and is as ready to attend a battle as a banquet. He thought nothing of stepping over to China to attend the nuptials of the celestial Emperor; and on that occasion extended his travels until he had completed the circuit of the globe, winding up with a run on the war-path among the American Indians. He assisted at the laying of the telegraph cable between Europe and America, and diversified his labours, and showed the versatility of his powers by taking part in an impromptu dramatic entertainment which he and his comrades got up for the occasion, and which they appropriately called 'A Cable-istic Extravaganza.' He was at the opening of the Suez Canal, and he passed with the first railway train through the Mont Cenis tunnel. In pursuing his vocation the special artist has to encounter the perils of earth, air, fire, and water. Now he is up in a balloon, now down in a coal-mine; now shooting tigers in India, now deer-stalking in the Highlands. Dr. Schliemann no sooner announced that he had discovered the site of Troy than the special artist was down upon the spot at once. He is found risking his life in the passes of Afghanistan, and in Zululand assisting at the defeat and capture of Cetywayo. Now he is at the bombardment of Alexandria, and now facing the savage warriors of the Soudan at El-Teb and Tamasi. At the present time (November, 1884), he is on his way up the Nile with the expedition for the relief of General Gordon at Khartoum, and he is in India with the Boundary Commissioners exploring the dangerous passes of the Afghan frontier. In peace or war the special artist pursues his purpose with stoical self-possession in spite of cold, hunger, and fatigue. [Illustration: A CABLE-ISTIC EXTRAVAGANZA, PERFORMED BY NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS ON BOARD THE _GREAT EASTERN_, AT SEA, JULY, 1866.] The special artist may be said to have commenced his career with the Crimean War. While the signs of the coming storm were yet distant the _Illustrated London News_ sent the late Mr. S. Read to the expected scene of action, and during the whole course of the war special artists were on the shores of the Black Sea and in the Baltic to chronicle the great events of the time. The world had scarcely forgotten Balaklava and Inkerman when the war between Italy, France, and Austria broke out. Solferino and Magenta were fought, Garibaldi conquered Sicily, and wherever the interest was greatest there the special artist was found. Special artists went with the contending armies when Denmark opposed herself single-handed to the united forces of Prussia and Austria, and delineated every important incident of the campaign. When the present Emperor of Germany was crowned King of Prussia at Königsberg special artists travelled to that ancient city to furnish sketches of the ceremony. The gigantic civil war in America, and the brief struggle between Prussia and Austria in 1866, gave active employment to the special artist; and when a British force advanced into Abyssinia a special artist was with that most romantic expedition, and sent home numerous sketches of the remarkable scenery of the country, as well as of all the principal events of the campaign. The assault on Magdala, the dispersion of King Theodore's broken army, the customs and dwellings of the people, were all noted and illustrated. When the great war of 1870, between France and Prussia, broke out, the illustrated newspapers had special artists on both sides, who encountered all sorts of hardships, and passed through all kinds of adventures in fulfilling their duties. Besides being frequently arrested as spies, and undergoing the privations of beleagured places, they had also to run the risk of shot and shell, and sometimes they were obliged to destroy their sketching materials under fear of arrest. One of them was in custody as a spy no less than eleven times during the war. The danger of being seen sketching or found with sketches in their possession was so great that on one occasion a special artist actually swallowed his sketch to avoid being taken up as a spy. Another purchased the largest book of cigarette papers he could obtain, and on them he made little sketches, prepared in case of danger to smoke them in the faces of his enemies. [Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF SPECIAL ARTIST IN ASIA MINOR, 1877.] [Illustration: ARREST OF NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS AT METZ, DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR.] The following extract from a letter I received from a special artist during the war, will give some idea of the trouble and danger of sketching:-- 'Of the trouble I have taken to get these sketches you can have no conception. The plan I have been obliged to adopt is this. I walk about quietly, apparently noticing only the goods in the shop-windows. When I see anything, I make memoranda on small bits of tissue paper, perhaps in a café, or while appearing to look at the water from the top of a bridge, or on the side of an apple, with a big knife in my hand pretending to peel it. These little mems I roll up into pills, place them handy in my waistcoat pocket to be chewed up or swallowed if "in extremis." When I get home at night, first making sure that I am not overlooked by way of the window, I unroll these little pills, and from those mems make a complete outline on a thin piece of white paper. Then I paste these sketches face to face, trim the edges, and it looks like a plain piece of paper, but hold it up to the light and the sketch shows. So I make memoranda all over it,--the times of trains starting, prices of articles, or extracts from newspapers. When I get to a place of safety, I soak these pieces of paper in water, pull the sketches apart, and from them have made the sketches I have forwarded to you. If I could not get into a place of safety to make the sketches, I don't know what I should do, in fact I don't think I could do anything, for I would not, for any consideration _be found making a sketch, nor with a sketch in my possession_; nor should I dare post a sketch at the "Bureaux de poste," but I might get it into a street box.' Another special artist being at Metz, found himself in the midst of a population infected with what he called the 'spy-fever.' About a dozen English newspaper correspondents were there, and they became a united body through persecution. There was always about a fourth of their number in prison, and what most persons would have considered to be clear evidence that they were not spies, was in the minds of the French clear evidence that they were. If they were told that the correspondent of an English newspaper could not possibly be a spy, the reply was that that was just the character that a _cochon_ of a Prussian spy would assume. The townspeople of Metz became quite wild when they heard of the French defeats at Wörth and Forbach, and when they saw an artist sketching the Emperor's carriage, they pounced upon him as a Prussian spy, and he and his companions were marched off in custody, amid the hootings of the mob. The following account of this affair is extracted from the _Illustrated London News_ of August 20, 1870: 'Three of the representatives of London papers, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Henry Mayhew and his son, went to the railway station, having heard a rumour that the Emperor was about to start for the front, and also that a train full of the wounded was expected to arrive. At the station they met Mr. Stuart, another newspaper correspondent, who had just come from Italy, having travelled all night. They found the Emperor's carriage and horses waiting to be forwarded by a train on the railway towards St. Avold. Our artist thought it would be doing no harm to employ the few minutes of his waiting at the station in making a slight sketch of the carriage and horses, which might be useful as materials for an illustration of some future scene where the same equipage might figure. He took a small sketch-book and pencil out of his pocket and quickly finished this little drawing. There was no attempt at concealment; he even showed his sketch to one of the bystanders who was close to him, and who seemed to watch his movements with some curiosity. Mr. Simpson then rejoined his three English companions, but had scarcely done so before they were surrounded by a large party of artillery soldiers, who wore undress jackets and had not their arms with them. They were taken into custody, each one placed between two soldiers, and thus were marched through the streets of Metz to the Place de la Cathedral. A mob of people followed, increasing as they went on, and reviling the foreigners as "Sacrés Prusses," or "Cochons de Prusses," threatening vengeance upon them, which might probably have been taken if their violence had not been restrained by the presence of the soldiers. The whole party were then brought into the guard-room, where several persons came forward as their accusers to denounce them as spies of the enemy, lurking about Metz with a hostile and insidious purpose. The chief evidence against one of them was that he had bought three copies of a Metz local newspaper; another was suspected because he had been seen four days successively in the same café, "and always sitting in the same seat;" a third could be no true man, because, while he said he belonged to a London paper, he confessed that he had just come from Florence. The main charge against Mr. Simpson was that he did not lodge at an hotel, but in a private house. These particulars were repeated to the crowd outside, which filled the whole Place, and was in a state of raging fury; till at last the officers in charge made their appearance and commenced a more regular examination. Our artist produced his passport, which was approved as in due order; but his little sketch-book, with its scraps of notes and bits of outline, seemed to contain matter for serious investigation. In spite of his awkward and rather alarming position, he was struck with the absurdity of viewing such innocent scrawls as proof of heinous guilt. He endeavoured, however, with the assistance of Mr. Mayhew, to explain what they were, and to persuade the officers that they could do no harm. After a tedious detention, they were permitted to write a note to a friend, who instantly went to the Provost-Marshal, and at once got an order for their immediate release. Their private letters and papers were examined. Several other persons, Frenchmen as well as foreigners, including one who was the artist employed by a Paris illustrated paper, were arrested at Metz on the same day; and more than one of them suffered rough usage at the hands of the mob. On the next day they were all ordered to leave the town.' The following is a facsimile of the sketch that produced all this commotion. [Illustration: THE EMPEROR'S CARRIAGE AT METZ.] The same artist who made his sketches into pills, being at Bremerhafen, found himself so watched and dogged by the police and others who had observed he was a stranger, that he could not make the sketch he wanted. After much walking about he at length returned to the place where he desired to sketch, and sitting down at the edge of the harbour he began to draw lines with his umbrella on the mud, as if in a fit of abstraction, and soon had sketched in this way the principal points of the scene before him. This he repeated several times, until the view was fixed in his memory, when he retired to the railway-station, and there, unobserved, committed the scene to his sketch-book. On another occasion, in the neighbourhood of Mezières, he was driven at nightfall to seek a lodging in a very lonely and villainous looking inn. The occupants of the place looked upon him with evil eyes, and dreading lest one more should be added to the numerous graves already near the cabaret, he betook himself to a neighbouring wood, where he spent the whole night surrounded by the carcases of dead horses. At Lyons he penetrated into the theatre where the people were storing corn and flour in anticipation of a siege. He had made some hasty notes in his sketch-book, when he was observed and obliged to retreat, followed, however, by several men. He had noticed an umbrella shop round the corner in the next street, and into this shop he rushed, seized an umbrella, opened it, and kept it expanded between himself and the door, as if examining the quality of the silk, while his pursuers ran past, when he demanded the price of the umbrella, paid the money, and walked off, glad to escape at so small a cost. Sometimes his adventures had a more amusing termination. When the spy-fever prevailed very strongly both in France and Germany, he was one day looking into a shop-window when he became conscious that he was watched by two officers. 'Now,' thought he, 'I am in for it again, and shall certainly be arrested.' This feeling was confirmed as one of the officers advanced towards him, and raising his hand as if to seize him by the collar, addressed him thus: 'Permit me, monsieur, to adjust the string of your shirt collar, which has escaped from behind your cravat.'[1] This gentleman was somewhat old-fashioned in his costume, and during his wanderings was sometimes mistaken for a sea-captain. He had even received confidential proposals to discuss the question of freight. The _Illustrated London News_ had five artists in the field during the Franco-German war: W. Simpson, R. T. Landells, G. H. Andrews, C. J. Staniland, and Jules Pelcoq. From the fact of Landells being already known to the Crown Prince of Prussia and several of his staff, it was settled that his destination should be Germany, and I remember that before his departure he expressed to me just the slightest shade of discontent that he should be selected to go on what he thought would be the losing side. He was destined, however, to be present at the proclamation of the German Emperor in the palace of Versailles, and he was one of the first to enter Paris after it capitulated to the German army. Soon afterwards he very nearly experienced the unpleasant consequences of being taken for a German spy. Landells himself was of a dark complexion, and might very well have passed for a Frenchman, but on the occasion referred to he was in the company of a brother artist (Mr. Sidney Hall, of the _Graphic_), who, being fair, might easily be mistaken for German. The excited mob of Paris had just vented their rage on a suspected spy by drowning him in the Seine, and the two special artists were loitering on the outskirts of the crowd, when Mr. Hall imprudently took out his sketch-book, which was no sooner perceived than a cry was raised of 'Prussian spy!' and they too would probably have been pitched into the river had they not managed, with great difficulty, to escape from the crowd. [Illustration: NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS ON THEIR WAY TO THE FRONT. SISTOVA, 1877.] When the German armies were closing round Paris M. Jules Pelcoq consented to be shut up in the devoted city for the purpose of supplying the _Illustrated London News_ with sketches. During the hardships of the siege he was quite unable to obtain fuel to warm his apartment, and was compelled to retire to bed, where, wrapped in a blanket, he finished up the rough sketches he had made out of doors, which were then photographed and sent off by balloons to London. These balloons were regularly despatched during the prevalence of winds that would carry them to the provinces unoccupied by the Germans. They were followed by Prussian light cavalry as long as they were in sight, and some were captured. Afterwards, as the city became more closely invested, and the danger increased, the precaution was taken of despatching the balloons at night, and the time fixed on was kept concealed from all save those immediately concerned, in order to avoid, as far as possible, the chances of its being communicated to the enemy, and thereby exposing the aëronauts to the fiery rockets and other projectiles with which the Germans were prepared to favour them. The railway-stations were generally chosen as the starting-places, for they not only offered large open spaces in which to fill the balloons, but, being situated away from the centre of Paris, there was less risk, in ascending, of coming in contact with buildings. To provide against the loss of sketches so sent, photographic copies were despatched by other balloons. In some cases two, and even three, copies of the same sketch reached my hands by balloon-post during the German investment of Paris. Considering the danger and difficulty of this mode of communication, the intercourse between the _Illustrated London News_ and its artist in Paris was kept up pretty regularly during the whole siege. [Illustration: SKETCHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. HERZEGOVINA, 1876.] The requirements of special artists when on the 'war path' vary according to circumstances. Mr. Simpson, in France during the Franco-German war, found no scarcity of food, but could seldom get a bed to sleep in. On the other hand, Mr. Melton Prior, in South Africa and other hot countries, found that he was never sure of obtaining either food or drink. During the war in Herzegovina in 1876 the newspaper correspondents had to rough it pretty considerably. Sometimes, when the special artist got to a resting-place for the night, he would have to work up his sketches by the light of a single candle, which he kept in an upright position by holding it between his feet as he sat on the ground, while the correspondent of a London 'daily' scribbled his notes beside him. The difficulty of obtaining sleeping accommodation was experienced by another artist in Servia, who was obliged one night to go to rest in a sort of diligence or covered waggon which stood in the inn yard. It was the only 'spare bed,' and the tired 'special' was very glad to coil himself up within its recesses. These hardships, however, belong to the past. Just as the combatants in modern warfare fight their battles with the most scientific weapons, so the newspaper correspondent now goes to the field armed with the latest appliances against cold, fatigue, hunger, and thirst. He provides himself with an abundant supply of tinned meats and champagne, plenty of clothing, the latest improvements in saddlery; and when he arrives at the scene of action he buys as many horses as he wants for himself and servants. Acting on the experience of former campaigns, Mr. Prior was able in the Zulu War to travel much more comfortably than any member of the staff, not even excepting Lord Chelmsford himself. 'I had then no fewer than five horses: two in the shafts of my American waggon, one for myself, one for my servant, and one spare horse. I followed the army through all its marches in my travelling carriage, and on the eve of the Battle of Ulundi I was the only man who had a tent; all the others lay down in the open.' [Illustration: THE SPARE BED.] While recording the progress of events--the deeds of war mingling with the works of peace--the pictorial press is not unmindful of what is done in the cause of humanity. One of the recent experiences of the special artist was in making a journey across Siberia in search of the survivors of the crew of the American exploring ship _Jeanette_. Mr. J. Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of the _New York Herald_, having sent out a commissioner to search for the missing expedition, he was joined by the special artist of the _Illustrated London News_. They had before them a journey of two or three thousand miles, and they travelled in one of the covered sledges used in Siberia in the winter time. It was their travelling carriage by day and their sleeping apartment at night. Sometimes they had to turn out and defend themselves from the wolves which followed them over the snowy waste. The artist on this occasion was Mr. Larsen, of Copenhagen, who proved himself a first-rate special. [Illustration: SPECIAL ARTIST'S TENT.] When the effects of a deadly climate are added to the usual chances of war, the courage and endurance of the newspaper correspondent are doubly tried. The 'specials' of the principal London journals joined the Ashantee expedition with as much alacrity as if they had been going to a review in Hyde Park. Among them was Mr. Melton Prior, the artist of the _Illustrated London News_, who landed at Cape Coast Castle before the arrival of the British troops, marched with them to Coomassie, and remained in that place till it was destroyed by the victors. But the long march in such a climate had exhausted the strength of many, and the special artist was among the number. On nearing Coomassie he could no longer trust to his own unaided powers of locomotion, so he laid hold on the tail of a mule which he saw ambling before him, and so was helped forward. The gentleman who was riding the mule turned round, when it proved to be Sir Garnet Wolseley himself, who, in answer to the exhausted artist's apologies, good-humouredly told him to 'hold on!' While coolness and courage are indispensable qualifications for the special artist, if he can sometimes accomplish a little harmless dissimulation he finds it very useful. In 1877, during the war between Russia and Turkey, a special artist overcame the difficulties he encountered in getting to the front by assuming the character of a camp-follower, and professing to sell composite candles, German sausages, Russian hams, dried fish, Dutch cheese, &c., and when passing Cossacks became importunate they were propitiated with a candle or two, a slice of cheese, or a packet of Roumanian tobacco. In like manner the artist who went to the port of Ferrol to accompany Cleopatra's Needle to London shipped on board the tug _Anglia_ as a coal-trimmer, and signed the usual articles as one of the crew, there being no room for passengers. After the successful voyage of the tug the artist left her at Gravesend, being anxious to bring his sketches to head-quarters; but until he was legally discharged from service he ran the unpleasant risk of being taken up for absconding from his ship. [Illustration: NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS STARTING FOR SIBERIA.] Not the least of a special artist's troubles is to get his sketches sent home without loss of time. Mr. Simpson, who has had a large and varied experience as a special artist, having been all round the world in that capacity, gives it as his opinion that the first duty of a special correspondent when he arrives at the scene of action is to find out the post-office, if he happens to be in a part of the world where such a civilised institution exists. He should take care to post all his packets himself, and never trust to any one else. He says, 'In all my various travels I never lost a packet but once, and that was during the week's fighting at the time of the Commune in Paris. There were three sketches in the packet. I was very dubious about letting them out of my hands, but I had been all the week with the correspondent of the _Times_, who had spent a considerable sum of money upon messengers to get his letters taken through the lines outside Paris and off to London. I ventured to let my packet go with his, thinking it was safe, but neither of them ever reached their destination.' In connexion with this subject I may quote the following story related by Mr. Prior to the editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_:--'I remember one time when I was attached to Mehemet Ali's head-quarters in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish war. The Turkish censor stopped no fewer than six weeks of my sketches. Things were getting desperate. Our people were telegraphing out to know whether I was alive or dead; and, finding that something must be done, I determined to see the thing through or leave the camp. It so happened that I had been the witness of some peculiarly atrocious deeds perpetrated by Turks upon Bulgarians, so I set to work and drew half-a-dozen faithful representations of the sufferings which I had witnessed. Armed with these I went up to the censor's office and asked that they might be stamped for transmission home. The censor looked at the first and said it was ridiculous. Couldn't pass that; no such atrocities had ever been committed; and so forth. The second was condemned in the same way, and so on until the last was reached. When he had rejected that also I said to him very deliberately, "You are going to pass every one of these sketches!" "On the contrary," said he, "I am going to tear them up." "If you do," said I, "I shall draw not only six but twelve pictures worse than these, and send them home by my own messenger." "I will have him arrested then," said the censor. "Very well, then, in that case I shall leave the camp at once, and in London I will draw twenty pictures all worse than these, and they will all be published, so that people may see the real truth about how you are behaving here." The censor, like a sensible man, saw that it was no use carrying things with too high a hand, and came to terms. He admitted he had stopped all my sketches, promised to do so no more, and I left him with my atrocity pictures in my pocket, assuring him that the first sketch of mine that he stopped again the whole series should go to London by the next steamer. I never had any more trouble with him in that respect, though he paid me out by having me arrested some months later.' [Illustration: CAMP OF THE 'TIMES' AND 'ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS'' CORRESPONDENTS ATTACKED BY WOLVES. BULGARIA, 1877.] During the Franco-German War Mr. Simpson often proved the advantage of his plan of always posting his sketches himself. At the fall of Strasburg he was in the advanced trench when the white flag was displayed from the tower of the cathedral. It was late in the evening when he got home to bed, but he was up with the first streak of dawn finishing his sketch of the historical event he had witnessed the day before. He then walked five miles to General Werder's head-quarters to post the sketch. He wasted no time in trying to get a horse or carriage, in which he might have failed, nor would he trust the packet to a messenger. He knew that the slightest delay would postpone the publication of the sketch for a whole week. The sketch arrived in time, as he had calculated, for the next publication, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that on this occasion, as on many others, his promptitude and energy had well served the interests of the journal he represented. [Illustration: NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS' HUTS ON THE BATTLE-FIELD OF KACELJEVO, 1877.] A special artist has to encounter many troubles and vexations apart from the dangers and difficulties of war time. When Mr. Simpson was at Brindisi, on his way to the opening of the Suez Canal, wishing to sketch the town and fortifications, he ensconced himself in a snug corner, well sheltered from the 'Bora,' or cold wind that was blowing, and had settled down comfortably to work, when he was interrupted by a man who addressed him in Italian, a language Simpson did not understand. He, however, made out that the man's 'padre' or master would not like Simpson to be there; but the latter replied in plain English that he cared nothing for his 'padre,' that he had the permission of the Commandant to go where he pleased, and so he went on with his sketching. After much unintelligible talk the man attempted to stop the sketcher's view by standing between him and the town, but finding the sketching went on just the same, he suddenly went away and then returned with a gun, pointing it in a threatening manner towards Simpson, who thought the gun was perhaps not loaded, or at all events that the man would never be such a fool as to shoot him, so he merely gave a majestic wave of his hand and went on with his work. The man's rage then increased to such a degree that he seized the butt end of his gun, uttering a volley of curses, and from the word 'testa' Simpson supposed the man wanted to smash his head. However he never flinched, and the man, lowering his gun, muttered something about the 'Cani,' and went off again. Presently he returned dragging with him a huge dog. Simpson felt more afraid of the dog than the man, but it turned out that the dog had more sense than his master and refused on any terms to attack the artist. He bolted, the man after him, and Simpson then armed himself with two stones in case the attack should be renewed, resolving, like Tell when he devoted one of his arrows to Gessler, that one stone should be for the dog and the other for his oppressor. The man however could not get the dog to return to the attack. He had exhausted the whole of his resources, and was evidently astonished and annoyed to find he had failed to frighten the artist, so he finished off with a torrent of curses and then gradually calmed down. He remained watching the completion of the sketch, and then obligingly favoured the artist with some criticisms on his work. He pointed out that a ship in the harbour had been forgotten, and could not understand that it had been purposely left out because it interfered with one of the principal buildings. In this instance it was perhaps best for both parties that they did not understand each other's language; but the special artist is occasionally placed at a disadvantage by not understanding the language of the country where he happens to be. However it rarely leads to more than a temporary embarrassment, and is often the cause of more amusement than vexation. Mr. G. H. Andrews on one occasion desired to have a couple of eggs for breakfast, but could not make the maid of the inn comprehend his meaning. He tried all he knew of French, Flemish, and German, but the girl shook her head. At length a bright idea struck the artist. He drew from his pocket a pencil and note-book, and sketched a couple of oval forms, meaning them for eggs, and explained by gestures that _that_ was what he wanted. The girl's face brightened at once when she saw the sketch, and with a nod of intelligence she tripped away. In a few minutes she returned and presented the hungry artist with--_a pair of spectacles!_ The late Mr. S. Read, who was one of the first special artists employed on the pictorial press, travelled much abroad, yet he knew little or nothing of any language save his mother tongue. Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, were all visited by him, and he got on very well without speaking the language of any of those countries. He was a man of genial humour, accustomed to make the best of everything, and not easily put out by trifles. He was once travelling in the south of France when a fellow-passenger in the train accosted him in French, and was much surprised to find he was not understood. 'Vat!' said the Frenchman; 'you travel and speak no French! Speak you German?' 'No.' 'Nor Italian?' 'No.' 'Spanish?' 'No.' 'Ah, mon Dieu! you travel and speak noting!' and with a pitying grimace and shrug of the shoulders he looked round at the other passengers. Presently our artist took his revenge. As they were passing a town with a ruined castle on a hill he said, with much fervour, addressing the Frenchman,-- 'How beautifully that old tower is relieved by the dark foliage! What a splendid contrast is the cold grey of the hill behind! How harmoniously the distance is blended with the middle distance, and the middle distance with the foreground, by means of the bridge across the river!' The Frenchman stared, stammered, and confessed he did not comprehend. 'What!' said our artist; 'you travel and do not understand English!' 'Ver leetle.' 'Do you speak Scotch?' 'Non, m'sieur.' 'Nor Irish!' 'Non.' 'Welsh?' 'Non.' 'Suffolk?' 'Non, non, m'sieur.' With an exact imitation of the Frenchman's contemptuous shrug our friend turned to their fellow-travellers amid the loud laughter of those who understood the joke. When the special artist exercises his vocation at home, though he lacks the excitement of danger, he meets with many amusing incidents. An artist who attended the meeting of the British Association at Lincoln many years ago desired to sketch the house which was reputed to have been the residence of John o' Gaunt, and asked the waiter at the hotel if he could direct him to it. 'Johnny Gaunt, Sir?' said the waiter, evidently puzzled; 'I don't know him, Sir, but I'll inquire.' In a few minutes he returned and said he had inquired at the bar, but that no such person as Johnny Gaunt resided thereabouts. Another, who was something of a wag, was once making a sketch in the heart of St. Giles's; there were no School Boards in those days, and numbers of idle street boys surrounded our sketcher, performing all manner of bewildering gymnastics. Not at all disturbed, however, he amused himself by asking his young friends numerous questions, all of which were answered with rapid pertness. At last he inquired of one active imp if he could read. 'No, I can't read,' said the young gentleman, 'but I can stand on my head and drink a quartern o' gin.' The methods pursued by special artists in obtaining their sketches are as various as the methods of painters in producing their pictures, or of authors in writing their books. One man uses a very small sketch-book, another prefers a large one, but they all require to supplement their hurried sketches with marginal notes. When there is not time to sketch a complete cow, it is good to write underneath the sketch, 'This is a cow.' Many events have to be sketched that last only a few minutes, and in such cases some little mistakes will occur even with old practitioners. Literary correspondents are liable to the same misfortune. At a certain royal marriage in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, the Lord Chamberlain obligingly sent a gentleman to attend the members of the press, and inform them as to the name and rank of the distinguished guests as they entered the chapel. The correspondents courteously allowed the artists of the pictorial press to take front places, so that some of their number were unable to see what was going on, and had to trust to their comrades for information. When the Duke of A----, in full Highland costume, entered the chapel, there was a general inquiry, 'Who is that?' 'That,' said the gentleman from the Lord Chamberlain's department, 'is the Duke of A----, the great Mac Callum More.' 'Who is it?' cried some of the gentlemen in the background, and the name was passed on, but by the time it reached the outer fringe of correspondents it was changed into 'The Duke of A---- with the Great Claymore,' and under that style and title his grace's name figured in at least one newspaper next day. What may be called the shorthand notes for a sketch are sometimes difficult to make out without explanation. On one occasion a sketch was under consideration, when the editor made certain suggestions to the artist, who was very good natured, and of a most pliant disposition. 'I think, you know,' said the editor, 'if you were to add two or three more figures in the foreground it would improve the composition and help to detach the principal group from this windmill.' 'Well, the fact is,' replied the artist, 'what you call a windmill I intended for a man on horseback, but if you think it will come better as a windmill I'll alter it with pleasure.' [Illustration: THE SPECIAL ARTIST ON THE ROAD.] FOOTNOTE: [1] This incident was illustrated in _Punch_, and lest I should be accused of using up old material, I must explain that the hero of the adventure, on his return to England, told the story to one of the _Punch_ artists, who made a sketch of the incident, which was afterwards published. CHAPTER X. Artists who have assisted in founding the Pictorial Press--Sir John Gilbert, R.A., G. H. Thomas, and others--Wood-Engraving and its Connexion with the Pictorial Press--Other Methods of producing Illustrations--Wood-Engraving in England before and after Bewick's time--Its wide Diffusion owing to the kindred Art of Printing--The resources of the Art developed by Pictorial Newspapers--Conclusion. Newspapers a Necessity of Civilised Life--The _Acta Diurna_ of the Romans--Early Newspapers in Venice, Germany, and the Low Countries--List of Illustrated Newspapers published Abroad. The establishment of the pictorial press as an English institution was greatly aided by the active co-operation of many distinguished artists, the very foremost in this connexion being Sir John Gilbert. Other Royal Academicians and eminent painters have drawn on wood for the illustrated newspapers, but Gilbert stands out pre-eminently the great popular illustrator of the Victorian era. He it was who first gave a distinctive character to the illustration of news. He seemed to possess an inborn knowledge of the essentials of newspaper art, and could express by a few freely drawn lines and touches the hurried movement of street crowds or the state and dignity of Court ceremonies. Whether he had to draw a knight in armour or a gentleman in a paletôt he did it in a way exactly suited to rapid engraving and printing. The feeling which, in his pictures, makes him delight in battle-fields, blazoned banners, velvet and gold, made his drawings on wood brilliant in handling and always picturesque. It was most fortunate that the commencement of his career was coincident with the foundation of the pictorial press. William Harvey and other artists were already in the field, but Gilbert's style was better adapted to newspaper work. His quickness and versatility made him just the man that was wanted. Harvey had drawn some of the subjects published in the _Observer_, but his style was not suited to the illustration of current events. Nothing came amiss to Gilbert, who supplied the pictorial press for twenty years with a constant succession of effective drawings, embracing all kinds of subjects, and he never failed in that most essential quality of a newspaper artist--_punctuality_. It is as the popular illustrator that the name of Gilbert stands at the head of that numerous band of artists who contributed to the foundation of illustrated journalism in this country. The late George H. Thomas was not less successful than Gilbert in the spirit and vigour of his drawings. His bold and eminently artistic pencil alternated with Gilbert's in portraying the exciting events following the revolutionary period of 1848-49. His contributions to the _Illustrated London News_ during the Crimean war were marked by great force and truthfulness, and procured him the notice and patronage of her Majesty Queen Victoria. Mr. Thomas's premature death in 1868 was a great loss to the world of art in general, and to the pictorial press in particular. It is remarkable that many of our distinguished artists should have begun their careers as engravers or draughtsmen on wood. The production of works in black and white, whether as engravings or drawings, is no doubt good artistic practice in the study of light and shade, and the young artist who draws on wood as a means of helping him to live while he is waiting for fame, is at the same time pursuing a useful branch of his art education. Luke Fildes, A.R.A., Birket Foster, W. Small, R. C. Woodville, C. Gregory, A.R.A., and many others began in this way, and among deceased artists occur the names of S. Read, E. Duncan, and F. W. Topham. The two last were both engravers. All these men have done good work on the pictorial press, and some of them first won distinction through its medium. Both the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Graphic_ may claim to have done good service to art and artists in this respect. Their pages have always been open to young artists of ability, and while they have helped forward struggling genius they have opened up new sources of enjoyment to the general public. The pictorial press has hitherto been mainly dependent on the art of wood-engraving for its illustrations, but latterly several inventions have been used, not unsuccessfully, in the production of blocks in relief, to be printed in the same manner as woodcuts. The great improvements that have been made in surface printing render it probable that in the future these _process_ blocks may be extensively used in illustrated newspapers. They are recommended by their cheapness and rapid production; and as the intermediate process of engraving is dispensed with, they retain the exact touch of the artist, and are not liable to be mutilated by careless or hasty engraving. It may be said of all these inventions, however, that they are best suited for slight sketches, and should not be applied to the production of highly-finished subjects. For the latter there is nothing better than a woodcut, which, when well executed and carefully printed, has a richness superior to any other method of engraving. But in the present day competition is so great and the march of events is so rapid that cheapness and rapidity of production will override artistic excellence, and _process_-engraving, as it is called, will probably be the method adopted for the _daily_ pictorial press, the era of which is approaching. Wood-engraving, as an art, scarcely existed in this country before the time of Thomas Bewick. To him we owe its revival, and he was thus indirectly concerned in the creation of the pictorial newspaper. Though we have seen that the _Grub Street Journal_ and the _Observer_ on a few occasions used copperplate illustrations, it is perfectly certain that an illustrated newspaper, properly so-called, never could have existed but for the art of wood-engraving. It was an essential agent in bringing into life this novel offspring of the printing press, just as it assisted in the birth of the old 'block books.' When Caxton brought the art of printing into this country the woodcuts printed at his press were probably executed by the printers whom he brought with him. His successors illustrated their books in the same way, and even after wood-engraving was practised in England as a distinct profession many of the illustrations in books and pamphlets were the work of printers. When something of superior design and finish was wanted, ready-made woodcuts were procured from Nuremberg or Lyons, then the chief marts for such productions. The blocks so obtained were sometimes used without much regard to the book in which they were printed. Cuts originally designed for an edition of _Ovid_ appeared in the Bible, and no notice was taken of this mixture of sacred and profane things. Albert Dürer's influence on the art of wood-engraving was very great, but it never extended to this country. Hans Holbein, who came to England two years before Dürer's death, made a few designs for the wood-engravers during his long residence here. His transient use of the art, however, did not raise it to a better condition, and printers continued to be the chief producers of woodcuts. In the time of Queen Elizabeth there flourished a printer and engraver of the name of John Day, who took for his mark an emblematic device of the day-spring of the reformed religion, with the motto, 'Arise, for it is Day.' The best illustrated books of that period were produced by him. About this time the art was rapidly declining in other countries, but in England it was in a better condition than at any previous period. It soon, however, declined in this country also, but was kept alive by Edward Kirkall, John Baptiste Jackson, and others, until it was revived by Thomas Bewick. The low condition of the art of wood-engraving in this country was chiefly owing to the want of good designers, and it was not until a man arose who possessed the power to _draw_ as well as to _engrave_ that an English school of wood-engraving was created. Bewick possessed the artistic faculty as a direct gift from nature; and though it was from accidental circumstances that he was led to exercise this innate power in drawing and engraving on wood, he soon discovered of what the art was capable, and devoted his chief attention to it. He drew such things as he understood and had studied from nature, and thoroughly comprehending the scope and power of wood-engraving, he was able, with little labour, to produce the best results. At the time of Bewick's death, in 1828, England had scarcely recovered from the exhausting wars of Napoleon, trade was stagnant, and taxation was heavy. The mass of the people had no money to spend on such luxuries as illustrated books, and the enterprise of publishers was confined to the production of the well-known 'Annuals' of that day; but they were illustrated with steel engravings, and were only purchased by the wealthier classes. Such works as _Robinson Crusoe_ and the _Pilgrim's Progress_, for which there is always a demand, were illustrated by Cruikshank and Harvey. There was _Northcote's Fables_, on which all the best engravers of the day were employed; but it was not until the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge began its operations, and Charles Knight took the lead in illustrated literature, that wood-engraving began to be extensively used. The art was so little known that when the woodcuts of the _Penny Magazine_ began to attract attention a nobleman of that day spoke of them as the productions of a new art. Illustrations were so seldom used that the preparation of even a small woodcut was of much moment to all concerned. I have heard the late William Harvey relate that when Whittingham, the well-known printer, wanted a new cut for his 'Chiswick Press' series, he would write to Harvey and John Thompson, the engraver, appointing a meeting at Chiswick, when printer, designer, and engraver talked over the matter with as much deliberation as if they were about to produce a costly national monument, and after they had settled all points over a snug supper, the result of their labours was the production, months afterwards, of a small woodcut measuring perhaps two inches by three. At this time only about a dozen persons, besides Bewick's pupils, were practising the art of wood-engraving in England, and in France the art was so low that a few years later the blocks for the _Magazin Pittoresque_ were sent from Paris to London to be engraved. In Germany, the cradle of the art, it languished as in other countries, while in America, a country which is now taking a leading part in the cultivation of wood-engraving, the art was almost unknown as a native production. It is now in use all over the civilised world, and there is scarcely a capital city without its newspaper illustrated with woodcuts. It has even penetrated to the sunless regions of ice and snow. In the Library of the South Kensington Museum there is a book with illustrations drawn and engraved on wood by Esquimaux! The cause of this wide diffusion and extended employment of the art of wood-engraving is undoubtedly its close alliance with the kindred art of printing. No other method of engraving lends itself so easily to the rapid productions of the printing-press. From the earliest days of printing the two arts have advanced hand in hand, aiding in the growth of knowledge and the spread of civilisation. The application of steam to the art of printing revolutionised the world of typography, and wood-engraving was not slow in adapting itself to the new conditions. The advancing spirit of education created a demand for cheap knowledge. Penny magazines and pictorial newspapers came into existence. The steam printing-press spread them far and wide, and wood-engraving since the time of Bewick has shown that it possesses capabilities which that genuine old artist would have rejoiced to behold. In tracing the origin and progress of the pictorial press I have confined my researches to British journalism, but the subject might be widely extended. From the days of the _Acta Diurna_ of the Romans something in the shape of a newspaper appears to have been a necessity of civilised life. Soon after the invention of printing small news-sheets appeared in various towns of Germany and in Venice. In the Low Countries an illustrated war gazette was published as early as 1605. It was called the _Niewetijdinghe_, and it was the precursor of the _Gazette van Antwerpen_, which survived till 1805. During the Spanish and Austrian rule in Belgium each town had its privileged newspaper. As the printers of those days were well acquainted with the art of wood-engraving, it is not unlikely that some of these early newspapers contained illustrations. The earlier newspapers of Holland were chiefly devoted to commercial intelligence, and afforded little scope for illustration, but illustrated broadsides were not uncommon. In Germany the first regular newspaper appeared in 1615, when the art of wood-engraving had greatly declined; and when the physician Renaudot started the first newspaper in France, in 1631, if the idea of illustrating it had occurred to him he would have had to rely on his printer for the production of the woodcuts. As, however, the low condition of illustrative art in the seventeenth century did not deter English printers of 'News-books' from seeking such pictorial aid as they could obtain, it is highly probable their Continental brethren did the same, however insufficient might be the means at their command. When the history of our own age comes to be written the pictorial newspapers will form an inexhaustible store-house for the historian. The following list of cities in Europe, America, and the English colonies, with the names of the illustrated newspapers published by them, will convey some idea of the extent to which pictorial journalism has spread during the last forty years:-- PARIS: _L'Illustration._ _Le Monde Illustré._ _L'Univers Illustré._ _La République Illustrée._ _La France Illustrée._ BERLIN: _Deutsche Illustrirte Zeitung._ STUTTGART: _Uber Land und Meer._ _Das Buch für Alle._ LEIPZIG: _Illustrirte Zeitung._ VIENNA: _Neue Illustrirte Zeitung._ MILAN: _L'Illustrazione Universale._ _L'Illustrazione Italiana._ MADRID: _La Illustracion Espanòla._ BARCELONA: _La Illustracion Catòlica._ WARSAW: _Klosy._ _Tycodnik Powszechny._ AMSTERDAM: _De Hollandsche Illustratie._ ST. PETERSBURG: _Universal Illustration._ COPENHAGEN: _Illustreret Tidende._ CHRISTIANIA: _Nu Illustreret Tidende._ NEW YORK: _Harper's Weekly._ _Harper's Bazaar._ _Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper._ _Spirit of the Times._ _The Daily Graphic._ _Illustrirte Zeitung_ (printed in German). WASHINGTON: _Illustrated Washington Chronicle._ MONTREAL: _Canadian Illustrated News._ _Le Monde Illustré_ (French). SYDNEY: _Illustrated Sydney News._ MELBOURNE: _Illustrated Australian News._ _Australian Sketcher._ MEXICO: _Revista Universal._ MONTEVIDEO: _La Illustracion Uruguaya._ RIO DE JANEIRO: _A Illustraçao._ CAPE TOWN: _South African Illustrated News._ THE END. [Illustration] London Printed by STRANGEWAYS AND SONS Tower Street Upper St Martin's Lane 
16447	----	[Illustration: "THEN IT'S ALL LIES! LIES AND MURDER!"] THE CLARION BY SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W.D. STEVENS _Published October 1914_ TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER MYRON ADAMS WHO LIVED AND DIED A SOLDIER OF IDEALS THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY INSCRIBED CONTENTS I. THE ITINERANT II. OUR LEADING CITIZEN III. ESMÉ IV. THE SHOP V. THE SCION VI. LAUNCHED VII. THE OWNER VIII. A PARTNERSHIP IX. GLIMMERINGS X. IN THE WAY OF TRADE XI. THE INITIATE XII. THE THIN EDGE XIII. NEW BLOOD XIV. THE ROOKERIES XV. JUGGERNAUT XVI. THE STRATEGIST XVII. REPRISALS XVIII. MILLY XIX. DONNYBROOK XX. THE LESSER TEMPTING XXI. THE POWER OF PRINT XXII. PATRIOTS XXIII. CREEPING FLAME XXIV. A FAILURE IN TACTICS XXV. STERN LOGIC XXVI. THE PARTING XXVII. THE GREATER TEMPTING XXVIII. "WHOSE BREAD I EAT" XXIX. CERTINA CHARLEY XXX. ILLUMINATION XXXI. THE VOICE OF THE PROPHET XXXII. THE WARNING XXXIII. THE GOOD FIGHT XXXIV. VOX POPULI XXXV. TEMPERED METAL XXXVI. THE VICTORY XXXVII. MCGUIRE ELLIS WAKES UP XXXVIII. THE CONVERT ILLUSTRATIONS "THEN IT'S ALL LIES! LIES AND MURDER!" HELP AND CURE ARE AT THEIR BECK AND CALL "KILL IT," SHE URGED SOFTLY "DON'T GO NEAR HIM. DON'T LOOK" THE CLARION CHAPTER I THE ITINERANT Between two flames the man stood, overlooking the crowd. A soft breeze, playing about the torches, sent shadows billowing across the massed folk on the ground. Shrewdly set with an eye to theatrical effect, these phares of a night threw out from the darkness the square bulk of the man's figure, and, reflecting garishly upward from the naked hemlock of the platform, accentuated, as in bronze, the bosses of the face, and gleamed deeply in the dark, bold eyes. Half of Marysville buzzed and chattered in the park-space below, together with many representatives of the farming country near by, for the event had been advertised with skilled appeal: cf. the "Canoga County Palladium," April 15, 1897, page 4. The occupant of the platform, having paused, after a self-introductory trumpeting of professional claims, was slowly and with an eye to oratorical effect moistening lips and throat from a goblet at his elbow. Now, ready to resume, he raised a slow hand in an indescribable gesture of mingled command and benevolence. The clamor subsided to a murmur, over which his voice flowed and spread like oil subduing vexed waters. "Pain. Pain. Pain. The primal curse, the dominant tragedy of life. Who among you, dear friends, but has felt it? You men, slowly torn upon the rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the torches); "all you who have known burning nights and pallid mornings, I offer you r-r-r-release!" On the final word his face lighted up as from an inner fire of inspiration, and he flung his arms wide in an embracing benediction. The crowd, heavy-eyed, sodden, wondering, bent to him as the torch-fires bent to the breath of summer. With the subtle sense of the man who wrings his livelihood from human emotions, he felt the moment of his mastery approaching. Was it fully come yet? Were his fish securely in the net? Betwixt hovering hands he studied his audience. His eyes stopped with a sense of being checked by the steady regard of one who stood directly in front of him only a few feet away; a solid-built, crisply outlined man of forty, carrying himself with a practical erectness, upon whose face there was a rather disturbing half-smile. The stranger's hand was clasped in that of a little girl, wide-eyed, elfin, and lovely. "Release," repeated the man of the torches. "Blessed release from your torments. Peace out of pain." The voice was of wonderful quality, rich and unctuous, the labials dropping, honeyed, from the lips. It wooed the crowd, lured it, enmeshed it. But the magician had, a little, lost confidence in the power of his spell. His mind dwelt uneasily upon his well-garbed auditor. What was he doing there, with his keen face and worldly, confident carriage, amidst those clodhoppers? Was there peril in his presence? Your predatory creature hunts ever with fear in his heart. "Guardy," the voice of the elfin child rang silvery in the silence, as she pressed close to her companion. "Guardy, is he preaching?" "Yes, my dear little child." The orator saw his opportunity and swooped upon it, with a flash of dazzling teeth from under his pliant lips. "This sweet little girl asks if I am preaching. I thank her for the word. Preaching, indeed! Preaching a blessed gospel, for this world of pain and suffering; a gospel of hope and happiness and joy. I offer you, here, now, this moment of blessed opportunity, the priceless boon of health. It is within reach of the humblest and poorest as well as the millionaire. The blessing falls on all like the gentle rain from heaven." His hands, outstretched, quivering as if to shed the promised balm, slowly descended below the level of the platform railing. Behind the tricolored cheesecloth which screened him from the waist down something stirred. The hands ascended again into the light. In each was a bottle. The speaker's words came now sharp, decisive, compelling. "Here it is! Look at it, my friends. The wonder of the scientific world, the never-failing panacea, the despair of the doctors. All diseases yield to it. It revivifies the blood, reconstructs the nerves, drives out the poisons which corrupt the human frame. It banishes pain, sickness, weakness, and cheats death of his prey. Oh, grave, where is thy victory? Oh, death, where is thy power? Overcome by my marvelous discovery! Harmless as water! Sweet on the tongue as honey! Potent as a miracle! By the grace of Heaven, which has bestowed this secret upon me, I have saved five thousand men, women, and children from sure doom, in the last three years, through my swift and infallible remedy, Professor Certain's Vitalizing Mixture; as witness my undenied affidavit, sworn to before Almighty God and a notary public and published in every newspaper in the State." Wonder and hope exhaled in a sigh from the assemblage. People began to stir, to shift from one foot to another, to glance about them nervously. Professor Certain had them. It needed but the first thrust of hand into pocket to set the avalanche of coin rolling toward the platform. From near the speaker a voice piped thinly:-- "Will it ease my cough?" The orator bent over, and his voice was like a benign hand upon the brow of suffering. "Ease it? You'll never know you had a cough after one bottle." "We-ell, gimme--" "Just a moment, my friend." The Professor was not yet ready. "Put your dollar back. There's enough to go around. Oh, Uncle Cal! Step up here, please." An old negro, very pompous and upright, made his way to the steps and mounted. "You all know old Uncle Cal Parks, my friends. You've seen him hobbling and hunching around for years, all twisted up with rheumatics. He came to me yesterday, begging for relief, and we began treatment with the Vitalizing Mixture right off. Look at him now. Show them what you can do, uncle." Wild-eyed, the old fellow gazed about at the people. "Glory! Hallelujah!" Emotional explosives left over from the previous year's revival burst from his lips. He broke into a stiff, but prankish double-shuffle. "I'd like to try some o' that on my old mare," remarked a facetious-minded rustic, below, and a titter followed. "Good for man or beast," retorted the Professor with smiling amiability. "You've seen what the Vitalizing Mixture has done for this poor old colored man. It will do as much or more for any of you. And the price is Only One Dollar!" The voice double-capitalized the words. "Don't, for the sake of one hundred little cents, put off the day of cure. Don't waste your chance. Don't let a miserable little dollar stand between you and death. Come, now. Who's first?" The victim of the "cough" was first, closely followed by the mare-owning wit. Then the whole mass seemed to be pressing forward, at once. Like those of a conjurer, the deft hands of the Professor pushed in and out of the light, snatching from below the bottles handed up to him, and taking in the clinking silver and fluttering greenbacks. And still they came, that line of grotesques, hobbling, limping, sprawling their way to the golden promise. Never did Pied Piper flute to creatures more bemused. Only once was there pause, when the dispenser of balm held aloft between thumb and finger a cart-wheel dollar. "Phony!" he said curtly, and flipped it far into the darkness. "Don't any more of you try it on," he warned, as the thwarted profferer of the counterfeit sidled away, and there was, in his tone, a dominant ferocity. Presently the line of purchasers thinned out. The Vitalizing Mixture had exhausted its market. But only part of the crowd had contributed to the levy. Mainly it was the men, whom the "spiel" had lured. Now for the women. The voice, the organ of a genuine artist, took on a new cadence, limpid and tender. "And now, we come to the sufferings of those who bear pain with the fortitude of the angels. Our women-folk! How many here are hiding that dreadful malady, cancer? Hiding it, when help and cure are at their beck and call. Lady," he bent swiftly to the slattern under the torch and his accents were a healing effluence, "with my soothing, balmy oils, you can cure yourself in three weeks, or your money back." "I do' know haow you knew," faltered the woman. "I ain't told no one yet. Kinder hoped it wa'n't thet, after all." He brooded over her compassionately. "You've suffered needlessly. Soon it would have been too late. The Vitalizing Mixture will keep up your strength, while the soothing, balmy oils drive out the poison, and heal up the sore. Three and a half for the two. Thank you. And is there some suffering friend who you can lead to the light?" The woman hesitated. She moved out to the edge of the crowd, and spoke earnestly to a younger woman, whose comely face was scarred with the chiseling of sleeplessness. "Joe, he wouldn't let me," protested the younger woman. "He'd say 't was a waste." "But ye'll be cured," cried the other in exaltation. "Think of it. Ye'll sleep again o' nights." The woman's hand went to her breast, with a piteous gesture. "Oh, my God! D'yeh think it could be true?" she cried. "Accourse it's true! Didn't yeh hear whut he sayed? Would he dast swear to it if it wasn't true?" Tremulously the younger woman moved forward, clutching her shawl about her. "Could yeh sell me half a bottle to try it, sir?" she asked. The vender shook his head. "Impossible, my dear madam. Contrary to my fixed professional rule. But, I'll tell you what I will do. If, in three days you're not better, you can have your money back." She began painfully to count out her coins. Reaching impatiently for his price, the Professor found himself looking straight into the eyes of the well-dressed stranger. "Are you going to take that woman's money?" The question was low-toned but quite clear. An uneasy twitching beset the corners of the professional brow. For just the fraction of a second, the outstretched hand was stayed. Then:-- "That's what I am. And all the others I can get. Can I sell _you_ a bottle?" Behind the suavity there was the impudence of the man who is a little alarmed, and a little angry because of the alarm. "Why, yes," said the other coolly. "Some day I might like to know what's in the stuff." "Hand up your cash then. And here you are--Doctor. It _is_ 'Doctor,' ain't it?" "You've guessed it," returned the stranger. [Illustration: HELP AND CURE ARE AT THEIR BECK AND CALL.] At once the platform peddler became the opportunist orator again. "A fellow practitioner, in my audience, ladies and gentlemen; and doing me the honor of purchasing my cure. Sir," the splendid voice rose and soared as he addressed his newest client, "you follow the noblest of callings. My friends, I would rather heal a people's ills than determine their destinies." Giving them a moment to absorb that noble sentiment, he passed on to his next source of revenue: Dyspepsia. He enlarged and expatiated upon its symptoms until his subjects could fairly feel the grilling at the pit of their collective stomach. One by one they came forward, the yellow-eyed, the pasty-faced feeders on fried breakfasts, snatchers of hasty noon-meals, sleepers on gorged stomachs. About them he wove the glamour of his words, the arch-seducer, until the dollars fidgeted in their pockets. "Just one dollar the bottle, and pain is banished. Eat? You can eat a cord of hickory for breakfast, knots and all, and digest it in an hour. The Vitalizing Mixture does it." Assorted ills came next. In earlier spring it would have been pneumonia and coughs. Now it was the ailments that we have always with us: backache, headache, indigestion and always the magnificent promise. So he picked up the final harvest, gleaning his field. "Now,"--the rotund voice sunk into the confidential, sympathetic register, yet with a tone of saddened rebuke,--"there are topics that the lips shrink from when ladies are present. But I have a word for you young men. Young blood! Ah, young blood, and the fire of life! For that we pay a penalty. Yet we must not overpay the debt. To such as wish my private advice--_private_, I say, and sacredly confidential--" He broke off and leaned out over the railing. "Thousands have lived to bless the name of Professor Certain, and his friendship, at such a crisis; thousands, my friends. To such, I shall be available for consultation from nine to twelve to-morrow, at the Moscow Hotel. Remember the time and place. Men only. Nine to twelve. And all under the inviolable seal of my profession." Some quality of unexpressed insistence in the stranger--or was it the speaker's own uneasiness of spirit?--brought back the roving, brilliant eyes to the square face below. "A little blackmail on the side, eh?" The words were spoken low, but with a peculiar, abrupt crispness. This, then, was direct challenge. Professor Certain tautened. Should he accept it, or was it safer to ignore this pestilent disturber? Craft and anger thrust opposing counsels upon him. But determination of the issue came from outside. "Lemme through." From the outskirts of the crowd a rawboned giant forced his way inward. He was gaunt and unkempt as a weed in winter. "Here's trouble," remarked a man at the front. "Allus comes with a Hardscrabbler." "What's a Hardscrabbler?" queried the well-dressed man. "Feller from the Hardscrabble Settlement over on Corsica Lake. Tough lot, they are. Make their own laws, when they want any; run their place to suit themselves. Ain't much they ain't up to. Hoss-stealin', barn-burnin', boot-leggin', an' murder thrown in when--" "Be you the doctor was to Corsica Village two years ago?" The newcomer's high, droning voice cut short the explanation. "I was there, my friend. Testimonials and letters from some of your leading citizens attest the work--" "You give my woman morpheean." There was a hideous edged intonation in the word, like the whine of some plaintive and dangerous animal. "My friend!" The Professor's hand went forth in repressive deprecation. "We physicians give what seems to us best, in these cases." "A reg'lar doctor from Burnham seen her," pursued the Hardscrabbler, in the same thin wail, moving nearer, but not again raising his eyes to the other's face. Instead, his gaze seemed fixed upon the man's shining expanse of waistcoat. "He said you doped her with the morpheean you give her." "So your chickens come home to roost, Professor," said the stranger, in a half-voice. "Impossible," declared the Professor, addressing the Hardscrabbler. "You misunderstood him." "They took my woman away. They took her to the 'sylum." Foreboding peril, the people nearest the uncouth visitor had drawn away. Only the stranger held his ground; more than held it, indeed, for he edged almost imperceptibly nearer. He had noticed a fleck of red on the matted beard, where the lip had been bitten into. Also he saw that the Professor, whose gaze had so timorously shifted from his, was intent, recognizing danger; intent, and unafraid before the threat. "She used to cry fer it, my woman. Cry fer the morpheean like a baby." He sagged a step forward. "She don't haff to cry no more. She's dead." Whence had the knife leapt, to gleam so viciously in his hand? Almost as swiftly as it was drawn, the healer had snatched one of the heavy torch-poles from its socket. Almost, not quite. The fury leapt and struck; struck for that shining waistcoat, upon which his regard had concentrated, with an upward lunge, the most surely deadly blow known to the knife-fighter. Two other movements coincided, to the instant. From the curtain of cheesecloth the slight form of a boy shot upward, with brandished arms; and the square-built man reached the Hardscrabbler's jaw with a powerful and accurate swing. There was a scream of pain, a roar from the crowd, and an answering bellow from the quack in midair, for he had launched his formidable bulk over the rail, to plunge, a crushing weight, upon the would-be murderer, who lay stunned on the grass. For a moment the avenger ground him, with knees and fists; then was up and back on the platform. Already the city man had gained the flooring, and was bending above the child. There was a sprinkle of blood on the bright, rough boards. "Oh, my God! Boy-ee! Has he killed you?" "No: he isn't killed," said the stranger curtly. "Keep the people back. Lift down that torch." The Professor wavered on his legs, grasping at the rail for support. "You _are_ a doctor?" he gasped. "Yes." "Can you save him? Any money--" "Set the torch here." "Oh, Boyee, Boyee!" The great, dark man had dropped to his knees, his face a mask of agony. "Oh, the devil!" said the physician disgustedly. "You're no help. Clear a way there, some of you, so that I can get him to the hotel." Then, to the other. "Keep quiet. There's no danger. Only a flesh wound, but he's fainted." Carefully he swung the small form to his shoulder, and forced a way through the crowd, the little girl, who had followed him to the platform, composedly trotting along in his wake, while the Hardscrabbler, moaning from the pain of two broken ribs, was led away by a constable. Some distance behind, the itinerant wallowed like a drunken man, muttering brilliant bargain offers of good conduct to Almighty God, if "Boyee" were saved to him. Once in the little hotel room, the physician went about his business with swift decisiveness, aided by the mite of a girl, who seemed to know by instinct where to be and what to do in the way of handling towels, wash-basin, and the other simple paraphernalia required. Professor Certain was unceremoniously packed off to the drug store for bandages. When he returned the patient had recovered consciousness. "Where's Dad?" he asked eagerly. "Did he hurt Dad?" "No, Boyee." The big man was at the bedside in two long, velvety-footed steps. Struck by the extenuation of the final "y" in the term, the physician for the first time noted a very faint foreign accent, the merest echo of some alien tongue. "Are you in pain, Boyee?" "Not very much. It doesn't matter. Why did he want to kill you?" "Never mind that, now," interrupted the physician. "We'll get that scratch bound up, and then, young man, you'll go to sleep." Pallid as a ghost, the itinerant held the little hand during the process of binding the wound. "Boyee" essayed to smile, at the end, and closed his eyes. "Now we can leave him," said the physician. "Poppet, curl up in that chair and keep watch on our patient while this gentleman and I have a little talk in the outer room." With a brisk nod of obedience and comprehension, the elfin girl took her place, while the two men went out. "What do I owe you?" asked Professor Certain, as soon as the door had closed. "Nothing." "Oh, that won't do." "It will have to do." "Courtesy of the profession? But--" The other laughed grimly, cutting him short. "So you call yourself an M.D., do you?" "Call myself? I am. Regular degree from the Dayton Medical College." He sleeked down his heavy hair with a complacent hand. The physician snorted. "A diploma-mill. What did you pay for your M.D.?" "One hundred dollars, and it's as good as your four-year P. and S. course or any other, for my purposes," retorted the other, with hardihood. "What's more, I'm a member of the American Academy of Surgeons, with a special diploma from St. Luke's Hospital of Niles, Michigan, and a certificate of fellowship in the National Medical Scientific Fraternity. Pleased to meet a brother practitioner." The sneer was as palpable as it was cynical. "You've got all the fake trimmings, haven't you? Do those things pay?" "Do they! Better than your game, I'll bet. Name your own fee, now, and don't be afraid to make it strong." "I'm not in regular practice. I'm a naval surgeon on leave. Give your money to those poor devils you swindled to-night. I don't like the smell of it." "Oh, you can't rile me," returned the quack. "I don't blame you regulars for getting sore when you see us fellows culling out coin from under your very noses, that you can't touch." "Cull it, and welcome. But don't try to pass it on to me." "Well, I'd like to do something for you in return for what you did for my son." "Would you? Pay me in words, then, if you will and dare. What is your Vitalizing Mixture?" "That's my secret." "Liquor? Eh?" "Some." "Morphine?" "A little." "And the rest syrup and coloring matter, I suppose. A fine vitalizer!" "It gets the money," retorted the other. "And your soothing, balmy oils for cancer? Arsenious acid, I suppose, to eat it out?" "What if it is? As well that as anything else--for cancer." "Humph! I happened to see a patient you'd treated, two years ago, by that mild method. It wasn't cancer at all; only a benign tumor. Your soothing oils burned her breast off, like so much fire. She's dead now." "Oh, we all make mistakes." "But we don't all commit murder." "Rub it in, if you like to. You can't make me mad. Just the same, if it wasn't for what you've done for Boyee--" "Well, what about 'Boyee'?" broke in his persecutor quite undisturbed. "He seems a perfectly decent sort of human integer." The bold eyes shifted and softened abruptly. "He's the big thing in my life." "Bringing him up to the trade, eh?" "No, damn you!" "Damn me, if you like. But don't damn him. He seems to be a bit too good for this sort of thing." "To tell you the truth," said the other gloomily, "I was going to quit at the end of this year, anyway. But I guess this ends it now. Accidents like this hurt business. I guess this closes my tour." "Is the game playing out?" "Not exactly! Do you know what I took out of this town last night? One hundred and ten good dollars. And to-morrow's consultation is good for fifty more. That 'spiel' of mine is the best high-pitch in the business." "High-pitch?" "High-pitching," explained the quack, "is our term for the talk, the patter. You can sell sugar pills to raise the dead with a good-enough high-pitch. I've done it myself--pretty near. With a voice like mine, it's a shame to drop it. But I'm getting tired. And Boyee ought to have schooling. So, I'll settle down and try a regular proprietary trade with the Mixture and some other stuff I've got. I guess I can make printer's ink do the work. And there's millions in it if you once get a start. More than you can say of regular practice. I tried that, too, before I took up itinerating." He grinned. "A midge couldn't have lived on my receipts. By the way," he added, becoming grave, "what was your game in cutting in on my 'spiel'?" "Just curiosity." "You ain't a government agent or a medical society investigator?" The physician pulled out a card and handed it over. It read, "Mark Elliot, Surgeon, U.S.N." "Don't lose any sleep over me," he advised, then went to open the outer door, in response to a knock. A spectacled young man appeared. "They told me Professor Certain was here," he said. "What is it?" asked the quack. "About that stabbing. I'm the editor of the weekly 'Palladium.'" "Glad to see you, Mr. Editor. Always glad to see the Press. Of course you won't print anything about this affair?" The visitor blinked. "You wouldn't hardly expect me to kill the story." "Not? Does anybody else but me give you page ads.?" "Well, of course, we try to favor our advertisers," said the spectacled one nervously. "That's business! I'll be coming around again next year, if this thing is handled right, and I think my increased business might warrant a double page, then." "But the paper will have to carry something about it. Too many folks saw it happen." "Just say that a crazy man tried to interrupt the lecture of Professor Andrew Leon Certain, the distinguished medical savant, and was locked up by the authorities." "But the knifing. How is the boy?" "Somebody's been giving you the wrong tip. There wasn't any knife," replied the Professor with a wink. "You may send me two hundred and fifty copies of the paper. And, by the way, do what you can to get that poor lunatic off easy, and I'll square the bills--with commission." "I'll see the Justice first thing in the morning," said the editor with enthusiasm. "Much obliged, Professor Certain. And the article will be all right. I'll show you a proof. It mightn't be a bad notion for you to drop in at the jail with me, and see Neal, the man that stab--that interrupted the meeting, before he gets talking with any one else." "So it mightn't. But what about my leaving, now?" Professor Certain asked of the physician. "Go ahead. I'll keep watch." Shortly after the itinerant had gone out with the exponent of free and untrammeled journalism, the boy awoke and looked about with fevered anxiety for his father. The little nurse was beside him at once. "You mustn't wiggle around," she commanded. "Do you want a drink?" Gratefully he drank the water which she held to his lips. "Where's my Dad?" he asked. "He's gone out. He'll come back pretty soon. Lie down." He sank back, fixing his eyes upon her. "Will you stay with me till he comes?" She nodded. "Does it hurt you much?" Her cool and tiny fingers touched his forehead, soothingly. "You're very hot. I think you've got a little fever." "Don't take your hand away." His eyes closed, but presently opened again. "I think you're very pretty," he said shyly. "Do you? I like to have people think I'm pretty. Uncle Guardy scolds me for it. Not really, you know, but just pretending. He says I'm vain." "Is that your uncle, the gentleman that fixed my arm?" "Yes. I call him Uncle Guardy because he's my guardian, too." "I like him. He looks good. But I like you better. I like you a lot." "Everybody does," replied the girl with dimpling complacency. "They can't help it. It's because I'm me!" For a moment he brooded. "Am I going to die?" he asked quite suddenly. "Die? Of course not." "Would you be sorry if I did?" "Yes. If you died you couldn't like me any more. And I want everybody to like me and think me pretty." "I'm glad I'm not. It would be tough on Dad." "My Uncle Guardy thinks your father is a bad man," said the fairy, not without a spice of malice. Up rose the patient from his pillow. "Then I hate him. He's a liar. My Dad is the best man in the world." A brighter hue than fever burnt in his cheeks, and his hand went to his shoulder. "I won't have his bandages on me," he cried. But she had thrown herself upon his arm, and pushed him back. "Oh, don't! Please don't," she besought. "Uncle Guardy told me to keep you perfectly quiet. And I've made you sit up--" "What's all this commotion?" demanded Dr. Elliot brusquely, from the door. "You said my father was a bad man," cried the outraged patient. "Lie back, youngster." The physician's hand was gentle, but very firm. "I don't recall saying any such thing. Where did you get it?" "I said you _thought_ he was a bad man," declared the midget girl. "I know you do. You wouldn't have spoken back to him down in the square if you hadn't." Her uncle turned upon her a slow, cool, silent regard. "Esmé, you talk too much," he said finally. "I'm a little ashamed of you, as a nurse. Take your place there by the bedside. And you, young man, shut your ears and eyes and go to sleep." Hardly had the door closed behind the autocrat of the sick-room, when his patient turned softly. "You're crying," he accused. "I'm not!" The denial was the merest gasp. The long lashes quivered with tears. "Yes, you are. He was mean to you." "He's _never_ mean to me." The words came in a sobbing rush. "But he--he--stopped loving me just for that minute. And when anybody I love stops loving me I want to die!" The boy's brown hands crept timidly to her arm. "I like you awfully," he said. "And I'll never stop, not even for a minute!" "Won't you?" Again she was the child coquette. "But we're going away to-night. Perhaps you won't see me any more." "Oh, yes, I shall. I'll look for you until I find you." "I'll hide," she teased. "That won't matter, little girl." He repeated the form softly and drowsily. "Little girl; little girl; I'd do anything in the world for you, little girl, if ever you asked me. Only don't go away while I'm asleep." Back of them the door had opened quietly and Professor Certain, who, with Dr. Elliot, had been a silent spectator of the little drama, now closed it again, withdrawing, on the further side, with his companion. "He'll sleep now," said the physician. "That's all he needs. Hello! What's this?" In a corner of the sofa was a tiny huddle, outlined vaguely as human, under a faded shawl. Drawing aside the folds, the quack disclosed a wild little face, framed in a mass of glowing red hair. "That Hardscrabbler's young 'un," he said. "She was crying quietly to herself, in the darkness outside the jail, poor little tyke. So I picked her up, and" (with a sort of tender awkwardness) "she was glad to come with me. Seemed to kind of take to me. Kiddies generally do." "Do they? That's curious." "I suppose you think so," replied the quack, without rancor. "What are you going to do with her?" "I'll see, later. At present I'm going to keep her here with us. She's only seven, and her mother's dead. Are you staying here to-night?" "Got to. Missed my connection." "Then at least you'll let me pay your hotel bill, if you won't take my money." "Why, yes: I suppose so," said the other grudgingly. "I'll look at the boy in the morning. But he'll be all right. Only, don't take up your itinerating again for a few days." "I'm through, I tell you. Give me a growing city to settle in and I'll go in for the regular proprietary manufacturing game. Know anything about Worthington?" "Yes." "Pretty good, live town?" "First-class, and not too critical, I suppose, to accept your business," said Dr. Elliot dryly. "I'm on my way there now for a visit. Well, I must get my little girl." The itinerant opened the door, looked, and beckoned. The boy lay on his pillow, the girl was curled in her chair, both fast asleep. Their hands were lightly clasped. Dr. Elliot lifted his ward and carried her away. The itinerant, returning to the Hardscrabbler girl, took her out to arrange the night's accommodation for her. So, there slept that night under one roof and at the charge of Professor Andrew L. Certain, five human beings who, long years after, were destined to meet and mingle their fates, intricate, intimate strands in the pattern of human weal and woe. CHAPTER II OUR LEADING CITIZEN The year of grace, 1913, commended itself to Dr. L. André Surtaine as an excellent time in which to be alive, rich, and sixty years old. Thoroughly, keenly, ebulliently alive he was. Thoroughly rich, also; and if the truth be told, rather ebulliently conscious of his wealth. You could see at a glance that he had paid no usurious interest to Fate on his success; that his vigor and zest in life remained to him undiminished. Vitality and a high satisfaction with his environment and with himself as well placed in it, radiated from his bulky and handsome person; but it was the vitality that impressed you first: impressed and warmed you; perhaps warned you, too, on shrewder observation. A gleaming personality, this. But behind the radiance one surmised fire. Occasion given, Dr. Surtaine might well be formidable. The world had been his oyster to open. He had cleaved it wide. Ill-natured persons hinted, in reference to his business, that he had used poison rather than the knife wherewith to loosen the stubborn hinges of the bivalve. Money gives back small echo to the cries of calumny, however. And Dr. Surtaine's Certina, that infallible and guaranteed blood-cure, eradicator of all known human ills, "famous across the map of the world," to use one of its advertising phrases, under the catchword of "Professor Certain's Certina, the Sure-Cure" (for he preserved the old name as a trade-mark), had made a vast deal of money for its proprietor. Worthington estimated his fortune at fifteen millions, growing at the rate of a million yearly, and was not preposterously far afield. In a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, claimed (one hundred and seventy-five thousand allowed by a niggling and suspicious census), this is all that the most needy of millionaires needs. It was all that Dr. Surtaine needed. He enjoyed his high satisfaction as a hard-earned increment. Something more than satisfaction beamed from his face this blustery March noon as he awaited the Worthington train at a small station an hour up the line. He fidgeted like an eager boy when the whistle sounded, and before the cars had fairly come to a stop he was up the steps of the sleeper and inside the door. There rose to meet him a tall, carefully dressed and pressed youth, whose exclamation was evenly apportioned between welcome and surprise. "Dad!" "Boy-ee!" To the amusement of the other passengers, the two seized each other in a bear-hug. "Oof!" panted the big man, releasing his son. "That's the best thing that's happened to me this year. George" (to the porter), "get me a seat. Get us two seats together. Aren't any? Perhaps this gentleman," turning to the chair back of him, "wouldn't mind moving across the aisle until we get to Worthington." "Certainly not. Glad to oblige," said the stranger, smiling. People usually were "glad to oblige" Dr. Surtaine whether they knew him or not. The man inspired good will in others. "It's nearly a year since I've set eyes on my son," he added in a voice which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; "and it seems like ten. How are you feeling, Hal? You look chirp as a cricket." "Couldn't possibly feel better, sir. Where did you get on?" "Here at State Crossing. Thought I'd come up and meet you. The office got on my nerves this morning. Work didn't hold me worth a cent. I kept figuring you coming nearer and nearer until I couldn't stand it, so I banged down my desk, told my secretary that I was going to California on the night boat and mightn't be back till evening, hung the scrap-basket on the stenographer's ear when she tried to hold me up to sign some letters, jumped out of the fifth-story window, and here I am. I hope you're as tickled to see me as I am to see you." The young man's hand went out, fell with a swift movement, to touch his father's, and was as swiftly withdrawn again. "Worthington's just waiting for you," the Doctor rattled on. "You're put up at all the clubs. People you've never heard of are laying out dinners and dances for you. You're a distinguished stranger; that's what you are. Welcome to our city and all that sort of thing. I'd like to have a brass band at the station to meet you, only I thought it might jar your quiet European tastes. Eh? At that, I had to put the boys under bonds to keep 'em from decorating the factory for you." "You don't seem to have lost any of your spirit, Dad," said the junior, smiling. "Noticed that already, have you? Well, I'm holding my own, Boyee. Up to date, old age hasn't scratched me with his claws to any noticeable extent--is that the way it goes?--see 'Familiar Quotations.' I'm getting to be a regular book-worm, Hal. Shakespeare, R.L.S., Kipling, Arnold Bennett, Hall Caine--all the high-brows. And I _get_ 'em, too. Soak 'em right in. I love it! Tell me, who's this Balzac? An agent was in yesterday trying to make me believe that he invented culture. What about him? I'm pretty hot on the culture trail. Look out, or I'll overhaul you." "You won't have to go very far or fast. I've got only smatterings." But the boy spoke with a subdued complacency not wholly lost upon the shrewd father. "Not so much that you'll think Worthington dull and provincial?" "Oh, I dare say I shall find it a very decent little place." But here Hal touched another pride and loyalty, quite as genuine as that which Dr. Surtaine felt for his son. "Little place!" he cried. "Two hundred thousand of the livest people on God's earth. A gen-u-wine American city if there ever was one." "Evidently it suits you, sir." "Couldn't suit better if I'd had it made to order," chuckled the Doctor. "And I did pretty near make it over to order. It was a dead-and-alive town when we opened up here. Didn't care much about my business, either. Now we're the biggest thing in town. Why Certina is the cross-mark that shows where Worthington is on the map. The business is sim-plee BOOMING." The word exploded in rapture. "Nothing like it ever known in the proprietary trade. Wait till you see the shop." "That will be soon, won't it, sir? I think I've loafed quite long enough." "You're only twenty-five," his father defended him. "It isn't as if you'd been idling. Your four years abroad have been just so much capital. Educational capital, I mean. I've got plenty of the other kind, for both of us. You don't need to go into the business unless you want to." "Being an American, I suppose I've got to go to work at something." "Not necessarily." "You don't want me to live on you all my life, though, I suppose." "Well, I don't want you to want me to want you to," returned the other, laughing. "But there's no hurry." "To tell the truth, I'm rather bored with doing nothing. And if I can be of any use to you in the business--" "You're ready to resume the partnership," his father concluded the sentence for him. "That was the foundation of it all; the old days when I did the 'spieling' and you took in the dollars. How quick your little hands were! Can you remember it? The smelly smoke of the torches, and the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below. And to think what has grown out of it. God, Boyee! It's a miracle," he exulted. "It isn't very clear in my memory. I used to get pretty sleepy, I remember," said the son, smiling. "Poor Boyee! Sometimes I hated the life, for you. But there was nobody to leave you with; and you were all I had. Anyway, it's turned out well, hasn't it?" "That remains to be seen for me, doesn't it? I'm rather at the start of things." "Most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and the world for a playground." "One gets tired of playing. _And_ of globe-trotting." "Good! Do you think you can make Worthington feel like home?" "How can I tell, sir? I haven't spent two weeks altogether in the place since I entered college eight years ago." "Did it ever strike you that I'd carefully planned to keep you away from here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at summer places?" "Yes." "You've never spoken of it." "No." "Good boy! Now I'll tell you why. I wanted to be absolutely established before I brought you back here. Not in business, alone. That came long ago. There have been obstacles, in other ways. They're all overcome. To-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and I, Hal. Do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?" "Rather more like a freshman entering college," said the other, laughing. "It isn't the town, it's the business that I have misgivings about." "Misgivings? How's that?" asked the father quickly. "What I can do in it." "Oh, that. My doubts are whether it's the best thing for you." "Don't you want me to go into it, Dad?" "Of course I want you with me, Boyee. But--well, frank and flat, I don't know whether it's genteel enough for you." "Genteel?" The younger Surtaine repeated the distasteful adjective with surprise. "Some folks make fun of it, you know. It's the advertising that makes it a fair mark. 'Certina,' they say. 'That's where he made his money. Patent-medicine millions.' I don't mind it. But for you it's different." "If the money is good enough for me to spend, it's good enough for me to earn," said Hal Surtaine a little grandiloquently. "Humph! Well, the business is a big success, and I want you to be a big success. But that doesn't mean that I want to combine the two. Isn't there anything else you've ever thought of turning to?" "I've got something of a leaning toward your profession, Dad." "My prof--oh, you mean medicine." "Yes." "Nothing in it. Doctors are a lot of prejudiced pedants and hypocrites. Not one in a thousand is more than an inch wide. What started you on that?" "I hardly know. It was just a notion. I think the scientific and sociological side is what appeals to me. But my interest is only theoretical." "That's very well for a hobby. Not as a profession. Here we are, half an hour late, as usual." The sudden and violent bite of the brakes, a characteristic operation of that mummy among railroads, the Mid-State and Great Muddy River, commonly known as the "Mid-and-Mud," flung forward in an involuntary plunge the incautious who had arisen to look after their things. Hal Surtaine found himself supporting the weight of a fortuitous citizen who had just made his way up the aisle. "Thank you," said the stranger in a dry voice. "You're the prodigal son of whom we've heard such glowing forecast, I presume." "Well met, Mr. Pierce," called Dr. Surtaine's jovial voice. "Yes, that's my son, Harrington, you're hanging to. Hal, this is Mr. Elias M. Pierce, one of the men who run Worthington." Releasing his burden Hal acknowledged the introduction. Elias M. Pierce, receding a yard or so into perspective, revealed himself as a spare, middle-aged man who looked as if he had been hewn out of a block, square, and glued into a permanent black suit. Under his palely sardonic eye Hal felt that he was being appraised, and in none too amiable a spirit. "A favorite pleasantry of your father's, Mr. Surtaine," said Pierce. "What became of Douglas? Oh, here he is." A clean-shaven, rather floridly dressed man came forward, was introduced to Hal, and inquired courteously whether he was going to settle down in Worthington. "Probably depends on how well he likes it," cut in the dry Mr. Pierce. "You might help him decide. I'm sure William would be glad to have you lunch with him one day this week at the Huron Club, Mr. Surtaine." Somewhat surprised and a little annoyed at this curiously vicarious suggestion of hospitality, the newcomer hesitated, although Douglas promptly supported the offer. Before he had decided what to reply, his father eagerly broke in. "Yes, yes. You must go, Hal," he said, apparently oblivious of the fact that he had not been included in the invitation. "I'll try to be there, myself," continued Pierce, in a flat tone of condescension. "Douglas represents me, however, not only legally but in other matters that I'm too busy to attend to." "Mr. Pierce is president of the Huron Club," explained Dr. Surtaine. "It's our leading social organization. You'll meet our best business men there." And Hal had no alternative but to accept. Here William Douglas turned to speak to Dr. Surtaine. "The Reverend Norman Hale has been looking for you. It is some minor hitch about that Mission matter, I believe. Just a little diplomacy wanted. He said he'd call to see you day after to-morrow." "Meaning more money, I suppose," said Dr. Surtaine. Then, more loudly: "Well, the business can stand it. All right. Send him along." With Hal close on his heels he stepped from the car. But Douglas, having the cue from his patron, took the younger man by the arm and drew him aside. "Come over and meet some of our fair citizens," he said. "Nothing like starting right." The Pierce motor car, very large, very quietly complete and elegant, was waiting near at hand, and in it a prematurely elderly, subdued nondescript of a woman, and a pretty, sensitive, sensuous type of brunette, almost too well dressed. To Mrs. Pierce and Miss Kathleen Pierce, Hal was duly presented, and by them graciously received. As he stood there, bareheaded, gracefully at ease, smiling up into the interested faces of the two ladies, Dr. Surtaine, passing to his own car to await him, looked back and was warmed with pride and gratitude for this further honorarium to his capital stock of happiness, for he saw already in his son the assurance of social success, and, on the hour's reckoning, summed him up. And since we are to see much of Harrington Surtaine, in evil chance and good, and see him at times through the eyes of that shrewd observer and capitalizer of men, his father, the summing-up is worth our present heed, for all that it is to be considerably modified in the mind of its proponent, as events develop. This, then, is Dr. Surtaine's estimate of his beloved "Boyee," after a year of separation. "A little bit of a prig. A little bit of a cub. Just a _little_ mite of a snob, too, maybe. But the right, solid, clean stuff underneath. And my son, thank God! _My_ son all through." CHAPTER III ESMÉ Hal saw her first, vivid against the lifeless gray of the cement wall, as he turned away from the Pierce car. A little apart from the human current she stood, still and expectant. As if to point her out as the chosen of gods and men, the questing sun, bursting in triumph through a cloud-rift, sent a long shaft of gold to encompass and irradiate her. To the end, whether with aching heart or glad, Hal was to see her thus, in flashing, recurrent visions; a slight, poised figure, all gracious curves and tender consonances, with a cluster of the trailing arbutus, that first-love of the springtide, clinging at her breast. The breeze bore to him the faint, wild, appealing fragrance which is the very breath and soul of the blossom's fairy-pink. Half-turning, she had leaned a little, as a flower leans, to the warmth of the sunlight, uplifting her face for its kiss. She was not beautiful in any sense of regularity of outline or perfection of feature, so much as lovely, with the lustrous loveliness which defiantly overrides the lapse of line and proportion, and imperiously demands the homage of every man born of woman. Chill analysis might have judged the mouth, with its delicate, humorous quirk at the corners, too large; the chin too broad, for all its adorable baby dimple; the line of the nose too abrupt, the wider contours lacking something of classic exactitude. But the chillest analysis must have warmed to enthusiasm at the eyes; wide-set, level, and of a tawny hazel, with strange, wine-brown lights in their depths, to match the brownish-golden sheen of the hair, where the sun glinted from it. As it were a higher power of her physical splendor, there emanated from the girl an intensity and radiance of joy in being alive and lovely. Involuntarily Hal Surtaine paused as he approached her. Her glance fell upon him, not with the impersonal regard bestowed upon a casual passer-by, but with an intent and brightening interest,--the thrill of the chase, had he but known it,--and passed beyond him again. But in that brief moment, the conviction was borne in upon him that sometime, somewhere, he had looked into those eyes before. Puzzled and eager he still stared, until, with a slight flush, she moved forward and passed him. At the head of the stairs he saw her greet a strongly built, grizzled man; and then became aware of his father beckoning to him from the automobile. "Bewitched, Hal?" said Dr. Surtaine as his son came to him. "Was I staring very outrageously, sir?" "Why, you certainly looked interested," returned the older man, laughing. "But I don't think you need apologize to the young lady. She's used to attention. Rather lives on it, I guess." The tone jarred on Hal. "I had a queer, momentary feeling that I'd seen her before," he said. "Don't you recall where?" "No," said Hal, startled. "_Do_ I know her?" "Apparently not," taunted the other good-humoredly. "You should know. Hers is generally considered a face not difficult to remember." "Impossible to forget!" "In that case it must be that you haven't seen her before. But you will again. And, then look out, Boy-ee. Danger ahead!" "How's that, sir?" "You'll see for yourself when you meet her. Half of the boys in town are crazy over her. She eats 'em alive. Can't you tell the man-killer type when you see it?" "Oh, that's all in the game, isn't it?" returned Hal lightly. "So long as she plays fair. And she looks like a girl of breeding and standards." "All of that. Esmé Elliot is a lady, so far as that goes. But--well, I'm not going to prejudice you. Here she comes now." "Who is it with her?" "Her uncle, Dr. Elliot. He doesn't altogether approve of us--me, I mean." Uncle and niece were coming directly toward them now, and Hal watched her approach with a thrill of delight in her motion. It was a study in harmonies. She moved like a cloud before the wind; like a ship upon the high seas; like the swirl of swift waters above hidden depths. As the pair passed to their car, which stood next to Dr. Surtaine's, the girl glanced up and nodded, with a brilliant smile, to the doctor, who returned to the salutation an extra-gallant bow. "You seem to be friends," commented Hal, somewhat amused. "That was more for you than for me. But the fair Esmé can always spare one of those smiles for anything that wears trousers." Hal moved uneasily. He felt a sense of discord. As he cast about for a topic to shift to, the Elliot car rolled ahead slowly, and once more he caught the woodsy perfume of the pink bloom. Strangely and satisfyingly to his quickened perceptions, it seemed to express the quality of the wearer. Despite her bearing of worldly self-assurance, despite the atmosphere of modishness about her, there was in her charm something wild and vivid, vernal and remote, like the arbutus which, alone among flowers, keeps its life-secret virgin and inviolate, resisting all endeavors to make it bloom except in its own way and in its own chosen places. CHAPTER IV THE SHOP Certina had found its first modest home in Worthington on a side street. As the business grew, the staid tenement which housed it expanded and drew to itself neighboring buildings, until it eventually gave way to the largest, finest, and most up-to-date office edifice in the city. None too large, fine, or modern was this last word in architecture for the triumphant nostrum and the minor medical enterprises allied to it. For though Certina alone bore the name and spread the fame and features of its inventor abroad in the land, many lesser experiments had bloomed into success under the fertilizing genius of the master-quack. Inanimate machinery, when it runs sweetly, gives forth a definite tone, the bee-song of work happily consummated. So this great human mechanism seemed, to Harrington Surtaine as he entered the realm of its activities, moving to music personal to itself. Through its wide halls he wandered, past humming workrooms, up spacious stairways, resonant to the tread of brisk feet, until he reached the fifth floor where cluster the main offices. Here through a succession of open doors he caught a glimpse of the engineer who controlled all these lively processes, leaning easily back from his desk, fresh, suavely groomed, smiling, an embodiment of perfect satisfaction. Before Dr. Surtaine lay many sheaves of paper, in rigid order. A stenographer sat in a far corner, making notes. From beyond a side door came the precise, faint clicking of a typewriter. The room possessed an atmosphere of calm and poise; but not of restfulness. At once and emphatically it impressed the visitor with a sense that it was a place where things were done, and done efficiently. Upon his son's greeting, Dr. Surtaine whirled in his chair. "Come down to see the old slave at work, eh?" he said. "Yes, sir." Hal's hand fell on the other's shoulder, and the Doctor's fingers went up to it for a quick pressure. "I thought I'd like to see the wheels go 'round." "You've come to the right spot. This is the good old cash-factory, and yours truly is the man behind the engine. The State, I'm It, as Napoleon said to Louis the Quince. Where McBeth sits is the head of the table." "In other words, a one-man business." "That's the secret. There's nothing in this shop that I can't do, and don't do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in. I can put more pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business. Modesty isn't my besetting sin, you see, Hal." "Why should it be? Every brick in this building would give the lie to it." "Say every frame on these four walls," suggested Dr. Surtaine with an expansive gesture. Following this indication, Hal examined the decorations. On every side were ordinary newspaper advertisements, handsomely mounted, most of them bearing dates on brass plates. Here and there appeared a circular, or a typed letter, similarly designated. Above Dr. Surtaine's desk was a triple setting, a small advertisement, a larger one, and a huge full-newspaper-page size, each embodying the same figure, that of a man half-bent over, with his hand to his back and a lamentable expression on his face. Certain strongly typed words fairly thrust themselves out of the surrounding print: "Pain--Back--Take Care--Means Something--Your Kidneys." And then in dominant presentment-- CERTINA CURES. "What do you think of Old Lame-Boy?" asked Dr. Surtaine. "From an æsthetic point of view?" "Never mind the æsthetics of it. 'Handsome is as handsome does.'" "What has that faded beauty done, then?" "Carried many a thousand of our money to bank for us, Boyee. That's the ad. that made the business." "Did you design it?" "Every word and every line, except that I got a cheap artist to touch up the drawing a little. Then I plunged. When that copy went out, we had just fifty thousand dollars in the world, you and I. Before it had been running three months, I'd spent one hundred thousand dollars more than we owned, in the newspapers, and had to borrow money right and left to keep the manufacturing and bottling plant up to the orders. It was a year before we could see clear sailing, and by that time we were pretty near quarter of a million to the good. Talk about ads. that pull! It pulled like a mule-team and a traction engine and a fifty-cent painless dentist all in one. I'm still using that copy, in the kidney season." "Do kidneys have seasons?" "Kidney troubles do." "I'd have thought such diseases wouldn't depend on the time of year." "Maybe they don't, actually," admitted the other. "Maybe they're just crowded out of the public mind by the pressure of other sickness in season, like rheumatism in the early winter, and pneumonia in the late. But there's no doubt that the kidney season comes in with the changes of the spring. That's one of my discoveries, too. I tell you, Boyee, I've built my success on things like that. It's psychology: that's what it is. That's what you've got to learn, if you're going into the concern." "I'm ready, Dad. It sounds interesting. More so than I'd have thought." "Interesting! It's the very heart and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy. They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well, one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old Lame-Boy is. He just pesters folks into taking proper care of themselves. They get Certina, and we get their dollars. And they get their money's worth, too," he added as an afterthought for Hal's benefit, "for it's a mighty good thing to have your kidneys tonicked up at this time of year." "But, Dad," queried Hal, with an effort of puzzled reminiscence, "in the old days Certina wasn't a kidney remedy, was it?" "Not specially. It's always been _good_ for the kidneys. Good for everything, for that matter. Besides, the formula's been changed." "Changed? But the formula's the vital thing, isn't it?" "Yes, yes. Of course. Certainly it's the vital thing: certainly. But, you see,--well,--new discoveries in medicine and that sort of thing." "You've put new drugs in?" "Yes: I've done that. Buchu, for instance. That's supposed to be good for the kidneys. Dropped some things out, too. Morphine got sort of a bad name. The muckrakers did that with their magazine articles." "Of course I don't pretend to know about such things, Dad. But morphine seems a pretty dangerous thing for people to take indiscriminately." "Well, it's out. There ain't a grain of it in Certina to-day." "I'm glad of it." "Oh, I don't know. It's useful in its place. For instance, you can't run a soothing-syrup without it. But when the Pure Food Law compelled us to print the amount of morphine on the label, I just made up my mind that I'd have no government interference in the Certina business, so I dropped the drug." "Did the law hurt our trade much?" "Not so far as Certina goes. I'm not even sure it didn't help. You see, now we can print 'Guaranteed under the U.S. Food and Drugs Act' on every bottle. In fact we're required to." "What does the guaranty mean?" "That whatever statement may be on the label is accurate. That's all. But the public takes it to mean that the Government officially guarantees Certina to do everything we claim for it," chuckled Dr. Surtaine. "It's a great card. We've done more business under the new formula than we ever did under the old." "What is the formula now?" "Prying into the secrets of the trade?" chuckled the elder man. "But if I'm coming into the shop, to learn--" "Right you are, Boyee," interrupted his father buoyantly. "There's the formula for making profits." He swept his hand about in a spacious circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls. "There's where the brains count. Come along," he added, jumping up; "let's take a turn around the joint." Every day, Dr. Surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to go through the entire plant. "It's the only way to keep a business up to mark. Besides, I like to know my people." Evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked him. So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their wanderings. First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company doing all its own printing; then to what Dr. Surtaine called "the literary bureau." "Three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy," he explained in an aside. "One of 'em gets five thousand a year; but even so I have to go over all his stuff. If I could teach him to write ads. like I do it myself, I'd pay him ten thousand--yes, twenty thousand. I'd have to, to keep him. The circulars they do better; but I edit those, too. What about that name for the new laxative pills, Con? Hal, I want you to meet Mr. Conover, our chief ad.-man." Conover, a dapper young man with heavy eye-glasses, greeted Hal with some interest, and then turned to the business in hand. "What'd you think of 'Anti-Pellets'?" he asked. "Anti, opposed to, you know. In the sub-line, tell what they're opposed to: indigestion, appendicitis, and so on." "Don't like it," returned Dr. Surtaine abruptly. "Anti-Ralgia's played that to death. Lemme think, for a moment." Down he plumped into Conover's chair, seized a pencil and made tentative jabs at a sheet of paper. "Pellets, pellets," he muttered. Then, in a kind of subdued roar, "I've got it! I've got it, Con! 'Pro-Pellets.' Tell people what they're for, not what they're against. Besides, the name has got the idea of pro-pulsion. See? Pro-Pellets, pro-pel!" His big fist shot forward like a piston-rod. "Just the idea for a laxative. Eh?" "Fine!" agreed Conover, a little ruefully, but with genuine appreciation of the fitness of the name. "I wish I'd thought of it." "You did--pretty near. Anyway, you made me think of it. Anti-Pellets, Pro-Pellets: it's just one step. Like as not you'd have seen it yourself if I hadn't butted in. Now, go to it, and figure out your series on that." With kindly hands he pushed Conover back into his chair, gave him a hearty pat on the shoulder, and passed on. Hal began to have an inkling of the reasons for his father's popularity. "Have we got other medicines besides Certina?" he asked. "Bless you, yes! This little laxative pills business I took over from a concern that didn't have the capital to advertise it. Across the hall there is the Sure Soother department. That's a teething syrup: does wonders for restless babies. On the floor below is the Cranicure Mixture for headaches, Rub-it-in Balm for rheumatism and bruises, and a couple of small side issues that we're not trying to push much. We're handling Stomachine and Relief Pills from here, but the pills are made in Cincinnati, and we market 'em under another trade name." "Stomachine is for stomach troubles, I assume," said Hal. "What are the Relief Pills?" "Oh, a female remedy," replied his father carelessly. "Quite a booming little trade, too. Take a look at the Certina collection of testimonials." In a room like a bank vault were great masses of testimonial letters, all listed and double-catalogued by name and by disease. "Genuine. Provably genuine, every one. There's romance in some of 'em. And gratitude; good Lord! Sometimes when I look 'em over, I wonder I don't run for President of the United States on a Certina platform." From the testimonial room they went to the art department where Dr. Surtaine had some suggestions to make as to bill-board designs. "You'll never get another puller like Old Lame-Boy," Hal heard the head designer say with a chuckle, and his father reply: "If I could I'd start another proprietary as big as Certina." "Where does that lead to?" inquired Hal, as they approached a side passage sloping slightly down, and barred by a steel door. "The old building. The manufacturing department is over there." "Compounding the medicine, you mean?" "Yes. Bottling and shipping, too." "Aren't we going through?" "Why, yes: if you like. You won't find much to interest you, though." Nor, to Hal's surprise, did Dr. Surtaine himself seem much concerned with this phase of the business. Apparently his hand was not so close in control here as in the other building. The men seemed to know him less well. "All this pretty well runs itself," he explained negligently. "Don't you have to keep a check on the mixing, to make sure it's right?" "Oh, they follow the formula. No chance for error." They walked amidst chinking trucks, some filled with empty, some with filled and labeled bottles, until they reached the carton room where scores of girls were busily inserting the bottles, together with folded circulars and advertising cards, into pasteboard boxes. At the far end of this room a pungent, high-spiced scent, as of a pickle-kitchen with a fortified odor underlying it, greeted the unaccustomed nose of the neophyte. "Good!" he sniffed. "How clean and appetizing it smells!" Enthusiasm warmed the big man's voice once more. "Just what it is, too!" he exclaimed. "Now you've hit on the second big point in Certina's success. It's easy to take. What's the worst thing about doctors' doses? They're nasty. The very thought of 'em would gag a cat. Tell people that here's a remedy better than the old medicine and pleasant to the taste, and they'll take to it like ducks to water. Certina is the first proprietary that ever tasted good. Next to Old Lame-Boy, it's my biggest idea." "Are we going into the mixing-room?" asked his son. "If you like. But you'll see less than you smell." So it proved. A heavy, wet, rich vapor shrouded the space about a huge cauldron, from which came a sound of steady plashing. Presently an attendant gnome, stripped to the waist, appeared, nodded to Dr. Surtaine, called to some one back in the mist, and shortly brought Hal a small glass brimming with a pale-brown liquid. "Just fresh," he said. "Try it." "My kidneys are all right," protested Hal. "I don't need any medicine." "Take it for a bracer. It won't hurt you," urged the gnome. Hal looked at his father, and, at his nod, put his lips to the glass. "Why, it tastes like spiced whiskey!" he cried. "Not so far out of the way. Columbian spirits, caramel, cinnamon and cardamom, and a touch of the buchu. Good for the blues. Finish it." Hal did so and was aware of an almost instantaneous glow. "Strong stuff, sir," he said to his father as they emerged into a clearer atmosphere. "They like it strong," replied the other curtly. "I give 'em what they like." The attendant gnome followed. "Mr. Dixon was looking for you, Dr. Surtaine. Here he comes, now." "Dixon's our chief chemist," explained Dr. Surtaine as a shabby, anxious-looking man ambled forward. "We're having trouble with that last lot of cascara, sir," said he lugubriously. "In the Number Four?" "Yes, sir. It don't seem to have any strength." "Substitute senna." So offhand was the tone that it sounded like a suggestion rather than an order. As the latter, however, the chemist contentedly took it. "It'll cost less," he observed; "and I guess it'll do the work just as well." To Hal it seemed a somewhat cavalier method of altering a medical formula. But his mind, accustomed to easy acceptance of the business which so luxuriously supplied his wants, passed the matter over lightly. "First-rate man, Dixon," remarked Dr. Surtaine as they passed along. "College-bred, and all that. Boozes, though. I only pay him twenty-five a week, and he's mighty glad to get it." On the way back to the offices, they traversed the checking and accounting rooms, the agency department, the great rows of desks whereat the shipping and mailing were looked after, and at length stopped before the door of a small office occupied by a dozen women. One of these, a full-bosomed, slender, warm-skinned girl with a wealth of deep-hued, rippling red hair crowning her small, well-poised head, rose and came to speak to Dr. Surtaine. "Did you get the message I sent you about Letter Number Seven?" she asked. "Hello, Milly," greeted the presiding genius, pleasantly. "Just what was that about Number Seven?" "It isn't getting results." "No? Let's see it." Dr. Surtaine was as interested in this as he had been casual about the drug alteration. "I don't think it's personal enough," pursued the girl, handing him a sheet of imitation typewriter print. "Oh, you don't," said her employer, amused. "Maybe you could better it." "I have," said the girl calmly. "You always tell us to make suggestions. Mine are on the back of the paper." "Good for you! Hal, here's the prettiest girl in the shop, and about the smartest. Milly, this is my boy." The girl looked up at Hal with a smile and brightened color. He was suddenly interested and appreciative to see to what a vivid prettiness her face was lighted by the raised glance of her swift, gray-green eyes. "Are you coming into the business, Mr. Surtaine?" she asked composedly, and with almost as proprietary an air as if she had said "our business." "I don't know. Is it the sort of business you would advise a rather lazy person to embark in, Miss--" "Neal," she supplied; adding, with an illustrative glance around, upon her busy roomful, all sorting and marking correspondence, "You see, I only give advice by letter." She turned away to answer one of the subordinates, and, at the same time, Dr. Surtaine was called aside by a man with a shipping-bill. Looking down the line of workers, Hal saw that each one was simply opening, reading, and marking with a single stroke, the letters from a distributing groove. To her questioner Milly Neal was saying, briskly: "That's Three and Seven. Can't you see, she says she has spots before her eyes. That's stomach. And the lameness in the side is kidneys. Mark it 'Three pass to Seven.' There's a combination form for that." "What branch of the work is this?" asked Hal, as she lifted her eyes to his again. "Symptom correspondence. This is the sorting-room." "Please explain. I'm a perfect greenhorn, you know." "You've seen the ads. of course. Nobody could help seeing them. They all say, 'Write to Professor Certain'--the trade name, you know. It's the regular stock line, but it does bring in the queries. Here's the afternoon mail, now." Hundreds upon hundreds of letters came tumbling from a bag upon the receiving-table. All were addressed to "Prof." or "Dr." Certain. "How can my father hope to answer all those?" cried Hal. The girl surveyed him with a quaint and delicious derision. "He? You don't suppose he ever sees them! What are _we_ here for?" "You do the answering?" "Practically all of it, by form-letters turned out in the printing department. For instance, Letter One is coughs and colds; Two, headaches; Three, stomach; and so on. As soon as a symp-letter is read the girl marks it with the form-letter number, underscores the address, and it goes across to the letter room where the right answer is mailed, advising the prospect to take Certina. Orders with cash go direct to the shipping department. If the symp-writer wants personal advice that the form-letters don't give, I send the inquiry upstairs to Dr. De Vito. He's a regular graduate physician who puts in half his time as our Medical Adviser. We can clear up three thousand letters a day, here." "I can readily see that my father couldn't attend to them personally," said Hal, smiling. "And it's just as good this way. Certina is what the prospects want and need. It makes no difference who prescribes it. This is the Chief's own device for handling the correspondence." "The Chief?" "Your father. We all call him that, all the old hands." Hal's glance skimmed over the fresh young face, and the brilliant eyes. "You wouldn't call yourself a very old hand, Miss Neal." "Seven years I've worked for the Chief, and I never want to work in a better place. He's been more than good to me." "Because you've deserved it, young woman," came the Doctor's voice from behind Hal. "That's the one and only reason. I'm a flint-livered old divvle to folks that don't earn every cent of their wages." "Don't you believe him, Mr. Surtaine," controverted the girl, earnestly. "When one of my girls came down last year with tuber--" "Whoof! Whoof! Whoof!" interrupted the big man, waving his hands in the air. "Stop it! This is no experience meeting. Milly, you're right about this letter. It's the confidential note that's lacking. It'll work up all right along the line of your suggestion. I'll have to send Hal to you for lessons in the business." "Miss Neal would have to be very patient with my stupidity." "I don't think it would be hard to be patient with you," she said softly; and though her look was steady he saw the full color rise in her cheeks, and, startled, felt an answering throb in his pulses. "But you mustn't flirt with her, Hal," warned the old quack, with a joviality that jarred. Uncomfortably conscious of himself and of the girl's altered expression, Hal spoke a hasty word or two of farewell, and followed his father out into the hallway. But the blithe and vivid femininity of the young expert plucked at his mind. At the bend of the hall, he turned with half a hope and saw her standing at the door. Her look was upon him, and it seemed to him to be both troubled and wistful. CHAPTER V THE SCION To Harrington Surtaine, life had been a game with easy rules. Certain things one must not do. Decent people didn't do them. That's all there was to that. In matters of morals and conduct, he was guided by a natural temperance and an innate sense of responsibility to himself. Difficult questions had not come up in his life. Consequently he had not found the exercise of judgment troublesome. His tendency, as regarded his own affairs, was to a definite promptness of decision, and there was an end of the matter. Others he seldom felt called upon to judge, but if the instance were ineluctable, he was prone to an amiable generosity. Ease of living does not breed in the mind a strongly defined philosophy. All that young Mr. Surtaine required of his fellow beings was that they should behave themselves with a due and respectable regard to the rights of all in general and of himself in particular--and he would do the same by them. Rather a pallid attenuation of the Golden Rule; but he had thus far found it sufficient to his existence. Into this peaceful world-scheme intruded, now, a disorganizing factor. He had brought it home with him from his visit to the "shop." An undefined but pervasive distaste for the vast, bustling, profitable Certina business formed the nucleus of it. As he thought it over that night, amidst the heavily ornate elegance of the great bedroom, which, with its dressing-room and bath, his father had set aside for his use in the Surtaine mansion, he felt in the whole scheme of the thing a vague offense. The air which he had breathed in those spacious halls of trade had left a faintly malodorous reminiscence in his nostrils. One feature of his visit returned insistently to his mind: the contrast between the semi-contemptuous carelessness exhibited by his father toward the processes of compounding the cure and the minute and insistent attention given to the methods of expounding it. Was the advertising really of so much more import than the medicine itself? If so, wasn't the whole affair a matter of selling shadow rather than substance? But it is not in human nature to view with too stern a scrutiny a business which furnishes one's easeful self with all the requisites of luxury, and that by processes of almost magic simplicity. Hal reflected that all big businesses doubtless had their discomforting phases. He had once heard a lecturing philosopher express a doubt as to whether it were possible to defend, ethically, that prevalent modern phenomenon, the millionaire, in any of his manifestations. By the counsel of perfection this might well be true. But who was he to judge his father by such rigorous standards? Of the medical aspect of the question he could form no clear judgment. To him the patent medicine trade was simply a part of the world's business, like railroading, banking, or any other form of merchandising. His own precocious commercial experience, when, as a boy, he had played his little part in the barter and trade, had blinded him on that side. Nevertheless, his mind was not impregnably fortified. Old Lame-Boy, bearer of dollars to the bank, loomed up, a disturbing figure. Then, from a recess in his memory, there popped out the word "genteel." His father had characterized the Certina business as being, possibly, not sufficiently "genteel" for him. He caught at the saving suggestion. Doubtless that was the trouble. It was the blatancy of the business, not any evil quality inherent in it, which had offended him. Kindest and gentlest of men and best of fathers as Dr. Surtaine was, he was not a paragon of good taste; and his business naturally reflected his personality. Even this was further than Hal had ever gone before in critical judgment. But he seized upon the theory as a defense against further thought, and, having satisfied his self-questionings with this sop, he let his mind revert to his trip through the factory. It paused on the correspondence room and its attractive forewoman. "She seemed a practical little thing," he reflected. "I'll talk to her again and get her point of view." And then he wondered, rather amusedly, how much of this self-suggestion arose from a desire for information, and how much was inspired by a memory of her haunting, hungry eyes. On the following morning he kept away from the factory, lunched at the Huron Club with William Douglas, Elias M. Pierce, who had found time to be present, and several prominent citizens whom he thought quite dully similar to each other; and afterward walked to the Certina Building to keep an appointment with its official head. "Been feeding with our representative citizens, eh?" his father greeted him. "Good! Meantime the Old Man grubbed along on a bowl of milk and a piece of apple pie, at a hurry-up lunch-joint. Good working diet, for young or old. Besides, it saves time." "Are you as busy as all that, Dad?" "Pretty busy this morning, because I've had to save an hour for you out of this afternoon. We'll take it right now if you're ready." "Quite ready, sir." "Hal, where's Europe?" "Europe? In the usual place on the map, I suppose." "You didn't bring it back with you, then?" "Not a great deal of it. They mightn't have let it through the customs." Dr. Surtaine snapped a rubber band from a packet of papers lying on his desk. "Considering that you seem to have bought it outright," he said, twinkling, "I thought you might tell me what you intend doing with it. There are the bills." "Have I gone too heavy, sir?" asked Hal. "You've never limited me, and I supposed that the business--" "The business," interrupted his father arrogantly, "could pay those bills three times over in any month. That isn't the point. The point is that you've spent something more than forty-eight thousand dollars this last year." Hal whistled ruefully. "Call it an even fifty," he said. "I've made a little, myself." "No! Have you? How's that?" "While I was in London I did a bit of writing; sketches of queer places and people and that sort of thing, and had pretty good luck selling 'em. One fellow I know there even offered me a job paragraphing. That's like our editorial writing, you know." "Fine! That makes me feel easier. I was afraid you might be going soft, with so much money to spend." "How I ever spent that much--" "Never mind that. It's gone. However, we'll try another basis. I'd thought of an allowance, but I don't quite like the notion. Hal, I'm going to give you your own money." "My own money? I didn't know that I had any." "Well, you have." "Where did I get it?" "From our partnership. From the old days on the road." "Rather an intangible fortune, isn't it?" "That old itinerant business was the nucleus of the Certina of to-day. You had a profit-sharing right in that. You've still got it--in this. Hal, I'm turning over to you to-day half a million dollars." "That's a lot of money, Dad," said the younger man soberly. "The interest doesn't come to fifty thousand dollars a year, though." "More than half; and that's more than plenty." "Well, I don't know. We'll try it. At any rate, it's your own. Plenty more where it comes from, if you need extra." "I shan't. It's more than generous of you--" "Not a bit of it. No more than just, Boyee. So let the thanks go." "All right, sir. But--you know how I feel about it." "I guess I know just about how you and I feel toward each other on anything that comes up between us, Boyee." There was a grave gentleness in Dr. Surtaine's tone. "Well, there are the papers," he added, more briskly. "I haven't put all your eggs in one basket, you see." Going over the certificates Hal found himself possessed of fifty thousand dollars in the stock of the Mid-State and Great Muddy Railroad: an equal sum in the Security Power Products Company; twenty-five thousand each in the stock of the Worthington Trust Company and the Remsen Savings Bank; one hundred thousand in the Certina Company, and fifty thousand in three of its subsidiary enterprises. Besides this, he found five check-books in the large envelope which contained his riches. "What are these, Dad?" he asked. "Cash on deposit in local and New York banks. You might want to do some investing of your own. Or possibly you might see some business proposition you wanted to buy into." "I see some Security Power Products Company certificates. What is that?" "The local light, heat, and power corporation. It pays ten per cent. Certina never pays less than twenty. The rest is all good for six, at least and the Mid-and-Mud averages eight. You've got upwards of thirty-seven thousand income there, not counting your deposits. While you're looking about, deciding what you're going to do, it'll be your own money and nobody else's that you're spending." "Do you think many fathers would do this sort of thing, Dad?" said Hal warmly. "Any sensible one would. I don't want to own you, Boyee. I want you to own yourself. And to make yourself," he added slowly. "If I can make myself like you, Dad--" "Oh, I'm a good-enough piece of work, for my day and time," laughed the father. "But I want a fine finish on you. While you're looking around for your life-work, how about doing a little unpaid job for me?" "Anything," cried Hal. "Just try me." "Do you know what an Old Home Week is?" "Only what I read in to-day's paper announcing the preliminary committee." "That gave you enough idea. We make a big thing of Old Home Week in Worthington. This year it will be particularly big because it's the hundredth anniversary of the city. The President of the United States will be here. I'm to be chairman of the general committee, and I want you for my secretary." "Nothing I'd like better, sir." "Good! All the moneyed men in town will be on the committee. The work will put you in touch with the people who count. Well, that settles our business. Good luck to you in your independence, Boyee." He touched a bell. "Any one waiting to see me, Jim?" he asked the attendant. "Yes, sir. The Reverend Norman Hale." "Send him in." "Shall I go, Dad?" asked Hal. "Oh, you might take a little ramble around the shop. Go anywhere. Ask any questions of anybody. They all know you." At the door, Hal passed a tall, sinewy young man with heavy brows and rebellious hair. A slight, humorous uptilt to his mouth relieved the face of impassivity and saved it from a too formal clericalism. The visitor was too deeply concerned with some consideration of his inner self to more than glance at Hal, who heard Dr. Surtaine's hearty greeting through the closing door. "Glad to see you, Mr. Hale. Take a chair." The visitor bowed gravely and sat down. "You've come to see me about--?" "Your subscription to the East End Church Club Fund." "I am heartily in sympathy with the splendid work your church is doing in the--er--less salubrious parts of our city," said Dr. Surtaine. "Doubtless," returned the young clergyman dryly. "Seems to be saving his wind," thought Dr. Surtaine, a little uneasily. "I suppose it's a question," he continued, aloud, "of the disposition of the sum--" "No: it is not." If this bald statement required elucidation or expansion, its proponent didn't seem to realize the fact. He contemplated with minute scrutiny a fly which at that moment was alighting (in about the proportion of the great American eagle) upon the pained countenance of Old Lame-Boy. "Well?" queried the other, adding to himself, "What the devil ails the man!" The scrutinized fly rose, after the manner of its kind, and (now reduced to normal scale) touched lightly in its exploratory tour upon Dr. Surtaine's domed forehead. Following it thus far, the visitor's gaze rested. Dr. Surtaine brushed off the insect. He could not brush off the regard. Under it and his caller's continued silence he grew fidgety. "While I'm very glad," he suggested, "to give you what time you need--" "I've come here because I wanted to have this thing out with you face to face." "Well, have it out," returned the other, smiling but wary. The young clergyman drew from his pocket a folded newspaper page to which was pinned an oblong of paper. This he detached and extended to the other. "What's that?" asked the doctor, making no motion to receive it, for he instantly recognized it. "Your check." "You're returning it?" "Without thanks." "You mean to turn down two thousand dollars!" demanded the other in slow incredulity. "Exactly." "Why?" "Is that question asked in good faith?" "It is." "Then you haven't seen the letter written by the superintendent of our Sunday School to the Certina Company." "What kind of a letter?" "A testimonial letter--for which your two thousand dollars is payment, I suppose." "Two thousand for a church testimonial!" Dr. Surtaine chuckled at his caller's innocence. "Why, I wouldn't pay that for a United States Senator. Besides," he added virtuously, "Certina doesn't buy its testimonials." "Then it's an unfortunate coincidence that your check should have come right on top of Mr. Smithson's very ill-advised letter." By a regular follow-up mechanism devised by himself, every donation by Dr. Surtaine was made the basis of a shrewd attempt to extract from the beneficiary an indorsement of Certina's virtues, or, if not that, of the personal character and professional probity of its proprietor. This is what had happened in the instance of the check to Mr. Hale's church, Smithson being the medium through whom the attempt was made. The quack saw no occasion to explain this to his inquisitor. So he merely said: "I never saw any such letter," which was, in a literal sense, true. "Nor will you know anything about it, I suppose, until the name of the church is spread broadcast through your newspaper advertising." Now, it is a rule of the patent medicine trade never to advertise an unwilling testimonial because that kind always has a kick-back. Hence:-- "Oh, if you feel that way about it," said Dr. Surtaine disdainfully, "I'll keep it out of print." "And return it to me," continued the other, in a tone of calm sequentiality, which might represent either appeal, suggestion, or demand. "Don't see the point," said the quack shortly. "Since you do not intend to use it in your business, it can't be of any value to you," countered the other. "What's its value to you?" "In plain words, the honor of my church is involved. The check is a bribe. The letter is the graft." "Nothing of the sort. You come here, a minister of the gospel," Dr. Surtaine reproached him sorrowfully, "and use hard words about a transaction that is perfectly straight business and happens every day." "Not in my church." "It isn't your letter, anyhow. You didn't write it." "It is written on the official paper of the church. Smithson told me so. He didn't understand what use would be made of it when he wrote it. Take your check back, Dr. Surtaine, and give me the letter." "Persistency, thy name is a jewel," said Dr. Surtaine with an air of scholarliness. "You win. The letter will be returned to-morrow. You'll take my word, I suppose?" "Certainly; and thank you." "And now, suppose I offered to leave the check in your hands?" asked the Doctor curiously. "I couldn't take it," came the decisive reply. "Do you mind telling me why?" The visitor spread out upon the table the newspaper page which he had taken from his pocket. "This morning's 'Clarion,'" he said. "So that's the trouble! You've been reading that blackmailing sheet. Why, what's the 'Clarion,' anyway? A scandal-mongering, yellow blatherskite, on its last legs financially. It's for sale to any bidder who'd be fool enough to put up money. The 'Clarion' went after me because it couldn't get our business. It ain't any straighter than a corkscrew's shadow." "Do I understand you to say that this attack is due to your refusal to advertise in the 'Clarion'?" "That's it, to a T. And now, you see, Mr. Hale," continued Dr. Surtaine in a tone of long-suffering and dignified injury, "how believing all you see in print lures you into chasing after strange dogs." The visitor's mouth quivered a little at this remarkable paraphrase of the Scripture passage; but he said gravely enough: "Then we get back to the original charges, which the 'Clarion' quotes from the 'Church Standard.'" "And there you are! Up to three years ago the 'Standard' took all the advertising we'd give them, and glad to get it. Then it went daffy over the muckraking magazine exposures, and threw out all the proprietary copy. Now nothing will do but it must roast its old patrons to show off its new virtue." "Do you deny what the editor of the 'Standard' said about Certina?" Dr. Surtaine employed the stock answer of medical quackery when challenged on incontrovertible facts. "Why, my friend," he said with elaborate carelessness, "if I tried to deny everything that irresponsible parties say about me, I wouldn't have any time left for business. Well, well; plenty of other people will be glad of that two thousand. Turn in the check at the cashier's window, please. Good-day to you." The Reverend Norman Hale retired, leaving the "Clarion's" denunciation lying outspread on the table. Meantime, wandering in the hallway, Hal had encountered Milly Neal. "Are you very busy, Miss Neal?" he asked. "Not more than usual," she answered, regarding him with bright and kindly eyes. "Did you want me?" "Yes. I want to know some things about this business." "Outside of my own department, I don't know much." "Well; inside your own department, then. May I ask some questions?" With a businesslike air she consulted a tiny watch, then glanced toward a settee at the end of the hall. "I'll give you ten minutes," she announced. "Suppose we sit down over there." "Do the writers of those letters--symp-letters, I believe, you call them--" he began; "do they seem to get benefit out of the advice returned?" "What advice? To take Certina? Why, yes. Most of 'em come back for more." "You think it good medicine for all that long list of troubles?" The girl's eyes opened wide. "Of course it's a good medicine!" she cried. "Do you think the Chief would make any other kind?" "No; certainly not," he hastened to disclaim. "But it seems like a wide range of diseases to be cured by one and the same prescription." "Oh, we've got other proprietaries, too," she assured him with her pretty air of partnership. "There's the Stomachine, and the headache powders and the Relief Pills and the liniment; Dr. Surtaine runs 'em all, and every one's a winner. Not that I keep much track of 'em. We only handle the Certina correspondence in our room. I know what that can do. Why, I take Certina myself when there's anything the matter with me." "Do you?" said Hal, much interested. "Well, you're certainly a living testimonial to its efficacy." "All the people in the shop take it. It's a good tonic, even when you're all right." The listener felt his vague uneasiness soothed. If those who were actually in the business had faith in the patent medicine's worth, it must be all that was claimed for it. "I firmly believe," continued the little loyalist, "that the Chief has done more good and saved more lives than all the doctors in the country. I'd trust him further than any regular doctor I know, even if he doesn't belong to their medical societies and all that. They're jealous of him; that's what's the matter with them." "Good for you!" laughed Hal, feeling his doubts melt at the fire of her enthusiasm. "You're a good rooter for the business." "So's the whole shop. I guess your father is the most popular employer in Worthington. Have you decided to come into the business, Mr. Surtaine?" "Do you think I'd make a valuable employee, Miss Milly?" he bantered. But to Milly Neal the subject of the Certina factory admitted of no jocularity. She took him under advisement with a grave and quaint dubiety. "Have you ever worked?" "Oh, yes; I'm not wholly a loafer." "For a living, I mean." "Unfortunately I've never had to." "How old are you?" "Twenty-five." "I don't believe I'd want you in my department, if it was up to me," she pronounced. "Do you think I wouldn't be amenable to your stern discipline?" Still she refused to meet him on his ground of badinage. "It isn't that. But I don't think you'd be interested enough to start in at the bottom and work up." "Perhaps you're right, Miss Neal," said Hal, a little startled by the acuteness of her judgment, and a little piqued as well. "Though you condemn me to a life of uselessness on scant evidence." She went scarlet. "Oh, please! You know I didn't mean that. But you seem too--too easy-going, too--" "Too ornamental to be useful?" Suddenly she stamped her foot at him, flaming into a swift exasperation. "You're laughing at me!" she accused. "I'm going back to my work. I won't stay and be made fun of." Then, in another and rather a dismayed tone, "Oh, I'm forgetting about your being the Chief's son." Hal jumped to his feet. "Please promise to forget it when next we meet," he besought her with winning courtesy. "You've been a kind little friend and adviser. And I thank you for what you have said." "Not at all," she returned lamely, and walked away, her face still crimson. Returning to the executive suite, the young scion found his father immersed in technicalities of copy with the second advertising writer. "Sit down, Boyee," said he. "I'll be through in a few minutes." And he resumed his discussion of "black-face," "36-point," "indents," "boxes," and so on. Left to his own devices Hal turned idly to the long table. From the newspaper which the Reverend Norman Hale had left, there glared up at him in savage black type this heading:-- CERTINA A FAKE _Religious Editor Shows Up Business and Professional_ _Methods of Dr. L. André Surtaine_ The article was made up of excerpts from a religious weekly's exposé, interspersed with semi-editorial comment. As he skimmed it, Hal's wrath and loyalty waxed in direct ratio. Malice was obvious in every line, to the incensed reader. But the cause and purpose were not so clear. As he looked up, brooding upon it, he caught his father's eye. "Been reading that slush, Hal?" "Yes, sir. Of course it's all a pack of lies. But what's the reason for it?" "Blackmail, son." "Do they expect to get money out of you this way?" "No. That isn't it. I've always refused to have any business dealings with 'em, and this is their way of revenge." "But I didn't know you advertised Certina in the local papers." "We don't. Proprietaries don't usually advertise in their own towns. We're so well known at home that we don't have to. But some of the side lines, like the Relief Pills, that go out under another trade name, use space in the Worthington papers. The 'Clarion' isn't getting that copy, so they're sore." "Can't you sue them for libel, Dad?" "Hardly worth while. Decent people don't read the 'Clarion' anyway, so it can't hurt much. It's best just to ignore such things." "Something ought to be done about it," declared Hal angrily. Stuffing the paper into his pocket he took his wrath out into the open air. Hard and fast he walked, but the farther he went the hotter burned his ire. There was in Harrington Surtaine a streak of the romantic. His inner world was partly made up of such chimerical notions as are bred in a lively mind, not in very close touch with the world of actualities, by a long course of novel-reading and theater-going. Deep within him stirred a conviction that there was a proper and suitable, nay, an almost obligatory, method made and provided for just such crises as this: something that a keen-spirited and high-bred youth ought to do about it. Suddenly it came to him. Young Surtaine returned home with his resolve taken. In the morning he would fare forth, a modern knight redressing human wrongs, and lick the editor of the "Clarion." Overnight young Mr. Surtaine revised his project. Horsewhipping would be no more than the offending editor deserved. However, he should have his chance. Let him repent and retract publicly, and the castigation should be remitted. Forthwith the avenger sat him down to a task of composition. The apology which, after sundry corrections and emendations, he finally produced in fair copy, was not alone complete and explicit: it was fairly abject. In such terms might a confessed and hopeless criminal cast himself desperately upon the mercy of the court. Previsioning this masterly _apologium_ upon the first page of the morrow's "Clarion,"--or perhaps at the top of the editorial columns,--its artificer thrilled with the combined pride of authorship and poetic justice. On the walls of the commodious room which had been set aside in the Surtaine mansion for the young master's study hung a plaited dog-whip. The agent of just reprisals curled this neatly inside his overcoat pocket and set forth upon his errand. It was then ten o'clock in the morning. Now, in hunting the larger fauna of the North American continent with a dog-whip, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the game's habits. Mr. Harrington Surtaine's first error lay in expecting to find the editorial staff of a morning newspaper on duty in the early forenoon. So much a sweeper, emerging from a pile of dust, communicated to him across a railing, further volunteering that three o'clock would be a well-chosen hour for return, as the boss would be less pressed upon by engagements then, perhaps, than at other hours. In the nature of things, the long delay might well have cooled the knightliest ardor. But as he departed from the office, Mr. Surtaine took with him a copy of that day's "Clarion" for perusal, and in its pages discovered a "follow-up" of the previous day's outrage. Back home he went, and added to his literary effort a few more paragraphs wherein the editorial "we" more profoundly cringed, cowered, and crawled in penitential abasement. Despite the relish of the words, Hal rather hoped that the editor would refuse to publish his masterpiece. He itched to use that whip. CHAPTER VI LAUNCHED For purposes of vital statistics, the head office boy of the Worthington "Daily Clarion" was denominated Reginald Currier. As this chaste cognomen was artistically incompatible with his squint eye, his militant swagger, and a general bearing of unrepressed hostility toward all created beings, he was professionally known as "Bim." Journalism, for him, was comprised in a single tenet; that no visitor of whatsoever kind had or possibly could have any business of even remotely legitimate nature within the precincts of the "Clarion" office. Tradition of the place held that a dent in the wall back of his desk marked the termination of an argument in which Reginald, all unwitting, had essayed to maintain his thesis against the lightweight champion of the State who had come to call on the sporting editor. There had been a lull in the activities of this minor Cerberus when the light and swinging footfall of one coming up the dim stairway several steps at a time aroused his ready suspicions. He bristled forth to the rail to meet a tall and rather elegant young man whom he greeted with a growl to this effect: "Hoojer wanter see?" "Is the editor in?" "Whajjer want uvvum?" The tall visitor stepped forward, holding out a card. "Take this to him, please, and say that I'd like to see him at once." Unwisely, Reginald disregarded the card, which fluttered to the floor. More unwisely, he ignored a certain tensity of expression upon the face of his interlocutor. Most unwisely he repeated, in his very savagest growl: "Whajjer want uvvum, I said. Didn' chu hear me?" Graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, Reginald Currier rose and soared. When he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. Somewhat perturbed, he extricated himself in time to see the decisive visitor disappear through an inner door. Retrieving the crumpled and rejected card from its resting-place, he examined it with interest. The legend upon it was "Mr. Harrington Surtaine." "Huh!" grunted Reginald Currier; "I never seen _that_ in no sporting column." Once within the sacred precincts, young Mr. Surtaine turned into an inner room, bumped against a man trailing a kite-tail of proof, who had issued from a door to the right, asked a question, got a response, and entered the editor's den. Two littered desks made up the principal furniture of the place. Impartially distributed between the further desk and a chair, the form of one lost in slumber sprawled. At the nearer one sat a dyspeptic man of middle age waving a heavy pencil above a galley proof. "Are you the editor?" asked Hal. "One editor. I'm Mr. Sterne. How the devil did you get in here?" "Are you responsible for this?" Hal held up the morning's clipping, headed "Surtaine Fakeries Explained." "Who are you?" asked Sterne, nervously hitching in his chair. "I am Harrington Surtaine." The journalist whistled, a soft, long-drawn note. "Dr. Surtaine's son?" he inquired. "Yes." "That's awkward." "Not half as awkward as it's going to be unless you apologize privately and publicly." Mr. Sterne looked at him estimatingly, at the same time wadding up a newspaper clipping from the desk in front of him. This he cast at the slumberer with felicitous accuracy. "Hoong!" observed that gentleman, starting up and caressing his cheek. "Wake up, Mac. Here's a man from the Trouble Belt, with samples to show." The individual thus addressed slowly rose out of his chair, exhibiting a squat, gnarly figure surmounted by a very large head. Hal's hand came up out of his pocket, with the dog-whip writhing unpleasantly after it. Simultaneously, the ex-sleeper projected himself, without any particular violence but with astonishing quickness, between the caller and his prey. Without at all knowing whence it was derived, Hal became aware of a large, black, knobby stick, which it were inadequate to call a cane, in his new opponent's grasp. Of physical courage there was no lack in the scion of the Surtaine line. Neither, however, was he wholly destitute of reasoning powers and caution. The figure before him was of an unquestionable athleticism; the weapon of obvious weight and fiber. The situation was embarrassing. "Please don't lick the editor," said the interrupter of poetic justice good-humoredly. "Appropriately framed and hung upon the wall, fifteen cents apiece. Yah-ah-ah-oo!" he yawned prodigiously. "Calm down," he added. Hal stared at the squat and agile figure. "You're the office bully and bouncer, I suppose," he said. "McGuire Ellis, _at_ your service. Bounce only when compelled. Otherwise peaceful. _And_ sleepy." "My business is with this man," said Hal, indicating Sterne. "Put up your toy, then, and state it in words of one syllable." For a moment the visitor pondered, drawing the whip through his hands, uncertainly. "I'm not fool enough to go up against that war-club," he remarked. Mr. McGuire Ellis nodded approval. "First sensible thing I've heard you say," he remarked. "But neither"--here Hal's jaw projected a little--"am I going to let this thing drop." "Law?" inquired Sterne. "If you think there's any libel in what the 'Clarion' has said, ask your lawyer. What do you want, anyway?" Thus recalled to the more pacific phase of his errand, Hal produced his document. "If you've got an iota of decency or fairness about you, you'll print that," he said. Sterne glanced through it swiftly. "Nothing doing," he stated succinctly. "Did Dr. Surtaine send you here with that thing?" "My father doesn't know that I'm here." "Oho! So that's it. Knight-errantry, eh? Now, let me put this thing to you straight, Mr. Harrington Surtaine. If your father wants to make a fair and decent statement, without abuse or calling names, over his own signature, the 'Clarion' will run it, at fifty cents a word." "You dirty blackmailer!" said Hal slowly. "Hard names go with this business, my young friend," said the other coolly. "At present you've got me checked. But you don't always keep your paid bully with you, I suppose. One of these days you and I will meet--" "And you'll land in jail." "He talks awfully young, doesn't he?" said Mr. Ellis, shaking a solemn head. "As for blackmail," continued Sterne, a bit eagerly, "there's nothing in that. We've never asked Dr. Surtaine for a dollar. He hasn't got a thing on us." "You never asked him for advertising either, I suppose," said Hal bitterly. "Only in the way of business. Just as we go out after any other advertising." "If he had given you his ads.--" "Oh, I don't say that we'd have gone after him if he'd been one of our regular advertisers. Every other paper in town gets his copy; why shouldn't we? We have to look out for ourselves. We look out for our patrons, too. Naturally, we aren't going to knock one of our advertisers. Others have got to take their chances." "And that's modern journalism!" "It's the newspaper business," cried Sterne. "No different from any other business." "No wonder decent people consider newspaper men the scum of the earth," said Hal, with rather ineffectual generalization. "Don't be young!" besought McGuire Ellis wearily. "Pretend you're a grown-up man, anyway. You look as if you might have some sense about you somewhere, if you'd only give it a chance to filter through." Some not unpleasant quirk of speech and manner in the man worked upon Hal's humor. "Why, I believe you're right about the youngness," he admitted, with a smile. "Perhaps there are other ways of getting at this thing. Just for a test,--for the last time will you or will you not, Mr. Sterne, publish this apology?" "We will not. There's just one person can give me orders." "Who is that?" "The owner." "I think you'll be sorry." McGuire Ellis turned upon him a look that was a silent reproach to immaturity. "Anything more?" queried Sterne. "Nothing," said Hal, with an effort at courtesy. "Good-day to you both." "Well, what about it?" asked McGuire Ellis of his chief, as the visitor's footsteps died away. "Nothing about it. When'll the next Surtaine roast be ready?" "Ought to be finished to-morrow." "Schedule it for Thursday. We'll make the old boy squeal yet. Do you believe the boy when he says that his father didn't send him?" "Sounded straight. Pretty straight boy he looked like to me, anyway." "Pretty fresh kid, _I_ think. And a good deal of a pin-head. Distributing agency for the old man's money, I guess. He won't get anywhere." "Well, I'm not so sure," said Ellis contemplatively. "Of course he acts gosh-awful young. But did you notice him when he went?" "Not particularly." "He was smiling." "Well?" "Always look out for a guy that smiles when he's licked. He's got a come-back to him." Eleven o'clock that night saw McGuire Ellis lift his head from the five-minute nap which he allowed himself on evenings of light pressure after the Washington copy was run off, and blink rapidly. At the same moment Mr. David Sterne gave utterance to an exclamation, partly of annoyance, partly of surprise. Mr. Harrington Surtaine, wearing an expression both businesslike and urbane stood in the doorway. "Good-evening, gentlemen," he remarked. Mr. Sterne snorted. Mr. Ellis's lips seemed about to form the reproachful monosyllable "young." Without further greeting the visitor took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on a peg. "You make yourself at home," growled Sterne. "I do," agreed Hal, and, discarding his coat, hung that on another peg. "I've got a right to." Tilting a slumber-burdened head, McGuire Ellis released his adjuration against youthfulness. "What's the answer?" demanded Sterne. "I've just bought out the 'Clarion,'" said Hal. CHAPTER VII THE OWNER Some degree of triumph would perhaps have been excusable in the new owner. Most signally had he turned the tables on his enemies. Yet it was with no undue swagger that he seated himself upon a chair of problematical stability, and began to study the pages of the morning's issue. Sterne regarded him dubiously. "This isn't a bluff, I suppose?" he asked. "Ask your lawyers." "Mac, get Rockwell's house on the 'phone, will you, and find out if we've been sold." Presently the drawl of Mr. Ellis was heard, pleading with a fair and anonymous Central, whom he addressed with that charming impersonality employed toward babies, pet dogs, and telephone girls, as "Tootsie," to abjure juvenility, and give him 322 Vincent, in a hurry. "You'll excuse me, Mr. Surtaine," said Sterne, in a new and ingratiating tone, for which Hal liked him none the better, "but verifying news has come to be an instinct with me." "It's straight," said Ellis, turning his heavy face to his principal, after a moment's talk over the wire. "Bought _and_ sold, lock, stock, and barrel." "Have you had any newspaper experience, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired Sterne. "Not on the practical side." "As owner I suppose you'll want to make changes." "Undoubtedly." "They all do," sighed Sterne. "But my contract has several months--" "Yes: I've been over the contracts with a lawyer. Yours and Mr. Ellis's. He says they won't hold." "All newspaper contracts are on the cheese," observed McGuire Ellis philosophically. "Swiss cheese, at that. Full of holes." "I don't admit it," protested Sterne. "Even so, to turn a man out--" A snort of disgust from Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful and captious immaturity. "Contract or no contract, you'll both be fairly treated," said the new owner shortly. "Who, me?" inquired Ellis. "You can go rapidly to hell and take my contract with you. I know when I'm fired." "Who fired you?" "I did. To save you the satisfaction." "Very good of you, I'm sure," drawled Hal in a tone of lofty superiority, turning away. Out of the corner of his eye, however, he could see McGuire Ellis making pantomime as of one spanking a baby with fervor. Amusement helped him to the recovery of his temper. "Working under an amateur journalist will just suit Sterne," observed Ellis, in a tone quite as offensive as Hal's. "Cut it out, Mac," suggested his principal. "There's no occasion for hard words." "Amateur isn't the hardest word in the dictionary," said Hal quietly. "Perhaps I'll become a professional in time." "Buying a newspaper doesn't make a newspaper man." "Well, I'm not too old to learn. But see here, Mr. Ellis, doesn't your contract hold you?" "The contract that you said was no good? Do you expect it to work all one way?" "Well, professional honor, then, I should suppose--" "Professional honor!" cut in Ellis, with scathing contempt. "You step in here and buy a paper out of a freak of revenge--" "Hold on, there! How can you know my motive?" "What else could it be?" Hal was silent, finding no answer. "You see! To feed your mean little spite, you've taken over control of the biggest responsibility, for any one with any decent sense of responsibility, that a man could take on his shoulders. And what will you make of it? A toy! A rich kid's plaything." "Well, what would you make of it, yourself?" asked Hal. "A teacher and a preacher. A force to tear down and to build up. To rip this old town wide open, and remould it nearer to the heart's desire! That's what a newspaper might be, and ought to be, and could be, by God in Heaven, if the right man ever had a free hand at it." "Don't get profane, my boy," tittered Sterne. "You think that's swearing?" retorted Ellis. "Yes; _you_ would. But I was nearer praying then than I've ever been since I came to this office. We'll never live to see that prayer answered, you and I." "Perhaps," began Hal. "Oh, perhaps!" Ellis snatched the word from his lips. "Perhaps you're the boy to do it, eh? Why, it's your kind that's made journalism the sewer of the professions, full of the scum and drainings of every other trade's failures. What chance have we got to develop ideals when you outsiders control the whole business?" "Hullo!" observed Sterne with a grin. "Where do you come in on the idealist business, Mac? This is new talk from you." "New? Why wouldn't it be new? Would I waste it on you, Dave Sterne?" "You certainly never have since I've known you." "Call it easing up my mind if you like. I can afford that luxury, now that you 're not my boss any longer. Not but what it's all Greek to you." "Had a drink to-day, Mac?" "No, damn you. But I'm going out of here and take a hundred. First, though, I'm going to tell young Bib-and-Tucker over there a thing or two about his new toy. Oh, yes: you can listen, too, Sterne, but it won't get to your shelled-in soul." "You in'trust muh, strangely," said Sterne, and looked over to Hal for countenance of his uneasy amusement. But the new owner did not appear amused. He had faced around in his chair and now sat regarding the glooming and exalted Ellis with an intent surprise. "A plaything! That's what you think you've bought, young Mr. Harrington Surtaine. One of two things you'll do with it: either you'll try to run it yourself, and you'll dip deeper and deeper into Poppa's medicine-bag till he gets sick of it and closes you up; or you'll hire some practical man to manage it, and insist on dividends that'll keep it just where it is now. And that's pretty low, even for a Worthington paper." "It won't live on blackmail, at any rate," said Hal, his mind reverting to its original grievance. "Maybe it will. You won't know it if it does. Anyhow, it'll live on suppression and distortion and manipulation of news, because it'll have to, if it's going to live at all." "You mean that is the basis of the newspaper business as it is to-day?" "Generally speaking. It certainly is in Worthington." "You're frank, at any rate. Where's all your glowing idealism now?" "Vanished into mist. All idealism goes that way, doesn't it?" "Not if you back it up with work. You see, Mr. Ellis, I'm something of an idealist myself." "The Certina brand of idealism. Guaranteed under the Pure Thought and Deed Act." "Our money may have been made a little--well, blatantly," said Hal, flushing. "But at least it's made honestly." He was too intent on his subject to note either Sterne's half-wink or Ellis's stare of blank amazement. "And I'm going to run this newspaper on the same high principles. I don't quite reconcile your standards with the practices of this paper, Mr. Ellis--" "Mac has nothing to do with the policy of the paper, Mr. Surtaine," put in Sterne. "He's only an employee." "Then why don't you get work on some paper that practices your principles?" "Hard to find. Not having been born with a silver spoon, full of Certina, in my mouth, I have to earn my own living. It isn't profitable to make a religion of one's profession, Mr. Surtaine. Not that I think you need the warning. But I've tried it, and I know." "Do you know, it's rather a pity you don't like me," said Hal, with ruminative frankness. "I think I could use some of that religion of yours." "Not on the market," returned Ellis shortly. "You see," pursued the other, "it's really my own money I've put into this paper: half of all I've got." "How much did you pay for it?" inquired Ellis: "since we're telling each other our real names." "Two hundred and thirty thousand dollars." "Whee-ee-ee-ew!" Both his auditors joined in the whistle. "They asked two-fifty." "Half of that would have bought," said Sterne. Hal digested that information in silence for a minute. "I suppose I was easy. Hurry never yet made a good bargain. But, now that I've got this paper I'm going to run it myself." "On the rocks," prophesied McGuire Ellis. "Utter and complete shipwreck. I'm glad I'm off." "Is it your habit, Mr. Ellis, to run at the first suggestion of disaster?" Ellis looked his questioner up and down. "Say the rest of it," he barked. "Why, it seems to me you're still an officer of this ship. Doesn't it enter into your ethics somewhere that you ought to stick by her until the new captain can fill your place, and not quit in the face of the shipwreck you foresee?" "Humph," grunted McGuire Ellis, "I guess you're not quite as young as I thought you were. How long would you want me to stay?" "About a year." "What!" "On an unbreakable contract. To be editorial manager. You see, I'm prepared to buy ideals." "What about my opinion of amateur journalism?" "You'll just have to do the best you can about that." "Give me till to-morrow to think it over." "All right." Ellis put down the hat and cane which he had picked up preparatory to his departure. "Not going out after those hundred drinks, eh, Mac?" laughed Sterne. "Indefinitely postponed," replied the other. "The first thing to do," said Hal decisively, "is to make amends. Mr. Sterne, the 'Clarion' is to print a full retraction of the attacks upon my father, at once." "Yes, sir," assented Sterne, slavishly responsive to the new authority. Not so McGuire Ellis. "If you do that you'll make a fool of your own paper," he said bluntly. "Make a fool of the paper by righting a rank injustice?" "Just the point. It isn't a rank injustice." "See here, Mr. Sterne: isn't it a fact that this attack was made because my father doesn't advertise with you?" The editor twisted uneasily in his chair. "A newspaper's got to look out for its own interests," he asserted defensively. "Please answer my question." "Well--yes; I suppose it is so." "Then you're simply operating a blackmailing scheme to get the Certina advertising for the 'Clarion.'" "The Certina advertising?" repeated Sterne in obvious surprise. "Certina doesn't advertise locally. Most patent medicines don't. It's a sort of fashion of the trade not to," explained Ellis. "What on earth is all this about, then?" The two newspaper men exchanged a glance. Obviously the new boss understood little of his progenitor's extensive business interests. "Might as well know sooner as later," decided Ellis, aloud. "It's the Neverfail Company of Cincinnati that we got turned down on." "What is the Neverfail Company?" "One of Dr. Surtaine's alia--one of the names he does business under. Every other paper in town gets their copy. We don't. Hence the roast." "What sort of business is it?" "Relief Pills. Here's the ad. in this morning's 'Banner.'" The name struck chill on Hal's memory. He stared at the sinister oblong of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing to apprehend the full villainy of the lure. "Whatever the advertising is," said he, "the principle is the same." "Precisely," chirped Ellis. "And you call that decent journalism?" "No: my extremely youthful friend, I do not. What's more, I never did." "If you want a retraction published," said Sterne, spreading wide his hands as one offering fealty, "wouldn't it be just as well to preface it with an announcement of the taking-over of the paper by yourself?" "That itself would be tantamount to an announced reversal of policy," mused Hal. Again Sterne and Ellis glanced at each other, but with a different expression this time. The look meant that they had recognized in the intruder a flash of that mysterious sense vaguely known as "the newspaper instinct," with which a few are born, but which most men acquire by giving mortgages on the blest illusions of youth. "Cor-_rect_," said Ellis. "Let the retraction rest for the present. I'll decide it later." The door was pushed open, and a dark man of perhaps thirty, with a begrimed and handsome face, entered. In one hand he held a proof. "About this paragraph," he said to Sterne in a slightly foreign accent. "Is it to run to-morrow?" "What paragraph is that?" "The one-stick editorial guying Dr. Surtaine." "Kill it," said Sterne hastily. "This is Mr. Harrington Surtaine. Mr. Surtaine, this is Max Veltman, foreman of our composing-room." Slowly the printer turned his fine, serious face from one to the other. "Ah," he said presently. "So it is arranged. We do not print this paragraph. Good!" Impossible to take offense at the tone. Yet the smile which accompanied it was so plainly a sneer that Hal's color rose. "Mr. Surtaine is the new owner of the 'Clarion,'" explained Ellis. "In that case, of course," said Veltman quietly. "Good-night, gentlemen." "Good-looking chap," remarked Hal. "But what a curious expression." "Veltman's a thinker and a crank," said Ellis. "If he had a little more balance he'd make his mark. But he's a sort of melancholiac. Ill-health, nerves, and a fixed belief in the general wrongness of creation." "Well. I'll get to know more about the shop to-morrow," said Hal. "I'm for home and sleep just now. See you at--what time, by the way?" "Noon," said Sterne. "If that suits you." "Perfectly. Good-night." Arrived at home, Hal went straight to the big ground-floor library where, as the light suggested, his father sat reading. "Dad, do you want a retraction printed?" "Of the 'Clarion' article?" "Yes." "From 'Want' to 'Get' the road runs rocky," said the senior Surtaine whimsically. "I've just come from removing a few of the rocks at the 'Clarion' office." "Go down to lick the editor?" Dr. Surtaine's eyes twinkled. "There may have been some such notion in the back of my head." "Expensive exercise. Did you do it?" "No. He had a club." "If I were running a slander-machine like the 'Clarion' I'd want six-inch armor-plate and a quick-fire battery. Well, what did you do?" "Bought the paper." "You needn't have gone down town to do that. It comes to the office." "You don't understand. I've bought the 'Clarion,' presses, plant, circulation, franchise, good-will, ill-will, high, low, jack, and the game." "You! What for?" "Why," said Hal thoughtfully; "mainly because I lost my temper, I believe." "Sounds like a pretty heavy loss, Boy-ee." "Two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Oh, the prodigal son hasn't got anything on me, Dad, when it comes to scattering patrimonies," he concluded a little ruefully. "What are you going to do with it, now you've got it?" "Run it. I've bought a career." "Now you're talking." The big man jumped up and set both hands on Hal's shoulders. "That's the kind of thing I like to hear, and in the kind of way it ought to be said. You go to it, Hal. I'll back you, as far as you like." "No, sir. I thank you just the same: this is my game." "Want to play it alone, do you?" "How else can I make a career of it?" "Right you are, Boyee. But it takes something behind money to build up a newspaper. And the 'Clarion' 'll take some building up." "Well, I've got aspiration enough, if it comes to that," smiled Hal. "Aspiration's a good starter: but it's perspiration that makes a business go. Are you ready to take off your coat and work?" "I certainly am. There's a lot for me to learn." "There is. Everything. Want some advice from the Old Man?" "I most surely do, Dad." "Listen here, then. A newspaper is a business proposition. Never forget that. All these hifalutin' notions about its being a palladium and the voice of the people and the guardian of public interests are good enough to talk about on the editorial page. Gives a paper a following, that kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. Now, how are you going to make money with the 'Clarion'?" "By making it a better paper than the others." "Hm! Better. Yes: that's all right, so long as you mean the right thing by 'better.' Better for the people that want to use it and can pay for using it." "The readers, you mean?" "The advertisers. It's the advertisers that pay for the paper, not the readers. You've got to have circulation, of course, to get the advertising. But remember this, always: circulation is only a means to an end. It never yet paid the cost of getting out a daily, and it never will." "I know enough of the business to understand that." "Good! Look at the 'Clarion,' as it is. It's got a good circulation. And that lets it out. It can't get the advertising. So it's losing money, hand over fist." "Why can't it?" "It's yellow. It doesn't treat the business interests right." "Sterne says they always look after their own advertisers." "Oh, that! Naturally they have to. Any newspaper will do that. But they print a lot of stuff about strikes and they're always playing up to the laboring man and running articles about abuses and pretending to be the friend of the poor and all that slush, and the better class of business won't stand for it. Once a paper gets yellow, it has to keep on. Otherwise it loses what circulation it's got. No advertiser wants to use it then. The department stores do go into the 'Clarion' because it gets to a public they can't reach any other way. But they give it just as little space as they can. It isn't popular." "Well, I don't intend to make the paper yellow." "Of course you don't. Keep your mind on it as a business proposition and you won't go wrong. Remember, it's the advertiser that pays. Think of that when you write an editorial. Frame it and hang it where every sub-editor and reporter can't help but see it. Ask of every bit of news, 'Is this going to get me an advertiser? Is that going to lose me an advertiser?' Be on the lookout to do your advertisers favors. They appreciate little things like special notices and seeing their names in print, in personals, and that kind of thing. And keep the paper optimistic. Don't knock. Boost. Business men warm up to that. Why, Boy-ee, if you'll just stick to the policy I've outlined, you'll not only make a big success, but you'll have a model paper that'll make a new era in local journalism; a paper that every business man in town will swear by and that'll be the pride of Worthington before you're through." Fired by the enthusiasm of his fair vision of a higher journalism, Dr. Surtaine had been walking up and down, enlivening, with swinging arms, the chief points of his Pæan of Policy. Now he dropped into his chair and with a change of voice said: "Never mind about that retraction, Hal." "No?" "No. Forget it. When do you start in work?" "To-morrow." "You must save to-morrow evening." "For what?" "You're invited to the Festus Willards'. Mrs. Willard was particularly anxious you should come." "But I don't know them, Dad." "Doesn't matter. It's about the most exclusive house in town. A cut above me, I can tell you. I've never so much as set foot in it." "Then I won't go," declared his son, flushing. "Yes: you must," insisted his father anxiously. "Don't mind about me. I'm not ambitious socially. I told you some folks don't like the business. It's too noisy. But you won't throw out any echoes. You'll go, Boyee?" "Since you want me to, of course, sir. But I shan't find much time for play if I'm to learn my new trade." "Oh, you can hire good teachers," laughed his father. "Well, I'm sleepy. Good-night, Mr. Editor." "Good-night, Dad. I could use some sleep myself." But thought shared the pillow with Hal Surtaine's head. Try as he would to banish the contestants, Dr. Surtaine's Pæan of Policy and McGuire Ellis's impassioned declaration of faith did battle for the upper hand in his formulating professional standards. The Doctor's theory was the clean-cut, comprehensible, and plausible one. But something within Hal responded to the hot idealism of the fighting journalist. He wanted Ellis for a fellow workman. And his last waking notion was that he wanted and needed Ellis mainly because Ellis had told him to go to hell. CHAPTER VIII A PARTNERSHIP All the adjectives in the social register were exhausted by the daily papers in describing Mrs. Festus Willard's dance. Without following them into that verbal borderland wherein "recherché" vies with "exclusive," and "chic" disputes precedence with "distingué," it is sufficient for the purposes of this narrative to chronicle the fact that the pick of Worthington society was there, and not much else. Also, if I may borrow from the Society Editor's convenient phrase-book, "Among those present" was Mr. Harrington Surtaine. For reasons connected with his new venture, Hal had come late. He was standing near the doorway wondering by what path to attain to an unidentified hostess, when Miss Esmé Elliot, at the moment engaged with that very hostess on some matter of feminine strategy with which we have no concern, spied him. "Who is the young Greek godling, hopelessly lost in the impenetrable depths of your drawing-room?" she propounded suddenly. "Who? What? Where?" queried Mrs. Willard, thus abruptly recalled to her duties. "Yonder by the doorway, looking as if he didn't know a soul." "It's some stranger," said the hostess, trying to peer around an intervening palm. "I must go and speak to him." "Wait. Festus has got him." For the host, a powerful, high-colored man in his early forties, with a slight limp, had noticed the newcomer and was now introducing himself. Miss Elliot watched the process with interest. "Jinny," she announced presently, "I want that to play with." The stranger turned a little, so that his full face was shown. "It's Hal Surtaine!" exclaimed Mrs. Willard. "I don't care who it is. It looks nice. Please, mayn't I have it to play with?" "Will you promise not to break it? It used to be a particular pet of mine." "When?" "Oh, years ago. When you were in your cradle." "Where?" "On the St. Lawrence. Several summers. He was my boy-knight, and chaperon, and protector. Such a dear, chivalrous boy!" "Was he in love with you?" demanded Miss Elliot with lively interest. "Of course he wasn't. He was a boy of fifteen, and I a mature young woman of twenty-one." "He _was_ in love with you," accused the girl, noting a brightness in her friend's color. "There was a sort of knightly devotion," admitted the other demurely. "There always is, isn't there, in a boy of that age, for a woman years older?" "And you didn't know him at first?" "It's ten years since I've set eyes on him. He doesn't even know that I am the Mrs. Festus Willard who is giving this party." "Festus is looking around for you. They'll be over here in a minute. No! Don't get up yet. I want you to do something for me." "What is it, Norrie?" "I'm not going to feel well, about supper-time." "Why not?" "Would _you_ feel well if you'd been in to dinner three times in the last week with Will Douglas, and then had to go in to supper with him, too?" "But I thought you and Will--" "I'm tired of having people think," said Miss Elliot plaintively. "Too much Douglas! Yes; I shall be quite indisposed, about one dance before supper." "I'll send you home." "No, you won't, Jinny, dear. Because I shall suddenly recover, about two minutes before the oysters arrive." "Norrie!" "Truly I shall. Quite miraculously. And you're to see that the young Greek godling doesn't get any other partner for supper--" "Esmé!!" "--because I'm sure he'd rather have me," she concluded superbly. "Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot!" "Oh, you may call me _all_ my names. I'm accustomed to abuse from you. But you'll arrange it, _dear_ Jinny, won't you!" "Did you ever fail of anything when you put on that wheedling face and tone?" "Never," said Miss Elliot with composure, but giving her friend a little hug. "Here they come. I fly. Bring him to me later." Piloted by Festus Willard, Hal crossed the floor, and beheld, moving to meet him with outstretched hands, a little woman with an elfin face and the smile of a happy child. "Have you forgotten me, Hal?" "Lady Jeannette!" he cried, the old boyhood name springing to his lips. "What are you doing here?" "Didn't Festus tell you?" She looked fondly up at her big husband. "I didn't know that the surprise would last up to the final moment." "It's the very best surprise that has happened to me in Worthington," declared Hal emphatically. "We're quite prepared to adopt you, Surtaine," said Willard pleasantly. "Jinny has never ceased to wonder why she heard nothing from you in reply to her note telling of our engagement." "Never got it," said Hal promptly. "And I've wondered why she dropped me so unaccountably. It's rather luck for me, you know," he added, smiling, "to find friends ready-made in a strange town." "Oh, you'll make friends enough," declared Mrs. Willard. "The present matter is to make acquaintances. Come and dance this dance out with me and then I'll take you about and introduce you. Are you as good a dancer as you used to be?" Hal was, and something more. And in his hostess he had one of the best partners in Worthington. Cleverly she had judged that the "Boston" with her, if he were proficient, would be the strongest recommendation to the buds of the place. And, indeed, before they had gone twice about the floor, many curious and interested eyes were turned upon them. Not the least interested were those of Miss Elliot, who privately decided, over a full and overflowing programme, that she would advance her recovery to one dance before the supper announcement. "You're going to be a social success, Hal," whispered his partner. "I feel it. And _where_ did you learn that delightful swing after the dip?" "Picked it up on shipboard. But I shan't have much time for gayeties. You see, I've become a workingman." "Tell me about it to-morrow. You're to dine with us; quite _en famille_. You _must_ like Festus, Hal." "I should think that would be easy." "It is. He is just the finest, cleanest, straightest human being in the world," she said soberly. "Now, come away and meet a million people." So late was it that most of the girls had no vacancies on their programmes. But Jeannette Willard was both a diplomat and a bit of a despot, socially, and several of the young eligibles relinquished, with surprisingly good grace, so Hal felt, their partners, in favor of the newcomer. He did not then know the tradition of Worthington's best set, that hospitality to a stranger well vouched for should be the common concern of all. Very pleasant and warming he found this atmosphere, after his years abroad, with its happy, well-bred frankness, its open comradeship, and obvious, "first-name" intimacies. But though every one he met seemed ready to extend to him, as a friend of the Willards, a ready welcome, he could not but feel himself an outsider, and at the conclusion of a dance he drew back into a side passage, to watch for a time. Borne on a draught of air from some invisibly opening door behind him there came to his nostrils the fairy-spice of the arbutus-scent. He turned quickly, and saw her almost at his shoulder, the girl of the lustrous face. Behind her was Festus Willard. "Ah, there you are, Surtaine," he said. "I've been looking for you to present you to Miss Elliot. Esmé, this is Mr. Harrington Surtaine." She neither bowed nor moved in acknowledgment of Hal's greeting, but looked at him with still, questioning eyes. The springtide hue of the wild flower at her breast was matched in her cheek. Her head was held high, bringing out the pure and lovely line of chin and throat. To Hal it seemed that he had never seen anything so beautiful and desirable. "Is it a bet?" Festus Willard's quiet voice was full of amusement. "Have you laid a wager as to which will keep silent longest?" At this, Hal recovered himself, though stumblingly. "'Fain would I speak,'" he paraphrased, "'but that I fear to--to--to--'" "Stutter," suggested Willard, with solicitous helpfulness. The girl broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over its private delectations. "If I could have a dance with you," suggested Hal, "I'm sure it would help my aphasia." "I'm afraid," she began dubiously, "that--No; here's one just before supper. If you haven't that--" "No: I haven't," said Hal hastily. "It's awfully good of you--and lucky for me." "I'll be with Mrs. Willard," said the girl, nodding him a cheerful farewell. Just what or who his partners for the next few dances were, Hal could not by any effort recall the next day. He was conscious, on the floor, only of an occasional glimpse of her, a fugitive savor of the wildwood fragrance, and then she had disappeared. Later, as he returned from a talk with Festus Willard outside, he became aware of the challenge of deep-hued, velvety eyes, regarding him with a somewhat petulant expression, and recognized his acquaintance of the motor car and the railroad terminal. "You'd forgotten me," accused Miss Kathleen Pierce, pouting, as he came to greet her. Hal's disclaimer had sufficient diplomatic warmth to banish her displeasure. She introduced to him as Dr. Merritt a striking-looking, gray-haired young man, who had come up at the same time with an anticipatory expression. This promptly vanished when she said offhandedly to him: "You've had three dances with me already, Hugh. I'm going to give this one to Mr. Surtaine if he wants it." "Of course I want it," said Hal. "Not that you deserve it," she went on. "You should have come around earlier. I'm not in the habit of giving dances this late in the evening." "How could I break through the solid phalanx of supplicating admirers?" "At least, you might have tried. I want to try that new step I saw you doing with Mrs. Willard. And I always get what I want." "Unfortunate young lady!" "Why unfortunate?" "To have nothing seem unattainable. Life must pall on you terribly." "Indeed, it doesn't. I like being a spoiled child, don't you? Don't you think it's fun having everything you want to buy, and having a leading citizen for a father?" "Is your father a leading citizen?" asked Hal, amused. "Of course. So's yours. Neither of them quite knows which is the most leading. Dr. Surtaine is the most popular, but I suppose Pop is the most influential. Between the two of them they pretty much run this little old burg. Of course," she added with careless insolence, "Pop has got it all over Dr. Surtaine socially. "I humbly feel that I am addressing local royalty," said Hal, smiling sardonically. "Who? Me? Oh, I'm only the irresponsible child of wealth and power. Dr. Merritt called me that once--before I got him tamed." Turning to look at the gray young man who stood not far off, and noting the quiet force and competence of the face, Hal hazarded a guess to himself that the very frank young barbarian with whom he was talking was none too modest in her estimate of her own capacities. "Mrs. Willard is our local queen," she continued. "And Esmé Elliot is the princess. Have you met Esmé yet?" "Yes." "Then, of course, nobody else has a chance--so long as you're the newest toy. Still, you might find a spare hour between-times to come and call on us. Come on; let's dance." "Pert" was the mildest term to which Hal reduced his characterization of Miss Pierce, by the time the one-step ended. Nevertheless, he admitted to himself that he had been amused. His one chief concern now, however, was the engagement with Miss Elliot. When finally his number came around, he found her calmly explaining to a well-favored young fellow with a pained expression that he must have made a mistake about the number, while Mrs. Willard regarded her with mingled amusement and disfavor. "Don't expect me to dance," she said as Hal approached. "I've twisted my foot." "I'm sorry," said he blankly. "Let's find a quiet place where we can sit. And then you may get me some supper." His face lighted up. Esmé Elliot remarked to herself that she had seldom seen a more pleasing specimen of the youth of the species. "This is rather like a fairy-gift," he began eagerly, as they made their way to a nook under the stairway, specially adapted to two people of hermit tastes. "I shouldn't have dared to expect such good fortune." "You'll find me quite a fairy-godmother if you're good. Besides," she added with calm audacity, "I wanted you to myself." "Why?" he asked, amused and intrigued. "Curiosity. My besetting sin. You're a phenomenon." "An ambiguous term. It may mean merely a freak." "A new young man in Worthington," she informed him, "is a phenomenon, a social phenomenon. Of course he may be a freak, also," she added judicially. "Newness is a charm that soon wears off." "Then you're going to settle down here?" "Yes. I've joined the laboring classes." "What kind of labor?" "Journalism. I've just started in, to-day." "Really! Which paper?" "The 'Clarion.'" Her expressive face changed. "Oh," she said, a little blankly. "You don't like the 'Clarion'?" "I almost never see it. So I don't know. And you're going to begin at the bottom? That's quite brave of you." "No; I'm going to begin at the top. That's braver. Anyway, it's more reckless. I've bought the paper." "Have you! I hadn't heard of it." "Nobody's heard of it yet. No outsider. You're the first." "How delightful!" She leaned closer and looked into his face with shining eyes. "Tell me more. What are you going to do with it?" "Learn something about it, first." "It's rather yellow, isn't it?" "Putting it mildly, yes. That's one of the things I want to change." "Oh, I wish I owned a newspaper!" "Do you? Why?" "For the power of it. To say what you please and make thousands listen." The pink in her cheeks deepened. "There's nothing in the world like the thrill of that sense of power. It's the one reason why I'd be almost willing to be a man." "Perhaps you wouldn't need to be. Couldn't you exert the power without actually owning the newspaper?" "How?" "By exercising your potent influence upon the obliging proprietor," he suggested smiling. There came a dancing light in her eyes. "Do you think I'd make a good Goddess-Outside-the-Machine, to the 'Daily Clarion'?" "Charming! For a two-cent stamp--no, for a spray of your arbutus, I'll sell you an editorial sphere of influence." "Generous!" she cried. "What would my duties be?" "To advise the editor and proprietor on all possible points," he laughed. "And my privileges?" "The right of a queen over a slave." "We move fast," she said. Her fingers went to the cluster of delicate-hued bells in her bodice. But it was a false gesture. Esmé Elliot was far too practiced in her chosen game to compromise herself to comment by allowing a man whom she had just met to display her favor in his coat. "Am I to have my price?" His voice was eager now. She looked very lovely and childlike, with her head drooping, consideringly, above the flowers. "Give me a little time," she said. "To undertake a partnership on five minutes' notice--that isn't business, is it?" "Nor is this--wholly," he said, quite low. Esmé straightened up. "I'm starved," she said lightly. "Are you not going to get me any supper?" After his return she held the talk to more impersonal topics, advising him, with an adorable assumption of protectiveness, whom he was to meet and dance with, and what men were best worth his while. At parting, she gave him her hand. "I will let you know," she said, "about the--the sphere of influence." Hal danced several more numbers, with more politeness than enjoyment, then sought out his hostess to say good-night. "I'll see you to-morrow, then," she said: "and you shall tell me all your news." "You're awfully good to me, Lady Jeannette," said he gratefully. "Without you I'd be a lost soul in this town." "Most people are good to you, I fancy, Hal," said she, looking him over with approval. "As for being a lost soul, you don't look it. In fact you look like a very well-found soul, indeed." "It _is_ rather a cheerful world to live in," said Hal with apparent irrelevance. "I hope they haven't spoiled you," she said anxiously. "Are you vain, Hal? No: you don't look it." "What on earth should I be vain about? I've never done anything in the world." "No? Yet you've improved. You've solidified. What have you been doing to yourself? Not falling in love?" "Not that, certainly," he replied, smiling. "Nothing much but traveling." "How did you like Esmé Elliot?" she asked abruptly. "Quite attractive," said Hal in a flat tone. "Quite attractive, indeed!" repeated his friend indignantly. "In all your travelings, I don't believe you've ever seen any one else half as lovely and lovable." "Local pride carries you far, Lady Jeannette," laughed Hal. "And I _had_ intended to have her here to dine to-morrow; but as you're so indifferent--" "Oh, don't leave her out on my account," said Hal magnanimously. "I believe you're more than half in love with her already." "Well, you ought to be a good judge unless you've wholly forgotten the old days," retorted Hal audaciously. Jeannette Willard laughed up at him. "Don't try to flirt with a middle-aged lady who is most old-fashionedly in love with her husband," she advised. "Keep your bravo speeches for Esmé! She's used to them." "Rather goes in for that sort of thing, doesn't she?" "You mean flirtation? Someone's been talking to you about her," said Mrs. Willard quickly. "What did they say?" "Nothing in particular. I just gathered the impression." "Don't jump to any conclusions about Esmé," advised his friend. "Most men think her a desperate flirt. She does like attention and admiration. What woman doesn't? And Esmé is very much a woman." "Evidently!" "If she seems heartless, it's because she doesn't understand. She enjoys her own power without comprehending it. Esmé has never been really interested in any man. If she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be more careful about hurting others. Yet the very men who have been hardest hit remain her loyal friends." "A tribute to her strategy." "A finer quality than that. It is her own loyalty, I think, that makes others loyal to her. But the men here aren't up to her standard. She is complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it. Fine and clean as our Worthington boys are, there isn't one of them who could appeal to the imagination and idealism of a girl like Esmé Elliot. For Esmé, under all that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn't found her ideal." "And therefore hasn't found herself." She flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him. "That's rather subtle of you," she said. "I hope you don't know _too_ much about women, Hal." "Not I! Just a shot in the dark." "I said there wasn't a man here up to her standard. That isn't quite true. There is one,--you met him to-night,--but he has troubles of his own, elsewhere," she added, smiling. "I had hoped--but there has always been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him and Esmé." "For a guess, that might be Dr. Merritt," said Hal. "How did you know?" she cried. "I didn't. Only, he seems, at a glance, different and of a broader gauge than the others." "You're a judge of men, at least. As for Esmé, I suppose she'll marry some man much older than herself. Heaven grant he's the right one! For when she gives, she will give royally, and if the man does not meet her on her own plane--well, there will be tragedy enough for two!" "Deep waters," said Hal. The talk had changed to a graver tone. "Deep and dangerous. Shipwreck for the wrong adventurer. But El Dorado for the right. Such a golden El Dorado, Hal! The man I want for Esmé Elliot must have in him something of woman for understanding, and something of genius for guidance, and, I'm afraid, something of the angel for patience, and he must be, with all this, wholly a man." "A pretty large order, Lady Jeannette. Well, I've had my warning. Good-night." "Perhaps it wasn't so much warning as counsel," she returned, a little wistfully. "How poor Esmé's ears must be burning. There she goes now. What a picture! Come early to-morrow." Hal's last impression of the ballroom, as he turned away, was summed up in one glance from Esmé Elliot's lustrous eyes, as they met his across her partner's shoulder, smiling him a farewell and a remembrance of their friendly pact. "Honey-Jinny," said Mrs. Willard's husband, after the last guest had gone; "I don't understand about young Surtaine. Where did he get it?" "Get what, dear? One might suppose he was a corrupt politician." "One might suppose he might be anything crooked or wrong, knowing his old, black quack of a father. But he seems to be clean stuff all through. He looks it. He acts it. He carries himself like it. And he talks it. I had a little confab with him out in the smoking-room, and I tell you, Jinny-wife, I believe he's a real youngster." "Well, he had a mother, you know." "Did he? What about her?" "She was an old friend of my mother's. Dr. Surtaine eloped with her out of her father's country place in Midvale. He was an itinerant peddler of some cure-all then. She was a gently born and bred girl, but a mere child, unworldly and very romantic, and she was carried away by the man's personal beauty and magnetism." "I can't imagine it in a girl of any sort of family." "Mother has told me that he had a personal force that was almost hypnotic. There must have been something else to him, too, for they say that Hal's mother died, as desperately in love as she had been when she ran away with him, and that he was almost crushed by her loss and never wholly got over it. He transferred his devotion to the child, who was only three years old when the mother died. When Hal was a mere child my mother saw him once taking in dollars at a country fair booth,--just think of it, dearest,--and she said he was the picture of his girl-mother then. Later, when Professor Certain, as he called himself then, got rich, he gave Hal the best of education. But he never let him have anything to do with the Ellersleys--that was Mrs. Surtaine's name. All the family are dead now." "Well, there must be some good in the old boy," admitted Willard. "But I don't happen to like him. I do like the boy. Blood does tell, Jinny. But if he's really as much of an Ellersley as he looks, there's a bitter enlightenment before him when he comes to see Dr. Surtaine as he really is." Meantime Hal, home at a reasonable hour, in the interest of his new profession, had taken with him the pleasantest impressions of the Willards' hospitality. He slept soundly and awoke in buoyant spirits for the dawning enterprise. On the breakfast table he found, in front of his plate, a bunchy envelope addressed in a small, strong, unfamiliar hand. Within was no written word; only a spray of the trailing arbutus, still unwithered of its fairy-pink, still eloquent, in its wayward, woodland fragrance, of her who had worn it the night before. CHAPTER IX GLIMMERINGS Ignorance within one's self is a mist which, upon closer approach, proves a mountain. To the new editor of the "Clarion" the things he did not know about this enterprise of which he had suddenly become the master loomed to the skies. Together with the rest of the outer world, he had comfortably and vaguely regarded a newspaper as a sort of automatic mill which, by virtue of having a certain amount of grain in the shape of information dumped into it, worked upon this with an esoteric type-mechanism, and, in due and exact time, delivered a definite grist of news. Of the refined and articulated processes of acquisition, selection, and elimination which went to the turning-out of the final product, he was wholly unwitting. He could as well have manipulated a linotype machine as have given out a quiet Sunday's assignment list: as readily have built a multiple press as made up an edition. So much he admitted to McGuire Ellis late in the afternoon of the day after the Willard party. Fascinated, he had watched that expert journalist go through page after page of copy, with what seemed superhuman rapidity and address, distribute the finished product variously upon hooks, boxes, and copy-boys, and, the immediate task being finished, lapse upon his desk and fall asleep. Meantime, the owner himself faced the unpleasant prospect of being smothered under the downfall of proofs, queries, and scribbled sheets which descended upon his desk from all sides. For a time he struggled manfully: for a time thereafter he wallowed desperately. Then he sent out a far cry for help. The cry smote upon the ear of McGuire Ellis, "Hoong!" ejaculated that somnolent toiler, coming up out of deep waters. "Did you speak?" "I want to know what I'm to do with all of these things," replied his boss, indicating the augmenting drifts. "Throw 'em on the floor, is _my_ advice," said the employee drowsily. "The more stuff you throw away, the better paper you get out. That's a proverb of the business." "In other words, you think the paper would get along better without me than with me?" "But you're enjoying yourself, aren't you?" queried his employee. Heaving himself out of his chair, he ambled over to Hal's desk and evolved out of the chaos some semblance of order. "Don't find it as easy as your enthusiasm painted it," he suggested. "Oh, I've still got the enthusiasm. If only I knew where to begin." Ellis rubbed his ear thoughtfully and remarked: "Once I knew a man from Phoenix, Arizona, who was so excited the first time he saw the ocean that he borrowed a uniform from an absent friend, shinned aboard a five-thousand-ton brigantine, and ordered all hands to put out to sea immediately in the teeth of a whooping gale. But he," added the narrator in the judicial tone of one who cites mitigating circumstances, "was drunk at the time." "Thanks for the parallel. I don't like it. But never mind that. The question is, What am I going to do?" "That's the question all right. Are you putting it to me?" "I am." "Well, I was just going to put it to you." "No use. I don't know." The two men looked each other in the eye, long and steadily. Ellis's harsh face relaxed to a sort of grin. "You want me to tell you?" "Yes." "What do you think you're hiring, a Professor of Journalism in the infant class?" The tone of the question offset any apparent ill-nature in the wording. "It might be made worth your while." "All right; I'm hired." "That's good," said Hal heartily. "I think you'll find I'm not hard to get along with." "I think _you'll_ find _I_ am," replied the other with some grimness. "But I know the game. Well, let's get down to cases. What do you want to do with the 'Clarion'?" "Make it the cleanest, decentest newspaper in the city." "Then you don't think it's that, now." "No. I know it isn't." "Did you get that from Dr. Surtaine?" "Partly." "What's the other part?" "First-hand impressions. I've been going through the files." "When?" "Since nine o'clock this morning." "With what idea?" "Why, having bought a piece of property, I naturally want to know about it." "Been through the plant yet? That's your property, too." "No. I thought I'd find out more from the files. I've bought a newspaper, not a building." The characteristic grunt with which Ellis favored his employer in reply to this seemed to have a note of approval in it. "Well; now that you own the 'Clarion,'" he said after a pause, "what do you think of it?" "It's yellow, and it's sensational, and--it's vulgar." There was nothing complimentary in the other's snort this time. "Of course it's vulgar. You can't sell a sweet-scented, prim old-maidy newspaper to enough people to pay for the z's in one font of type. People are vulgar. Don't forget that. And you've got to make a newspaper to suit them. Lesson Number One." "It needn't be a muckraking paper, need it, forever smelling out something rotten, and exploiting it in big headlines?" "Oh, that's all bluff," replied the journalist easily. "We never turn loose on anything but the surface of things. Why, if any one started in really to muckrake this old respectable burg, the smell would drive most of our best citizens to the woods." "Frankly, Mr. Ellis, I don't like cheap cynicism." "Prefer to be fed up on pleasant lies?" queried his employee, unmoved. "Not that either. I can take an unpleasant truth as well as the next man. But it's got to be the truth." "Do you know the nickname of this paper?" "Yes. My father told me of it." "It was his set that pinned it on us. 'The Daily Carrion,' they call us, and they said that our triumphal roosters ought to be vultures. Do you know why?" "In plain English because of the paper's lies and blackguardism." "In plainer English, because of its truth. Wait a minute, now. I'm not saying that the 'Clarion' doesn't lie. All papers do, I guess. They have to. But it's when we've cut loose on straight facts that we've got in wrong." "Give me an instance." "Well, the sewing-girls' strike." "Engineered by a crooked labor leader and a notoriety-seeking woman." "I see the bunch have got to you already, and have filled you up with their dope. Never mind that, now. We're supposed to be a sort of tribune of the common people. Rights of the ordinary citizen, and that sort of thing. So we took up the strike and printed the news pretty straight. No other paper touched it." "Why not?" "Didn't dare. We had to drop it, ourselves. Not until we'd lost ten thousand dollars in advertising, though, and gained an extra blot on our reputation as being socialistic and an enemy to capital and all that kind of rot." "Wasn't it simply a case of currying favor with the working-classes?" "According as you look at it." Apparently weary of looking at it at all, McGuire Ellis tipped back in his chair and contemplated the ceiling. When he spoke his voice floated up as softly as a ring of smoke. "How honest are you going to be, Mr. Surtaine?" "What!" "I asked you how honest you are going to be." "It's a question I don't think you need to ask me." "I do. How else will I find out?" "I intend the 'Clarion' to be strictly and absolutely honest. That's all there is to that." "Don't be so young," said McGuire Ellis wearily. "'Strictly and absol'--see here, did you ever read 'The Wrecker'?" "More than once." "Remember the chap who says, 'You seem to think honesty as simple as blindman's-buff. I don't. It's some difference of definition, I suppose'? Now, there's meat in that." "Difference of definition be hanged. Honesty is honesty." "And policy is policy. And bankruptcy is bankruptcy." "I don't see the connection." "It's there. Honesty for a newspaper isn't just a matter of good intentions. It's a matter of eternal watchfulness and care and expert figuring-out of things." "You mean that we're likely to make mistakes about facts--" "We're certain to. But that isn't what I mean at all. I mean that it's harder for a newspaper to be honest than it is for the pastor of a rich church." "You can't make me believe that." "Facts can. But I'm not doing my job. You want to learn the details of the business, and I'm wasting time trying to throw light into the deep places where it keeps what it has of conscience. That'll come later. Now where shall I begin?" "With the structure of the business." "All right. A newspaper is divided into three parts. News is the merchandise which it has to sell. Advertising is the by-product that pays the bills. The editorial page is a survival. At its best it analyzes and points out the significance of important news. At its worst, it is a mouthpiece for the prejudices or the projects of whoever runs it. Few people are influenced by it. Many are amused by it. It isn't very important nowadays." "I intend to make it so on the 'Clarion.'" Ellis turned upon him a regard which carried with it a verdict of the most abandoned juvenility, but made no comment. "News sways people more than editorials," he continued. "That's why there's so much tinkering with it. I'd like to give you a definition of news, but there isn't any. News is conventional. It's anything that interests the community. It isn't the same in any two places. In Arizona a shower is news. In New Orleans the boll-weevil is news. In Worthington anything about your father is news: in Denver they don't care a hoot about your father; so, unless he elopes or dies, or buys a fake Titian, or breaks the flying-machine record, or lectures on medical quackery, he isn't news away from home. If Mrs. Festus Willard is bitten by a mad dog, every dog-chase for the week following is news. When a martyred suffragette chews a chunk out of the King of England, the local meetings of the Votes-for-Women Sorority become a live topic. If ever you get to the point where you can say with certainty, 'This is news; that isn't,' you'll have no further need for me. You'll be graduated." "Where does a paper get its news?" "Through mechanical channels, mostly. If you read all the papers in town,--and you'll have to do it,--you'll see that they've got just about the same stuff. Why shouldn't they have? The big, clumsy news-mill grinds pretty impartially for all of them. There's one news source at Police Headquarters, another at the City Hall, another in the financial department, another at the political headquarters, another in the railroad offices, another at the theaters, another in society, and so on. At each of these a reporter is stationed. He knows his own kind of news as it comes to him, ready-made, and, usually, not much else. Then there's the general, unclassified news of the city that drifts in partly by luck, partly by favor, partly through the personal connections of the staff. One paper is differentiated from another principally by getting or missing this sort of stuff. For instance, the 'Banner' yesterday had a 'beat' about you. It said that you had come back and were going to settle down and go into your father's business." "That's not true." "Glad to hear it. Your hands will be full with this job. But it was news. Everybody is interested in the son of our leading citizen. The 'Banner' is strong on that sort of local stuff. I think I'll jack up our boys in the city room by hinting that there may be a shake-up coming under the new owner. Knowing they're on probation will make 'em ambitious." "And the news of the outside world?" "Much the same principle as the local matter and just as machine-like. The 'Clarion' is a unit in a big system, the National News Exchange Bureau. Not only has the bureau its correspondents in every city and town of any size, but it covers the national sources of news with special reporters. Also the international. Theoretically it gives only the plainest facts, uncolored by any bias. As a matter of fact, it's pretty crooked. It suppresses news, and even distorts it. It's got a secret financial propaganda dictated by Wall Street, and its policies are always open to suspicion." "Why doesn't it get honest reporters?" "Oh, its reporters are honest enough. The funny business is done higher up, in the executive offices." "Isn't there some other association we can get into?" "Not very well, just now. The Exchange franchise is worth a lot of money. Besides," he concluded, yawning, "I don't know that they're any worse than we are." Hal got to his feet and walked the length of the office and back, five times. At the end of this exercise he stood, looking down at his assistant. "Ellis, are you trying to plant an impression in my mind?" "No." "You're doing it." "Of what sort?" "I hardly know. Something subtle, and lurking and underhanded in the business. I feel as if you had your hands on a curtain that you might pull aside if you would, but that you don't want to shock my--my youthfulness." "Plain facts are what you want, aren't they?" "Exactly." "Well, I'm giving them to you as plain as you can understand them. I don't want to tell you more than you're ready to believe." "Try it, as an experiment." "Who do you suppose runs the newspapers of this town?" "Why, Mr. Vane runs the 'Banner.' Mr. Ford owns the 'Press.' The 'Telegram'--let me see--" "No; no; no," cried Ellis, waving his hands in front of his face. "I don't mean the different papers. I mean all of 'em. The 'Clarion,' with the others." "Nobody runs them all, surely." "Three men run them all; Pierce, Gibbs, and Hollenbeck." "E.M. Pierce?" "Elias Middleton Pierce." "I had luncheon with him yesterday, and with Mr. Gibbs--" "Ah! That's where you got your notions about the strike." "--and neither of them spoke of any newspaper interests." "Catch them at it! They're the Publication Committee of the Retail Dry Goods Union." "What is that?" "The combination of local department stores. And, as such, they can dictate to every Worthington newspaper what it shall or shall not print." "Nonsense!" "Including the 'Clarion.'" "There you're wrong, anyway." "The department stores are the biggest users of advertising space in the city. No paper in town could get along without them. If they want a piece of news kept out of print, they tell the editor so, and you bet it's kept out. Otherwise that paper loses the advertising." "Has it ever been done here?" "Has it? Get Veltman down to tell you about the Store Employees' Federation." "Veltman? What does he know of it? He's in the printing-department, isn't he?" "Composing-room; yes. Outside he's a labor agitator and organizer. A bit of a fanatic, too. But an A1 man all right. Get the composing-room," he directed through the telephone, "and ask Mr. Veltman to come to Mr. Surtaine's office." As the printer entered, Hal was struck again with his physical beauty. "Did you want to see me?" he asked, looking at the "new boss" with somber eyes. "Tell Mr. Surtaine about the newspapers and the Store Federation, Max," said Ellis. The German shook his head. "Nothing new in that," he said, with the very slightest of accents. "We can't organize them unless the newspapers give us a little publicity." "Explain it to me, please. I know nothing about it," said Hal. "For years we've been trying to organize a union of department store employees." "Aren't they well treated?" "Not quite as well as hogs," returned the other in an impassive voice. "The girls wanted shorter hours and extra pay for overtime at holiday time and Old Home Week. Every time we've tried it the stores fire the organizers among their employees." "Hardly fair, that." "This year we tried to get up a public meeting. Reverend Norman Hale helped us, and Dr. Merritt, the health officer, and a number of women. It was a good news feature, and that was what we wanted, to get the movement started. But do you think any paper in town touched it? Not one." "But why?" "E.M. Pierce's orders. He and his crowd." "Even the 'Clarion,' which is supposed to have labor sympathies?" "The 'Clarion'!" There was a profundity of contempt in Veltman's voice; and a deeper bitterness when he snapped his teeth upon a word which sounded to Hal suspiciously like the Biblical characterization of an undesirable citizeness of Babylon. "In any case, they won't give the 'Clarion' any more orders." "Oh, yes, they will," said Veltman stolidly. "Then they'll learn something distinctly to their disadvantage." The splendid, animal-like eyes of the compositor gleamed suddenly. "Do you mean you're going to run the paper honestly?" Hal almost recoiled before the impassioned and incredulous surprise in the question. "What is 'honestly'?" "Give the people who buy your paper the straight news they pay for?" "Certainly, the paper will be run that way." "As easy as rolling off a log," put in McGuire Ellis, with suspicious smoothness. Veltman looked from one to the other. "Yes," he said: and again "Yes-s-s." But the life had gone from his voice. "Anything more?" "Nothing, thank you," answered Hal. "Brains, fire, ambition, energy, skill, everything but balance," said Ellis, as the door closed. "He's the stuff that martyrs are made of--or lunatics. Same thing, I guess." "Isn't he a trouble-maker among the men?" "No. He's a good workman. Something more, too. Sometimes he writes paragraphs for the editorial page; and when they're not too radical, I use 'em. He's brought us in one good feature, that 'Kitty the Cutie' stuff." "I'd thought of dropping that. It's so cheap and chewing-gummy." "Catches on, though. We really ought to run it every day. But the girl hasn't got time to do it." "Who is she?" "Some kid in your father's factory, I understand. Protégée of Veltman's, He brought her stuff in and we took it right off the bat." "Well, I'll tell you one thing that is going." "What?" "The 'Clarion's motto. 'We Lead: Let Those Who Can Follow.'" Hal pointed to the "black-face" legend at the top of the first editorial column. "Got anything in its place?" "I thought of 'With Malice Toward None: With Charity for All.'" "Worked to death. But I've never seen it on a newspaper. Shall I tell Veltman to set it up in several styles so you may take your pick?" "Yes. Let's start it in to-morrow." That night Harrington Surtaine went to bed pondering on the strange attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman clasped each other in an apoplectic agony of laughter. On the following day the blatant cocks of the shrill "Clarion" stood guard at either end of the paper's new golden text. CHAPTER X IN THE WAY OF TRADE Dr. Surtaine sat in Little George's best chair, beaming upon the world. By habit, the big man was out of his seat with his dime and nickel in the bootblack's ready hand, almost coincidently with the final clip-clap of the rhythmic process. But this morning he lingered, contemplating with an unobtrusive scrutiny the occupant of the adjoining chair, a small, angular, hard man, whose brick-red face was cut off in the segment of an abrupt circle, formed by a low-jammed green hat. This individual had just briskly bidden his bootblack "hurry it up" in a tone which meant precisely what it said. The youth was doing so. "George," said Dr. Surtaine, to the proprietor of the stand. "Yas, suh." "Were you ever in St. Jo, Missouri?" "Yas, suh, Doctah Suhtaine; oncet." "For long?" "No, suh." "Didn't live there, did you?" "No, suh." "George," said his interlocutor impressively, "you're lucky." "Yas, suh," agreed the negro with a noncommittal grin. "While you can buy accommodations in a graveyard or break into a penitentiary, don't you ever live in St. Jo Missouri, George." The man in the adjacent seat half turned toward Dr. Surtaine and looked him up and down, with a freezing regard. "It's the sink-hole and sewer-pipe of creation, George. They once elected a chicken-thief mayor, and he resigned because the town was too mean to live in. Ever know any folks there, George?" "Don't have no mem'ry for 'em, Doctah." "You're lucky again. They're the orneriest, lowest-down, minchin', pinchin', pizen trash that ever tainted the sweet air of Heaven by breathing it, George." "You don' sesso, Doctah Suhtaine, suh." "I do sess precisely so, George. Does the name McQuiggan mean anything to you?" "Don' mean nothin' at-tall to me, Doctah." "You got away from St. Jo in time, then. Otherwise you might have met the McQuiggan family, and never been the same afterward." "Ef you don' stop youah feet a-fidgittin', Boss," interpolated the neighboring bootblack, addressing the green-hatted man in aggrieved tones, "I cain't do no good wif this job." "McQuiggan was the name," continued the volunteer biographer. "The best you could say of the McQuiggans, George, was that one wasn't much cusseder than the others, because he couldn't be. Human nature has its limitations, George." "It suttinly have, suh." "But if you had to allow a shade to any of 'em, it would probably have gone to the oldest brother, L.P. McQuiggan. Barring a scorpion I once sat down on while in swimming, he was the worst outrage upon the scheme of creation ever perpetrated by a short-sighted Providence." "Get out of that chair!" The little man had shot from his own and was dancing upon the pavement. "What for?" Dr. Surtaine's tone was that of inquiring innocence. "To have your fat head knocked off." With impressive agility for one of his size and years, the challenged one descended. He advanced, "squared," and suddenly held out a muscular and plump hand. "Hullo, Elpy." "Huh?" The other glared at him, baleful and baffled. "Hullo, I said. Don't you know me?" "No, I don't. Neither will your own family after I get through with you." "Come off, Elpy; come off. I licked you once in the old days, and I guess I could do it now, but I don't want to. Come and have a drink with old Andy." "Andy? Andy the Spieler? Andy Certain?" "Dr. L. André Surtaine, at your service. _Now_, will you shake?" Still surly, Mr. McQuiggan hung back. "What about that roast?" he demanded. "Wasn't sure of you. Twenty years is a long time. But I knew if it was you you'd want to fight, and I knew if you didn't want to fight it wasn't you. I'll buy you one in honor of the best little city west of the Mississip, and the best bunch of sports that ever came out of it, the McQuiggans of St. Jo, Missouri. Does that go?" "It goes," replied the representative of the family concisely. Across the café table Dr. Surtaine contemplated his old acquaintance with friendly interest. "The same old scrappy Elpy," he observed. "What's happened to you, since you used to itinerate with the Iroquois Extract of Life?" "Plenty." "You're looking pretty prosperous." "Have to, in my line." "What is it?" Mr. McQuiggan produced a card, with the legend:-- +-----------------------------------------+ | | | McQuiggan & Straight | | STREAKY MOUNTAIN COPPER COMPANY | | Orsten, Palas County, Nev. | | | | | | L.P. MCQUIGGAN ARTHUR STRAIGHT | | _President_ _Vice-Pres. & Treas._ | | | +-----------------------------------------+ "Any good?" queried the Doctor. "Best undeveloped property in the State." "Why don't you develop it?" "Capital." "Get the capital." "Will you help me?" "Sure." "How?" "Advertise." "Advertising costs money." "And brings two dollars for every one you spend." "Maybe," retorted the other, with a skeptical air. "But my game is still talk." "Talk gets dimes; print gets dollars," said his friend sententiously. "You have to show me." "Show you!" cried the Doctor. "I'll write your copy myself." "_You_ will? What do you know about mining?" "Not a thing. But there isn't much I don't know about advertising. I've built up a little twelve millions, plus, on it. And I can sell your stock like hot cakes through the 'Clarion.'" "What's the 'Clarion'?" "My son's newspaper." "Thereby keeping the graft in the family, eh?" "Don't be a fool, Elpy. I'm showing you profits. Besides doing you a good turn, I'd like to bring in some new business to the boy. Now you take half-pages every other day for a week and a full page Sunday--" "Pages!" almost squalled the little man. "D'you think I'm made of money?" "Elpy," said Dr. Surtaine, abruptly, "do you remember my platform patter?" "Like the multiplication table." "Was it good?" "Best ever!" "Well, I'm a slicker proposition with a pen than I ever was with a spiel. And you're securing my services for nothing. Come around to the office, man, and let me show you." Still suspicious, Mr. McQuiggan permitted himself to be led away, expatiating as he went, upon the unrivaled location and glorious future of his mining property. From time to time, Dr. Surtaine jotted down an unostentatious note. The first view of the Certina building dashed Mr. McQuiggan's suspicions; his inspection of his old friend's superb office slew them painlessly. "Is this all yours, Andy? On the level? Did you do it all on your own?" "Every bit of it! With my little pen-and-ink. Take a look around the walls and you'll see how." He seated himself at his desk and proceeded to jot down, with apparent carelessness, but in broad, sweeping lines, a type lay-out, while his guest passed from advertisement to advertisement, in increasing admiration. Before Old Lame-Boy he paused, absolutely fascinated. "I thought that'd get you," exulted the host, who, between strokes of the creative pen had been watching him. "I've seen it in the newspaper, but never connected it with you. Being out of the medical line I lost interest. Say, it's a wonder! Did it fetch 'em?" "Fetch 'em? It knocked 'em flat. That picture's the foundation of this business. Talk about suggestion in advertising! He's a regular hypnotist, Old Lame-Boy is. Plants the suggestion right in the small of your back, where we want it. Why, Elpy, I've seen a man walk up to that picture on a bill-board as straight as you or me, take one good, long look, and go away hanging onto his kidneys, and squirming like a lizard. Fact! What do you think of that? Genius, I call it: just flat genius, to produce an effect like that with a few lines and a daub or two of color." "Some pull!" agreed Mr. McQuiggan, with professional approval. "And then--'Try Certina,' eh?" "For a starter and, for a finisher 'Certina _Cures_.' Shoves the bottle right into their hands. The first bottle braces 'em. They take another. By the time they've had half a dozen, they love it." "Booze?" "Sure! Flavored and spiced up, nice and tasty. Great for the temperance trade. _And_ the best little repeater on the market. Now take a look, Elpy." He tapped the end of his pen upon the rough sketch of the mining advertisement, which he had drafted. Mr. McQuiggan bent over it in study, and fell a swift victim to the magic of the art. "Why, that would make a wad of bills squirm out of the toe of a stockin'! It's new game to me. I've always worked the personal touch. But I'll sure give it a try-out, Andy." "I guess it's bad!" exulted the other. "I guess I've lost the trick of tolling the good old dollars in! Take this home and try it on your cash register! Now, come around and meet the boy." Thus it was that Editor-in-Chief Harrington Surtaine, in the third week of his incumbency received a professional call from his father, and a companion from whose pockets bulged several sheets of paper. "Shake hands with Mr. McQuiggan, Hal," said the Doctor. "Make a bow when you meet him, too. He's your first new business for the reformed 'Clarion.'" "In what way?" asked Hal, meeting a grip like iron from the stranger. "News?" "News! I guess not. Business, I said. Real money. Advertising." "It's like this, Mr. Surtaine," said L.P. McQuiggan, turning his spare, hard visage toward Hal. "I've got some copper stock to sell--an A1 under-developed proposition; and your father, who's an old pal, tells me the 'Clarion' can do the business for me. Now, if I can get a good rate from you, it's a go." "Mr. Shearson, the advertising manager, is your man. I don't know anything about advertising rates." "Then you'd best get busy and learn," cried Dr. Surtaine. "I'm learning other things." "For instance?" "What news is and isn't." "Look here, Boyee." Dr. Surtaine's voice was surcharged with a disappointed earnestness. "Put yourself right on this. News is news; any paper can get it. But advertising is _Money_. Let your editors run the news part, till you can work into it. _You get next to the door where the cash comes in._" In the fervor of his advice he thumped Hal's desk. The thump woke McGuire Ellis, who had been devoting a spare five minutes to his favorite pastime. For his behoof, the exponent of policy repeated his peroration. "Isn't that right, Ellis?" he cried. "You're a practical newspaper man." "It's true to type, anyway," grunted Ellis. "Sure it is!" cried the other, too bent on his own notions to interpret this comment correctly. "And now, what about a little reading notice for McQuiggan's proposition?" "Yes: an interview with me on the copper situation and prospects might help," put in McQuiggan. Hal hesitated, looking to Ellis for counsel. "You've got to do something for an advertiser on a big order like this, Boyee," urged his father. "Let's see the copy," put in Ellis. The trained journalistic eye ran over the sheets. "Lot of gaudy slush about copper mines in general," he observed, "and not much information on Streaky Mountain." "It's an undeveloped property," said McQuiggan. "Strong on geography," continued Ellis. "'In the immediate vicinity,'" he read from one sheet, "'lie the Copper Monarch Mine paying 40 per cent dividends, the Deep Gulch Mine, paying 35 per cent, the Three Sisters, Last Chance, Alkali Spring Mines, all returning upwards of 25 per cent per annum: and immediately adjacent is the famous Strike-for-the-West property which enriches its fortunate stockholders to the tune of 75 per cent a year!' Are you on the same range as the Strike-for-the-West, Mr. McQuiggan?" "It's an adjacent property," growled the mining man. "What d'you know about copper?" "Oh, I've seen a little mining, myself. And a bit of mining advertising. That's quite an ad. of yours, McQuiggan." "I wrote that ad.," said Dr. Surtaine blandly: "and I challenge anybody to find a single misstatement in it." "You're safe. There isn't any. And scarcely a single statement. But if you wrote it, I suppose it goes." "And the interview, too," rasped McQuiggan. "It's usual," said Ellis to Hal. "The tail with the hide: the soul with the body, when you're selling." "But we're not selling interviews," said Hal uneasily. "You're getting nearly a thousand dollars' worth of copy, and giving a bonus that don't cost you anything," said his father. "The papers have done it for me ever since I've been in business." "I guess that's right, too," agreed Ellis. "Why don't you take McQuiggan down to meet your Mr. Shearson, Hal?" suggested the Doctor. "I'll stay here and round out a couple of other ideas for his campaign." Hal had risen from his desk when there was a light knock at the door and Milly Neal's bright head appeared. "Hullo!" said Dr. Surtaine. "What's up? Anything wrong at the shop, Milly?" The girl walked into the room and stood trimly at ease before the four men. "No, Chief," said she. "I understood Mr. Surtaine wanted to see me." "I?" said Hal blankly, pushing a chair toward her. "Yes. Didn't you? They told me you left word for me in the city room, to see you when I came in again. Sometimes I send my copy, so I only just got the message." "Miss Neal is 'Kitty the Cutie,'" explained McGuire Ellis. "Looks it, too," observed L.P. McQuiggan jauntily, addressing the upper far corner of the room. Miss Neal looked at him, met a knowing and conscious smile, looked right through the smile, and looked away again, all with the air of one who gazes out into nothingness. "Guess I'll go look up this Shearson person," said Mr. McQuiggan, a trifle less jauntily. "See you all later." "I'd no notion you were the writer of the Cutie paragraphs, Milly," said Dr. Surtaine. "They're lively stuff." "Nobody has. I'm keeping it dark. It's only a try-out. You _did_ send for me, didn't you?" she added, turning to Hal. "Yes. What I had in mind to say to you--that is, to the author--the writer of the paragraphs," stumbled Hal, "is that they're a little too--too--" "Too flip?" queried his father. "That's what makes 'em go." "If they could be done in a manner not quite so undignified," suggested the editor-in-chief. Color rose in the girl's smooth cheek. "You think they're vulgar," she charged. "That's rather too harsh a word," he protested. "You do! I can see it." She flushed an angry red. "I'd rather stop altogether than have you think that." "Don't be young," put in McGuire Ellis, with vigor. "Kitty has caught on. It's a good feature. The paper can't afford to drop it." "That's right," supplemented Dr. Surtaine. "People are beginning to talk about those items. They read 'em. I read 'em myself. They've got the go, the pep. They're different. But, Milly, I didn't even know you could write." "Neither did I," said the girl staidly, "till I got to putting down some of the things I heard the girls say, and stringing them together with nonsense of my own. One evening I showed some of it to Mr. Veltman, and he took it here and had it printed." "I was going to suggest, Mr. Surtaine," said McGuire Ellis formally, "that we put Miss Kitty on the five-dollar-a-column basis and make her an every-other-day editorial page feature. I think the stuff's worth it." "We can give it a trial," said his principal, a little dubiously, "since you think so well of it." "Then, Milly, I suppose you'll be quitting the shop to become a full-fledged writer," remarked Dr. Surtaine. "No, indeed, Chief." The girl smiled at him with that frank friendliness which Hal had noted as informing every relationship between Dr. Surtaine and the employees of the Certina plant. "I'll stick. The regular pay envelope looks good to me. And I can do this work after hours." "How would it be if I was to put you on half-time, Milly?" suggested her employer. "You can keep your department going by being there in the mornings and have your afternoons for the writing." The girl thanked him demurely but with genuine gratitude. "Then we'll look for your copy here on alternate days," said Hal. "And I think I'll give you a desk. As this develops into an editorial feature I shall want to keep an eye on it and to be in touch with you. Perhaps I could make suggestions sometimes." She rose, thanking him, and Hal held open the door for her. Once again he felt, with a strange sensation, her eyes take hold on his as she passed him. "Pretty kid," observed Ellis. "Veltman is crazy about her, they say." "_Good_ kid, too," added Dr. Surtaine, emphasizing the adjective. "You might tell Veltman that, whoever he is." "Tell him, yourself," retorted Ellis with entire good nature. "He isn't the sort to offer gratuitous information to." Upon this advice, L.P. McQuiggan reëntered. "All fixed," said he, with evident satisfaction. "We went to the mat on rates, but Shearson agreed to give me some good reading notices. Now, I'll beat it. See you to-night, Andy?" Dr. Surtaine nodded. "You owe me a commission, Boyee," said he, smiling at Hal as McQuiggan made his exit. "But I'll let you off this time. I guess it won't be the last business I bring in to you. Only, don't you and Ellis go looking every gift horse too hard in the teeth. You might get bit." "Shut your eyes and swallow it and ask no questions, if it's good, eh, Doctor?" said McGuire Ellis. "That's the motto for your practice." "Right you are, my boy. And it's the motto of sound business. What is business?" he continued, soaring aloft upon the wings of a Pæan of Policy. "Why, business is a deal between you and me in which I give you my goods and a pleasant word, and you give me your dollar and a polite reply. Some folks always want to know where the dollar came from. Not me! I'm satisfied to know that its coming to me. Money has wings, and if you throw stones at it, it'll fly away fast. And you want to remember," he concluded with the fervor of honest conviction, "that a newspaper can't be quite right, any more than a man can, unless it makes its own living. Well. I'm not going to preach any more. So long, boys." "What do you think of it, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired McGuire Ellis, after the lecturer had gone his way. "Pretty sound sense, eh?" "I wonder just what you mean by that, Ellis. Not what you say, certainly." But Ellis only laughed and turned to his "flimsy." Meantime the editor of the "Clarion" was being quietly but persistently beset by another sermonizer, less cocksure of text than the Sweet Singer of Policy, but more subtle in influence. This was Miss Esmé Elliot. Already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their acquaintance had developed into a real, if somewhat indeterminate connection. Esmé found her new acquaintance interesting both for himself and for his career. Her set in general considered the ripening friendship merely "another of Esmé's flirtations," and variously prophesied the dénouement. To the girl's own mind it was not a flirtation at all. She was (she assured herself) genuinely absorbed in the development of a new mission in which she aspired to be influential. That she already exercised a strong sway of personality over Hal Surtaine, she realized. Indeed, in the superb confidence of her charm, she would have been astonished had it been otherwise. Just where her interest in the newly adventured professional field ended, and in Harrington Surtaine, the man, began, she would have been puzzled to say. Kathleen Pierce had bluntly questioned her on the subject. "Yes, of course I like him," said Esmé frankly. "He's interesting and he's a gentleman, and he has a certain force about him, and he's"--she paused, groping for a characterization--"he's unexpected." "What gets me," said Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there. Know what I mean? There's a scrapper behind that nice-boy smile." "He hasn't scrapped with me, yet, Kathie," smiled the beauty. "Don't let him," advised the other. "It mightn't be safe. Still, I suppose you understand him by now, down to the ground." "Indeed I do not. Didn't I tell you he was unexpected? He has an uncomfortable trick," complained Miss Elliot, "just when everything is smooth and lovely, of suddenly leveling those gray-blue eyes of his at you, like two pistols. 'Throw up your hands and tell me what you really mean!' One doesn't always want to tell what one really means." "Bet you have to with him, sooner or later," returned her friend. This conversation took place at the Vanes' _al fresco_ tea, to which Hal came for a few minutes, late in the afternoon of his father's visit with McQuiggan, mainly in the hope of seeing Esmé Elliot. Within five minutes after his arrival, Worthington society was frowning, or smiling, according as it was masculine or feminine, at their backs, as they strolled away toward the garden. Miss Esmé was feeling a bit petulant, perhaps because of Kathie Pierce's final taunt. "I think you aren't living up to our partnership," she accused. "Is it a partnership, where one party is absolute slave to the other's slightest wish?" he smiled. "There! That is exactly it. You treat me like a child." "I don't think of you as a child, I assure you." "You listen to all I say with pretended deference, and smile and--and go your own way with inevitable motion." "Wherein have I failed in my allegiance?" asked Hal, courteously concerned. "Haven't we published everything about all the charities that you're interested in?" "Oh, yes. So far as that goes. But the paper itself doesn't seem to change any. It's got the same tone it always had." "What's wrong with its tone?" The eyes were leveled at her now. "Speaking frankly, it's tawdry. It's lurid. It's--well, yellow." "A matter of method. You're really more interested, then, in the way we present news than in the news we present." "I don't know anything about news, itself. But I don't see why a newspaper run by a gentleman shouldn't be in good taste." "Nor do I. Except that those things take time. I suppose I've got to get in touch with my staff before I can reform their way of writing the paper." "Haven't you done that yet?" "I simply haven't had time." "Then I'll make you a nice present of a very valuable suggestion. Give a luncheon to your employees, and invite all the editors and reporters. Make a little speech to them and tell them what you intend to do, and get them to talk it over and express opinions. That's the way to get things done. I do it with my mission class. And, by the way, don't make it a grand banquet at one of the big hotels. Have it in some place where the men are used to eating. They'll feel more at home and you'll get more out of them." "Will you come?" "No. But you shall come up to the house and report fully on it." Had Miss Esmé Elliot, experimentalist in human motives, foreseen to what purpose her ingenious suggestion was to work out, she might well have retracted her complaint of lack of real influence; for this casual conversation was the genesis of the Talk-it-Over Breakfast, an institution which potently affected the future of the "Clarion" and its young owner. CHAPTER XI THE INITIATE Within a month after Hal's acquisition of the "Clarion," Dr. Surtaine had become a daily caller at the office. "Just to talk things over," was his explanation of these incursions, which Hal always welcomed, no matter how busy he might be. Advice was generally the form which the visitor's talk took; sometimes warning; not infrequently suggestions of greater or less value. Always his counsel was for peace and policy. "Keep in with the business element, Boyee. Remember all the time that Worthington is a business city, the liveliest little business city between New York and Chicago. Business made it. Business runs it. Business is going to keep on running it. Anybody who works on a different principle, I don't care whether it's in politics or journalism or the pulpit, is going to get hurt. I don't deny you've braced up the 'Clarion.' People are beginning to talk about it already. But the best men, the moneyed men, are holding off. They aren't sure of you yet. Sometimes I'm not sure myself. Every now and then the paper takes a stand I don't like. It goes too far. You've put ginger into it. I have to admit that. And ginger's a good thing, but sugar catches more flies." The notion of a breakfast to the staff met with the Doctor's instant approval. "That's the idea!" said he "I'll come to it, myself. Lay down your general scheme and policy to 'em. Get 'em in sympathy with it. If any of 'em aren't in sympathy with it, get rid of those. Kickers never did any business any good. You'll get plenty of kicks from outside. Then, when the office gets used to your way of doing things, you can quit wasting so much time on the news and editorial end." "But that's what makes the paper, Dad." "Get over that idea. You hire men to get out the paper. Let 'em earn their pay while you watch the door where the dollars come in. Advertising, my son: that's the point to work at. In a way I'm sorry you let Sterne out." The ex-editor had left, a fortnight before, on a basis agreeable to himself and Hal, and McGuire Ellis had taken over his duties. "Certainly you had no reason to like Sterne, Dad." "For all that, he knew his job. Everything Sterne did had a dollar somewhere in the background. Even his blackmailing game. He worked with the business office, and he took his orders on that basis. Now if you had some man whom you could turn over this news end to while you're building up a sound advertising policy--" "How about McGuire Ellis?" Dr. Surtaine glanced over to the window corner where the associate editor was somnambulantly fighting a fly for the privilege of continuing a nap. "Too much of a theorist: too much of a knocker." "He's taught me what little I know about this business," said Hal. "Hi! Wake up, Ellis. Do you know you've got to make a speech in an hour? This is the day of the Formal Feed." "Hoong!" grunted Ellis, arousing himself. "Speech? I can't make a speech. Make it yourself." "I'm going to." "What are you going to talk about?" "Well, I might borrow your text and preach them a sermon on honesty in journalism. Seriously, I think the whole paper has degenerated to low ideals, and if I put it to them straight, that every man of them, reporter, copy-reader, or editor, has got to measure up to an absolutely straight standard of honesty--" "They'll throw the tableware at you," said McGuire Ellis quietly: "at least they ought to, if they don't." The two Surtaines stared at him in surprise. "Who are you," continued the journalist, "to talk standards of honesty in journalism to those boys?" "He's their boss: that's all he is," said Dr. Surtaine weightily. "Let him set the example, then, jack the paper up where it belongs, and there'll be no difficulty with the men who write it." "But, Mac, you've been hammering at me about the crookedness of journalism in Worthington from the first." "All right. Crookedness there is. Where does it come from? From the men in control, mostly. Let me tell you something, you two: there's hardly a reporter in this city who isn't more honest than the paper he works for." "Hifalutin nonsense," said Dr. Surtaine. "From your point of view. You're an outsider. It's outsiders that make the newspaper game as bad as it is. Look at 'em in this town. Who owns the 'Banner'? A political boss. Who owns the 'News'? A brewer. The 'Star'? A promoter, and a pretty scaly one at that. The 'Observer' belongs body and soul to an advertising agency, and the 'Telegraph' is controlled by the banks. And one and all of 'em take their orders from the Dry Goods Union, which means Elias M. Pierce, because they live on its advertising." "Why not? That's business," said Dr. Surtaine. "Are we talking about business? I thought it was standards. What do those men know about the ethics of journalism? If you put the thing up to him, like as not E.M. Pierce would tell you that an ethic is something a doctor gives you to make you sleep." "How about the 'Clarion,' Mac?" said Hal, smiling. "It's run by an outsider, too, isn't it?" "That's what I want to know." There was no answering smile on Ellis's somber and earnest face. "I've thought there was hope for you. You've had no sound business training, thank God, so your sense of decency may not have been spoiled." "You don't seem to think much of business standards," said the Doctor tolerantly. "Not a great deal. I've bumped into 'em too hard. Not so long ago I was publisher of a paying daily in an Eastern city. The directors were all high-class business men, and the chairman of the board was one of those philanthropist-charity-donator-pillar-of-the-church chaps with a permanent crease of high respectability down his front. Well, one day there turned up a double murder in the den of one of these venereal quacks that infest every city. It set me on the trail, and I had my best reporter get up a series about that gang of vampires. Naturally that necessitated throwing out their ads. The advertising manager put up a howl, and we took the thing to the board of directors. In those days I had all my enthusiasm on tap. I had an array of facts, too, and I went at that board like a revivalist, telling 'em just the kind of devil-work the 'men's specialists' did. At the finish I sat down feeling pretty good. Nobody said anything for quite a while. Then the chairman dropped the pencil he'd been puttering with, and said, in a kind of purry voice: 'Gentlemen: I thought Mr. Ellis's job on this paper was to make it pay dividends, and not to censor the morals of the community.'" "And, by crikey, he was right!" cried Dr. Surtaine. "From the business point of view." "Oh, you theorists! You theorists!" Dr. Surtaine threw out his hands in a gesture of pleasant despair. "You want to run the world like a Sunday-school class." "Instead of like a three-card-monte game." "With your lofty notions, Ellis, how did you ever come to work on a sheet like the 'Clarion'?" "A man's got to eat. When I walked out of that directors' meeting I walked out of my job and into a saloon; and from that saloon I walked into a good many other saloons. Luckily for me, booze knocked me out early. I broke down, went West, got my health and some sense back again, drifted to this town, found an opening on the 'Clarion,' and took it, to make a living." "You won't continue to do that," advised Dr. Surtaine bluntly, "if you keep on trying to reform your bosses." "But what makes me sick," continued Ellis, disregarding this hint, "is to have people assume that newspaper men are a lot of semi-crooks and shysters. What does the petty grafting that a few reporters do--and, mind you, there's mighty little of it done--amount to, compared with the rottenness of a paper run by my church-going reformer with the business standards?" A call from the business office took Hal away. At once Ellis turned to the older man. "Are you going to run the paper, Doc?" "No: no, my boy. Hal owns it, on his own money." "Because if you are, I quit." "That's no way to talk," said the magnate, aggrieved. "There isn't a man in Worthington treats his employees better or gets along with 'em smoother than me." "That's right, too, I guess. Only I don't happen to want to be your employee." "You're frank, at least, Mr. Ellis." "Why not? I've laid my cards on the table. You know me for what I am, a disgruntled dreamer. I know you for what you are, a hard-headed business man. We don't have to quarrel about it. Tell you what I'll do: I'll match you, horse-and-horse, for the soul of your boy." "You're a queer Dick, Ellis." "Don't want to match? Then I suppose I've got to fight you for him," sighed the editor. The big man laughed whole-heartedly. "Not a chance, my friend! Not a chance on earth. I don't believe even a woman could come between Hal and me, let alone a man." "_Or_ a principle?" "Ah--ah! Dealing in abstractions again. Look out for this fellow, Boyee," he called jovially as Hal came back to his desk. "He'll make your paper the official organ of the Muckrakers' Union." "I'll watch him," promised Hal. "Meantime I'll take your advice about my speech, Mac, and blue-pencil the how-to-be-good stuff." "Now you're talking! I'll tell you, Boss: why not get some of the fellows to speak up. You might learn a few things about your own paper that would interest you." "Good idea! But, Mac, I wish you wouldn't call me 'Boss.' It makes me feel absurdly young." "All right, Hal," returned Ellis, with a grin. "But you've still got some youngness to overcome, you know." An hour later, looking down the long luncheon table, the editor-owner felt his own inexperience more poignantly. With a very few exceptions, these men, his employees, were his seniors in years. More than that, he thought to see in the faces an air of capability, of assurance, of preparedness, a sort of work-worthiness like the seaworthiness of a vessel which has passed the high test of wind and wave. And to him, untried, unformed, ignorant, the light amateur, all this human mechanism must look for guidance. Humility clouded him at the recollection of the spirit in which he had taken on the responsibility so vividly personified before him, a spirit of headlong wrath and revenge, and he came fervently to a realization and a resolve. He saw himself as part of a close-knit whole; he visioned, sharply, the Institution, complex, delicate, almost infinitely powerful for good or evil, not alone to those who composed it, but to the community to which it bore so subtle a relationship. And he resolved, with a determination that partook of the nature of prayer and yet was more than prayer, to give himself loyally, unsparingly, devotedly to the common task. In this spirit he rose, at the close of the luncheon, to speak. No newspaper reported the maiden speech of Mr. Harrington Surtaine to the staff of the Worthington "Clarion." Newspapers are reticent about their own affairs. In this case it is rather a pity, for the effort is said to have been an eminently successful one. Estimated by its effect, it certainly was, for it materialized with quite spiritistic suddenness, from out the murk of uncertainty and suspicion, the form and substance of a new _esprit de corps_, among the "Clarion" men, and established the system of Talk-it-Over Breakfasts which made a close-knit, jealously guarded corporation and club out of the staff. Free of all ostentation or self-assertiveness was Hal's talk; simple, and, above all virtues, brief. He didn't tell his employees what he expected of them. He told them what they might expect of him. The frankness of his manner, the self-respecting modesty of his attitude toward an audience of more experienced subordinates, his shining faith and belief in the profession which he had adopted; all this eked out by his ease of address and his dominant physical charm, won them from the first. Only at the close did he venture upon an assertion of his own ideas or theories. "It is the Sydney 'Bulletin,' I think, which preserves as its motto the proposition that every man has at least one good story in him. I have been studying newspaper files since I took this job,--all the files of all the papers I could get,--and I'm almost ready to believe that much news which the papers publish has got realer facts up its sleeve: that the news is only the shadow of the facts. I'd like to get at the Why of the day's news. Do you remember Sherlock Holmes's 'commonplace' divorce suit, where the real cause was that the husband used to remove his front teeth and hurl 'em at the wife whenever her breakfast-table conversation wasn't sprightly enough to suit him? Once out of a hundred times, I suppose, the everyday processes of our courts hide something picturesque or perhaps important in the background. Any paper that could get and present that sort of news would liven up its columns a good deal. And it would strike a new note in Worthington. I'll give you a motto for the 'Clarion,' gentlemen: 'The Facts Behind the News.' And now I've said my say, and I want to hear from you." Here for the first time Hal struck a false note. Newspaper men, as a class, abhor public speaking. So much are they compelled to hear from "those bores who prate intolerably over dinner tables," that they regard the man who speaks when he isn't manifestly obliged to, as an enemy to the public weal, and are themselves most loath thus to add to the sum of human suffering. Merely by way of saving the situation, Wayne, the city editor, arose and said a few words complimentary to the new owner. He was followed by the head copy-reader in the same strain. Two of the older sub-editors perpetrated some meaningless but well-meant remarks, and the current of events bade fair to end in complete stagnation, when from out of the ruck, midway of the table, there rose the fringed and candid head of one William S. Marchmont, the railroad and markets reporter. Marchmont was an elderly man, of a journalistic type fast disappearing. There is little room in the latter-day pressure of newspaper life for the man who works on "booze." But though a steady drinker, and occasionally an unsteady one, Marchmont had his value. He was an expert in his specialty. He had a wide acquaintance, and he seldom became unprofessionally drunk in working hours. To offset the unwonted strain of rising before noon, however, he had fortified himself for this occasion by several cocktails which were manifest in his beaming smile and his expansive flourish in welcoming Mr. Surtaine to the goodly fellowship of the pen. "Very good, all that about the facts behind the news," he said genially. "Very instructive and--and illuminating. But what I wanta ask you is this: We fellows who have to _write_ the facts behind the news; where do we get off?" "I don't understand you," said Hal. "Lemme explain. Last week we had an accident on the Mid-and-Mud. Engineer ran by his signals. Rear end collision. Seven people killed. Coroner's inquest put all the blame on the engineer. Engineer wasn't tending to his duty. That's news, isn't it, Mr. Surtaine?" "Undoubtedly." "Yes: but here's the facts. That engineer had been kept on duty forty-eight hours with only five hours off. He was asleep when he ran past the block and killed those people." "Is he telling the truth, Mac?" asked Hal in a swift aside to Ellis. "If he says so, it's right," replied Ellis. "What do you call that?" pursued the speaker. "Murder. I call it murder." Max Veltman, who sat just beyond the speaker, half rose from his chair. "The men who run the road ought to be tried for murder." "Oh, _you_ can call it that, all right, in one of your Socialist meetings," returned the reporter genially. "But I can't." "Why can't you?" demanded Hal. "The railroad people would shut down on news to the 'Clarion.' I couldn't get a word out of them on anything. What good's a reporter who can't get news? You'd fire me in a week." "Can you prove the facts?" "I can." "Write it for to-morrow's paper. I'll see that you don't lose your place." Marchmont sat down, blinking. Again there was silence around the table, but this time it was electric, with the sense of flashes to come. The slow drawl of Lindsay, the theater reporter, seemed anti-climatic as he spoke up, slouched deep in his seat. "How much do you know of dramatic criticism in this town, Mr. Surtaine?" "Nothing." "Maybe, then, you'll be pained to learn that we're a set of liars--I might even go further--myself among the number. There hasn't been honest dramatic criticism written in Worthington for years." "That is hard to believe, Mr. Lindsay." "Not if you understand the situation. Suppose I roast a show like 'The Nymph in the Nightie' that played here last week. It's vapid and silly, and rotten with suggestiveness. I wouldn't let my kid sister go within gunshot of it. But I've got to tell everybody else's kid sister, through our columns, that it's a delightful and enlivening _mélange_ of high class fun and frolic. To be sure, I can praise a fine performance like 'Kindling' or 'The Servant in the House,' but I've got to give just as clean a bill of health to a gutter-and-brothel farce. Otherwise, the high-minded gentlemen that run our theaters will cut off my tickets." "Buy them at the box-office," said Hal. "No use. They wouldn't let me in. The courts have killed honest criticism by deciding that a manager can keep a critic out on any pretext or without any. Besides, there's the advertising. We'd lose that." "Speaking of advertising,"--now it was Lynch, a young reporter who had risen from being an office boy,--"I guess it spoils some pretty good stories from the down-town district. Look at that accident at Scheffer and Mintz's; worth three columns of anybody's space. Tank on the roof broke, and drowned out a couple of hundred customers. Panic, and broken bones, and all kinds of things. How much did we give it? One stick! And we didn't name the place: just called it 'a Washington Street store.' There were facts behind _that_ news, all right. But I guess Mr. Shearson wouldn't have been pleased if we'd printed 'em." In fact, Shearson, the advertising manager, looked far from pleased at the mention. "If you think a one-day story would pay for the loss of five thousand a year in advertising, you've got another guess, young man," he growled. "He's right, there," said Dr. Surtaine, on one side of Hal; and from the other, McGuire Ellis chirped:-- "Things are beginning to open up, all right, Mr. Editor." Two aspirants were now vying for the floor, the winner being the political reporter for the paper. "Would you like to hear some facts about the news we don't print?" he asked. "Go ahead," replied Hal. "You have the floor." "You recall a big suffrage meeting here recently, at which Mrs. Barkerly from London spoke. Well, the chairman of that meeting didn't get a line of his speech in the papers: didn't even get his name mentioned. Do you know why?" "I can't even imagine," said Hal. "Because he's the Socialist candidate for Governor of this State. He's blackballed from publication in every newspaper here." "By whom?" inquired Hal. "By the hinted wish of the Chamber of Commerce. They're so afraid of the Socialist movement that they daren't even admit it's alive." "Not at all!" Dr. Surtaine's rotund bass boomed out the denial. "There are some movements that it's wisest to disregard. They'll die of themselves. Socialism is a destructive force. Why should the papers help spread it by noticing it in their columns?" "Well, I'm no Socialist," said the political reporter, "but I'm a newspaper man, and I say it's news when a Socialist does a thing just as much as when any one else does it. Yet if I tried to print it, they'd give me the laugh on the copy-desk." "It's a fact that we're all tied down on the news in this town," corroborated Wayne; "what between the Chamber of Commerce and the Dry Goods Union and the theaters and the other steady advertisers. You must have noticed, Mr. Surtaine, that if there's a shoplifting case or anything of that kind you never see the name of the store in print. It's always 'A State Street Department Store' or 'A Warburton Avenue Shop.' Ask Ellis if that isn't so." "Correct," said Ellis. "Why shouldn't it be so?" cried Shearson. "You fellows make me tired. You're always thinking of the news and never of the advertising. Who is it pays your salaries, do you think? The men who advertise in the 'Clarion.'" "Hear! Hear!" from Dr. Surtaine. "And what earthly good does it do to print stuff like those shoplifting cases? Where's the harm in protecting the store?" "I'll tell you where," said Ellis. "That McBurney girl case. They got the wrong girl, and, to cover themselves, they tried to railroad her. It was a clear case. Every paper in town had the facts. Yet they gave that girl the reputation of a thief and never printed a correction for fear of letting in the store for a damage suit." "Did the 'Clarion' do that?" asked Hal. "Yes." "Get me a full report of the facts." "What are you going to do?" asked Shearson. "Print them." "Oh, my Lord!" groaned Shearson. The circle was now drawing in and the talk became brisker, more detailed, more intimate. To his overwhelming amazement Hal learned some of the major facts of that subterranean journalistic history which never gets into print; the ugly story of the blackmail of a President of the United States by a patent medicine concern (Dr. Surtaine verified this with a nod); the inside facts of the failure of an important senatorial investigation which came to nothing because of the drunken debauchery of the chief senatorial investigator; the dreadful details of the death of a leading merchant in a great Eastern city, which were so glossed over by the local press that few of his fellow citizens ever had an inkling of the truth; the obtainable and morally provable facts of the conspiracy on the part of a mighty financier which had plunged a nation into panic; these and many other strange narratives of the news, known to every old newspaper man, which made the neophyte's head whirl. Then, in a pause, a young voice said: "Well, to bring the subject up to date, what about the deaths in the Rookeries?" "Shut up," said Wayne sharply. There followed a general murmur of question and answer. "What about the Rookeries?"--"Don't know."--"They say the death-rate is a terror."--"Are they concealing it at the City Hall?"--"No; Merritt can't find out."--"Bet Tip O'Farrell can."--"Oh, he's in on the game."--"Just another fake, I guess." In vain Hal strove to catch a clue from the confused voices. He had made a note of it for future inquiry, when some one called out: "Mac Ellis hasn't said anything yet." The others caught it up. "Speech from Mac!"--"Don't let him out."--"If you can't speak, sing a song."--"Play a tune on the _bazoo_."--"Hike him up there, somebody."--"Silence for the MacGuire!!" "I've never made a speech in my life," said Ellis, glowering about him, "and you fellows know it. But last night I read this in Plutarch: 'Themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.'" Ellis paused, lifting one hand. "Fellows," he said, and he turned sharply to face Hal Surtaine, "I don't know how the devil old Themistocles ever could do it--unless he owned a newspaper!" Silence followed, and then a quick acclaiming shout, as they grasped the implicit challenge of the corollary. Then again silence, tense with curiosity. No doubt of what they awaited. Their expectancy drew Hal to his feet. "I had intended to speak but once," he said, in a constrained voice, "but I've learned more here this afternoon--more than--than I could have thought--" He broke off and threw up his hand. "I'm no newspaper man," he cried. "I'm only an amateur, a freshman at this business. But one thing I believe; it's the business of a newspaper to give the news without fear or favor, and that's what the 'Clarion' is going to do from this day. On that platform I'll stand by any man who'll stand by me. Will you help?" The answer rose and rang like a cheer. The gathering broke into little, excited, chattering groups, sure symptom of the success of a meeting. Much conjecture was expressed and not a little cynicism. "Compared to us Ishmael would be a society favorite if Surtaine carries this through," said one. "It means suspension in six months," prophesied Shearson. But most of the men were excitedly enthusiastic. Your newspaper man is by nature a romantic; otherwise he would not choose the most adventurous of callings. And the fighting tone of the new boss stimulated in them the spirit of chance and change. Slowly and reluctantly they drifted away to the day's task. At the close Hal sat, thoughtful and spent, in a far corner when Ellis walked heavily over to him. The associate editor gazed down at his bemused principal for a time. From his pocket he drew the thick blue pencil of his craft, and with it tapped Hal thrice on the shoulder. "Rise up, Sir Newspaper Man," he pronounced solemnly. "I hereby dub thee Knight-Editor." CHAPTER XII THE THIN EDGE Across the fresh and dainty breakfast table, Dr. Miles Elliot surveyed his even more fresh and dainty niece and ward with an expression of sternest disapproval. Not that it affected in any perceptible degree that attractive young person's healthy appetite. It was the habit of the two to breakfast together early, while their elderly widowed cousin, who played the part of Feminine Propriety in the household in a highly self-effacing and satisfactory manner, took her tea and toast in her own rooms. It was further Dr. Elliot's custom to begin the day by reprehending everything (so far as he could find it out) which Miss Esmé had done, said, or thought in the previous twenty-four hours. This, as he frequently observed to her, was designed to give her a suitably humble attitude toward the scheme of creation, but didn't. "Out all night again?" he growled. "Pretty nearly," said Esmé cheerfully, setting a very even row of very white teeth into an apple. "Humph! What was it this time?" "A dinner-dance at the Norris's." "Have a good time?" "Beautiful! My frock was pretty. And I was pretty. And everybody was nice to me. And I wish it were going to happen right over again to-night." "Whom did you dance with mostly?" "Anybody that asked me." "Dare say. How many new victims?" he demanded. "Don't be a silly Guardy. I'm not a man-eating tiger or tigress, or the Great American Puma--or pumess. Don't you think 'pumess' is a nice lady-word, Guardy?" "Did you dance with Will Douglas?" catechised the grizzled doctor, declining to be shunted off on a philological discussion. Next to acting as legal major domo to E.M. Pierce, Douglas's most important function in life was apparently to fetch and carry for the reigning belle of Worthington. His devotion to Esmé Elliot had become stock gossip of the town, since three seasons previous. "Almost half as often as he asked me," said the girl. "That was eight times, I think." "Nice boy, Will." "Boy!" There was a world of expressiveness in the monosyllable. "Not a day over forty," observed the uncle. "And you are twenty-two. Not that you look it"--judicially--"like thirty-five, after all this dissipation." Esmé rose from her seat, walked with great dignity past her guardian, and suddenly whirling, pounced upon his ear. "Do I? Do I?" she cried. "Do I look thirty-five? Quick! Take it back." "Ouch! Oh! No. Not more'n thirty. Oo! All right; twenty-five, then. Fifteen! Three!!!" She kissed the assaulted ear, and pirouetted over to the broad window-seat, looking in her simple morning gown like a school-girl. "Wonder how you do it," grumbled Dr. Elliot. "Up all night roistering like a sophomore--" "I was in bed at three." "Down next morning, fresh as a--a--" "Rose," she supplied tritely. "--cake o' soap," concluded her uncle. "Now, as for you and Will Douglas, as between Will's forty--" "Marked down from forty-five," she interjected. "And your twenty-two--" "Looking like thirty-something." "Never mind," said Dr. Elliot in martyred tones. "_I_ don't want to finish _any_ sentence. Why should I? Got a niece to do it for me." "Nobody wants you to finish that one. You're a matchmaking old maid," declared Esmé, wrinkling her delicate nose at him, "and if you're ever put up for our sewing-circle I shall blackball you. Gossip!" "Oh, if I wanted to gossip, I'd begin to hint about the name of Surtaine." The girl's color did not change. "As other people have evidently been doing to you." "A little. Did you dance with him last night?" "He wasn't there. He's working very hard on his newspaper." "You seem to know a good deal about it." "Naturally, since I've bought into the paper myself. I believe that's the proper business phrase, isn't it?" "Bought in? What do you mean? You haven't been making investments without my advice?" "Don't worry, Guardy, dear. It isn't strictly a business transaction. I've been--ahem--establishing a sphere of influence." "Over Harrington Surtaine?" "Over his newspaper." "Look here, Esmé! How serious is this Surtaine matter?" Dr. Elliot's tone had a distinct suggestion of concern. "For me? Not serious at all." "But for him?" "How can I tell? Isn't it likely to be serious for any of the unprotected young of your species when a Great American Pumess gets after him?" she queried demurely. "But you can't know him very well. He's been here only a few weeks, hasn't he?" "More than a month. And from the first he's gone everywhere." "That's quite unusual for your set, isn't it? I thought you rather prided yourselves on being careful about outsiders." "No one's an outsider whom Jinny Willard vouches for. Besides every one likes Hal Surtaine for himself." "You among the number?" "Yes, indeed," she responded frankly. "He's attractive. And he seems older and more--well--interesting than most of the boys of my set." "And that appeals to you?" "Yes: it does. I get awfully bored with the just-out-of-college chatter of the boys. I want to see the wheels go round, Guardy. Real wheels, that make up real machinery and get real things done. I'm not quite an _ingénue_, you know." "Thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, fifteen, three," murmured her uncle, rubbing his ear. "And does young Surtaine give you inside glimpses of the machinery of his business?" "Sometimes. He doesn't know very much about it himself, yet." "It's a pretty dirty business, Honey. And, I'm afraid, he's a pretty bad breed." "The father _is_ rather impossible, isn't he?" she said, laughing. "But they say he's very kindly, and well-meaning, and public-spirited, and that kind of thing." "He's a scoundrelly old quack. It's a bad inheritance for the boy. Where are you off to this morning?" "To the 'Clarion' office." "What! Well, but, see here, dear, does Cousin Clarice approve of that sort of thing?" "Wholly," Esmé assured him, dimpling. "It's on behalf of the Recreation Club. That's the Reverend Norman Hale's club for working-girls, you know. We're going to give a play. And, as I'm on the Press Committee, it's quite proper for me to go to the newspapers and get things printed." "Humph!" grunted Dr. Elliot. "Well: good hunting--Pumess." After the girl had gone, he sat thinking. He knew well the swift intimacies, frank and clean and fine, which spring up in the small, close-knit social circles of a city like Worthington. And he knew, too, and trusted and respected the judgment of Mrs. Festus Willard, whose friendship was tantamount to a certificate of character and eligibility. As against that, he set the unforgotten picture of the itinerant quack, vending his poison across the countryside, playing on desperate fears and tragic hopes, coining his dollars from the grimmest of false dies; and now that same quack,--powerful, rich, generous, popular, master of the good things of life,--still draining out his millions from the populace, through just such deadly swindling as that which had been lighted up by the flaring exploitation of the oil torches fifteen years before. Could any good come from such a stock? He decided to talk it out with Esmé, sure that her fastidiousness would turn away from the ugly truth. Meantime, the girl was making a toilet of vast and artful simplicity wherewith to enrapture the eye of the beholder. The first profound effect thereof was wrought upon Reginald Currier, alias "Bim," some fifteen minutes later, at the outer portals of the "Clarion" office. "Hoojer wanter--" he began, and then glanced up. Almost as swiftly as he had aforetime risen under Hal's irate and athletic impulsion, the redoubtable Bim was lifted from his seat by the power of Miss Elliot's glance. "Gee!" he murmured. The Great American Pumess, looking much more like a very innocent, soft, and demurely playful kitten, accepted this ingenuous tribute to her charms with a smile. "Good-morning," she said. "Is Mr. Surtaine in?" "Same t'you," responded the courteous Mr. Currier. "Sure he is. Walk this way, maddim!" They found the editor at his desk. His absorbed expression brightened as he jumped up to greet his visitor. "You!" he cried. Esmé let her hand rest in his and her glance linger in his eyes, perhaps just a little longer than might have comported with safety in one less adept. "How is the paper going?" she inquired, taking the chair which he pulled out for her. "Completely to the dogs," said Hal. "No! Why I thought--" "You haven't given any advice to the editor for six whole days," he complained. "How can you expect an institution to run, bereft of its presiding genius? Is it your notion of a fair partnership to stay away and let your fellow toilers wither on the bough? I only wonder that the presses haven't stopped." "Would this help at all?" The visitor produced from her shopping-bag the written announcement of the Recreation Club play. "Undoubtedly it will save the day. Lost Atlantis will thrill to hear, and deep-sea cables bear the good news to unborn generations. What is it?" She frowned upon his levity. "It is an interesting item, a _very_ interesting item of news," she said impressively. "Bring one in every day," he directed: "in person. We can't trust the mails in matters of such vital import." And scrawling across the copy a single hasty word in pencil, he thrust it into a wire box. "What's that you've written on it?" "The mystic word 'Must.'" "Does it mean that it must be printed?" "Precisely, O Fountain of Intuition. It is one of the proud privileges which an editor-in-chief has. Otherwise he does exactly what the city desk or the advertising manager or the head proof-reader or the fourth assistant office boy tells him. That's because he's new to his job and everybody in the place knows it." "Yet I don't think it would be easy for any one to make you do a thing you really didn't want to do," she observed, regarding him thoughtfully. "When you lift your eyebrows like that--" "I thought you weren't to make pretty speeches to me in business hours," she reproached him. "Such a stern and rock-bound partner! Very well. How does the paper suit your tastes?" "You've got an awfully funny society column." "We strive to amuse. But I thought only people outside of society ever read society columns--except to see if their names were there." "I read _all_ the paper," she answered severely. "And I'd like to know who Mrs. Wolf Tone Maher is." "Ring up 'Information,'" he suggested. "Don't be flippant. Also Mr. and Mrs. B. Kirschofer, and Miss Amelia Sproule. All of which give teas in the society columns of the 'Clarion.' _Or_ dances. _Or_ dinners. And I notice they're always sandwiched in between the Willards or the Vanes or the Ellisons or the Pierces, or some of our own crowd. I'm curious." "So am I. Let's ask Wayne." Accordingly the city editor was summoned and duly presented to Miss Elliot. But when she put the question to him, he looked uncomfortable. Like a good city editor, however, he defended his subordinate. "It isn't the society reporter's fault," he said. "He knows those people don't belong." "How do they get in there, then?" asked Hal. "Mr. Shearson's orders." "Is Mr. Shearson the society editor?" asked Esmé. "No. He's the advertising manager." "Forgive my stupidity, but what has the advertising manager to do with social news?" "A big heap lot," explained Wayne. "It's the most important feature of the paper to him. Wolf Tone Maher is general manager of the Bee Hive Department Store. We get all their advertising, and when Mrs. Maher wants to see her name along with the 'swells,' as she would say, Mr. Shearson is glad to oblige. B. Kirschofer is senior partner in the firm of Kirschofer & Kraus, of the Bargain Emporium. Miss Sproule is the daughter of Alexander Sproule, proprietor of the Agony Parlors, three floors up." "Agony Parlors?" queried the visitor. "Painless dentistry," explained Wayne. "Mr. Shearson handles all that matter and sends it down to us." "Marked 'Must,' I suppose," remarked Miss Elliot, not without malice. "So the mystic 'Must' is not exclusively a chief-editorial prerogative?" The editor-in-chief looked annoyed, thereby satisfying his visitor's momentary ambition. "Hereafter, Mr. Wayne, all copy indorsed 'Must' is to be referred to me," he directed. "That kills the 'Must' thing," commented the city editor cheerfully. "What about 'Must not'?" "Another complication," laughed Esmé. "I fear I'm peering into the dark and secret places of journalism." "For example, a story came in last night that was a hummer," said Wayne; "about E.M. Pierce's daughter running down an apple-cart in her sixty-horse-power car, and scattering dago, fruit, and all to the four winds of Heaven. Robbins saw it, and he's the best reporter we have for really funny stuff." "Kathleen drives that car like a demon out on a spree," said Esmé. "But of course you wouldn't print anything unpleasant about it." "Why not?" asked Wayne. "Well, she belongs to our crowd,--Mr. Surtaine's friends, I mean,--and it was accidental, I suppose, and so long as the man wasn't hurt--" "Only a sprained shoulder." "--and I'm sure Agnes would be more than willing to pay for the damage." "Oh, yes. She asked the worth of his stock and then doubled it, gave him the money, and drove off with her mud guards coquettishly festooned with grapes. That's what made it such a good story." "But, Mr. Wayne"--Esmé's eyes were turned up to his pleadingly: "those things are funny to tell. But they're so vulgar, in the paper. Think, if it were your sister." "If my sister went tearing through crowded streets at forty miles an hour, I'd have her examined for homicidal mania. That Pierce girl will kill some one yet. Even then, I suppose we won't print a word of it." "What would stop us?" asked Hal. "The fear of Elias M. Pierce. His 'Must not' is what kills this story." "Let me see it." "Oh, it isn't visible. But every editor in town knows too much to offend the President of the Consolidated Employers' Organization, let alone his practical control of the Dry Goods Union." "You were at the staff breakfast yesterday, I believe, Mr. Wayne." "What? Yes; of course I was." "And you heard what I said?" "Yes. But you can't do that sort of thing all at once," replied the city editor uneasily. "We certainly never shall do it without making a beginning. Please hold the Pierce story until you hear from me." "Tell me all about the breakfast," commanded Esmé, as the door closed upon Wayne. Briefly Hal reported the exchange of ideas between himself and his staff, skeletonizing his own speech. "Splendid!" she cried. "And isn't it exciting! I love a good fight. What fun you'll have. Oh, the luxury of saying exactly what you think! Even I can't do that." "What limits are there to the boundless privileges of royalty?" asked Hal, smiling. "Conventions. For instance, I'd love to tell you just how fine I think all this is that you're doing, and just how much I like and admire you. We've come to be real friends, haven't we? And, you see, I can be of some actual help. The breakfast was my suggestion, wasn't it? So you owe me something for that. Are you properly grateful?" "Try me." "Then, august and terrible sovereign, spare the life of my little friend Kathie." Hal drew back a bit. "I'm afraid you don't realize the situation." The Great American Pumess shot forth a little paw--such a soft, shapely, hesitant, dainty, appealing little paw--and laid it on Hal's hand. "Please," she said. "But, Esmé,"--he began. It was the first time he had used that intimacy with her. Her eyes dropped. "We're partners, aren't we?" she said. "Of course." "Then you won't let them print it!" "If Miss Pierce goes rampaging around the streets--" "Please. For me,--partner." "One would have to be more than human, to say no to you," he returned, laughing a little unsteadily. "You're corrupting my upright professional sense of duty." "It can't be a duty to hold a friend up to ridicule, just for a little accident." "I'm not so sure," said Hal, again. "However, for the sake of our partnership, and if you'll promise to come again soon to tell us how to run the paper--" "I knew you'd be kind!" There was just the faintest pressure of the delicate paw, before it was withdrawn. The Great American Pumess was feeling the thrill of power over men and events. "I think I like the newspaper business. But I've got to be at my other trade now." "What trade is that?" "Didn't you know I was a little sister of the poor? When you've lost all your money and are ill, I'll come and lay my cooling hand on your fevered brow and bring wine jelly to your tenement." "Aren't you afraid of contagious diseases?" he asked anxiously. "Such places are always full of them." "Oh, they placard for contagion. It's safe enough. And I'm really interested. It's my only excuse to myself for living." "If bringing happiness wherever you go isn't enough--" "No! No!" She smiled up into his eyes. "This is still a business visit. But you may take me to my car." On his way back Hal stopped to tell Wayne that perhaps the Pierce story wasn't worth running, after all. Unease of conscience disturbed his work for a time thereafter. He appeased it by the excuse that it was no threat or pressure from without which had influenced his action. He had killed the item out of consideration for the friend of his friend. What did it matter, anyway, a bit of news like that? Who was harmed by leaving it out? As yet he was too little the journalist to comprehend that the influences which corrupt the news are likely to be dangerous in proportion as they are subtle. Wayne understood better, and smiled with a cynical wryness of mouth upon McGuire Ellis, who, having passed Hal and Esmé on the stairs, had lingered at the city desk and heard the editor-in-chief's half-hearted order. "Still worrying about Dr. Surtaine's influence over the paper?" asked the city editor, after Hal's departure. "Yes," said Ellis. "Don't." "Why not?" "Did you happen to notice about the prettiest thing that ever used eyes for weapons, in the hall?" "Something of that description." "Let me present you, in advance, to Miss Esmé Elliot, the new boss of our new boss," said Wayne, with a flourish. "God save the Irish!" said McGuire Ellis. CHAPTER XIII NEW BLOOD Echoes of the Talk-it-Over Breakfast rang briskly in the "Clarion" office. It was suggested to Hal that the success of the function warranted its being established as a regular feature of the shop. Later this was done. One of the participants, however, was very ill-pleased with the morning's entertainment. Dr. Surtaine saw, in retrospect and in prospect, his son being led astray into various radical and harebrained vagaries of journalism. None of those at the breakfast had foreseen more clearly than the wise and sharpened quack what serious difficulties beset the course which Hal had laid out for himself. Trouble was what Dr. Surtaine hated above all things. Whatever taste for the adventurous he may have possessed had been sated by his career as an itinerant. Now he asked only to be allowed to hatch his golden dollars peacefully, afar from all harsh winds of controversy. That his own son should feel a more stirring ambition left him clucking, a bewildered hen on the brink of perilous waters. But he clucked cunningly. And before he undertook his appeal to bring the errant one back to shore he gave himself two days to think it over. To this extent Dr. Surtaine had become a partisan of the new enterprise; that he, too, previsioned an ideal newspaper, a newspaper which, day by day, should uphold and defend the Best Interests of the Community, and, as an inevitable corollary, nourish itself on their bounty. By the Best Interests of the Community--he visualized the phrase in large print, as a creed for any journal--Dr. Surtaine meant, of course, business in the great sense. Gloriously looming in the future of his fancy was the day when the "Clarion" should develop into the perfect newspaper, the fine flower of journalism, an organ in which every item of news, every line of editorial, every word of advertisement, should subserve the one vital purpose, Business; should aid in some manner, direct or indirect, in making a dollar for the "Clarion's" patrons and a dime for the "Clarion's" till. But how to introduce these noble and fortifying ideals into the mind of that flighty young bird, Hal? Dr. Surtaine, after studying the problem, decided to employ the instance of the Mid-State and Great Muddy River Railroad as the entering wedge of his argument. Hal owned a considerable block of stock, earning the handsome dividend of eight per cent. Under attacks possibly leading to adverse legislation, this return might well be reduced and Hal's own income suffer a shrinkage. Therefore, in the interests of all concerned, Hal ought to keep his hands off the subject. Could anything be clearer? Obviously not, the senior Surtaine thought, and so laid it before the junior, one morning as they were walking down town together. Hal admitted the assault upon the Mid-and-Mud; defended it, even; added that there would be another phase of it presently in the way of an attempt on the part of the paper to force a better passenger service for Worthington. Dr. Surtaine confessed a melancholious inability to see what the devil business it was of Hal's. "It isn't I that's making the fight, Dad. It's the 'Clarion.'" "The same thing." "Not at all the same thing. Something very much bigger than I or any other one man. I found that out at the breakfast." That breakfast! Socialistic, anarchistic, anti-Christian, were the climactic adjectives employed by Dr. Surtaine to signify his disapproval of the occasion. "Sorry you didn't like it, Dad. You heard nothing but plain facts." "Plain slush! Just look at this railroad accident article broad-mindedly, Boyee. You own some Mid-and-Mud stock." "Thanks to you, Dad." "Paying eight per cent. How long will it go on paying that if the newspapers keep stirring up trouble for it? Anti-railroad sentiment is fostered by just such stuff as the 'Clarion' printed. What if the engineer _was_ worked overtime? He got paid for it." "And seven people got killed for it. I understand the legislature is going to ask why, mainly because of our story and editorial." "There you are! Sicking a pack of demagogues onto the Mid-and-Mud. How can it make profits and pay your dividends if that kind of thing keeps up?" "I don't know that I need dividends earned by slaughtering people," said Hal slowly. "Maybe you don't need the dividends, but there's plenty of people that do, people that depend on 'em. Widows and orphans, too." "Oh, that widow-and-orphan dummy!" cried Hal. "What would the poor, struggling railroads ever do without it to hide behind!" "You talk like Ellis," reproved his father. "Boyee, I don't want you to get too much under his influence. He's an impractical will-o'-the-wisp chaser. Just like all the writing fellows." By this time they had reached the "Clarion" Building. "Come in, Dad," invited Hal, "and we'll talk to Ellis about Old Home Week. He's with you there, anyway." "Oh, he's all right aside from his fanatical notions," said the other as they mounted the stairs. The associate editor nodded his greetings from above a pile of left-over copy. "Old Home Week?" he queried. "Let's see, when does it come?" "In less than six months. It isn't too early to give it a start, is it?" asked Hal Surtaine. "No. It's news any time, now." "More than that," said Dr. Surtaine. "It's advertising. I can turn every ad. that goes out to the 'Clarion.'" "Last year we got only the pickings," remarked Ellis. "Last year your owner wasn't the son of the committee's chairman." "By the way, Dad, I'll have to resign that secretaryship. Every minute of my spare time I'm going to put in around this office." "I guess you're right. But I'm sorry to lose you." "Think how much more I can do for the celebration with this paper than I could as secretary." "Right, again." "Some one at the breakfast," observed Hal, "mentioned the Rookeries, and Wayne shut him up. What are the Rookeries? I've been trying to remember to ask." The other two looked at each other with raised eyebrows. As well might one have asked, "What is the City Hall?" in Worthington. Ellis was the one to answer. "Hell's hole and contamination. The worst nest of tenements in the State. Two blocks of 'em, owned by our best citizens. Run by a political pull. So there's no touching 'em." "What's up there now; more murders?" asked the Doctor. "Somebody'll be calling it that if it goes much further," replied the newspaper man. "I don't know what the official _alias_ of the trouble is. If you want details, get Wayne." In response to a telephone call the city editor presented his lank form and bearded face at the door of the sanctum. "The Rookeries deaths?" he said. "Oh, malaria--for convenience." "Malaria?" repeated Dr. Surtaine. "Why, there aren't any mosquitoes in that locality now." "So the health officer, Dr. Merritt, says. But the certificates keep coming in. He's pretty worried. There have been over twenty cases in No. 7 and No. 9 alone. Three deaths in the last two days." "Is it some sort of epidemic starting?" asked Hal. "That would be news, wouldn't it?" At the word "epidemic," Dr. Surtaine had risen, and now came forward flapping his hand like a seal. "The kind of news that never ought to get into print," he exclaimed. "That's the sort of thing that hurts a whole city." "So does an epidemic if it gets a fair start," suggested Ellis. "Epidemic! Epidemic!" cried the Doctor. "Ten years ago they started a scare about smallpox in those same Rookeries. The smallpox didn't amount to shucks. But look what the sensationalism did to us. It choked off Old Home Week, and lost us hundreds of thousands of dollars." "I was a cub on the 'News' then," said Wayne. "And I remember there were a lot of deaths from chicken-pox that year. I didn't suppose people--that is, grown people--died of chicken-pox very often: not more often, say, than they die of malaria where there are no mosquitoes." "Suspicion is one thing. Fact is another," said Dr. Surtaine decisively. "Hal, I hope you aren't going to take up with this nonsense, and risk the success of the Centennial Old Home Week." "I can't see what good we should be doing," said the new editor. "It's big news, if it's true," suggested Wayne, rather wistfully. "Suppression of a real epidemic." "Ghost-tales and goblin-shine," laughed the big doctor, recovering his good humor. "Who's the physician down there?" "Dr. De Vito, an Italian. Nobody else can get into the Rookeries to see a case. O'Farrell's the agent, and he sees to that." "Tip O'Farrell, the labor politician? I know him. And I know De Vito well. In fact, he does part-time work in the Certina plant. I'll tell you what, Hal. I'll just make a little expert investigation of my own down there, and report to you." "The 'Clarion's Special Commissioner, Dr. L. André Surtaine," said Ellis sonorously. "No publicity, boys. This is a secret commission. And here's your chance right now to make the 'Clarion' useful to the committee, Hal, by keeping all scare-stuff out of the paper." "If it really does amount to anything, wouldn't it be better," said Hal, "to establish a quarantine and go in there and stamp the thing out? We've plenty of time before Old Home Week." "No; no!" cried the Doctor. "Think of the publicity that would mean. It would be a year before the fear of it would die out. Every other city that's jealous of Worthington would make capital of it and thousands of people whose money we want would be scared away." Ellis drew Wayne aside. "What does Dr. Merritt really think? Smallpox?" "No. The place has been too well vaccinated. It might be scarlet fever, or diphtheria, or even meningitis. Merritt wants to go in there and open it up, but the Mayor won't let him. He doesn't dare take the responsibility without any newspaper backing. And none of the other papers dares tackle the ownership of the Rookeries." "Then we ought to. A good, rousing sensation of that sort is just what the paper needs." "We won't get it. There's too many ropes on the Boy Boss. First the girl and now the old man." "Wait and see. He's got good stuff in him and he's being educated every day. Give him time." "Mr. Wayne, I'd like to see the health office reports," called Hal, and the two went out. Selecting one of his pet cigars, Dr. Surtaine advanced upon McGuire Ellis, extending it. "Mac, you're a good fellow at bottom," he said persuasively. "What's the price," asked Ellis, "of the cigar and the compliment together? In other words, what do you want of me?" "Keep your hands off the boy." "Didn't I offer fair and square to match you for his soul? You insisted on fight." "If you'd just let him alone," pursued the quack, "he'd come around right side up with care. He's sound and sensible at bottom. He's got a lot of me in him. But you keep feeding him up on your yellow journal ideas. What'll they ever get him? Trouble; nothing but trouble. Even if you should make a sort of success of the paper with your wild sensationalism it wouldn't be any real good to Hal. It wouldn't get him anywhere with the real people. It'd be a sheet he'd always have to be a little ashamed of. I tell you what, Mac, in order to respect himself a man has got to respect his business." "Just so," said McGuire Ellis. "Do you respect your business, Doc?" "Do I!! It makes half a million a year clear profit." The associate editor turned to his work whistling softly. CHAPTER XIV THE ROOKERIES Two conspicuous ornaments of Worthington's upper world visited Worthington's underworld on a hot, misty morning of early June. Both were there on business, Dr. L. André Surtaine in the fulfillment of his agreement with his son--the exact purpose of the visit, by the way, would have inspired Harrington Surtaine with unpleasant surprise, could he have known it; and Miss Esmé Elliot on a tour of inspection for the Visiting Nurses' Association, of which she was an energetic official. Whatever faults or foibles might be ascribed to Miss Elliot, she was no faddist. That which she undertook to do, she did thoroughly and well; and for practical hygiene she possessed an inborn liking and aptitude, far more so than, for example, her fortuitous fellow slummer of the morning, Dr. Surtaine, whom she encountered at the corner where the Rookeries begin. The eminent savant removed his hat with a fine flourish, further reflected in his language as he said:-- "What does Beauty so far afield?" "Thank you, if you mean me," said Esmé demurely. "Do you see something else around here that answers the description?" "No: I certainly don't," she replied, letting her eyes wander along the street where Sadler's Shacks rose in grime and gauntness to offend the clean skies. "I am going over there to see some sick people." "Ah! Charity as well as Beauty; the perfect combination." The Doctor's pomposity always amused Esmé. "And what does Science so far from its placid haunts?" she mocked. "Are you scattering the blessings of Certina amongst a grateful proletariat?" "Not exactly. I'm down here on some other business." "Well, I won't keep you from it, Dr. Surtaine. Good-bye." The swinging doors of a saloon opened almost upon her, and a short, broad-shouldered foreigner, in a ruffled-up silk hat, bumped into her lightly and apologized. He jogged up to Dr. Surtaine. "Hello, De Vito," said Dr. Surtaine. "At the service of my distinguish' confrère," said the squat Italian. "Am I require at the factory?" "No. I've come to look into this sickness. Where is it?" "The opposite eemediate block." Dr. Surtaine eyed with disfavor the festering tenement indicated. "New cases?" "Two, only." "Who's treating them?" "I am in charge. Mr. O'Farrell employs my services: so the pipple have not to pay anything. All the time which I am not at the Certina factory, I am here." "Just so. And no other doctor gets in?" "There is no call. They are quite satisfied." "And is the Board of Health satisfied?" The employee shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. "How is it you Americans say? 'What he does not know cannot hurt somebody.'" "Is O'Farrell agent for all these barracks?" Dr. Surtaine inquired as they walked up the street. "All. Many persons own, but Mr. O'Farrell is boss of all. This Number 4, Mr. Gibbs owns. He is of the great department store. You know. A ver' fine man, Mr. Gibbs." "A very fine fool," retorted the Doctor, "to let himself get mixed up with such rotten property. Why, it's a reflection on all us men of standing." "Nobody knows he is owner. And it pays twelve per cent," said the Italian mildly. He paused at the door. "Do we go in?" he asked. An acrid-soft odor as of primordial slime subtly intruded upon the sensory nerves of the visitor. The place breathed out decay; the decay of humanity, of cleanliness, of the honest decencies of life turned foul. Something lethal exhaled from that dim doorway. There was a stab of pestilence, reaching for the brain. But the old charlatan was no coward. "Show me the cases," he said. For an hour he moved through the black, stenchful passageways, up and down ramshackle stairs, from human warren to human warren, pausing here to question, there to peer and sniff and poke with an exploring cane. Out on the street again he drew full, heaving breath. "O'Farrell's got to clean up. That's all there is to that," he said decisively. "The Doctor thinks?" queried the little physician. Dr. Surtaine shook his head. "I don't know. But I'm sure of one thing. There's three of them ought to be gotten out at once. The third-floor woman, and that brother and sister in the basement." "And the German family at the top?" Dr. Surtaine tapped his chest significantly. "Sure to be plenty of that in this kind of hole. Nothing to do but let 'em die." He did not mention that he had left a twenty-dollar bill and a word of cheer with the gasping consumptive and his wife. Outside of the line of business Dr. Surtaine's charities were silent. "How many of the _other_ cases have you had here?" "Eleven. Seven deaths. Four I take away." "And what is your diagnosis, Doctor?" inquired the old quack professionally of the younger ignoramus. Again De Vito shrugged. "For public, malignant malaria. How you call it? Pernicious. For me, I do' know. Maybe--" he leaned forward and spoke a low word. "Meningitis?" repeated the other. "Possibly. I've never seen much of the infectious kind. What are you giving for it?" "Certina, mostly." Dr. Surtaine looked at him sharply, but the Italian's face was innocent of any sardonic expression. "As well that as anything," muttered its proprietor. "By the way, you might get testimonials from any of 'em that get well. Can you find O'Farrell?" "Yes, sir." "Tell him I want to see him at my office at two o'clock." "Ver' good. What do you think it is, Doctor?" Dr. Surtaine waved a profound hand. "Very obscure. Demands consideration. But get those cases out of the city. There's no occasion to risk the Board of Health seeing them." At the corner Dr. Surtaine again met Miss Elliot and stopped her. "My dear young lady, ought you to be risking your safety in such places as these?" "No one ever interferes. My badge protects me." "But there's so much sickness." "That is what brings me," she smiled. "It might be contagious. In fact, I have reason to believe that there is--er--measles in this block." "I've had it, thank you. May I give you a lift in my car?" "No, thank you. But I think you should consult your uncle before coming here again." "The entire Surtaine family seems set upon barring me from the Rookeries. I wonder why." With which parting shot she left him. Going home, he bathed and changed into his customary garb of smooth black, to which his rotund placidity of bearing imparted an indescribably silky finish. His discarded clothes he put, with his own hands, into an old grip, sprinkled them plenteously with a powerful disinfectant, and left orders that they be destroyed. It was a phase of Dr. Surtaine's courage that he never took useless risks, either with his own life, or (outside of business) with the lives of others. Having lunched, he went to his office where he found O'Farrell waiting. The politician greeted him with a mixture of deference and familiarity. At one stage of their acquaintance familiarity had predominated, when having put through a petty but particularly rancid steal for the benefit of the Certina business, O'Farrell had become inspired with effusiveness to the extent of addressing his patron as "Doc." He never made that particular error again. Yet, to the credit of Dr. Surtaine's tact and knowledge of character be it said, O'Farrell was still the older man's loyal though more humble friend, after the incident. To-day he was plainly apprehensive. "Them other cases the same thing?" he asked. "Yes, O'Farrell." "What is it?" "That I can't tell you." "You went in and saw 'em?" Dr. Surtaine nodded. "By God, I wouldn't do it," declared O'Farrell, shivering. "I wouldn't go in there, not to collect the rent! It's catching, ain't it?" "In all probability it is a contagious or zymotic disease." The politician shook his head, much impressed, as it was intended he should be. "Cleaning-up time for you, I guess, O'Farrell," pursued the other. "All right, if you say so. But I won't have any Board o' Health snitches bossing it. They'd want to pull the whole row down." "Exactly what ought to be done." "What! And it averagin' better'n ten per cent," cried the agent in so scandalized a tone that the Doctor could not but smile. "How have you managed to keep them out, thus far?" "Haven't. There's been a couple of inspectors around, but I stalled 'em off. And we got the sick cases out right from under 'em." "Dr. Merritt is a hard man to handle if he once gets started." "He's got his hands full. The papers have been poundin' him because his milk regulations have put up the price. Persecution of the dairymen, they call it. Well, persecution of an honest property owner--with a pull--won't look pretty for Mr. Health Officer if he don't find nothing there. And the papers'll back me." "Ellis of the 'Clarion' has his eye on the place." "You can square that through your boy, can't you?" The Doctor had his own private doubts, but didn't express them. "Leave it to me," he said. "Get some disinfectants and clean up. Your owners can stand the bill--at ten per cent. Much obliged for coming in, O'Farrell." As the politician went out an office girl entered and announced: "There's a man out in the reception hall, Doctor, waiting to see you. He's asleep with his elbow on the stand." "Wake him up and ask him for his berth-check, Alice," said Dr. Surtaine, "and if he says his name is Ellis, send him in." Ellis it was who entered and dropped into the chair pushed forward by his host. "Glad to see you, my boy," Dr. Surtaine greeted him. "I thought you were going to send a reporter." "Ordinarily we would have sent one. But I'm pretty well interested in this myself. I expected to hear from you long ago." "Busy, my boy, busy. It's only been a week since I undertook the investigation. And these things take time." "Apparently. What's the result?" "Nothing." The quack spread his hands abroad in a blank gesture. "False alarm. Couple of cases of typhoid and some severe tonsillitis, that looked like diphtheria." "People die of tonsillitis, do they?" "Sometimes." "And are buried?" "Naturally." "What in?" "Why, in coffins, I suppose." "Then why were these bodies buried in quicklime?" "What bodies?" "Last week's lot." "You mean in Canadaga County? O'Farrell said nothing about quicklime." "That's what I mean. Apparently O'Farrell _did_ say something about more corpses smuggled out last week." "Mr. Ellis," said the Doctor, annoyed at his slip, "I am not on the witness stand." "Dr. Surtaine," returned the other in the same tone, "when you undertake an investigation for the 'Clarion,' you are one of my reporters and I expect a full and frank report from you." "Bull's-eye for you, my boy. You win. They did run those cases out. Before we're through with it they'll probably run more out. You see, the Health Bureau has got it in for O'Farrell, and if they knew there was anything up there, they'd raise a regular row and queer things generally." "What _is_ up?" "Honestly, I don't know." "Nor even suspect?" "Well, it might be scarlet fever. Or, perhaps diphtheria. You see strange types sometimes." "If it's either, failure to report is against the law." "Technically, yes. But we've got it fixed to clean things up. The people will be looked after. There's no real danger of its spreading much. And you know how it is. The Rookeries have got a bad name, anyway. Anything starting there is sure to be exaggerated. Why, look at that chicken-pox epidemic a few years ago." "I understand nobody who had been vaccinated got any of the chicken-pox, as you call it." "That's as may be. What did it amount to, anyway? Nothing. Yet it almost ruined Old Home Week." "Naturally you don't want the Centennial Home Week endangered. But we don't want the health of the city endangered." "'We.' Who's we?" "Well, the 'Clarion.'" "Don't work the guardian-of-the-people game on me, my boy. And don't worry about the city's health. If this starts to spread we'll take measures." By no means satisfied with this interview, McGuire Ellis left the Certina plant, and almost ran into Dr. Elliot, whom he hailed, for he had the faculty of knowing everybody. "Not doing any doctoring nowadays, are you?" "No," retorted the other. "Doing any sickening, yourself?" Ellis grinned. "It's despairing weariness that makes me look this way. I'm up against a tougher job than old Diogenes. I'm looking for an honest doctor." "You fish in muddy waters," commented his acquaintance, glancing up at the Certina Building. "There's something very wrong down in the Twelfth Ward." "Not going in for reform politics, are you?" "This isn't political. Some kind of disease has broken out in O'Farrell's Rookeries." "Delirium tremens," suggested Dr. Elliot. "Yes: that's a funny joke," returned the other, unmoved; "but did you ever hear of any one sneaking D-T cases across the county line at night to a pest-house run by a political friend of O'Farrell's?" "Can't say I have." "Or burying the dead in quicklime?" "Quicklime? What's this, 'Clarion' sensationalism?" "Don't be young. I'm telling you. Quicklime. Canadaga County." Not only had Dr. Elliot served his country in the navy, but he had done duty in that efficient fighting force, which reaps less honor and follows a more noble, self-sacrificing and courageous ideal than any army or navy, the United States Public Health Service. Under that banner he had fought famines, panic, and pestilence, from the stricken lumber-camps of the North, to the pent-in, quarantined bayous of the South; and now, at the hint of danger, there came a battle-glint into his sharp eyes. "Tell me what you know." "Now you're talking!" said the newspaper man. "It's little enough. But we've got it straight that they've been covering up some disease for weeks." "What do the certificates call it?" "Malaria and septic something, I believe." "Septicæmia hemorrhagica?" "That's it." "An alias. That's what they called bubonic plague in San Francisco and yellow fever in Texas in the old days of concealment." "It couldn't be either of those, could it?" "No. But it might be any reportable disease: diphtheria, smallpox, any of 'em. Even that hardly explains the quicklime." "Could you look into it for us; for the 'Clarion'?" "I? Work for the 'Clarion'?" "Why not?" "I don't like your paper." "But you'd be doing a public service." "Possibly. How do I know you'd print what I discovered--supposing I discovered anything?" "We're publishing an honest paper, nowadays." "_Are_ you? Got this morning's?" Like all good newspaper men, McGuire Ellis habitually went armed with a copy of his own paper. He produced it from his coat pocket. "Honest, eh?" muttered the physician grimly as he twisted the "Clarion" inside out. "Honest! Well, not to go any farther, what about this for honesty?" Top of column, "next to reading," as its contract specified, the lure of the Neverfail Company stood forth, bold and black. "Boon to Troubled Womanhood" was the heading. Dr. Elliot read, with slow emphasis, the lying half-promises, the specious pretenses of the company's "Relief Pills." "No Case too Obstinate": "Suppression from Whatever Cause": "Thousands of Women have Cause to Bless this Sovereign Remedy": "Saved from Desperation." "No doubt what that means, is there?" queried the reader. "It seems pretty plain." "What do you mean, then, by telling me you run an honest paper when you carry an abortion advertisement every day?" "Will that medicine cause abortion?" "Certainly it won't cause abortion!" "Well, then." "Can't you see that makes it all the worse, in a way? It promises to bring on abortion. It encourages any fool girl who otherwise might be withheld from vice by fear of consequences. It puts a weapon of argument into the hands of every rake and ruiner; 'If you get into trouble, this stuff will fix you all right.' How many suicides do you suppose your 'Boon to Womanhood' and its kind of hellishness causes in a year, thanks to the help of your honest journalism?" "When I said we were honest, I wasn't thinking of the advertising." "But I am. Can you be honest on one page and a crook on another? Can you bang the big drum of righteousness in one column and promise falsely in the next to commit murder? Ellis, why does the 'Clarion' carry such stuff as that?" "Do you really want to know?" "Well, you're asking me to help your sheet," the ex-surgeon reminded him. "Because Dr. L. André Surtaine _is_ the Neverfail Company." "Oh," said the other. "And I suppose Dr. L. André Surtaine _is_ the 'Clarion,' also. Well, I don't choose to be associated with that honorable and high-minded polecat, thank you." "Don't be too sure about the 'Clarion.' Harrington Surtaine isn't his father." "The same rotten breed." "Plus another strain. Where it comes from I don't know, but there's something in the boy that may work out to big ends." Dr. Miles Elliot was an abrupt sort of person, as men of independent lives and thought are prone to be. "Look here, Ellis," he said: "are you trying to be honest, yourself? Now, don't answer till you've counted three." "One--two--three," said McGuire Ellis solemnly. "I'm honestly trying to put the 'Clarion' on the level. That's what you really want to know, I suppose." "Against all the weight of influence of Dr. Surtaine?" "Bless you; he doesn't half realize he's a crook. Thinks he's a pretty fine sort of chap. The worst of it is, he _is_, too, in some ways." "Good to his family, I suppose, in the intervals of distributing poison and lies." "He's all wrapped up in the boy. Which is going to make it all the harder." "Make what all the harder?" "Prying 'em apart." "Have you set yourself that little job?" "Since we're speaking out in meeting, I have." "Good. Why are you speaking out in meeting to me, particularly?" "On the theory that you may have reason for being interested in Mr. Harrington Surtaine." "Don't know him." "Your niece does." "Just how does that concern this discussion?" "What business is it of mine, you mean. Well, Dr. Elliot, I'm pretty much interested in trying to make a real newspaper out of the 'Clarion.' My notion of a real newspaper is a decent, clean newspaper. If I can get my young boss to back me up, we'll have a try at my theory. To do this, I'll use any fair means. And if Miss Elliot's influence is going to be on my side, I'm glad to play it off against Dr. Surtaine's." "Look here, Ellis, I don't like this association of my niece's name with young Surtaine." "All right. I'll drop it, if you object. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know Miss Elliot, anyway. But sooner or later there's coming one big fight in the 'Clarion' office, and it's going to open two pairs of eyes. Old Doc Surtaine is going to discover his son. Hal Surtaine is going to find out about the old man. Neither of 'em is going to be awfully pleased. And in that ruction the fate of the Neverfail Company's ad. is going to be decided and with it the fate and character of the 'Clarion.' Now, Dr. Elliot, my cards are on the table. Will you help me in the Rookeries matter?" "What do you want me to do?" "Go cautiously, and find out what that disease is." "I'll go there to-morrow." "They won't let you in." "Won't they?" Dr. Elliot's jaw set. "Don't risk it. Some of O'Farrell's thugs will pick a fight with you and the whole thing will be botched." "How about getting a United States Public Health Surgeon down here?" "Fine! Can you do it?" "I think so. It will take time, though." "That can't be helped. I'll look you up in a few days." "All right. And, Ellis, if I can help in the other thing--the clean-up--I'm your man." Meantime from his office Dr. Surtaine had, after several attempts, succeeded in getting the Medical Office of Canadaga County on the telephone. "Hello! That you, Doctor Simons?--Seen O'Farrell?--Yes; you ought to get in touch with him right away--Three more cases going over to you.--Oh, they're there, are they? You're isolating them, aren't you?--Pest-house? That's all right.--All bills will be paid--liberally. You understand?--What are you calling it? Diphtheria?--Good enough for the present.--Ever see infectious meningitis? I thought it might be that, maybe--No? What do you think, then?--_What_! Good God, man! It can't be! Such a thing has never been heard of in this part of the country--What?--Yes: you're right. We can't talk over the 'phone. Come over to-morrow. Good-bye." Putting up the receiver, Dr. Surtaine turned to his desk and sat immersed in thought. Presently he shook his head. He scratched a few notes on a pad, tore off the sheet and thrust it into the small safe at his elbow. Proof of a half-page Certina display beckoned him in buoyant, promissory type to his favorite task. He glanced at the safe. Once again he shook his head, this time more decisively, took the scribbled paper out and tore it into shreds. Turning to the proof he bent over it, striking out a word here, amending there, jotting in a printer's direction on the margin; losing himself in the major interest. The "special investigator" of the "Clarion" was committing the unpardonable sin of journalism. He was throwing his paper down. CHAPTER XV JUGGERNAUT Misfortunes never come singly--to the reckless. The first mischance breeds the second, apparently by ill luck, but in reality through the influence of irritant nerves. Thus descended Nemesis upon Miss Kathleen Pierce. Not that Miss Pierce was of a misgiving temperament: she had too calm and superb a conviction of her own incontrovertible privilege in every department of life for that. But Esmé Elliot had given her a hint of her narrow escape from the "Clarion," and she was angry. To the Pierce type of disposition, anger is a spur. Kathleen's large green car increased its accustomed twenty-miles-an-hour pace, from which the police of the business section thoughtfully averted their faces, to something nearer twenty-five. Three days after the wreck of the apple cart, she got results. Harrington Surtaine was crossing diagonally to the "Clarion" office when the moan of a siren warned him for his life, and he jumped back from the Pierce juggernaut. As it swept by he saw Kathleen at the wheel. Beside her sat her twelve-year-old brother. A miscellaneous array of small luggage was heaped behind them. "Never mind the speed laws," murmured Hal softly. "_Sauve qui peut_. There, by Heavens, she's done it!" The car had swerved at the corner, but not quite quickly enough. There was a snort of the horn, a scream that gritted on the ear like the clamor of tortured metals, and a huddle of black and white was flung almost at Hal's feet. Equally quick with him, a middle-aged man, evidently of the prosperous working-classes, helped him to pick the woman up. She was a trained nurse. The white band on her uniform was splotched with blood. She groaned once and lapsed, inert, in their arms. "Help me get her to the automobile," said Hal. "This is a hospital case." "What automobile?" said the other. Hal glanced up the street. He saw the green car turning a corner, a full block away. "She didn't even stop," he muttered, in a paralysis of surprise. "Stop?" said the other. "Her? That's E.M. Pierce's she-whelp. True to the breed. She don't care no more for a workin'-woman's life than her father does for a workin'-man's." A policeman hurried up, glanced at the woman and sent in an ambulance call. "I want your name," said Hal to the stranger. "What for?" "Publication now. Later, prosecution. I'm the editor of the 'Clarion.'" The man took off his hat and scratched his head. "Leave me out of it," he said. "You won't help me to get justice for this woman?'" cried Hal. "What can you do to E.M. Pierce's girl in this town?" retorted the man fiercely. "Don't he own the town?" "He doesn't own the 'Clarion.'" "Let the 'Clarion' go up against him, then. I daresn't." "You'll never get him," said a voice close to Hal's ear. It was Veltman, the foreman of the 'Clarion' composing-room. "He's a street-car employee. It's as much as his job is worth to go up against Pierce." They were pressed back, as the clanging ambulance arrived with its white-coated commander. "No; not dead," he said. "Help me get her in." This being accomplished, Hal hurried up to the city room of the paper. He remembered the pile of suit-cases in the Pierce car, and made his deductions. "Send a reporter to the Union Station to find Kathleen Pierce. She's in a green touring-car. She's just run down a trained nurse. Have him interview her; ask her why she didn't turn back after she struck the woman; whether she doesn't know the law. Find out if she's going to the hospital. Get her estimate of how fast she was going. We'll print anything she says. Then he's to go to St. James Hospital, and ask about the nurse. I'll give him the details of the accident." News of a certain kind, of the kind important to the inner machinery of a newspaper, spreads swiftly inside an office. Within an hour, Shearson, the advertising manager, was at his chief's desk. "About that story of Miss Pierce running over the trained nurse," he began. "What is your suggestion?" asked Hal curiously. "E.M. Pierce is a power in this town, and out of it. He's the real head of the Retail Dry Goods Union. He's a director in the Security Power Products Company. He's the big boss of the National Consolidated Employers' Association. He practically runs the Retail Dry Goods Union. Gibbs, of the Boston Store, is his brother-in-law, and the girl's uncle. Mr. Pierce has got a hand in pretty much everything in Worthington. And he's a bad man in a fight." "So I have heard." "If we print this story--" "We're going to print the story, Mr. Shearson." "It's full of dynamite." "It was a brutal thing. If she hadn't driven right on--" "But she's only a kid." "The more reason why she shouldn't be driving a car." "Why have you got it in for her, Mr. Surtaine?" ventured the other. "I haven't got it in for her. But we've let her off once. And this is too flagrant a case." "It means a loss of thousands of dollars in advertising, just as like as not." "That can't be helped." Shearson did the only thing he could think of in so unheard-of an emergency. He went out to call up the office of E.M. Pierce. Left to his own thoughts, the editor-in-chief reconstructed the scene of the outrage. None too strong did that term seem to him. The incredible callousness of the daughter of millions, speeding away without a backward glance at the huddled form in the gutter, set a flame of wrath to heating his brain. He built up a few stinging headlines, and selected one which he set aside. "GIRL PLAYS JUGGERNAUT. ELIAS M. PIERCE'S DAUGHTER SERIOUSLY INJURES NURSE AND LEAVES HER LYING IN GUTTER." Not long after he had concluded, McGuire Ellis entered, slumped into his chair, and eyed his employer from under bent brows. "Got a grip on your temper?" he asked presently. "What's the occasion?" countered Hal. "I think you're going to have an interview with Elias M. Pierce." "Where and when?" "In his office. As soon as you can get there." "I think not." "Not?" repeated Ellis, conning the other with his curious air. "Why should I go to Elias M. Pierce's office?" "Because he's sent for you." "Don't be absurd, Mac." "And don't _you_ be young. In all Worthington there aren't ten men that don't jump when Elias M. Pierce crooks his finger. Who are you, to join that noble company of martyrs?" Achieving no nibble on this bait, the speaker continued: "Jerry Saunders has been keeping Wayne's telephone on the buzz, ordering the story stopped." "Who is Jerry Saunders?" "Pierce's man, and master of our fates. So he thinks, anyway. In other words, general factotum of the Boston Store. Wayne told him the matter was in your hands. All storm signals set, and E.M.'s secretary telephoning that the Great Man wants to see you at once. _Don't_ you think it would be safer to go?" Mr. Harrington Surtaine swung full around on his chair, looked at his assistant with that set and level gaze of which Esmé Elliot had aforetime complained, and turned back again. A profound chuckle sounded from behind him. "This'll be a shock to Mr. Pierce," said Ellis. "I'll break it diplomatically to his secretary." And thus was the manner of the Celt's diplomacy. "Hello,--Mr. Pierce's secretary?--Tell Mr. Pierce--get this _verbatim_, please,--that Mr. Harrington Surtaine is busy at present, but will try to find time to see him here--_here_, mind you, at the 'Clarion' office, at 4.30 this afternoon--What? Oh, yes; you understood, all right. Don't be young.--What? Do _not_ sputter into the 'phone.--Just give him the message.--No; Mr. Surtaine will not speak with you.--Nor with Mr. Pierce. He's busy.--_Good_-bye." "Two hours leeway before the storm," said Hal. "Why deliberately stir him up, Mac?" "No one ever saw Pierce lose his temper. I've a curiosity in that direction. Besides, he'll be easier to handle, mad. Do you know Pierce?" "I've lunched with him, and been there to the house to dinner once or twice. Wish I hadn't." "Let me give you a little outline of him. Elias M. is the hard-shell New England type. He was brought up in the fear of God and the Poor-House. God was a good way off, I guess; but there stood the Poor-House on the hill, where you couldn't help but see it. The way of salvation from it was through the dollar. Elias M. worked hard for his first dollar, and for his millionth. He's still working hard. He still finds the fear of God useful: he puts it into everybody that goes up against his game. The fear of the Poor-House is with him yet, though he doesn't realize it. It's the mainspring of his religion. There's nothing so mean as fear; and Elias M.'s fear is back of all his meanness, his despotism in business, his tyranny as an employer. I tell you, Boss, if you ever saw a hellion in a cutaway coat, Elias M. Pierce is it, and you're going to smell sulphur when he gets here. Better let him do the talking, by the way." Prompt to the minute, Elias M. Pierce arrived. With him came William Douglas, his personal counsel. Having risen to greet them, Hal stood leaning against his desk, after they were seated. The lawyer disposed himself on the far edge of his chair, as if fearing that a more comfortable pose might commit him to something. Mr. Pierce sat solid and square, a static force neatly buttoned into a creaseless suit. His face was immobile, but under the heavy lids the eyes smouldered, dully. The tone of his voice was lifelessly level: yet with an immanent menace. "I do not make appointments outside my own office--" he began, looking straight ahead of him. Mindful of Ellis's advice, Hal stood silent, in an attitude of courteous attention. "But this is a case of saving time. My visit has to do with the accident of which you know." Whether or not Hal knew was undeterminable from sign or speech of his. "It was wholly the injured woman's fault," pursued Mr. Pierce, and turned a slow, challenging eye upon Hal. Over his shoulder the editor-in-chief caught sight of McGuire Ellis laying finger on lip, and following up this admonition by a gesture of arms and hands as of one who pays out line to a fish. Douglas fidgeted on his desperate edge. "You sent a reporter to interview my daughter. He was impertinent. He should be discharged." Still Mr. Pierce was firing into silence. Something rattled and flopped in a chute at his elbow. He turned, irritably. That Mr. Pierce's attention should have been diverted even for a moment by this was sufficient evidence that he was disconcerted by the immobility of the foe. But his glance quickly reverted and with added weight. Heavily he stared, then delivered his ultimatum. "The 'Clarion' will print nothing about the accident." The editor of the "Clarion" smiled. At sight of that smile some demon-artist in faces blocked in with lightning swiftness parallel lines of wrath at right angles to the corners of the Pierce mouth. Through the lips shone a thin glint of white. "You find me amusing?" Men had found Elias M. Pierce implacable, formidable, inscrutable, even amenable, in some circumstances, with a conscious and godlike condescension; but no opponent had ever smiled at his commands as this stripling of journalism was doing. Still there was no reply. In his chair McGuire Ellis leaned back with an expression of beatitude. The lawyer, shrewd enough to understand that his principal was being baited, now took a hand. "You may rely on Mr. Pierce to have the woman suitably cared for." Now the editorial smile turned upon William Douglas. It was gentle, but unsatisfying. "_And_ the reporter will be discharged at once," continued Elias M. Pierce, exactly as if Douglas had not spoken at all. "Mr. Ellis," said Hal, "will you 'phone Mr. Wayne to send up the man who covered the Pierce story?" The summoned reporter entered the room. He was a youth named Denton, one year out of college, eager and high-spirited, an enthusiast of his profession, loving it for its adventurousness and its sense of responsibility and power. These are the qualities that make the real newspaper man. They die soon, and that is why there are no good, old reporters. Elias M. Pierce turned upon him like a ponderous machine of vengeance. "What have you to say for yourself?" he demanded. Up under Denton's fair skin ran a flush of pink. "Who are you?" he blurted. "You are speaking to Mr. Elias M. Pierce," said Douglas hastily. Six weeks before, young Denton would perhaps have moderated his attitude in the interests of his job. But now through the sensitive organism of the newspaper office had passed the new vigor; the feeling of independence and of the higher responsibility to the facts of the news only. The men believed that they would be upheld within their own rights and those of the paper. Harrington Surtaine's standards had been not only absorbed: they had been magnified and clarified by minds more expert than his own. Subconsciously, Denton felt that his employer was back of him, must be back of him in any question of professional honor. "What I've got to say, I've said in writing." "Show it to me." The insolence of the command was quite unconscious. The reporter turned to Hal. "Mr. Denton," said Hal, "did Miss Pierce explain why she didn't return after running the nurse down?" "She said she was in a hurry: that she had a train to catch." "Did you ask her if she was exceeding the speed limit?" "She was not," interjected Elias M. Pierce. "She said she didn't know; that nobody ever paid any attention to speed laws." "What about her license?" "I asked her and she said it was none of my business." "Quite right," approved Mr. Pierce curtly. "Tell the desk to run the interview _verbatim_, under a separate head. Will the nurse die?" Mr. Pierce snorted contemptuously. "Die! She's hardly hurt." "Dislocated shoulder, two ribs broken, and scalp wounds. She'll get well," said the reporter. "Now, see here, Surtaine," said Douglas smoothly, "be reasonable. It won't do the 'Clarion' any good to print a lot of yellow sensationalism about this. There are half a dozen witnesses who say it was the nurse's fault." "We have evidence on the other side." "From whom?" "Max Veltman, of our composing-room." "Veltman? Veltman?" repeated Elias M. Pierce, who possessed a wonderful memory for men and events. "He's that anarchist fellow. Hates every man with a dollar. Stirred up the labor troubles two years ago. I told my men to smash his head if they ever caught him within two blocks of our place." "Speaking of anarchy," said McGuire Ellis softly. "A prejudiced witness; one of your own employees," pointed out the lawyer. "I wouldn't believe him under oath," said Pierce. "Perhaps you wouldn't believe me, either. I saw the whole thing myself," said Hal quietly. "And you intend to print it?" demanded Pierce. "It's news. The 'Clarion's business is to print the news." "Then there remains only to warn you," said Douglas, "that you will be held to full liability for anything you may publish, civil _and_ criminal." "Take that down, Mr. Denton," said Hal. "I've got it," said the reporter. "That isn't all." Elias M. Pierce rose and his eyes were wells of somber fury. "You print that story--one word of it--and I'll smash your paper." "Take that down, Mr. Denton." Hal's voice was even. "I've got it," said Denton in the same tone. "You don't know what I am in this city." Every word of the great man's voice rang with the ruthless arrogance of his power. "I can make or mar any man or any business. I've fought the demagogues of labor and driven 'em out of town. I've fought the demagogues of politics and killed them off. And you think with your little spewing demagoguery of newspaper filth, you can override me? You think because you've got your father's quack millions behind you, that you can stand up to me?" "Take that down, Mr. Denton." "I've got it." "Then take this, too," cried Elias M. Pierce, losing all control, under the quiet remorselessness of this goading: "people like my daughter and me aren't at the mercy of scum like you. We've got rights that aren't responsible to every little petty law. By God, I've made and unmade judges in this town: and I'll show you what the law can do before I'm through with you. I'll gut your damned paper." "Not missing anything, are you, Mr. Denton?" "I've got it all." Throughout, Douglas, with a strained face, had been plucking at his principal's arm. Now Elias M. Pierce turned to him. "Go to Judge Ransome," he said sharply, "and get an injunction against the 'Clarion.'" McGuire Ellis sauntered over. "I wouldn't," he drawled. "I'm not asking your advice." "And I'm not looking for gratitude. But just let me suggest this: Ransome may be one of the judges you brag of owning. But if he grants an injunction I'll advise Mr. Surtaine to publish a spread on the front page, stating that we have the facts, that we're enjoined from printing them at present, but that now or a year from now we'll tell the whole story in every phase. With that hanging over him, I don't believe Judge Ransome will care to issue any fake injunction." "There's such a thing as contempt of court," warned Douglas. "Making and unmaking judges, for example?" suggested Ellis. "Just one final word to you." The Pierce face was thrust close to Hal's. "You keep your hands off my daughter if you expect to live in this town." "My one regret for Miss Pierce is that she is your daughter," retorted Hal. "You have given me the material for a leading editorial in to-morrow's issue. I recommend you to buy the paper." The other glared at him speechless. "It will be called," said Hal, "'A Study in Heredity.' Good-day." And he gave the retiring magnate a full view of his back as he sat down to write it. CHAPTER XVI THE STRATEGIST "Never write with a hot pen." Thus runs one of McGuire Ellis's golden rules of journalism. Had his employer better comprehended, in those early days, the Ellisonian philosophy, perhaps the "Heredity" editorial might never have appeared. Now, as it lay before him in proof, it seemed but the natural expression of a righteous wrath. "Neither Kathleen Pierce nor her father can claim exemption or consideration in this instance," Hal had written, in what he chose to consider his most telling passage. "Were it the girl's first offense of temerity, allowance might be made. But the city streets have long been the more perilous because of her defiance of the rights of others. Here she runs true to type. She is her father's own daughter. In the light of his character and career, of his use of the bludgeon in business, of his resort to foul means when fair would not serve, of his brutal disregard of human rights in order that his own power might be enhanced, of his ruthless and crushing tyranny, not alone toward his employees, but toward all labor in its struggle for better conditions, we can but regard the girl who left her victim crushed and senseless in the gutter and sped on because, in the words of her own bravado, she 'had a train to catch,' as a striking example of the influence of heredity. If the law which she so contemptuously brushed aside is to be aborted by the influence and position of her family, the precept will be a bitter and dangerous one. Much arrant nonsense is vented concerning the 'class-hatred' stirred up by any criticism of the rich. One such instance as the running-down of Miss Cleary bears within it far more than the extremest demagoguery the potentialities of an unleashed hate. It is a lesson in lawlessness." Still in the afterglow of composition, Hal, tinkering lightly with the proofs, felt a hand on his shoulder. "Well, Boy-ee," said the voice of Dr. Surtaine. "Hello, father," returned Hal. "Sit down. What's up?" "I've just had a message from E.M. Pierce." "Did you obey a royal command and go to his office?" "No." "Neither did I." "With you it's different. You're a younger man. And Elias M. Pierce is the most powerful--um--er--well, _as_ powerful as any man in Worthington." "Outside of this office, possibly." "Don't you be foolish, Boy-ee. You can't fight him." "Nor do I want to," said Hal, a little chilled, nevertheless, by the gravity of the paternal tone. "But when he comes in here and dictates what the 'Clarion' shall and shall not print--" "About his own daughter." "News, father. It's news." "News is what you print. If you don't print it, it isn't news. Isn't that right? Well, then!" "Not quite. News is what happens. If no paper published this, it would be current by word of mouth just the same. A hundred people saw it." "Anyway, tone your article down, won't you, Boy-ee?" "I'm afraid I can't, Dad." "Of course you can. Here, let me see it." McGuire Ellis looked up sharply, his face wrinkled into an anxious query. It relaxed when Hal handed the editorial proof to the Doctor, saying, "Look at this, instead." Dr. Surtaine read slowly and carefully. "Do you know what you're doing?" he said, replacing the strip of paper. "I think so." "That editorial will line up every important business man in Worthington against you." "I don't see why it should." "Because they'll see that none of 'em are safe if a newspaper can do that sort of thing. It's never been done here. The papers have always respected men of position, and their business and their families, too. Worthington won't stand for that sort of thing." "It's true, isn't it?" "All the more harm if it is," retorted Dr. Surtaine, thus codifying the sum and essence of the outsider's creed of journalism. "Do you know what they'll call you if you print that? They'll call you an anarchist." "Will they?" "Ask Ellis." "Probably," agreed the journalist. "Every friend and business associate of Pierce's will be down on you." "The whole angry hive of capital and privilege," confirmed Ellis. "You see," cried the pleader; "you can't print it. Publishing an article about Kathleen Pierce will be bad enough, but it's nothing to what this other roast would be. One would make Pierce hate you as long as he lives. The other will make the whole Business Interests of the city your enemy. How can you live without business?" "Business isn't as rotten as that," averred Hal. "If it is, I'm going to fight it." "Fight business!" It was almost a groan. "Tell him, Ellis, what a serious thing this is. You agree with me in that, don't you?" "Entirely." "And that the 'Clarion' can't afford to touch the thing at all? You're with me there, too, aren't you?" "Absolutely not." "You're going to stand by and see my boy turn traitor to his class?" "Damn his class," said McGuire Ellis, in mild, conversational tones. "As much as you like," agreed the other, "in talk. But when it comes to print, remember, it's our class that's got the money." "Wouldn't it be a refreshing change," suggested Ellis, "to have one paper in Worthington that money won't buy?" "All very well, if you were strong enough." The wily old charlatan shifted his ground. "Wait until you've built up to it. Then, when you've got the public, you can afford to be independent." "Get your price and then reform. Is that the idea, Father?" said Hal. "Boy-ee, I don't know what's come over you lately. Journalism seems to have got into your blood." "Blame Ellis. He's been my preceptor." "Both of you have got your lesson to learn." "Well, I've learned one," asserted Hal: "that it's the business of a newspaper to print the news." "There's only one sound business principle, success. When it costs you more to print a thing than not to print it, it's bad business to print it." "I'm sorry, Dad, but the 'Clarion' is going to carry this to-morrow." "In case you're nervous about Mr. Pierce," put in McGuire Ellis with Machiavellian innuendo, "I can pass it on to him that you're in no way responsible for the 'Clarion's policy." "Me, afraid of Elias M. Pierce?" Our Leading Citizen's prickly vanity was up in arms at once. "I'll match him or fight him dollar for dollar, as long as my weasel-skin lasts. No, sir: if Hal's going to fight, I'll stick by him as long as there's a dollar in the till." "It's mighty good of you, Dad, and I know you'd do it. But I've made up my mind to win out or lose out on the capital you gave me. And I won't take a cent more." "That's business, too, son. I like that. But I hate to see you lose. By publishing your editorial you're committing your paper absolutely to a policy, and a fatal one. Well, I won't argue any more. But I haven't given up yet." "Well, that's over," said Hal, as his father departed, gently smoothing down his silk hat. "And I hope that ends it." "Do you?" McGuire Ellis raised a tuneful baritone in song:-- 'You may think you've got 'em going,' said the bar-keep to the bum. 'But cheer up And beer up. The worst is yet to come!' "Unless my estimate of E.M. Pierce is wrong," he continued, "you'll begin to hear from the other newspapers soon." So it proved. Advertising managers called up and talked interminably over the telephone. Editors-in-chief wrote polite notes. One fellow proprietor called. By all the canons of editorial courtesy they exhorted Mr. Surtaine to hold his hand from the contemplated sacrilege against their friend and patron, Elias M. Pierce. Equally polite, Mr. Surtaine replied that the "Clarion" would print the news. How much of the news would he print? All the news, now and forever, one and inseparable, or words to that effect. Painfully and protestingly the noble fellowship of the free and untrammeled press pointed out that if the "Clarion" insisted on informing the public, they too, in self-defense, must supply something in the way of information to cover themselves, loth though they were so to do. But the burden of sin and vengeance would rest upon the paper which forced them into such a course. Still patient, Hal found refuge in truism: to wit, that what his fellow editors chose to do was wholly and specifically their business. From the corollary, he courteously refrained. Meantime, the object of Editor Surtaine's scathing had not been idle. To the indignant journalist, Miss Kathleen Pierce had appeared a brutal and hardened scion of wealth and injustice. This was hardly a just view. Careless she was, and unmindful of standards; but not cruel. In this instance, panic, not callousness, had been the mainspring of her apparent cruelty. She was badly scared; and when her angry father told her what she might expect at the hands of a "yellow newspaper," she became still more badly scared. In this frame of mind she fled for refuge to Miss Esmé Elliot. "I didn't mean to run over her," she wailed. "You know I didn't, Esmé. She ran out just like a m-m-mouse, and I felt the car hit her, and then she was all crumpled up in the gutter. Oh, I was so frightened! I wanted to go back, but I was afraid, and Phil began to cry and say we'd killed her, and I lost my head and put on speed. I didn't mean to, Esmé!" "Of course you didn't, dear. Who says you did?" "The newspaper is going to say so. That awful reporter! He caught me at the station and asked me a lot of questions. I just shook my head and wouldn't say a word," lied the frightened girl. "But they're going to print an awful interview with me, father says. He's furious at me." "In what paper, Kathie?" "The 'Clarion.' Father says the other papers won't publish anything about it, but he can't stop the 'Clarion.'" "I can," said Miss Esmé Elliot confidently. The heiress to the Pierce millions lifted her woe-begone face. "You?" she cried incredulously. "How?" "I've got a pull," said Esmé, dimpling. A light broke in upon her suppliant. "Of course! Hal Surtaine! But father has been to see him and he won't promise a thing. I don't see what he's got against me." "Don't worry, dear. Perhaps your father doesn't understand how to go about it." "No," said the other thoughtfully. "Father would try to bully and threaten. He tried to bully me!" Miss Pierce stamped a well-shod foot in memory of her manifold wrongs. Then feminine curiosity interposed a check. "Esmé! Are you engaged to Hal Surtaine?" "No, indeed!" The girl's laughter rang silvery and true. "Are you going to be?" "I'm not going to be engaged to anybody. Not for a long time, anyway. Life is too good as it is." "Is he in love with you?" persisted Kathleen. Esmé lifted up a very clear and sweet mezzo-soprano in a mocking lilt of song:-- "How should my heart know What love may be?" The visitor regarded her admiringly. "Of course he is. What man wouldn't be! And you've seen a lot of him lately, haven't you?" "I'm helping him run his paper--with good advice." "Oh-h-h!" Miss Pierce's soft mouth and big eyes formed three circles. "And you're going to advise him--" "I'm going to advise him ver-ree earnestly not to say a word about you in the paper, if you'll promise never, never to do it again." The other clasped her in a bear-hug. "You duck! I'll just crawl through the streets after this. You watch me! The police will have to call time on me to make sure I'm not obstructing the traffic. But, Esmé--" "Well?" Kathleen caught her hand and snuggled it up to her childishly. "How often do you see Hal Surtaine?" "You ought to know. There's something going on every evening now. And he goes everywhere." "Yes: but outside of that?" Esmé laughed. "How hard you're working to make a romance that isn't there. I go to his office once in a while, just to see the wheels go 'round." "And are you going to the office now?" "No," said Esmé, after consideration. "Hal Surtaine is coming here. This evening." "You have an appointment with him?" "Not yet. I'll telephone him." "Father telephoned him, but he wouldn't come to see father. So father had to go to see him." "Mahomet! Well, I'm the mountain in this case. Go in peace, my child." Esmé patted the other's head with an absurd and delightful affectation of maternalism. "And look in the 'Clarion' to-morrow with a clear assurance. You shan't find your name there--unless in the Social Doings column. Good-bye, dear." Having thus engaged her honor, the advisor to the editor sat her down to plan. At the conclusion of a period of silent thought, she sent a telephone message which made the heart of young Mr. Surtaine accelerate its pace perceptibly. Was he too busy to come up to Greenvale, Dr. Elliot's place, at 8.30 sharp? Busy he certainly was, but not too busy to obey any behest of his partner. That was very nice of him. It would take but a few minutes. As many minutes as she could use, she might have, or hours. Then he was to consider himself gratefully thanked and profoundly curtsied to, over the wire. By the way, if he had a galley proof of anything that had been written about Kathleen Pierce's motor accident, would he bring that along? And didn't he think it quite professional of her to remember all about galleys and things? Highly professional and clever (albeit in a somewhat altered tone, not unnoted by the acute listener). Yes, he would bring the proof. At 8.30, then, sharp. "The new boss of our new boss," Wayne had styled the charming interloper, on the occasion of her first visit to the "Clarion" office. Had she heard, Esmé would have approved. More, she would have believed, though not without misgivings. Well she knew that she had not yet proved her power over her partner. Many and various as were the men upon whom, in the assay of her golden charm, she had exercised the arts of coquetry, this test was on a larger scale. This was the potential conquest of an institution. Could she make a newspaper change its hue, as she could make men change color, with the power of a word or the incitement of a glance? The very dubiety of the issue gave a new zest to the game. Behold, now, Miss Esmé Elliot, snarer of men's eyes and hearts, sharpening her wits and weapons for the fray; aye, even preparing her pitfall. Cunningly she made a bower of one end of the broad living-room at Greenvale with great sprays of apple blossoms from the orchard, ravishing untold spoilage of her mother and forerunner, Eve, for the bedecking of the quiet, cozy nook. Pink was ever her color; the hue of the flushing of spring, of the rising blood in the cheek of maidenhood, and the tenderest of the fruit-blooms was not more downy-soft of tint than the face it bent to brush. At the close of the task, a heavy voice startled her. "What's all this about?" "Uncle Guardy! You mustn't, you really mustn't come in on tiptoe that way." "Stamped like an elephant," asserted Dr. Elliot. "But you were so immersed in your floral designs--What kind of a play is it?" She turned upon him the sparkle of golden lights in wine-brown eyes. "It's a fairy bower. I'm going to do a bewitchment." "Upon what victim?" "Upon a newspaper. I'm going to be a fairy godmother sort of witch and save my foster-child by--by arointing something out of print." "Doing _what_?" "Arointing it. Don't you know, you say, 'Aroint thee, witch,' when you want to get rid of her? Well, if a witch can be arointed, why shouldn't she aroint other things?" "All very well, if you understand the process. Do you?" "Of course. It's done 'with woven paces and with waving arms.' 'Beware, beware; her flashing eyes, her float--'" "Stop it! You shall not make a poetry cocktail out of Tennyson and Coleridge, and jam it down my throat; or I'll aroint myself. Besides, you're not a witch, at all. I know you for all your big cap, and your cloak, and the basket on your arm. 'Grandmother, what makes your teeth so white?'" "No, no. I'm not that kind of a beastie, at all. Wrong guess, Guardy." "Yet there's a gleam of the hunt about you. Is it, oh, is it, the Great American Pumess that I have the honor to address?" She made him a sweeping bow. "In a good cause." "About which I shall doubtless hear to-morrow?" "Don't I always confess my good actions?" "At what hour does the victim's dying shriek rend the quivering air?" "Mr. Surtaine is due here at half past eight." "Humph! Young Surtaine, eh? Shy bird, if it has taken all this time to bring him down. Well, run and dress. It's after five and that gives you less than three hours for prinking up, counting dinner in." Whatever time and effort may have gone to the making of the Great American Pumess's toilet, Hal thought, as he came down the long room to where she stood embowered in pink, that he had never beheld anything so freshly lovely. She gave him a warm and yielding hand in welcome, and drew away a bit, surveying him up and down with friendly eyes. "You're looking unusually smart to-night," she approved. "London clothes don't set so well on many Americans. But your tie is askew. Wait. Let me do it." With deft fingers she twitched and patted the bow into submission. The touch of intimacy represented the key in which she had chosen to pitch her play. Sinking back into a cushioned corner of the settee, she curled up cozily, and motioned him to a chair. "Draw it around," she directed. "I want you where you can't get away, for I'm going to cast a spell over you." "_Going_ to?" The accent on the first word was stronger than the reply necessitated. "Do many people ask favors of an editor?" "More than enough." "And is the editor often kind and obliging?" "That depends on the favor." "Not a little bit on the asker?" "Naturally, that, too." "Your tone isn't very encouraging." She searched his face with her limpid, lingering regard. "Did you bring the proofs?" "Yes." Still holding his eyes to hers, she stretched out her hand to receive the strip of print, "Do you think I'd better read it?" "No." "Then I will." Studying her face, as she read, Hal saw it change from gay to grave, saw her quiver and wince with a swiftly indrawn breath, and straightened his spine to what he knew was coming. "Oh, it's cruel," she said in a low tone, letting the paper fall on her knee. "It's true," said Hal. "Oh, no! Even if it were, it ought not to be published." "Why?" "Because--" The girl hesitated. "Because she's one of us?" "No. Yes. It has something to do with my feeling, I suppose. Why, you've been a guest at her house." "Suppose I have. The 'Clarion' hasn't." "Isn't that rather a fine distinction?" "On the contrary. Personally, I might refrain from saying anything about it. Journalistically, how can I? It's the business of the 'Clarion' to give the news. More than that: it's the honor of the 'Clarion.'" "But what possible good will it do?" "If it did no other good, it would warn other reckless drivers." "Let the police look to that. It's their business." "You know that the police dare do nothing to the daughter of Elias M. Pierce. See here, Partner,"--Hal's tone grew gentle,--"don't you recall, in that long talk we had about the paper, one afternoon, how you backed me up when I told you what I meant to do in the way of making the 'Clarion' honest and clean and strong enough to be straight in its attitude toward the public? Why, you've been the inspiration of all that I've been trying to do. I thought that was the true Esmé. Wasn't it? Was I wrong? You're not going back on me, now?" "But she's so young," pleaded Esmé, shifting her ground before this attack. "She doesn't think. She's never had to think. Your article makes her look a--a murderess. It isn't fair. It isn't true, really. If you could have seen her here, so frightened, so broken. She cried in my arms. I told her it shouldn't be printed. I promised." Here was the Great American Pumess at bay, and suddenly splendid in her attitude of protectiveness. In that moment, she had all but broken Hal's resolution. He rose and walked over to the window, to clear his thought of the overpowering appeal of her loveliness. "How can I--" he began, coming back: but paused because she was holding out to him the proof. Across it, in pencil, was written, "Must not," and the initials, E.S.M.E. "Kill it," she urged softly. "And my honesty with it." "Oh, no. It can't be so fatal, to be kind for once. Let her off, poor child." Hal stood irresolute. "If it were I?" she insisted softly. "If it were you, would you ask it?" "I shouldn't have to. I'd trust you." The sweetness of it shook him. But he still spoke steadily. "Others trust me, now. The men in the office. Trust me to be honest." Again she felt the solid wall of character blocking her design, and within herself raged and marveled, and more deeply, admired. Resentment was uppermost, however. Find a way through that barrier she must and would. Whatever scruples may have been aroused by his appeal to her she banished. No integer of the impressionable sex had ever yet won from her such a battle. None ever should: and assuredly not this one. The Great American Pumess was now all feline. She leaned forward to him. "You promised." "I?" "Have you forgotten?" "I have never forgotten one word that has passed between us since I first saw you." "Ah; but when was that?" "Seven weeks ago to-day, at the station." [Illustration: "KILL IT," SHE URGED SOFTLY.] "Fifteen years ago this summer," she corrected. "You _have_ forgotten," She laughed gayly at the amazement in his face. "And the promise." Up went a pink-tipped finger in admonition. "Listen and be ashamed, O faithless knight. 'Little girl, little girl: I'd do anything in the world for you, little girl. Anything in the world, if ever you asked me.' Think, and remember. Have you a scar on your left shoulder?" The effort of recollection dimmed Hal's face. "Wait! I'm beginning to see. The light of the torches across the square, and the man with the knife.--Then darkness.--was unconscious, wasn't I?--Then the fairy child with the soft eyes, looking down at me. Little girl, little girl, it was you! That is why I seemed to remember, that day at the station, before I knew you." "Yes," she said, smiling up at him. "How wonderful! And you remembered. How more than wonderful!" "Yes, I remembered." It was no part of her plan--quite relentless, now--to tell him that her uncle had recounted to her the events of that far-distant night, and that she had been holding them in reserve for some hitherto undetermined purpose of coquetry. So she spoke the lie without a tremor. What he would say next, she almost knew. Nor did he disappoint her expectation. "And so you've come back into my life after all these years!" "You haven't taken back your proof." She slipped it into his hand. "What have you done with my subscription-flower?" "The arbutus? It stands always on my desk." "Do you see the rest of it anywhere?" Her eyes rested on a tiny vase set in a hanging window-box of flowers, and holding a brown and withered wisp. "I tend those flowers myself," she continued. "And I leave the dead arbutus there to remind me of the responsibilities of journalism--and of the hold I have over the incorruptible editor." "Does it weigh upon you?" He answered the tender laughter in her eyes. "Only the uncertainty of it." "Do you realize how strong it is, Esmé?" "Not so strong, apparently, as certain foolish scruples." A soft color rose in her face, as she half-buried it in a great mass of apple blossom. From the mass she chose a spray, and set it in the bosom of her dress, then got to her feet and moved slowly toward him. "You're not wearing my colors to-night." This was directed to the white rose in his buttonhole. He took it out and tossed it into the fireplace. "Pink's the only wear," declared the girl gayly. With delicate fingers she detached a little luxuriant twig of the bloom from her breast, and set it in the place where the rose had been. Her face was close to his. He could feel her hands above his heart. "Please," she breathed. "What?" He was playing for time and reason. "For Kathleen Pierce. Please." His hand closed over hers. "You are bribing me." If she said it again, she knew that he would kiss her. So she spoke, with lifted face and eyes of uttermost supplication. "For me. Please." Men had kissed Esmé Elliot before; for she had played every turn of the game of coquetry. Some she had laughed to scorn and dismissed; some she had sweetly rebuked, and held to their adoring fealty. She had known the kiss of headlong passion, of love's humility, of desperation, even of hot anger; but none had ever visited her lips twice. The game, for her, was ended with the surrender and the avowal; and she protected herself the more easily in that her pulses had never been stirred to more than the thrill of triumph. In Hal Surtaine's arms she was playing for another stake. So intent had she been upon her purpose that the guerdon of the modern Venus Victrix, the declaration of the lover, was held in the background of her mind. For a swift, bewildering moment, she felt his lips upon hers, the gentlest, the tenderest pressure, instantly relaxed: then the sudden knowledge of him for what he was, a loyal and chivalrous gentleman thus beguiled, burned her with a withering and intolerable shame. Simultaneously she felt her heart go out to him as never yet had it gone to any man, and in that secret shock to her maidenhood, the coquette in her waned and the woman waxed. She drew back, quivering, aghast. With all the force of this new and tumultuous emotion, she hoped for her own defeat: yearned over him that he should refuse that for which she had unworthily pressed. Yet, such is the perversity of that strange struggle against the great surrender, that she gathered every power of her sex to gain the dreaded victory. By an effort she commanded her voice, releasing herself from his arms. "Wait. Don't speak to me for a minute," she said hoarsely. "But I must speak, now,--dear, dearest." "Am--am I that to you?" The feline in her caught desperately at the opportunity. "Always. From the first." "But--you forgot." "Let me atone with the rest of my life for that treason." He laughed happily. "You keep your promise, then, to the little girl?" At her feet lay the galley proof. Birdlike she darted down upon it, seized, and tore it half across. "No: you do it," she commanded, thrusting it into his hand. No longer was he master of himself. The kiss had undermined him. "Must I?" he said. Victorious and aghast, she yet smiled into his face. "I knew I could believe in you," she cried. "You're a true knight, after all. I declare you my Knight-Editor. No well-equipped journalistic partnership should be without one." Perhaps had the phrase been different, Hal might have yielded. So narrow a margin of chance divides the paths of honor and dishonor, to mortals groping dimly through the human maze. But the words were an echo to wake memory. Rugged, harsh, and fine the face of McGuire Ellis rose before Hal. He heard the rough voice, with its undertone of affection beneath the jocularity of the rather feeble pun, and it called him back like a trumpet summons to the loyalty which he had promised to the men of the "Clarion." He slipped the half-torn paper into his pocket. "I can't do it, Esmé." "You--can't--do--it?" "No." Finality was in the monosyllable. She looked into his leveled and quiet eyes, and knew that she had lost. And the demon of perversity, raging, stung her to its purposes. "After this, you tell me that you can't, you won't?" "Dearest! You're not going to let it make a difference in our love for each other." "_Our_ love! You go far, and fast." "Do I go too far, since you have let me kiss you?" "I didn't," she cried. "Then you meant nothing by it?" She shrugged her shoulders. "You are trying to take advantage of a position which you forced," she said coldly. "Let me understand this clearly." He had turned white. "You let me make love to you, in order to entrap me and save your friend. Is that it?" No reply came from her other than what he could read in compressed lips and smouldering eyes. "So that is the kind of woman you are." There were both wonder and distress in his voice. "That is the kind of woman for whose promise to be my wife I would have given the heart out of my body." At this the tumult and catastrophe of her emotion fused into a white hot, illogical anger against this man who was suffering, and by his suffering made her suffer. "Your wife? Yours?" She smiled hatefully. "The wife of the son of a quack? You do yourself too much honor, Hal Surtaine." "I fear that I did you too much honor," he replied quietly. Suffocation pressed upon her throat as she saw him go to the door. For a moment the wild desire to hold him, to justify herself, to explain, even to ask forgiveness, seized her. Bitterly she fought it down, and so stood, with wide eyes and smiling lips. At the door he turned to look, with a glance less of appeal than of incredulity that she, so lovely, so alluring, so desirable beyond all the world, a creature of springtime and promise embowered amidst the springtime and promise of the apple-bloom, could be such as her speech and action proclaimed her. Hal carried from her house, like a barbed arrow, the memory of that still and desperate smile. CHAPTER XVII REPRISALS Working on an empty heart is almost as severe a strain as the less poetic process of working on an empty stomach. On the morning after the failure of Esmé's strategy and the wrecking of Hal's hopes, the young editor went to his office with a languid but bitter distaste for its demands. The first item in the late afternoon mail stung him to a fitter spirit, as a sharp blow will spur to his best efforts a courageous boxer. This was a packet, containing the crumbled fragments of a spray of arbutus, and a note in handwriting now stirringly familiar. I have read your editorial. From a man dishonest enough to print deliberate lies and cowardly enough to attack a woman, it is just such an answer as I might have expected. ELEANOR S.M. ELLIOT. At first the reference to the editorial bewildered Hal. Then he remembered. Esmé had known nothing of the editorial until she read it in the paper. She had inferred that he wrote it after leaving her, thus revenging himself upon her by further scarification of the friend for whom she had pleaded. To the charge of deliberate mendacity he had no specific clue, not knowing that Kathleen Pierce had denied the authenticity of the interview. He mused somberly upon the venomed injustice of womankind. The note and its symbol of withered sweetness he buried in his waste-basket. If he could but discard as readily the vision of a face, strangely lovely in its anger and chagrin, and wearing that set and desperate smile! Well, there was but one answer to her note. That was to make the "Clarion" all that she would have it not be! No phantoms of lost loveliness came between McGuire Ellis and his satisfaction over the Pierce _coup_. Characteristically, however, he presented the disadvantageous as well as the favorable aspects of the matter to his employer. "Some paper this morning!" he began. "The town is humming like a hive." "Over the Pierce story?" asked Hal. "Nothing else talked of. We were sold out before nine this morning." "Selling papers is our line of business," observed the owner-editor. "You won't think so when you hear Shad Shearson. He's an avalanche of woe, waiting to sweep down upon you." "What's his trouble? The department store advertising?" "The Boston Store advertising is gone. Others are threatening to follow. Pierce has called a meeting of the Publications Committee of the Dry Goods Union. Discipline is in the air, Boss. Have you seen the evening papers?" "Yes." "What did you think of their stories of the accident?" "I seemed to notice a suspicious similarity." "You can bet every one of those stories came straight from E.M. Pierce's own office. You'll see, they'll be the same in to-morrow morning's papers. Now that we've opened up, they all have to cover the news, so they've thoughtfully sent around to inquire what Elias M. would like to have printed." "From what they say," remarked Hal flippantly, "the nurse ought to be arrested for trying to bump a sixty-horsepower car out of the roadway." "We strive to please, in the local newspaper shops." Ellis turned to answer the buzzing telephone. "Get on your life preserver," he advised his principal. "Shearson's coming up to weep all over you." The advertising manager entered, his plump cheeks sagging into lugubrious and reproachful lines, speaking witnesses to a sentiment not wholly unjustifiable in his case. To see circulation steadily going up and advertising as steadily going down, is an irritant experience to the official responsible for the main income of a daily paper, advertising revenue. "Advertisers have some rights," he boomed, in his heavy voice. "Including that of homicide?" asked Hal. "Let the law take care of that. It ain't our affair." "Would it be our affair if Pierce didn't control advertising?" Shearson's fat hands went to his fat neck in a gesture of desperation. "That's different," he cried. "I can't seem to make you see my point. Why looka here, Mr. Surtaine. Who pays for the running of a newspaper? The advertisers. Where do your profits come from? Advertising. There never was a paper could last six months on circulation alone. It's the ads. that keep every paper going. Well, then: how's a paper going to live that turns against its own support? Tell me that. If you were running a business, and a big buyer came in, would you roast him and knock his methods, and criticize his family, and then expect to sell him a bill of goods? Or would you take him out to the theater and feed him a fat cigar, and treat him the best you know how? You might have your own private opinion of him--" "A newspaper doesn't deal in private opinions," put in Hal. "Well, it can keep 'em private for its own good, can't it? How many readers care whether E.M. Pierce's daughter ran over a woman or not? What difference does it make to them? They'd be just as well satisfied to read about the latest kick-up in Mexico, or the scandal at Washington, or Mrs. Whoopdoodle's Newport dinner to the troupe of educated fleas. But it makes a lot of difference to E.M. Pierce, and he can make it a lot of difference to us. So long as he pays us good money, he's got a right to expect us to look out for his interests." "So have our readers who pay us good money, Mr. Shearson." "What are their interests?" asked the advertising manager, staring. "To get the news straight. You've given me your theory of journalism; now let me give you mine. As I look at it, there's a contract of honor between a newspaper and its subscribers. Tacitly the newspaper says to the subscriber, 'For two cents a day, I agree to furnish you with the news of your town, state, nation, and the outside world, selected to the best of my ability, and presented without fear or favor.' On this basis, if the newspaper fakes its news, if it distorts facts, or if it suppresses them, it is playing false with its subscribers. It is sanding its sugar, and selling shoddy for all-wool. Isn't that true?" "Every newspaper does it," grumbled Shearson. "And the public knows it." "Doubted. The public knows that newspapers make mistakes and do a lot of exaggerating and sensationalizing. But you once get it into their heads that a certain newspaper is concealing and suppressing news, and see how long that paper will last. The circulation will drop and the very men like Pierce will be the first to withdraw their advertising patronage. Your keen advertiser doesn't waste time fishing in dead pools. So even as a matter of policy the straight way may be the best, in the long run. Whether it is or not, get this firmly into your mind, Mr. Shearson. From now on the first consideration of the 'Clarion' will be news and not advertising." "Then, good-_night_ 'Clarion,'" pronounced Shearson with entire solemnity. "Is that your resignation, Mr. Shearson?" "Do you want me to quit?" "No; I don't. I believe you're an efficient man, if you can adjust yourself to new conditions. Do you think you can?" "Well, I ain't much on the high-brow stuff, Mr. Surtaine, but I can take orders, I guess. I'm used to the old 'Clarion,' and I kinda like you, even if we don't agree. Maybe this virtuous jag'll get us some business for what it loses us. But, say, Mr. Surtaine, you ain't going to get virtuous in your advertising columns, too, are you?" "I hadn't considered it," said Hal. "One of these days I'll look into it." "For God's sake, don't!" pleaded Shearson, with such a shaken flabbiness of vehemence that both Hal and Ellis laughed, though the former felt an uneasy puzzlement. The article and editorial on the Pierce accident had appeared in a Thursday's "Clarion." In their issues of the following day, the other morning papers dealt with the subject most delicately. The "Banner" published, without obvious occasion, a long and rather fulsome editorial on E.M. Pierce as a model of high-minded commercial emprise and an exemplar for youth: also, on the same page in its "Pointed Paragraphs," the following, with a point quite too palpably aimed:-- "It is said, on plausible if not direct authority, that one of our morning contemporaries will appropriately alter its motto to read, 'With Malice toward All: with Charity for None.'" But it remained for that evening's "Telegram" to bring up the heavy guns. From its first edition these headlines stood out, black and bold:-- E.M. PIERCE DEFENDS DAUGHTER * * * * * MAGNATE INCENSED AT UNJUST ATTACKS WILL PUSH CASE AGAINST HER TRADUCERS TO A FINISH There followed an interview in which the great man announced his intention of bringing both civil and criminal action for libel against the "Clarion." McGuire Ellis frowned savagely at the sheet. "Dirty skunk!" he growled. "Meaning our friend Pierce?" queried Hal. "No. Meaning Parker, and the whole 'Telegram' outfit." "Why?" "Because they printed that interview." "What's wrong with it? It's news." "Don't be positively infantile, Boss. Newspapers don't print libel actions brought against other newspapers. It's unprofessional. It's unethical. It isn't straight." "No: I don't see that at all," decided Hal, after some consideration. "That amounts simply to this, that the newspapers are in a combination to discourage libel actions, by suppressing all mention of them." "Certainly. Why not? Libel suits are generally holdups." "I think the 'Telegram' is right. Whatever Pierce says is news, and interesting news." "You bet Parker would never have carried that if his holding corporation wasn't a heavy borrower in the Pierce banks." "Maybe not. But I think we'll carry it." "In the 'Clarion'?" almost shouted Ellis. "Certainly. Let's have Wayne send a reporter around to Pierce. If Pierce won't give us an interview, we'll reprint the 'Telegram's,' with credit." "We'd be cutting our own throats, and playing Pierce's game. Besides, stuff about ourselves isn't news." Hal's inexperience had this virtue, that it was free of the besetting and prejudicial superstitions of the craft of print. "If it's interesting, it's the 'Clarion' kind of news." Ellis, about to protest further, met the younger man's level gaze, and swallowed hard. "All right," he said. "I'll tell Wayne." So the "Clarion" violated another tradition of newspaperdom, to the amused contempt of its rivals, who were, however, possibly not quite so amused or so contemptuous as they appeared editorially to be. Also it followed up the interview with an explicit statement of its own intentions in the matter, which were not precisely music to the savage breast of E.M. Pierce. Evidences of that formidable person's hostilities became increasingly manifest from day to day. One morning a fire marshal dropped casually in upon the "Clarion" office, looked the premises over, and called the owner's attention to several minor and unsuspected violations of the law, the adjustment of which would involve no small inconvenience and several hundred dollars outlay. By a curious coincidence, later in the day, a factory inspector happened around,--a newspaper office being, legally, within the definition of a factory,--and served a summons on McGuire Ellis as publisher, for permitting smoking in the city room. From time immemorial every edition of every newspaper in the United States of America has evolved out of rolling clouds of tobacco smoke: but the "Clarion" alone, apparently, had come within the purview of the law. Subsequently, Hal learned, to his amusement, that all the other newspaper offices were placarded with notices of the law in Yiddish, so that none might be unduly disturbed thereby! To give point to the discrimination, down on the street, a zealous policeman arrested one of the "Clarion's" bulk-paper handlers for obstructing the sidewalk. "Pierce's political pull is certainly working," observed Ellis, "but it's coarse work." Finer was to come. Two libel suits mushroomed into view in as many days, provoked, as it were, out of conscious nothing; unimportant but harassing: one, brought by a ne'er-do-well who had broken a leg while engaged in a drunken prank months before, the other the outcome of a paragraph on a little, semi-fraudulent charity. "I'll bet that eminent legal light, Mr. William Douglas, could tell something about these," said Ellis, "though his name doesn't appeal on the papers." "We'll print these, too,--and we'll tell the reason for them," said Hal. But on this last point his assistant dissuaded him. The efficient argument was that it would look like whining, and the one thing which a newspaper must not do was to lament its own ill-treatment. On top of the libel suits came a letter from the Midland National Bank, stating with perfect courtesy that, under its present organization, a complicated account like that of the "Clarion" was inconvenient to handle; wherefore the bank was reluctantly obliged to request its withdrawal. "Bottling us up financially," remarked Ellis. "I expected this, before." "There are other banks than the Midland that'll be glad of our business," replied Hal. "Probably not." "No? Then they're curious institutions." "There isn't one of 'em in which Elias M. Pierce isn't a controlling factor. Ask your father." On the following day when Dr. Surtaine, who had been out of town for several days, dropped in at the office, Hal had a memorandum ready on the point. The old quack eased himself into a chair with his fine air of ample leisure, creating for himself a fragrant halo of cigar smoke. "Well, Boyee." The tone was a mingling of warm affection and semi-humorous reproach. "You went and did it to Elias M., didn't you?" "Yes, sir. We went and did it." The Doctor shook his head, looking at the other through narrowing eyes. "And it's worrying you. You're not looking right." "Oh, I'm well enough: a little sleeplessness, that's all." He did not deem it necessary to tell his father that upon his white nights the unforgettable face of Esmé Elliot had gleamed persistently from out the darkness, banishing rest. "Suppose you let me do some of the worrying, Boyee." "Haven't you enough troubles in your own business, Dad?" smiled Hal. "Machinery, son. Automatic, at that. Runs itself and turns out the dollars, regular, for breakfast. Very different from the newspaper game." "I _should_ like your advice." "On the take-it-or-leave-it principle, I suppose," answered Dr. Surtaine, with entire good humor. "In the Pierce matter you left it. How do you like the results?" "Not very much." Dr. Surtaine spread out upturned hands, in dumb, oracular illustration of his own sagacity. "But I'd do the same thing over again if it came up for decision." "That's exactly what you mustn't do, Hal. Banging around the shop like that, cracking people on the knuckles may give you a temporary feeling of power and importance" (Hal flushed boyishly), "but it don't pay. Now, if I get you out of this scrape, I want you to go more carefully." "How are you going to get me out of it?" "Square it with E.M. Pierce. He's a good friend of mine." "Do you really like Mr. Pierce, Dad?" "Hm! Ah--er--well, Boyee, as for that, that's another tail on a cat. In a business way, I meant." "In a business way he's trying to be a pretty efficient enemy of mine. How would you like it if he undertook to interfere with Certina?" By perceptible inches Dr. Surtaine's chest rounded in slow expansion. "Legislatures and government bureaus have tried that. They never got away with it yet. Elias Pierce is a pretty big man in this town, but I guess he knows enough to keep hands and tongue off me." "If not off your line of business," amended Ellis. "Did you see his interview in the 'Telegram'?" He tossed over a copy of the paper folded to a column wherein Mr. Pierce, with more temper than tact, had possessed himself of his adversary's editorial text, "Heredity," and proceeded to perform a variant thereon. "If this young whippersnapper," Mr. Pierce had said, "this fledgling thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his unearned money, perhaps he wouldn't talk so glibly about heredity." Thence the interview pursued a course of indirect reflection upon the matter and method of the patent medicine trade, as exemplified in Certina and its allied industries. The top button of Dr. Surtaine's glossy morning coat, as he read, seemed in danger of flying off into infinite space. His powerful hands opened and closed slowly. Leaning forward he reached for the telephone, but checked himself. "Mr. Pierce seems to have let go both barrels at once," he said with a strong effort of control. "Pretty little exhibition of temper, isn't it?" said Hal, smiling. "Temper's expensive. Perhaps we'll teach Elias M. Pierce that lesson before we're through. You remember it, too, next time you start in on a muckraking jag." "Our muckraking, as you call it, isn't a question of temper, Dad," said Hal earnestly. "It's a question of policy. What the 'Clarion' is doing, is done because we're trying to be a newspaper. We've got to stick to that. I've given my word." "Who to?" "To the men on the staff." "What's more," put in McGuire Ellis, turning at the door on his way out to see a caller, "the fellows have got hold of the idea. That's what gives the 'Clarion' the go it's got. We're all rowing one stroke." "And the captain can't very well quit in mid-race." Hal took up the other's metaphor, as the door closed behind him. "So you see, Dad, I've got to see it through, no matter what it costs me." The father's rich voice dropped to a murmur. "Hasn't it cost you something more than money, already, Boyee? I understand Miss Esmé is a pretty warm friend of Pierce's girl." Hal winced. "All right, Boyee. I don't want to pry. But lots of things come quietly to the old man's ear. You've got a right to your secrets." "It isn't any secret, Dad. In fact, it isn't anything any more," said Hal, smiling wanly. "Yes, the price was pretty high. I don't think any other will ever be so high." Dr. Surtaine heaved his bulk out of the chair and laid a heavy arm across his son's shoulder. "Boyee, you and I don't agree on a lot of things. We're going to keep on not agreeing about a lot of things. You think I'm an old fogy with low-brow standards. I think you've got a touch of that prevalent disease of youth, fool-in-the-head. But, I guess, as father and son, pal and pal, we're pretty well suited,--eh?" "Yes," said Hal. There was that in the monosyllable which wholly contented the older man. "Go ahead with your 'Clarion,' Boyee. Blow your fool head off. Deave us all deaf. Play any tune you want, and pay yourself for your piping. I won't interfere--any more'n I can help, being an old meddler by taste. Blood's thicker than water, they say. I guess it's thicker than printer's ink, too. Remember this, right or wrong, win or lose, Boyee, I'm with you." CHAPTER XVIII MILLY All Hal's days now seemed filled with Pierce. Pierce's friends, dependents, employees, associates wrote in, denouncing the "Clarion," canceling subscriptions, withdrawing advertisements. Pierce's club, the Huron, compelled the abandonment of Mr. Harrington Surtaine's candidacy. Pierce's clergyman bewailed the low and vindictive tone of modern journalism. The Pierce newspapers kept harassing the "Clarion"; the Pierce banks evinced their financial disapproval; the Pierce lawyers diligently sought new causes of offense against the foe; while Pierce's mayor persecuted the newspaper office with further petty enforcements and exactions. Pierce's daughter, however, fled the town. With her went Miss Esmé Elliot. According to the society columns, including that of the "Clarion," they were bound for a restful voyage on the Pierce yacht. From time to time Editor Surtaine retaliated upon the foe, employing the news of the slow progress of Miss Cleary, the nurse, to maintain interest in the topic. Protests invariably followed, sometimes from sources which puzzled the "Clarion." One of the protestants was Hugh Merritt, the young health officer of the city, who expressed his views to McGuire Ellis one day. "No," Ellis reported to his employer, on the interview, "he didn't exactly ask that we let up entirely. But he seemed to think we were going too strong. I couldn't quite get his reasons, except that he thought it was a terrible thing for the Pierce girl, and she so young. Queer thing from Merritt. They don't make 'em any straighter than he is." Alone of the lot of protests, that of Mrs. Festus Willard gained a response from Hal. "You're treating her very harshly, Hal." "We're giving the facts, Lady Jinny." "_Are_ they the facts? _All_ the facts?" "So far as human eyes could see them." "Men's eyes don't see very far where a woman is concerned. She's very young and headstrong, and, Hal, she hasn't had much chance, you know. She's Elias Pierce's daughter." "Thus having every chance, one would suppose." "Every chance of having everything. Very little chance of being anything." There was a pause. Then: "Very well, Hal, I know I can trust you to do what you believe right, at least. That's a good deal. Festus tells me to let you alone. He says that you must fight your own fight in your own way. That's the whole principle of salvation in Festus's creed." "Not a bad one," said Hal. "I'm not particularly liking to do this, you know, Lady Jinny." "So I can understand. Have you heard anything from Esmé Elliot since she left?" "No." "You mustn't drop out of the set, Hal," said the little woman anxiously. "You've made good so quickly. And our crowd doesn't take up with the first comer, you know." Since Esmé Elliot had passed out of his life, as he told himself, Hal found no incentive to social amusements. Hence he scarcely noticed a slow but widening ostracism which shut him out from house after house, under the pressure of the Pierce influence. But Mrs. Festus Willard had perceived and resented it. That any one for whom she had stood sponsor should fail socially in Worthington was both irritating and incredible to her. Hence she made more of Hal than she might otherwise have found time to do, and he was much with her and Festus Willard, deriving, on the one hand, recreation and amusement from her sparkling _camaraderie_, and on the other, support and encouragement from her husband's strong, outspoken, and ruggedly honest common sense. Neither of them fully approved of his attack on Kathleen Pierce, whom they understood better than he did. But they both--and more particularly Festus Willard--appreciated the courage and honor of the "Clarion's" new standards. Except for an occasional dinner at their house, and a more frequent hour late in the afternoon or early in the evening, with one or both of them, Hal saw almost nothing of the people into whose social environment he had so readily slipped. Because of his exclusion, there prospered the more naturally a casual but swiftly developing intimacy which had sprung up between himself and Milly Neal. It began with her coming to Hal for his counsel about her copy. From the first she assumed an attitude of unquestioning confidence in his wisdom and taste. This flattered the pedagogue which is inherent in all of us. He was wise enough to see promptly that he must be delicately careful in his criticism, since here he was dealing out not opinion, but gospel. Poised and self-confident the girl was in her attitude toward herself: the natural consequence of early success and responsibility. But about her writing she exhibited an almost morbid timidity lest it be thought "vulgar" or "common" by the editor-in-chief; and once McGuire Ellis felt called upon to warn Hal that he was "taking all the gimp out of the 'Kitty the Cutie' stuff by trying to sewing-circularize it." Of literature the girl knew scarcely anything; but she had an eager ambition for better standards, and one day asked Hal to advise her in her reading. Not without misgivings he tried her with Stevenson's "Virginibus Puerisque" and was delighted with the swiftness and eagerness of her appreciation. Then he introduced her by careful selection to the poets, beginning with Tennyson, through Wordsworth, to Browning, and thence to the golden-voiced singers of the sonnet, and all of it she drank in with a wistful and wondering delight. Soon her visits came to be of almost daily occurrence. She would dart in of an evening, to claim or return a book, and sit perched on the corner of the big work-table, like a little, flashing, friendly bird; always exquisitely neat, always vividly pretty and vividly alive. Sometimes the talk wandered from the status of instructor and instructed, and touched upon the progress of the "Clarion," the view which Milly's little world took of it, possible ways of making it more interesting to the women readers to whom the "Cutie" column was supposed to cater particularly. More than once the more personal note was touched, and the girl spoke of her coming to the Certina factory, a raw slip of a country creature tied up in calico, and of Dr. Surtaine's kindness and watchfulness over her. "He wanted to do well by me because of the old man--my father, I mean," she caught herself up, blushing. "They knew each other when I was a kid." "Where?" asked Hal. "Oh, out east of here," she answered evasively. Again she said to him once, "What I like about the 'Clarion' is that it's trying to do something for _folks_. That's all the religion I could ever get into my head: that human beings are mostly worth treating decently. That counts for more than all your laws and rules and church regulations. I don't like rules much," she added, twinkling up at him. "I always want to kick 'em over, just as I always want to break through the police lines at a fire." "But rules and police lines are necessary for keeping life orderly," said Hal. "I suppose so. But I don't know that I like things too orderly. My teacher called me a lawless little demon, once, and I guess I still am. Suppose I should break all the rules of the office? Would you fire me?" And before he could answer she was up and had flashed away. As the intimacy grew, Hal found himself looking forward to these swift-winged little visits. They made a welcome break in the detailed drudgery; added to the day a glint of color, bright like the ripple of half-hidden flame that crowned Milly's head. Once Veltman, intruding on their talk, had glared blackly and, withdrawing, had waited for the girl in the hallway outside from whence, as she left, Hal could hear the foreman's deep voice in anger and her clear replies tauntingly stimulating his chagrin. Having neglected the Willards for several days, Hal received a telephone message, about a month after Esmé Elliot's departure, asking him to stop in. He found Mrs. Willard waiting him in the conservatory. His old friend looked up as he entered, with a smile which did not hide the trouble in her eyes. "Aren't you a lily-of-the-field!" admired the visitor, contemplating her green and white costume. "It's the Vanes' dance. Not going?" "Not asked. Besides, I'm a workingman these days." "So one might infer from your neglect of your friends. Hal, I've had a letter from Esmé Elliot." "Any message?" he asked lightly, but with startled blood. There was no answering lightness in her tones. "Yes. One I hate to give. Hal, she's engaged herself to Will Douglas. It must have been by letter, for she wasn't engaged when she left. 'Tell Hal Surtaine' she says in her letter to me." "Thank you, Lady Jinny," said Hal. The diminutive lady looked at him and then looked away, and suddenly a righteous flush rose on her cheeks. "I'm fond of Esmé," she declared. "One can't help but be. She compels it. But where men are concerned she seems to have no sense of her power to hurt. I could _kill_ her for making me her messenger. Hal, boy," she rose, slipping an arm through his caressingly, "I do hope you're not badly hurt." "I'll get over it, Lady Jinny. There's the job, you know." He started for the office. Then, abruptly, as he went, "the job" seemed purposeless. Unrealized, hope had still persisted in his heart--the hope that, by some possible turn of circumstance, the shattered ideal of Esmé Elliot would be revivified. The blighting of his love for her had been no more bitter, perhaps less so, than the realization which she had compelled in him of her lightness and unworthiness. Still, he had wanted her, longed for her, hoped for her. Now that hope was gone. There seemed nothing left to work for, no adequate good beyond the striving. He looked with dulled vision out upon blank days. With a sudden weakening of fiber he turned into a hotel and telephoned McGuire Ellis that he wouldn't be at the office that evening. To the other's anxious query was he ill, he replied that he was tired out and was going home to bed. Meantime, far across the map at a famous Florida hostelry, the Great American Pumess, in the first flush and pride of her engagement which all commentators agree upon as characteristic of maidenhood's vital resolution, lay curled up in a little fluffy coil of misery and tears, repeating between sobs, "I hate him! I _hate_ him!" Meaning her _fiancé_, Mr. William Douglas, with whom her mind and emotions should properly have been concerned? Not so, perspicacious reader. Meaning Mr. Harrington Surtaine. Upon _his_ small portion of the map, that gentleman wooed sleep in vain for hours. Presently he arose from his tossed bed, dressed quietly, slipped out of the big door and walked with long, swinging steps down to the "Clarion" Building. There it stood, a plexus of energies, in the midst of darkness and sleep. Eye-like, its windows peered vigilantly out into the city. A door opened to emit a voice that bawled across the way some profane demand for haste in the delivery of "that grub"; and through the shaft of light Hal could see brisk figures moving, and hear the roar and thrill of the press sealing its irrevocable message. Again he felt, with a pride so profound that its roots struck down into the depths of humility, his own responsibility to all that straining life and energy and endeavor. He, the small atom, alone in the night, _was_ the "Clarion." Those men, the fighting fellowship of the office, were rushing and toiling and coordinating their powers to carry out some ideal still dimly inchoate in his brain. What mattered his little pangs? There was a man's test to meet, and the man within him stretched spiritual muscles for the trial. "If I could only be sure what's right," he said within himself, voicing the doubt of every high-minded adventurer upon unbeaten paths. Sharply, and, as it seemed to him, incongruously, he wondered that he had never learned to pray; not knowing that, in the unfinished phrase he had uttered true prayer. A chill breeze swept down upon him. Looking up into the jeweled heavens he recalled from the far distance of memory, the prayer of a great and simple soul,-- "Make thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies." Hal set out for home, ready now for a few hours' sleep. At a blind corner he all but collided with a man and a woman, walking at high speed. The woman half turned, flinging him a quick and silvery "Good-evening." It was Milly Neal. The man with her was Max Veltman. CHAPTER XIX DONNYBROOK Worthington began to find the "Clarion" amusing. It blared a new note. Common matter of everyday acceptance which no other paper in town had ever considered as news, became, when trumpeted from between the rampant roosters, vital with interest. And whithersoever it directed the public attention, some highly respectable private privilege winced and snarled. Worthington did not particularly love the "Clarion" for the enemies it made. But it read it. Now, a newspaper makes its enemies overnight. Friends take months or years in the making. Hence the "Clarion," whilst rapidly broadening its circle of readers, owed its success to the curiosity rather than to the confidence which it inspired. Meantime the effect upon its advertising income was disastrous. If credence could be placed in the lamenting Shearson, wherever it attacked an abuse, whether by denunciation or ridicule, it lost an advertiser. Moreover the public, not yet ready to credit any journal with honest intentions, was inclined to regard the "Clarion" as "a chronic kicker." The "Banner's" gibing suggestion of a reversal of the editorial motto between the triumphant birds to read "With malice toward all," stuck. But there were compensations. The blatant cocks had occasional opportunity for crowing. With no small justification did they shrill their triumph over the Midland & Big Muddy Railroad. The "Mid and Mud" had declared war upon the "Clarion," following the paper's statement of the true cause of the Walkersville wreck, as suggested by Marchmont, the reporter, at the breakfast. Marchmont himself had been banished from the railroad offices. All sources of regular news were closed to him. Therefore, backed by the "Clarion," he proceeded to open up a line of irregular news which stirred the town. For years the "Mid and Mud" had given to Worthington a passenger service so bad that no community less enslaved to a _laissez-faire_ policy would have endured it. Through trains drifted in anywhere from one to four hours late. Local trains, drawn by wheezy, tin-pot locomotives of outworn pattern, arrived and departed with such casualness as to render schedules a joke, and not infrequently "bogged down" between stations until some antediluvian engine could be resuscitated and sent out to the rescue. The day coaches were of the old, dangerous, wooden type. The Pullman service was utterly unreliable, and the station in which the traveling populace of Worthington spent much of its time, a draft-ridden barn. Yet Worthington suffered all this because it was accustomed to it and lacked any means of making protest vocal. Then the "Clarion" started in publishing its "Yesterday's Time-Table of the Midland & Big Muddy R.R. Co." to this general effect: Day Express Due 10 A.M. Arrived 11.43 A.M. Late 1 hour 43 min. Noon Local Due 12 A.M. Arrived 2.10 P.M. Late 2 hrs. 10 min. Sunrise Limited Due 3 P.M. Arrived 3.27 P.M. Late 0 hrs. 27 min. And so on. From time to time there would appear, underneath, a special item, of which the following is an example: "The Eastern States Through Express of the Midland & Big Muddy Railroad arrived and departed on time yesterday. When asked for an explanation of this phenomenon, the officials declined to be interviewed." Against this "persecution," the "Mid and Mud" authorities at first maintained a sullen silence. The "Clarion" then went into statistics. It gave the number of passengers arriving and departing on each delayed train, estimated the value of their time, and constructed tables of the money value of time lost in this way to the city of Worthington, per day, per month, and per year. The figures were not the less inspiring of thought, for being highly amusing. People began to take an interest. They brought or sent in personal experiences. A commercial traveler, on the 7.50 train (arriving at 10.01, that day), having lost a big order through missing an appointment, told the "Clarion" about it. A contractor's agent, gazing from the windows of the stalled "Limited" out upon "fresh woods and pastures new" twenty miles short of Worthington, what time he should have been at a committee meeting of the Council, forfeited a $10,000 contract and rushed violently into "Clarion" print, breathing slaughter and law-suits. Judge Abner Halloway and family, arriving at the New York pier in a speeding taxi from the Eastern Express (five hours late out of Worthington), just in time to see the Lusitania take his forwarded baggage for a pleasant outing in Europe, hired a stenographer (male) to tell the "Clarion" what he thought of the matter, in words of seven syllables. Professor Beeton Trachs, the globe-trotting lecturer, who arrived via the "M. and M." for an eight o'clock appearance, at 9.54, gave the "Clarion" an interview proper to the occasion of having to abjure a $200 guaranty, wherein the mildest and most judicial opinion expressed by Professor Trachs was that crawling through a tropical jungle on all fours was speed, and being hurtled down a mountain on the bosom of a landslide, comfort, compared to travel on the "Mid and Mud." All these and many similar experiences, the "Clarion" published in its "News of the M. and M." column. It headed them, "Stories of Survivors." For six weeks the railroad endured the proddings of ridicule. Then the Fourth Vice-President of the road appeared in Mr. Harrington Surtaine's sanctum. He was bland and hinted at advertising. Two weeks later the Third Vice-President arrived. He was vague and hinted at reprisals. The Second Vice-President presented himself within ten days thereafter, departed after five unsatisfactory minutes, and reported at headquarters, with every symptom of an elderly gentleman suffering from shock, that young Mr. Surtaine had seemed bored. The First Vice-President then arrived on a special train. "What do you want, anyway?" he asked. "Decent passenger service for Worthington," said the editor. "Just what I've told every other species _and_ number of Vice-President on your list." "You get it," said the First Vice-President. Thus was afforded another example of that super-efficiency which, we are assured, marks the caste of the American railroad as superior to all others, and which consists in sending four men and spending several weeks to do what one could do better in a single day. In the course of a few weeks the Midland & Big Muddy did bring its service up to a reasonable standard, and the owner of the "Clarion" savored his first pleasant proof of the power of the press. Vastly less important, but swifter and more definite in results and more popular in effect, was the "Clarion's" anti-hat-check campaign. The Stickler, Worthington's newest hotel, had established a coat-room with the usual corps of girl-bandits, waiting to strip every patron of his outer garments before admitting him to the restaurant, and returning them only upon the blackmail of a tip. All the other good restaurants had followed suit. Worthington resented it, as it resented most innovations; but endured the imposition, for lack of solidarity, until the "Clarion" took up the subject in a series of paragraphs. "Do you think," blandly inquired the editorial roosters, "that when you tip the hat-check girl she gets the tip? She doesn't. It goes to a man who rents from the restaurant the privilege of bullying you out of a dime or a quarter. The girl holds you up, because if she doesn't extort fifteen dollars a week, she loses her job and her own munificent wages of seven dollars. The 'Clarion' takes pleasure in announcing a series of portraits of the high-minded pirates of finance whom you support in luxury, when you 'give up' to the check-girl. Our first portrait, ladies and gentlemen, is that of Mr. Abe Hotzenmuller, race-track bookmaker and whiskey agent, who, in the intervals of these more reputable occupations, extracts alms from the patrons of the Hotel Stickler." Next in line was "Shirty" MacDonough, a minor politician, "appropriately framed in silver dimes," as the "Clarion" put it. He was followed by Eddie Perkins, proprietor of a dubious resort on Mail Street. By this time coat-room franchises had suffered a severe depreciation. They dropped almost to zero when the newspaper, having clinched the lesson home with its "Photo-graft Gallery of Leading Dime-Hunters," exhorted its readers: "If you think you need your change as much as these men do, watch for the coupon in to-morrow's 'Clarion,' and Stick it in Your Hat." The coupon was as follows: I READ THE CLARION. I WILL NOT GIVE ONE CENT IN TIPS TO ANY COAT-ROOM GRAFTER. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? The enterprise hit upon the psychological moment. Every check-room bristled with hats proclaiming defiance, and, incidentally, advertising the "Clarion." The "cut-out coupon" ran for three weeks. In one month the Stickler check-room, last to surrender, gave up the ghost, and Mr. Hotzenmuller sued the proprietor for his money back! Over the theatrical managers the paper's victory was decisive in this, that it established honest dramatic criticism in Worthington. But only at a high cost. Not a line of theater advertising appeared in the columns after the editorial announcement of independence. Press tickets were cut off. The "Clarion's" dramatic reporter was turned back from the gate of the various theaters, after paying for admittance. Nevertheless, the "Clarion" continued to publish frank criticism of current drama, through a carefully guarded secret arrangement with the critic of the "Evening News." About this time a famous star, opening a three days' engagement, got into difficulties with the scene-shifters' union over an unjust demand for extra payment, refused to be blackmailed, and canceled the second performance. One paper only gave the facts, and that was the "Clarion," generally regarded as the defender and mouthpiece of the laboring as against the capitalistic interests. Great was the wrath of the unions. Boycott was threatened; even a strike in the office. In response, the editorial page announced briefly that its policy of giving the news accurately and commenting upon it freely exempted no man or organization. The trouble soon died out, but, while making new enemies amongst the rabid organization men, strengthened the "Clarion's" growing repute for independence. One of the most violent objectors was Max Veltman, whose protest, delivered to Hal and McGuire Ellis, was so vehement that he was advised curtly and emphatically to confine his activities and opinions to his own department. "Look out for that fellow," advised Ellis, as the foreman went away fuming. "He hates you." "Only his fanaticism," said Hal. "More than that. It's personal. I think," added the associate editor after some hesitancy, "it's 'Kitty the Cutie.' He's jealous, Hal. And I think he's right. That girl's getting too much interested in you." Hal flushed sharply. "Nonsense!" he said, and the subject lapsed. Meantime the manager of the Ralston Opera House, where the labor trouble had occurred, made tentative proffer of peace in the form of sending in the theater advertising again. Hal promptly refused to accept it, by way of an object-lesson, despite the almost tearful protest of his own business office. This blow almost killed Shearson. In fact, the unfortunate advertising manager now lived in an atmosphere of Stygian gloom. Two of the most extensive purchasers of newspaper space, the Boston Store and the Triangle Store, had canceled their contracts immediately after the attack on the Pierces, through a "joker" clause inserted to afford such an opportunity. All the other department stores threatened to follow suit when the "Clarion" took up the cause of the Consumers' League. Mrs. Festus Willard was president of the organization, which had been practically moribund since its inception, for the sufficient reason that no mention of its activities, designs, or purposed reforms could gain admission to any newspaper in Worthington. The Retail Union saw to that through its all-potent Publication Committee. Perceiving the crescent emancipation of the "Clarion," Mrs. Willard, after due consultation with her husband, appealed to Hal. Would he help the League to obtain certain reforms? Specifically, seats for shopgirls, and extra pay for extra work, as during Old Home Week, when the stores kept open until 10 P.M.? Hal agreed, and, in the face of the dismalest forecasts from Shearson, prepared several editorials. Moreover, "Kitty the Cutie" took up the campaign in her column, and her series of "Lunch-Time Chats," with their slangy, pungent, workaday flavor, presented the case of the overworked saleswomen in a way to stir the dullest sympathies. The event fully justified Shearson in his rôle of Cassandra. Half of the remaining stores represented in the Retail Union notified the "Clarion" of the withdrawal of their advertising. Thus some twelve hundred dollars a week of income vanished. Moreover, the Union, it was hinted, would probably blacklist the "Clarion" officially. And the shop-folk gained nothing by the campaign. The merchants were strong enough to defeat the League and its sole backer at every point. This was one of the "Clarion's" failures. Coincident with the ebb of the store advertising occurred a lapse in circulation, inexplicable to the staff until an analysis indicated that the women readers were losing interest. It was young Mr. Surtaine who solved the mystery, by a flash of that newspaper instinct with which Ellis had early credited him. "Department store advertising is news," he decided, in a talk with Ellis and Shearson. "How can advertising be news?" objected the manager. "Anything that interests the public is news, on the authority of no less an expert than Mr. McGuire Ellis. Shopping is the main interest in life of thousands of women. They read the papers to find out where the bargains are. Watch 'em on the cars any morning and you'll see them studying the ads. The information in those ads. is what they most want. Now that we don't give it to them, they are dropping the paper. So we've got to give it to them." "Now you're talking," cried Shearson. "Cut out this Consumers' League slush and I'll get the stores back." "We'll cut out nothing. But we'll put in something. We'll print news of the department stores as news, not as advertising." "Well, if that ain't the limit!" lamented Shearson. "If you give 'em advertising matter free, how can you ever expect 'em to pay for it?" "We're not giving it to the stores. We're giving it to our readers." "In which case," remarked McGuire Ellis with a grin, "we can afford to furnish the real facts." "Exactly," said Hal. From this talk developed a unique department in the "Clarion." An expert woman shopper collected the facts and presented them daily under the caption, "Where to Find Real Bargains," and with the prefatory note, "No paid matter is accepted for this column." The expert had an allowance for purchasing, where necessary, and the utmost freedom of opinion was granted her. Thus, in the midst of a series of items, such as--"The Boston Store is offering a special sale of linens at advantageous prices"; "The necktie sale at the Emporium contains some good bargains"; and "Scheffler and Mintz's 'furniture week' is worth attention, particularly in the rocking-chair and dining-set lines"--might appear some such information as this: "In the special bargain sale of ribbons at the Emporium the prices are slightly higher than the same lines sold for last week, on the regular counter"; or, "The heavily advertised antique rug collection at the Triangle is mostly fraudulent. With a dozen exceptions the rugs are modern and of poor quality"; or, "The Boston Shop's special sale of rain coats are mostly damaged goods. Accept none without guarantee." Never before had mercantile Worthington known anything like this. Something not unlike panic was created in commercial circles. Lawyers were hopefully consulted, but ascertained in the first stages of investigation, that wherever a charge of fraud was brought, the "Clarion" office actually had the goods, by purchase. All this was costly to the "Clarion." But it added nearly four thousand solid circulation, of the buying class, a class of the highest value to any advertiser. Only with difficulty and by exercise of pressure on the part of E.M. Pierce, were the weaker members among the withdrawing advertisers dissuaded from resuming their patronage of the "Clarion." "I wouldn't have thought it possible," said the dictator, angrily, to his associates. "The thing is getting dangerous. The damned paper is out for the truth." "And the public is finding it out," supplemented Gibbs, his brother-in-law. "Wait till my libel suit comes on," said Pierce grimly. "I don't believe young Mr. Surtaine will have enough money left to indulge in the luxury of muckraking, after that." "Won't the old man back him up?" "Tells me that the boy is playing a lone hand," said Pierce with satisfaction. Herein he spoke the fact. While the "Clarion's" various campaigns were still in mid-career, Dr. Surtaine had made his final appeal to his son in vain, ringing one last change upon his Pæan of Policy. "What good does it all do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism: "Boyee, you can't sell a stink, in this town." "Perhaps I can help to get rid of it," said Hal. "Not you! Nobody thanks you for your pains. They take notice for a while, because their noses compel 'em to. Then they forget. What thanks does the public give a newspaper? But the man you've roasted--he's after you, all the time. A sore toe doesn't forget. Look at Pierce." "Pierce has bothered me," confessed Hal. "He's shut me off from the banks. None of them will loan the 'Clarion' a cent. I have to go out of town for my money." "Can you blame him? I'd have done the same if he'd roasted you as you roasted his girl." "News, Dad," said Hal wearily. "It was news." "Let's not go over that again. You'll stick to your policy, I suppose, till it ruins you. About finances, by the way, where do you stand?" "Stand?" repeated Hal. "I wish we did. We slip. Downhill; and pretty fast." "Why wouldn't you? Fighting your own advertisers." "Some advertising has come in, though. Mostly from out of town." "Foreign proprietary," said Dr. Surtaine, using the technical term for patent-medicine advertising from out of town, "isn't it? I've been doing a little missionary work among my friends in the trade, Hal; persuaded them to give the 'Clarion' a try-out. The best of it is, they're getting results." "They ought to. Do you know we're putting on circulation at the rate of nearly a thousand a week?" "Expensive, though, isn't it?" "Pretty bad. The paper costs a lot more to get out. We've enlarged our staff. Now we need a new press. There's thirty-odd thousand dollars, in one lump." "How long can you go on at this rate?" "Without any more advertising?" "You certainly aren't gaining, by your present policy." "Well, I can stick it out through the year. By that time the advertising will be coming in. It's _got_ to come to the paper that has the circulation, Dad." "Hum!" droned the big doctor, dubiously. "Have you reckoned the Pierce libel suits in?" "He can't win them." "Can't he? I don't know. He intends to try. And he feels pretty cocky about it. E.M. Pierce has something up his sleeve, Boyee." "That would be a body-blow. But he can't win," repeated Hal. "Why, I saw the whole thing myself." "Just the same you ought to have the best libel lawyer you can get from New York. All the good local men are tied up with Pierce or afraid of him." "Can't afford it." To this point the big man had been leading up. "I've been thinking over this Pierce matter, Hal, and I've made up my mind. Pierce is getting to think he's the whole thing around here. He's bullied this town all his life, just as he's bullied his employees until they hate him like poison. But now he's gone up against the wrong game. Roast Certina, will he? The pup! Why, if he'd ever run his factories or his store or his Consolidated Employees' Organization one hundredth part as decently as I've run our business, he wouldn't have to stay in nights for fear some one might sneak a knife into him out of the dark." This was something less than just to Elias M. Pierce, who, whatever his other faults, had never been a fearful man. "Libel, eh?" continued the genius of Certina, quietly but formidably. "We'll teach him a few things about libel, before he's through. Here's my proposition, Boyee. You can fight Pierce, but you can't fight all Worthington. Every enemy you make for the 'Clarion' becomes an ally of Pierce. Quit all these other campaigns. Stop roasting the business men and advertisers. Drop your attack on the Mid and Mud: you've got 'em licked, anyway. Let up on the street railway: I notice you're taking a fall out of them on their overcrowding. Treat the theaters decently: they're entitled to a fair chance for their money. Cut out this Consumers' League foolishness (I'm surprised at Milly Neal--the way she's lost her head over that). Make friends instead of foes. And go after Elias M. Pierce, to the finish. Do this, and I'll back you with the whole Certina income. Come on, now, Boyee. Be sensible." Hal's reply came without hesitation. "I'm sorry, Dad: but I can't do it. I've told you I'd stand or fall on what you've already given me. If I can't pull through on that, I can't pull through at all. Let's understand each other once and for all, Dad. I've got to try this thing out to the end. And I won't ask or take one cent from you or any one else, win or lose." "All right, Boyee," returned his father sorrowfully. "You're wrong, dead wrong. But I like your nerve. Only, let me tell you this. You think you're going to keep on printing the news and the whole news and all that sort of thing. I tell you, it can't be done." "Why can't it be done?" "Because, sooner or later, you'll bump up against your own interests so hard that you'll have to quit." "I don't see that at all, sir." "No, you don't. But one of these days something in the news line will come up that'll hit you right between the eyes, if ever it gets into print. Then see what you'll do." "I'll print it." "No, you won't, Boyee. Human nature ain't built that way. You'll smother it, and be glad you've got the power to." "Dad, you believe I'm honest, don't you?" "Too blamed honest in some ways." "But you'd take my word?" "Oh, that! Yes. For anything." "Then I put my honor on this. If ever the time comes that I have to suppress legitimate news to protect or aid my own interests, I'll own up I'm beaten: I'll quit fighting, and I'll make the 'Clarion' a very sucking dove of journalism. Is that plain?" "Shake, Boyee. You've bought a horse. Just the same, I hate to let up on Pierce. Sure you won't let me hire a New York lawyer for the libel suit?" "No. Thank you just as much, Dad. That's a 'Clarion' fight, and the 'Clarion's money has got to back it." It was the gist of this decision which, some days later, had reached E.M. Pierce, and caused him such satisfaction. With the "Clarion" depending upon its own resources, unbacked by the great reserve wealth of Certina's proprietor, he confidently expected to wreck it and force its suspension by an overwhelming verdict of damages. For, as Dr. Surtaine had surmised, he held a card up his sleeve. CHAPTER XX THE LESSER TEMPTING Seven days of the week did Mr. Harrington Surtaine labor, without by any means doing all his work. For to the toil which goes to the making of many newspapers there is no end; only ever a fresh beginning. Had he brought to the enterprise a less eager appetite for the changeful adventure of it, the unremitting demand must soon have dulled his spirit. Abounding vitality he possessed, but even this flagged at times. One soft spring Sunday, while the various campaigns of the newspaper were still in mid-conflict, he decided to treat himself to a day off. So, after a luxurious morning in bed, he embarked in his runabout for an exploration around the adjacent country. Having filled his lungs with two hours of swift air, he lunched, none too delicately, at a village fifty miles distant, and, on coming out of the hotel, was warned by a sky shaded from blue to the murkiest gray, into having the top of his car put up. The rain chased him for thirty miles and whelmed him in a wild swirl at the thirty-first. Driving through this with some caution, he saw ahead of him a woman's figure, as supple as a willow withe, as gallant as a ship, beating through the fury of the elements. Hal slowed down, debating whether to offer conveyance, when he caught a glint of ruddy waves beneath the drenched hat, and the next instant he was out and looking into the flushed face and dancing eyes of Milly Neal. "What on earth are you doing here?" he cried. "Can't you see?" she retorted merrily. "I'm a fish." "You need to be. Get in. You're soaked to the skin," he continued, dismayed, as she began to shiver under the wrappings he drew around her. "Never mind. I'll have you home in a few minutes." But the demon of mischance was abroad in the storm. Before they had covered half a mile the rear tire went. Milly was now shaking dismally, for all her brave attempts to conceal it. A few rods away a sign announced "Markby's Road-House." Concerned solely to get the girl into a warm and dry place, Hal turned in, bundled her out, ordered a private room with a fireplace, and induced the proprietor's wife by the persuasions of a ten-dollar bill to provide a change of clothing for the outer, and hot drinks for the inner, woman. Half an hour later when he had affixed a new tire to the wheel, he and Milly sat, warmed and comforted before blazing logs, waiting for her clothes to dry out. "I know I look a fright," she mourned. "That Mrs. Markby must buy her dresses by the pound." She gazed at him comically from above a quaint and nondescript garment, to which she had given a certain daintiness with a cleverly placed ribbon or two and an adroit use of pins. Privately, Hal considered that she looked delightfully pretty, with her provocative eyes and the deep gleam of red in her hair like flame seen through smoke. "Do you often go out wading, ten miles from home?" he asked. "Not very. I was running away." "I didn't see any one in pursuit." "They knew too much." Her firm little chin set rather grimly. "Do you want to hear about it?" "Yes. I'm curious," confessed Hal. "I went to lunch with another girl and a couple of drummers, out at Callender's Pond Hotel. She said she knew the men and they were all right. They weren't. They got too fresh altogether. So I told Florence she could do as she pleased, but I was for home and the trolley. I guess I could have made it with a life-preserver," she laughed. Hal was surprisedly conscious of a rasp of anger within him. "You ought not to put yourself into such a position," he declared. She threw him a covert glance from the corner of her sparkling eyes. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she decided calmly. "I always have. When fresh drummers begin to talk private dining-room and cold bottles, I spread my little wings and flit." "To another private room," mocked Hal. "Aren't you afraid?" "With you? You're different." There sounded in her voice the purring note of utter content which is the subtlest because the most unconscious flattery of womankind. A silence fell between them. Hal stared into the fire. "Are you warm enough?" he asked presently. "Yes." "Do you want something to eat? Or drink? What did you have to drink?" he added, glancing at the empty glass on the table. "Certina." "Certina?" he queried, uncertain at first whether she was joking. "How could you get Certina here?" "Why not? They keep it at all these places. There's quite a bar-trade in it." "Is that so?" said Hal, with a vague feeling of disturbance of ideas. "Which job do you like best: the Certina or the newspaper, Miss Neal?" "My other boss calls me Milly," she suggested. "Very well,--Milly, then." "Oh, I'm for the office. It's more exciting, a lot." "Your stuff," said Hal, in the language of the cult, "is catching on." "You don't like it, though," she countered quickly. "Yes, I do. Much better than I did, anyway. But the point is that it's a success. Editorially I _have_ to like it." "I'd rather you liked it personally." "Some of it I do. The 'Lunch-Time Chats'--" "And some of it you think is vulgar." "One has to suit one's style to the matter," propounded Hal. "'Kitty the Cutie' isn't supposed to be a college professor." "I hate to have you think me vulgar," she insisted. "Oh, come!" he protested; "that isn't fair. I don't think _you_ vulgar, Milly." "I like to have you call me Milly," she said. "It seems quite natural to," he answered lightly. "I've thought sometimes I'd like to try my hand at a regular news story," she went on, in a changed tone. "I think I've got one, if I could only do it right; one of those facts-behind-the-news stories that you talked to us about. Do you remember meeting me with Max Veltman the other night?" "Yes." "Did you think it was queer?" "A little." "A girl I used to know back in the country tried to kill herself. She wrote me a letter, but it didn't get to me till after midnight, so I called up Max and got him to go with me down to the Rookeries district where she lives. Poor little Maggie! She got caught in one of those sewing-girl traps." "Some kind of machinery?" "Machinery? You don't know much about what goes on in your town, do you?" "Not as much as an editor ought to know--which is everything." "I'll bring you Maggie's letter. That tells it better than I can. And I want to write it up, too. Let me write it up for the paper." She leaned forward and her eyes besought him. "I want to prove I can do something besides being a vulgar little 'Kitty the Cutie.'" "Oh, my dear," he said, half paternally, but only half, "I'm sorry I hurt you with that word." "You didn't mean to." Her smile forgave him. "Maggie's story means another fight for the paper. Can we stand another?" He warmed to the possessive "we." "So you know about our warfare," he said. "More than you think, perhaps. The books you gave me aren't the only things I study. I study the 'Clarion,' too." "Why?" he asked, interested. "Because it's yours." She looked at him straightly now. "Can you pull it through, Boss?" "I think so. I hope so." "We've lost a lot of ads. I can reckon that up, because I had some experience in the advertising department of the Certina shop, and I know rates." She pursed her lips with a dainty effect of careful computation. "Somewhere about four thousand a week out, isn't it?" "Four thousand, three hundred and seventy in store business last week." The talk settled down and confined itself to the financial and editorial policies of the paper, Milly asking a hundred eager and shrewd questions, now and again proffering some tentative counsel or caution. Impersonal though it seemed, through it Hal felt a growing tensity of intercourse; a sense of pregnant and perilous intimacy drawing them together. "Since you're taking such an interest, I might get you to help Mr. Ellis run the paper when I go away," he suggested jocularly. "You're not going away?" The query came in a sort of gasp. "Next week." "For long?" Her hand, as if in protest against the dreaded answer, went out to the arm of his chair. His own met and covered it reassuringly. "Not very. It's the new press." "We're going to have a new press?" "Hadn't you heard? You seem to know so much about the office. We're going to build up the basement and set the press just inside the front wall and then cut a big window through so that the world and his wife can see the 'Clarion' in the very act of making them better." Both fell silent. Their hands still clung. Their eyes were fixed upon the fire. Suddenly a log, half-consumed, crashed down, sending abroad a shower of sparks. The girl darted swiftly up to stamp out a tiny flame at her feet. Standing, she half turned toward Hal. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To New York." "Take me with you." So quietly had the crisis come that he scarcely realized it. For a measured space of heart-beats he gazed into the fireplace. As he stared, she slipped to the arm of his chair. He felt the alluring warmth of her body against his shoulder. Then he would have turned to search her eyes, but, divining him, she denied, pressing her cheek close against his own. "No; no! Don't look at me," she breathed. "You don't know what you mean," he whispered. "I do! I'm not a child. Take me with you." "It means ruin for you." "Ruin! That's a word! Words don't frighten me." "They do me. They're the most terrible things in the world." She laughed at that. "Is it the word you're afraid of, or is it me?" she challenged. "I'm not asking you anything. I don't want you to marry me. Oh!" she cried with a sinking break of the voice, "do you think I'm _bad_?" Freeing himself, he caught her face between his hands. "Are you--have you been 'bad,' as you call it?" "I don't blame you for asking--after what I've said. But I haven't." "And now?" "Now, I care. I never cared before. It was that, I suppose, kept me straight. Don't you care for me--a little, Hal?" He rose and strode to the window. When he turned from his long look out into the burgeoning spring she was standing silent, expectant. Like stone she stood as he came back, but her arms went up to receive him. Her lips melted into his, and the fire of her face flashed through every vein. "And afterward?" he said hoarsely. There was triumph in her answering laughter, passion-shaken though it was. "Then you'll take me with you." "But afterward?" he repeated. Lingeringly she released herself. "Let that take care of itself. I don't care for afterward. We're free, you and I. What's to hinder us from doing as we please? Who's going to be any the worse for it? Oh, I told you I was lawless. It's the Hardscrabbler blood in me, I guess." Deep in Hal's memory a response to that name stirred. "Somewhere," he said, "I have run across a Hardscrabbler before." "Me. But you've forgotten." "Have I? Let me see. It was in the old days when Dad and I were traveling. You were the child with the wonderful red hair, the night I was hurt. _Were_ you?" "And next day I tried to bite you because you wanted to play with a prettier little girl in beautiful clothes." Esmé! The electric spark of thought leaped the long space of years from the child, Esmé, to the girl, in the vain love of whom he had eaten his heart hollow. For the moment, passion for the vivid woman-creature before him had dulled that profounder feeling almost to obliteration. Perhaps--so the thought came to him--he might find forgetfulness, anodyne in Milly Neal's arms. But what of Milly, taken on such poor terms? The bitter love within him gave answer. Not loyalty to Esmé Elliot whom he knew unworthy, but to Milly herself, bound him to honor and restraint; so strangely does the human soul make its dim and perilous way through the maze of motives. Even though the girl, now questing his face with puzzled, frightened eyes, asked nothing but to belong to him; demanded no bond of fealty or troth, held him free as she held herself free, content with the immediate happiness of a relation that, must end in sorrow for one or the other, yet he could not take what she so prodigally, so gallantly proffered, with the image of another woman smiling through his every thought. That, indeed, were to be unworthy, not of Esmé, not of himself, but of Milly. He made a step toward her, and her glad hands went out to him again. Very gently he took them; very gently he bent and kissed her cheek. "That's for good-bye," he said. The voice in which he spoke seemed alien to his ears, so calm it was, so at variance with his inner turmoil. "You won't take me with you?" "No." "You promised." "I know." He was not concerned now with verbal differentiations. Truly, he had promised, wordlessly though it had been. "But I can't." "You don't care?" she said piteously. "I care very much. If I cared less--" "There's some other woman." "Yes." Flame leaped in her eyes. "I hope she poisons your life." "I hope I haven't poisoned yours," he returned, lamely enough. "Oh, I'll manage to live on," she gibed. "I guess there are other men in the world besides you." "Don't make it too hard, Milly." "You're pitying me! Don't you dare pity me!" A sob rose, and burst from her. Then abruptly she seized command over herself. "What does it all matter?" she said. "Go away now and let me change my clothes." "Are they dry?" "I don't care whether they're dry or not. I don't care what becomes of me now." All the sullen revolt of generations of lawlessness was vocal in her words. "You wait and see!" Somehow Hal got out of the room, his mind awhirl, to await her downstairs. In a few moments she came, and with eyes somberly averted got into the runabout without a word. As they swung into the road, they met McGuire Ellis and Wayne, who bowed with a look of irrepressible surprise. During the ride homeward Hal made several essays at conversation. But the girl sat frozen in a white silence. Only when they pulled up at her door did she speak. "I'm going to try to forget this," she said in a dry, hard voice. "You do the same. I won't quit my job unless you want me to." "Don't," said Hal. "But you won't be bothered with seeing me any more. I'll send you Maggie Breen's letter and the story. I guess I understand a little better now how she felt when she took the poison." With that rankling in his brain, Hal Surtaine sat and pondered in his private study at home. His musings arraigned before him for judgment and contrast the two women who had so stormily wrought upon his new life. Esmé Elliot had played with his love, had exploited it, made of it a tinsel ornament for vanity, sought, through it, to corrupt him from the hard-won honor of his calling. She had given him her lips for a lure; she had played, soul and body, the petty cheat with a high and ennobling passion. Yet, because she played within the rules by the world's measure, there was no stain upon her honor. By that same measure, what of Milly Neal? In her was no trickery of sex; only the ungrudging, wide-armed offer of all her womanhood, reckless of aught else but love. Debating within himself the phrase, "an honest woman," Hal laughed aloud. His laughter lacked much of being mirthful, and something of being just. For he had reckoned two daughters of Eve by the same standard, which is perhaps the oldest and most disastrous error hereditary to all the sons of Adam. CHAPTER XXI THE POWER OF PRINT Hal paid thirty-two thousand dollars for the new press. It was a delicate giant of mechanism, able not only to act, but also to think with stupendous accuracy and swiftness; lacking only articulate speech to be wholly superhuman. But in signing the check for it, Hal, for the first time in his luxurious life experienced a financial qualm. Always before there had been an inexhaustible source wherefrom to draw. Now that he had issued his declaration of pecuniary independence, he began to appreciate the perishable nature of money. He came back from his week's journey to New York feeling distinctly poorer. Moreover there was an uncomfortable paradox connected with his purchase. That he should be put to so severe an expenditure merely for the purpose of incurring an increased current expense, struck him as a rather sardonic joke. Yet so it was. Circulation does not mean direct profit to a newspaper. On the contrary, it implies loss in many cases. For some weeks it had been costing the "Clarion," to print the extra papers necessitated by the increased demand, more than the money received from their sale. Until the status of the journal should justify a higher advertising charge, every added paper sold would involve a loss. True, an augmented circulation logically commands a higher advertising rate; it is thus that a newspaper reaps its harvest; and soon Hal hoped to be able to raise his advertising rate from fifteen to twenty-five cents a line. At that return his books would show a profit on a normal volume of advertising. Meantime he performed an act of involuntary philanthropy with every increase of issue, Nevertheless, Hal felt for his mechanical giant something of the new-toy thrill. To him it was a symbol of productive power. It made appeal to his imagination, typifying the reborn "Clarion." He saw it as a master-loom weaving fresh patterns, day by day, into the fabric of the city's life and thought. That all might view the process, he had it mounted high from the basement, behind a broad plate-glass show window set in the front wall, a highly unstrategic position, as McGuire Ellis pointed out. "Suppose," said he, "a horse runs wild and makes a dive through that window? Or a couple of bums get shooting at each other, and a stray bullet comes whiffling through the glass and catches young Mr. Press in his delikit insides. We're out of business for a week, maybe, mending him up." Shearson, however, was in favor of it. It suggested prosperity and aroused public interest. On Hal's return from New York, the fat and melancholious advertising manager had exhibited a somewhat mollified pessimism. "The Boston Store is coming back," he visited Hal's sanctum to announce. "Why, that's John M. Gibbs's store, isn't it?" "Sure." "And he's E.M. Pierce's brother-in-law. I thought he'd stick by his family in fighting the 'Clarion.'" "Family is all right, but Grinder Gibbs is for business first and everything else afterwards. Our rates look good to him, with the circulation we're showing. And he knows we bring results. He's been using us on the quiet for a little side issue of his own." "What's that?" "Some sewing-girls' employment thing. It's in the 'Classified' department. Don't amount to much; but it's proved to him that the 'Clarion' ad does the business. I've been on his trail for two weeks. So the store starts in Sunday with half-pages. They say Pierce is crazy mad." "No wonder." "The best of it is that now the Retail Union won't fight us, as a body, for taking up the Consumers' League fight. They can't very well, with their second biggest store using the 'Clarion's columns." McGuire Ellis, too, was feeling quite cheerful over the matter. "It shows that you can be independent and get away with it," he declared, "if you get out an interesting enough paper. By the way, that's a hot little story 'Kitty the Cutie' turned in on the Breen girl's suicide." "It was only attempted suicide, wasn't it?" "The first time. She had a second trial at it day before yesterday and turned the trick. You'll find Neal's copy on your desk. I held it for you." From out of a waiting heap of mail, proof, and manuscript, Hal selected the sheets covered with Milly Neal's neat business chirography. She had written her account briefly and with restraint, building her "story" around the girl's letter. It set forth the tragedy of a petty swindle. The scheme was as simple as it was cruel. A concern calling itself "The Sewing Aid Association" advertised for sewing-women, offering from ten to fifteen dollars a week to workers; experience not necessary. Maggie Breen answered the advertisement. The manager explained to her that the job was making children's underclothing from pattern. She would be required to come daily to the factory and sew on a machine which she would purchase from the company, the price, thirty dollars, being reckoned as her first three weeks' wages. To all this, duly set forth in a specious contract, the girl affixed her signature. She was set to work at once. The labor was hard, the forewoman a driver, but ten dollars a week is good pay. Hoping for a possible raise Maggie turned out more garments than any of her fellow workers. For two weeks and a half all went well. In another few days the machine would be paid for, the money would begin to come in, and Maggie would get a really square meal, which she had come to long for with a persistent and severe hankering. Then the trap was sprung. Maggie's work was found "unsatisfactory." She was summarily discharged. In vain did she protest. She would try again; she would do better. No use; "the house" found her garments unmarketable. Sorrowfully she asked for her money. No money was due her. Again she protested. The manager thrust a copy of her contract under her nose and turned her into the street. Thus the "Sewing Aid Association" had realized upon fifteen days' labor for which they had not paid one cent, and the "installment" sewing-machine was ready for its next victim. This is a very pleasant and profitable policy and is in use, in one form or another, in nearly every American city. Proof of which the sufficiently discerning eye may find in the advertising columns of many of our leading newspapers and magazines. To Maggie Breen it was small consolation that she was but one of many. Even her simple mind grasped the "joker" in the contract. She tore up that precious document, went home, reflected that she was rather hungry and likely to be hungrier, quite wretched and likely to be wretcheder; and so made a decoction of sulphur matches and drank it. An ambulance surgeon disobligingly arrived in time to save her life for once; but the second time she borrowed some carbolic acid, which is more expeditious than any ambulance surgeon. This was the story which "Kitty the Cutie," while sticking close to the facts, had contrived to inform with a woman's wrath and a woman's pity. Reading it, Hal took fire. He determined to back it up with an editorial. But first he would look into the matter for himself. With this end in view he set out for Number 65 Sperry Street, where Maggie Breen's younger sister and bedridden mother lived. It was his maiden essay at reporting. Sperry Street shocked Hal. He could not have conceived that a carefully regulated and well-kept city such as Worthington (he knew it, be it remembered, chiefly from above the wheels of an automobile) would permit such a slum to exist. On either side of the street, gaunt wooden barracks, fire-traps at a glance, reared themselves five rackety stories upward, for the length of a block. Across intersecting Grant Street the sky-line dropped a few yards, showing ragged through the metal cornice and sickly brick chimneys of a tenement row only a degree less forbidding than the first. The street itself was a mere refuse patch smeared out over bumpy cobbles. The visitor entered the tenement at 65, between reeking barrels which had waited overlong for the garbage cart. He was received without question, as a reporter for the "Clarion." At first Sadie Breen, anæmic, hopeless-eyed, timorous, was reluctant to speak. But the mother proved Hal's ally. "Let 'im put it in the paper," she exhorted. "Maybe it'll keep some other girl away from them sharks." "Why didn't your sister sue the company?" asked Hal. "Where'd we get the money for a lawyer?" whined Sadie. "It's no use, anyway," said Mrs. Breen. "They've tried it in Municipal Court. The sharks always wins. Somebody ought to shoot that manager," she added fiercely. "Yes; that's great to say," jeered Sadie, in a whine. "But look what happened to that Mason girl from Hoppers Hollow. She hit at him with a pair of scissors, an' they sent her up for a year." "Better that than Cissy Green's way. You know what become of her. Went on the street," explained Mrs. Breen to Hal. They poured out story after story of poor women entrapped by one or another of those lures which wring the final drop of blood from the bleakest poverty. In the midst of the recital there was a knock at the door, and a tall young man in black entered. He at once introduced himself to Hal as the Reverend Norman Hale, and went into conference with the two women about a place for Sadie. This being settled, Hal's mission was explained to him. "A reporter?" said the Reverend Norman. "I wish the papers _would_ take this thing up. A little publicity would kill it off, I believe." "Won't the courts do anything?" "They can't. I've talked to the judge. The concern's contract is water-tight." The two young men went down together through the black hallways, and stood talking at the outer door. "How do people live in places like this?" exclaimed Hal. "Not very successfully. The death-rate is pretty high. Particularly of late. There's what a friend of mine around the corner--he happens to be a barkeeper, by the way--calls a lively trade in funerals around here." "Is your church in this district?" "My club is. People call it a mission, but I don't like the word. It's got too much the flavor of reaching down from above to dispense condescending charity." "Charity certainly seems to be needed here." "Help and decent fairness are needed; not charity. What's your paper, by the way?" "The 'Clarion.'" "Oh!" said the other, in an altered tone. "I shouldn't suppose that the 'Clarion' would go in much for any kind of reform." "Do you read it?" "No. But I know Dr. Surtaine." "Dr. Surtaine doesn't own the 'Clarion.' I do." "You're Harrington Surtaine? I thought I had seen you somewhere before. But you said you were a reporter." "Pardon me, I didn't. Mrs. Breen said that. However, it's true; I'm doing a bit of reporting on this case. And I'm going to do some writing on it before I'm through." "As for Dr. Surtaine--" began the young clergyman, then checked himself, pondering. What further he might have had to say was cut off by a startling occurrence. A door on the floor above opened; there was a swift patter of feet, and then from overhead, a long-drawn, terrible cry. Immediately a young girl, her shawl drawn about her face, ran from the darkness into the half-light of the lower hall and would have passed between them but that Norman Hale caught her by the arm. "Lemme go! Lemme go!" she shrieked, pawing at him. "Quiet," he bade her. "What is it, Emily?" "Oh, Mr. Hale!" she cried, recognizing him and clutching at his shoulder. "Don't let it get me!" "Nothing's going to hurt you. Tell me about it." "It's the Death," she shuddered. The man's face changed. "Here?" he said. "In this block?" "Don't you go," she besought. "Don't you go, Mr. Hale. You'll get it." "Where is it? Answer me at once." "First-floor front," sobbed the girl. "Mrs. Schwarz." "Don't wait for me," said the minister to Hal. "In fact you'd better leave the place. Good-day." Thus abruptly discarded from consideration, Hal turned to the fugitive. "Is some one dead?" "Not yet." "Dying, then?" "As good as. It's the Death," said the girl with a strong shudder. "You said that before. What do you mean by the Death?" "Don't keep me here talkin'," she shivered. "I wanta go home." Hal walked along with her, wondering. "I wish you would tell me," he said gently. "All I know is, they never get well." "What sort of sickness is it?" "Search me." The petty slang made a grim medium for the uncertainty of terror which it sought to express. "They've had it over in the Rookeries since winter. There ain't no name for it. They just call it the Death." "The Rookeries?" said Hal, caught by the word. "Where are they?" "Don't you know the Rookeries?" The girl pointed to the long double row of grisly wooden edifices down the street. "Them's Sadler's Shacks on this side, and Tammany Barracks on the other. They go all the way around the block." "You say the sickness has been in there?" "Yes. Now it's broken out an' we'll all get it an' die," she wailed. A little, squat, dark man hurried past them. He nodded, but did not pause. "I know him," said Hal. "Who is he?" "Doc De Vito. He tends to all the cases. But it's no good. They all die." "You keep your head," advised Hal. "Don't be scared. And wash your hands and face thoroughly as soon as you get home." "A lot o' good that'll do against the Death," she said scornfully, and left him. Back at the office, Hal, settling down to write his editorial, put the matter of the Rookeries temporarily out of mind, but made a note to question his father about it. Milly Neal's article, touched up and amplified by Hal's pen, appeared the following morning. The editorial was to be a follow-up in the next day's paper. Coming down early to put the finishing touches to this, Hal found the article torn out and pasted on a sheet of paper. Across the top of the paper was written in pencil: "_Clipped from the Clarion; a Deadly Parallel_." The penciled legend ran across the sheet to include, under its caption a second excerpt, also in "Clarion" print, but of the advertisement style: WANTED--Sewing-girls for simple machine work. Experience not necessary. $10 to $15 a week guaranteed. Apply in person at 14 Manning Street. THE SEWING AID ASSOCIATION. Below, in the same hand writing was the query: "_What's your percentage of the blood-money, Mr. Harrington Surtaine?"_ Hal threw it over to Ellis. "Whose writing is that?" he asked. "It looks familiar to me." "Max Veltman's," said Ellis. He took in the meaning of it. "The insolent whelp!" he said. "Insolent? Yes; he's that. But the worst of it is, I'm afraid he's right." And he telephoned for Shearson. The advertising manager came up, puffing. Hal held out the clipping to him. "How long has that been running?" "On and off for six months." "Throw it out." "Throw it out!" repeated the other bitterly. "That's easy enough said." "And easily enough done." "It's out already. Taken out by early notice this morning." "That's all right, then." "_Is_ it all right!" boomed Shearson. "_Is_ it! You won't think so when you hear the rest of it." "Try me." "Do you know _who_ the Sewing Aid Association is?" "No." "It's John M. Gibbs! That's who it is!" "Yell louder, Shearson. It may save you from apoplexy," advised McGuire Ellis with tender solicitude. "And we lose every line of the Boston Store advertising, that I worked so hard to get back." "That'll hurt," allowed Ellis. "Hurt! It draws blood, that does. That Sewing Aid Association is Gibbs's scheme to supply the children's department of his store. Why couldn't you find out who you were hitting, Mr. Surtaine?" demanded Shearson pathetically, "before you went and mucksed everything up this way? See what comes of all this reform guff." "Are you sure that John M. Gibbs is back of that sewing-girl ad?" "Sure? Didn't he call me up this morning and raise the devil?" "Thank you, Mr. Shearson. That's all." To his editorial galley-proof Hal added two lines. "What's that, Mr. Surtaine?" asked the advertising manager curiously. "That's outside of your department. But since you ask, I'll tell you. It's an editorial on the kind of swindle that causes tragedies like Maggie Breen's. And the sentence which I have just added, thanks to you, is this: "'The proprietor of this scheme which drives penniless women to the street or to suicide is John M. Gibbs, principal owner of the Boston Store.'" Words failed Shearson; also motive power, almost. For reckonable seconds he stood stricken. Then slowly he got under way and rolled through the door. Once, on the stairs, they heard from him a protracted rumbling groan. "Ruin," was the one distinguishable word. It left an echo in Hal's brain, an echo which rang hollowly amongst misgivings. "_Is_ it ruin to try and run a newspaper without taking a percentage of that kind of profits, Mac?" he asked. "Well, a newspaper can't be too squeamish about its ads." was the cautious answer. "Do all newspapers carry that kind of stuff?" "Not quite. Most of them, though. They need the money." "What's the matter with business in this town? Everything seems to be rotten." Ellis took refuge in a proverb. "Business is business," he stated succinctly. "And it's as bad everywhere as here? This is all new to me, you know. I rather expected to find every concern as decently and humanly run as Certina." One swift, suspicious glance Ellis cast upon his superior, but Hal's face was candor itself. "Well, no," he admitted. "Perhaps it isn't as bad in some cities. The trouble here is that all the papers are terrorized or bribed into silence. Until we began hitting out with our little shillalah, nobody had ever dared venture a peep of disapproval. So, business got to thinking it could do as it pleased. You can't really blame business much. Immunity from criticism isn't ever good for the well-known human race." Hal took the matter of the "Sewing Aid" swindle home with him for consideration. Hitherto he had considered advertising only as it affected or influenced news. Now he began to see it in another light, as a factor in itself of immense moral moment and responsibility. It was dimly outlined to his conscience that, as a partner in the profit, he became also a partner in the enterprise. Thus he faced the question of the honesty or dishonesty of the advertising in his paper. And this is a question fraught with financial portent for the honorable journalist. CHAPTER XXII PATRIOTS Worthington's Old Home Week is a gay, gaudy, and profitable institution. During the six days of its course the city habitually maintains the atmosphere of a three-ringed circus, the bustle of a county fair, and the business ethics of the Bowery. Allured by widespread advertising and encouraged by special rates on the railroads, the countryside for a radius of one hundred miles pours its inhabitants into the local metropolis, their pockets filled with greased dollars. Upon them Worthington lavishes its left-over and shelf-cluttering merchandise, at fifty per cent more than its value, amidst general rejoicings. As Festus Willard once put it, "There is a sound of revelry by night and larceny by day." But then Mr. Willard, being a manufacturer and not a retailer, lacks the subtler sympathy which makes lovely the spirit of Old Home hospitality. This year the celebration was to outdo itself. Because of the centennial feature, no less a person than the President of the United States, who had spent a year of his boyhood at a local school, was pledged to attend. In itself this meant a record crowd. Crops had been good locally and the toil-worn agriculturist had surplus money wherewith to purchase phonographs, gold teeth, crayon enlargements of self and family, home instruction outfits for hand-painting sofa cushions, and similar prime necessities of farm life. To transform his static savings into dynamic assets for itself was Worthington's basic purpose in holding its gala week. And now this beneficent plan was threatened by one individual, and he young, inexperienced, and a new Worthingtonian, Mr. Harrington Surtaine. This unforeseen cloud upon the horizon of peace, prosperity, and happiness rose into the ken of Dr. Surtaine the day after the appearance of the sewing-girl editorial. Dr. Surtaine hadn't liked that editorial. With his customary air of long-suffering good nature he had told Hal so over his home-made apple pie and rich milk, at the cheap and clean little luncheon place which he patronized. Hal had no defense or excuse to offer. Indeed, his reference to the topic was of the most casual order and was immediately followed by this disconcerting question: "What about the Rookeries epidemic, Dad?" "Epidemic? There's no epidemic, Boyee." "Well, there's something. People are dying down there faster than they ought to. It's spread beyond the Rookeries now." This was no news to the big doctor. But it was news to him that Hal knew it. "How do you know?" he asked. "I've been down there and ran right upon it." The father's affection and alarm outleapt his caution at this. "You better keep away from there, Boyee," he warned anxiously. "If there's no epidemic, why should I keep away?" "There's always a lot of infection down in those tenements," said Dr. Surtaine lamely. "Dad, when you made your report for the 'Clarion' did you tell us all you knew?" "All except some medical technicalities," said the Doctor, who never told a lie when a half-lie would serve. "I've just had a talk with the health officer, Dr. Merritt." "Merritt's an alarmist." "He's alarmed this time, certainly." "What does he think it is?" "It?" said Hal, a trifle maliciously. "The epidemic?" "Epidemic's a big word. The sickness." "How can he tell? He's had no chance to see the cases. They still mysteriously disappear before he can get to them. By the way, your Dr. De Vito seems to have a hand in that." "Hal, I wish you'd get over your trick of seeing a mystery in everything," said his father with a mild and tempered melancholy. "It's a queer slant to your brain." "There's a queer slant to this business of the Rookeries somewhere, but I don't think it's in my brain. Merritt says the Mayor is holding him off, and he believes that Tip O'Farrell, agent for the Rookeries, has got the Mayor's ear. He wants to force the issue by quarantining the whole locality." "And advertise to the world that there's some sort of contagion there!" cried Dr. Surtaine in dismay. "Well, if there is--" "Think of Old Home Week," adjured his father. "The whole thing would be stamped out long before then." "But not the panic and the fear of it. Hal, I do hope you aren't going to take this up in the 'Clarion.'" "Not at present. There isn't enough to go on. But we're going to watch, and if things get any worse I intend to do something. So much I've promised Merritt." The result of this conversation was that Dr. Surtaine called a special meeting of the Committee on Arrangements for Old Home Week. In conformity with the laws of its genus, the committee was made up of the representative business men of the city, with a clergyman or two for compliment to the Church, and most of the newspaper owners or editors, to enlist the "services of the press." Its chairman was thoroughly typical of the mental and ethical attitude of the committee. He felt comfortably assured that as he thought upon any question of local public import, so would they think. Nevertheless, he didn't intend to tell them all he knew. Such was not the purpose of the meeting. Its real purpose, not to put too fine a point on it, was to intimidate the newspapers, lest, if the "Clarion" broke the politic silence, others might follow; and, as a secondary step, to furnish funds for the handling of the Rookeries situation. Since Dr. Surtaine designed to reveal as little as possible to his colleagues, he naturally began his speech with the statement that he would be perfectly frank with them. "There's more sickness than there ought to be in the Rookeries district," he proceeded. "It isn't dangerous, but it may prove obstinate. Some sort of malarious affection, apparently. Perhaps it may be necessary to do some cleaning up down there. In that case, money may be needed." "How much?" somebody asked. "Five thousand dollars ought to do it." "That's a considerable sum," another pointed out. "And this is a serious matter," retorted the chairman. "Many of us remember the disastrous effect that rumors of smallpox had on Old Home Week, some years back. We can't afford to have anything of that sort this time. An epidemic scare might ruin the whole show." Now, an epidemic to these hard-headed business men was something that kept people away from their stores. And the rumor of an epidemic might accomplish that as thoroughly as the epidemic itself. Therefore, without questioning too far, they were quite willing to spend money to avert such disaster. The sum suggested was voted into the hands of a committee of three to be appointed by the chair. "In the mean time," continued Dr. Surtaine, "I think we should go on record to the effect that any newspaper which shall publish or any individual who shall circulate any report calculated to inspire distrust or alarm is hostile to the best interests of the city." "Well, what newspaper is likely to do that?" demanded Leroy Vane, of the "Banner." "If it's any it'll be the 'Clarion,'" growled Colonel Parker, editor of the "Telegram." "The newspaper business in this town is going to the dogs since the 'Clarion' changed hands," said Carney Ford, of the "Press," savagely. "Nobody can tell what they're going to do next over there. They're keeping the decent papers on the jump all the time, with their yellowness and scarehead muckraking." "A big sensational story about an epidemic would be great meat for the 'Clarion,'" said Vane. "What does it care for the best interests of the town?" "As an editor," observed Dr. Surtaine blandly, "my son don't appear to be over-popular with his confrères." "Why should he be?" cried Parker. "He's forever publishing stuff that we've always let alone. Then the public wants to know why we don't get the news. Get it? Of course we get it. But we don't always want to print it. There's such a thing as a gentleman's understanding in the newspaper business." "So I've heard," replied the chairman. "Well, gentlemen, the boy's young. Give him time." "I'll give him six months, not longer, to go on the way he's been going," said John M. Gibbs, with a vicious snap of his teeth. "Does the 'Clarion' really intend to publish anything about an epidemic?" asked Stickler, of the Hotel Stickler. "Nothing is decided yet, so far as I know. But I may safely say that there's a probability of their getting up some kind of a sensational story." "Can't you control your own son?" asked some one bluntly. "Understand this, if you please, gentlemen. Over the Worthington 'Clarion' I have no control whatsoever." "Well, there's where the danger lies," said Vane. "If the 'Clarion' comes out with a big story, the rest of us have got to publish something to save our face." "What's to be done, then?" cried Stickler. "This means a big loss to the hotel business." "To all of us," amended the chairman. "My suggestion is that our special committee be empowered to wait upon the editor of the 'Clarion' and talk the matter over with him." Embodied in the form of a motion this was passed, and the chair appointed as that committee three merchants, all of whom were members of the Publication Committee of the Retail Union; and, as such, exercised the most powerful advertising control in Worthington. Dr. Surtaine still pinned his hopes to the dollar and its editorial potency. Unofficially and privately these men invited to go with them to the "Clarion" office Elias M. Pierce, who had not been at the meeting. At first he angrily refused. He wished to meet that young whelp Surtaine nowhere but in a court of law, he announced. But after Bertram Hollenbeck, of the Emporium, the chairman of the subcommittee, had outlined his plan, Pierce took a night to think it over, and in the morning accepted the invitation with a grim smile. Forewarned by his father, who had begged that he consider carefully and with due regard to his own future the proposals to be set before him, Hal was ready to receive the deputation in form. Pierce's presence surprised him. He greeted all four men with equally punctilious politeness, however, and gave courteous attention while Hollenbeck spoke for his colleagues. The merchant explained the purpose of the visit; set forth the importance to the city of the centennial Old Home Week, and urged the inadvisability of any sensationalism which might alarm the public. "We have sufficient assurance that there's nothing dangerous in the present situation," he said. "I haven't," said Hal. "If I had, there would be nothing further to be said. The 'Clarion' is not seeking to manufacture a sensation." "What is the 'Clarion' seeking to do?" asked Stensland, another of the committee. "Discover and print the news." "Well, it isn't news until it's printed," Hollenbeck pointed out comfortably. "And what's the use of printing that sort of thing, anyway? It does a lot of people a lot of harm; but I don't see how it can possibly do any one any good." "Oh, put things straight," said Stensland. "Here, Mr. Editor; you've stirred up a lot of trouble and lost a lot of advertising by it. Now, you start an epidemic scare and kill off the biggest retail business of the year, and you won't find an advertiser in town to stand by you. Is that plain?" "Plain coercion," said Hal. "Call it what you like," began the apostle of frankness, when Hollenbeck cut in on him. "No use getting excited," he said. "Let's hear Mr. Surtaine's views. What do you think ought to be done about the Rookeries?" In anticipation of some such question Hal had been in consultation with Dr. Elliot and the health officer that morning. "Open up the Rookeries to the health authorities and to private physicians other than Dr. De Vito. Call Tip O'Farrell's blockade off. Clean out and disinfect the tenements. If necessary, quarantine every building that's suspected." "Why, what do you think the disease is?" cried Hollenbeck, taken aback by the positiveness of Hal's speech. "Do _you_ tell _me_. You've come here to give directions." "Something in the nature of malaria," said Hollenbeck, recovering himself. "So there's no call for extreme measures. The Old Home Week Committee will look after the cleaning-up. As for quarantine, that would be a confession. And we want to do the thing as quietly as possible." "You've come to the wrong shop to buy quiet," said Hal mildly. "Now listen to _me_." Elias M. Pierce sat forward in his chair and fixed his stony gaze on Hal's face. "This is what you'll do with the 'Clarion.' You'll agree here and now to print nothing about this alleged epidemic." Hal turned upon him a silent but benign regard. The recollection of that contained smile lent an acid edge to the magnate's next speech. "You will further promise," continued Pierce, "to quit all your muckraking of the business interests and business men of this town." Still Hal smiled. "And you will publish to-morrow a full retraction of the article about my daughter and an ample apology for the attack upon me." The editorial expression did not change. "On those conditions," Pierce concluded, "I will withdraw the criminal proceedings against you, but not the civil suit. The indictment will be handed down to-morrow." "I'm ready for it." "Are you ready for this? We have two unbiased witnesses--unbiased, mind you--who will swear that the accident was Miss Cleary's own fault. And--" there was the hint of an evil smile on the thin lips, as they released the final words very slowly--"and Miss Cleary's own affidavit to that effect." For the moment the words seemed a jumble to Hal. Meaning, dire and disastrous, informed them, as he repeated them to himself. Providentially his telephone rang, giving him an excuse to go out. He hurried over to McGuire Ellis. "I'm afraid it's right, Boss," said the associate editor, after hearing Hal's report. "But how can it be? I saw the whole thing." "E.M. Pierce is rich. The nurse is poor. That is, she has been poor. Lately I've had a man keeping tabs on her. Since leaving the hospital, she's moved into an expensive flat, and has splurged out into good clothes. Whence the wherewithal?" "Bribery!" "Without a doubt." "Then Pierce has got us." "It looks so," admitted Ellis sorrowfully. "But we can't give in," groaned Hal. "It means the end of the 'Clarion.' What is there to do?" "Play for time," advised the other. "Go back there with a stiff upper lip and tell 'em you won't be bulldozed or hurried. Then we'll have a council." "Suppose they demand an answer." "Refuse. See here, Hal. I know Pierce. He'd never give up his revenge, for any good he could do to the cause of the city by holding off the 'Clarion' on this Old Home Week business if there weren't something else. Pierce isn't built that way. That bargain offer is mighty suspicious. There's a weak spot in his case somewhere. Hold him off, and we'll hunt for it." None could have guessed, from the young editor's bearing, on his return, that he knew himself to be facing a crucial situation. With the utmost nonchalance he insisted that he must have time for consideration. Influenced by Pierce, who was sure he had Hal beaten, the committee insisted on an immediate reply to their ultimatum. "You go up against this bunch," advised Stensland, "and it's dollars to doughnuts the receiver'll have your 'Clarion' inside of six months." Hal leaned indolently against the door. "Speaking of dollars and doughnuts," he said, "I'd like to tell you gentlemen a little story. You all know who Babson is, the biggest stock-market advertiser in the country. Well, Babson's vanity is to be a great man outside of his own line. He owns a big country place down East, near the old town of Singatuck; one of the oldest towns on the coast. Babson is as new as Singatuck is old. The people didn't care much about his patronizing ways. Nevertheless, he kept doing things to 'brace the town up,' as he put it. The town needed it. It was about bankrupt. The fire department was a joke, the waterworks a farce, and the town hall a ruin. Babson thought this gave him a chance to put his name on the map. So he said to his local factotum, 'You go down to the meeting of the selectmen next week, shake a bagful of dollars in front of those old doughnuts, and make 'em this proposition: I'll give five thousand dollars to the fire department, establish a water system, rebuild the town hall, pay off the town debt and put ten thousand dollars into the treasury if they'll change the name of the town from Singatuck to Babson.' "The factotum went to the meeting and presented the proposition. Now Singatuck is proud of its age and character with a local pride that is quite beyond the Babson dollars or the Babson type of imagination. His proposition aroused no debate. There was a long silence. Then an old moss-farmer who hadn't had money enough to buy himself a new tooth for twenty years arose and said: 'I move you, Mister Chairman, that this body thank Mr. Babson kindly for his offer and tell him to go to hell.' "The motion was carried unanimously, and the meeting proceeded to the consideration of other business. I cite this, gentlemen, merely as evidence that the disparity between the dollar and the doughnut isn't as great as some suppose." The third member of the committee, who had thus far spoken no word, peered curiously at Hal from above a hooked nose. He was Mintz, of Sheffler and Mintz. "Do I get you righd?" he observed mildly; "you're telling us to go where the selectmen sent Misder Babson." "Plumb," replied Hal, with his most amiable expression. "So far as any immediate decision is concerned." "Less ged oud," said Mr. Mintz to his colleagues. They got out. Mintz was last to go. He came over to Hal. "I lyg your story," he said. "I lyg to see a feller stand up for his bizniz against the vorlt. I'm a Jew. I hope you lose--but--goot luck!" He held out his hand. Hal took it. "Mr. Mintz, I'm glad to know you," said he earnestly. Nothing now remained for the committee to do but to expend their allotted fund to the best purpose. Their notion of the proper method was typically commercial. They thought to buy off an epidemic. Many times this has been tried. Never yet has it succeeded. It embodies one of the most dangerous of popular hygienic fallacies, that the dollar can overtake and swallow the germ. CHAPTER XXIII CREEPING FLAME For sheer uncertainty an epidemic is comparable only to fire on shipboard. The wisest expert can but guess at the time or place of its catastrophic explosion. It may thrust forth here and there a tongue of threat, only to subside and smoulder again. Sometimes it "sulks" for so protracted a period that danger seems to be over. Then, without warning, comes swift disaster with panic in its train. But one man in all Worthington knew, early, the true nature of the disease which quietly crept among the Rookeries licking up human life, and he was well trained in keeping his own counsel. In this crisis, whatever Dr. Surtaine may have lacked in scrupulosity of method, his intentions were good. He honestly believed that he was doing well by his city in veiling the nature of the contagion. Scientifically he knew little about it save in the most general way; and his happy optimism bolstered the belief that if only secrecy could be preserved and the fair repute of the city for sound health saved, the trouble would presently die out of itself. He looked to his committee to manage the secrecy. Unfortunately this particular form of trouble hasn't the habit of dying out quietly and of itself. It has to be fought and slain in the open. As Dr. Surtaine's committee hadn't the faintest notion of how to handle their five-thousand-dollar appropriation, they naturally consulted the Honorable Tip O'Farrell, agent for and boss of the Rookeries. And as the Honorable Tip had a very definite and even eager notion of what might be done with that amount of ready cash, he naturally volunteered to handle the fund to the best advantage, which seemed quite reasonable, since he was familiar with the situation. Therefore the disposition of the money was left to him. Do not, however, oh high-minded and honorable reader, be too ready to suppose that this was the end of the five thousand dollars, so far as the Rookeries are concerned. Politicians of the O'Farrell type may not be meticulous on points of finance. But they are quite likely to be human. Tip O'Farrell had seen recently more misery than even his toughened sensibilities could uncomplainingly endure. Some of the fund may have gone into the disburser's pocket. A much greater portion of it, I am prepared to affirm, was distributed in those intimate and effective forms of beneficence which, skillfully enough managed, almost lose the taint of charity. O'Farrell was tactful and he knew his people. Many cases over which organized philanthropy would have blundered sorely, were handled with a discretion little short of inspired. Much wretchedness was relieved; much suffering and perhaps some lives saved. The main issue, nevertheless, was untouched. The epidemic continued to spread beneath the surface of silence. O'Farrell wasn't interested in that side of it. He didn't even know what was the matter. What money he expended on that phase of the difficulty was laid out in perfecting his system of guards, so that unauthorized doctors couldn't get in, or unauthorized news leak out. Also he continued to carry on an irregular but costly traffic in dead bodies. Meantime, the Special Committee of the Old Home Week Organization, thus comfortably relieved of responsibility and the appropriation, could now devote itself single-mindedly to worrying over the "Clarion." According to Elias M. Pierce, no mean judge of men, there was nothing to worry about in that direction. That snake, he considered, was scotched. It might take time for said snake, who was a young snake with a head full of poison (his uncomplimentary metaphor referred, I need hardly state, to Mr. Harrington Surtaine), to come to his serpentine senses; but in the end he must realize that he was caught. The committee wasn't so smugly satisfied. Time was going on and there was no word, one way or the other, from the "Clarion" office. Inside that office more was stirring than the head of it knew about. On a warmish day, McGuire Ellis, seated at his open window, had permitted the bland air of early June to lull him to a nap, which was rudely interrupted by the intrusion of a harsh point amongst his waistcoat buttons. Stumbling hastily to his feet he confronted Dr. Miles Elliot. "Wassamatter?" he demanded, in the thick tones of interrupted sleep. "What are you poking me in the ribs for?" "McBurney's point," observed the visitor agreeably. "Now, if you had appendicitis, you'd have yelped. You haven't got appendicitis." "Much obliged," grumped Mr. Ellis. "Couldn't you tell me that without a cane?" "I spoke to you twice, but all you replied was 'Hoong!' As I speak only the Mandarin dialect of Chinese--" "Sit down," said Ellis, "and tell me what you're doing in this den of vice and crime." "Vice and crime is correct," confirmed the physician. "You're still curing cancer, consumption, corns, colds, and cramps in print, for blood money. I've come to report." McGuire Ellis stared. "What on?" "The Rookeries epidemic." "Quick work," the journalist congratulated him sarcastically. "The assignment is only a little over two months old." "Well, I might have guessed, any time in those two months, but I wanted to make certain." "_Are_ you certain?" "Reasonably." "What is it?" "Typhus." "What's that? Something like typhoid?" "It bears about the same relation to typhoid," said the Doctor, eyeing the other with solemnity, "as housemaid's knee does to sunstroke." "Well, don't get funny with me. I don't appreciate it. Is it very serious?" "Not more so than cholera," answered the Doctor gravely. "Hey! Then why aren't we all dead?" "Because it doesn't spread so rapidly. Not at first, anyway." "How does it spread? Come on! Open up!" "Probably by vermin. It's rare in this country. There was a small epidemic in New York in the early nineties. It was discovered early and confined to one tenement. There were sixty-three people in the tenement when they clapped on the quarantine. Thirty-two of 'em came out feet first. The only outside case was a reporter who got in and wrote a descriptive article. He died a week later." "Sounds as if this little affair of the Rookeries might be some story." "It is. There may have been fifty deaths to date; or maybe a hundred. We don't know." Ellis sat back in his chair with a bump. "Who's 'we'?" "Dr. Merritt and myself." "The Health Bureau is on, then. What's Merritt going to do about it?" "What can he do?" "Give out the whole thing, and quarantine the district." "The Mayor will remove him the instant he opens his mouth, and kill any quarantine. Merritt will be discredited in all the papers--unless the 'Clarion' backs him. Will it?" Ellis dropped his head in his hand. "I don't know," he said finally. "Not running an honest paper this week?" sneered the physician lightly. "By the way, where's Young Hopeful?" "See here, Dr. Elliot," said Ellis. "You're a good old scout. If you hadn't poked me in the stomach I believe I'd tell you something." "Try it," encouraged the other. "All right. Here it is. They've put it up to Hal Surtaine pretty stiff, this gang of perfectly honorable business men, leading citizens, pillars of the church, porch-climbers, and pickpockets who run the city. I guess you know who I mean." Dr. Elliot permitted himself a reserved grin. "All right. They've got him in a clove hitch. At least it looks so. And one of the conditions for letting up on him is that he suppresses all news of the epidemic. Then they'll have the 'Clarion' right where they've got every other local paper." "Nice town, Worthington," observed Dr. Elliot, with easy but apparently irrelevant affability. But McGuire Ellis went red. "It's easy enough for you to sit there and be righteous," he said. "But get this straight. If the young Boss plays straight and tells 'em all to go to hell, it'll be a close call of life or death for the paper." "And if he doesn't?" "Easy going. Advertising'll roll in on us. Money'll come so fast we can't dodge it. Are you so blame sure what _you'd_ do in those conditions?" "Mac," said the brusque physician, for the first time using the familiar name: "between man and man, now: _what_ about the boy?" From the ancient loyalty of his race sprang McGuire Ellis's swift word, "My hand in the fire for any that loves him." "But--stanch, do you think?" persisted the other. "I hope it." "Well, I wish it was you owned the 'Clarion.'" "Do you, now? I don't. How do _I_ know what I'd do?" "Human lives, Mac: human lives, on this issue." "Who else knows it's typhus, Doc?" "Nobody but Merritt and me. You bound me in confidence, you know." "Good man!" "There's one other ought to know, though." "Who's that?" "Norman Hale." "The Reverend Norman's all right. We could do with a few more ministers like him around the place. But why, in particular, should he know?" "For one thing, he suspects, anyway. Then, he's down in the slums there most of the time, and he could help us. Besides, he's got some rights of safety himself. He's out in the reception room now, under guard of that man-eating office boy of yours." "All right, if you say so." Accordingly the Reverend Norman Hale was summoned, sworn to confidence, and informed. He received the news with a quiver of his long, gaunt features. "I was afraid it was something like that," he said. "What's to be done?" "I'll tell you my plan," said Ellis, who had been doing some rapid thinking. "I'll put the best man in the office on the story, and give him a week on it if necessary. How soon is the epidemic likely to break, Doctor?" "God knows," said the physician gravely. "Well, we'll hurry him as much as we can. Our reporter will work independently. No one else on the staff will know what he's doing. I'll expect you two and Dr. Merritt to give him every help. I'll handle the story myself, at this end. And I'll see that it's set up in type by our foreman, whom I can trust to keep quiet. Therefore, only six people will know about it. I think we can keep the secret. Then, when I've got it all in shape, two pages of it, maybe, with all the facts, I'll pull a proof and hit the Boss right between the eyes with it. That'll fetch him, I _think_." The others signified their approval. "But can't we do something in the mean time?" asked Dr. Elliot. "A little cleaning-up, maybe? Who owns that pest-hole?" "Any number of people," said the clergyman. "It's very complicated, what with ground leases, agencies, and trusteeships. I dare say some of the owners don't even know that the property belongs to them." "One of the things we might find out," said Ellis. "Might be interesting to publish." "I'll send you a full statement of what I got about the burials in Canadaga County," promised Dr. Elliot. "Coming along, Mr. Hale?" "No. I want to speak to Mr. Ellis about another matter." The clergyman waited until the physician had left and then said, "It's about Milly Neal." "Well, what about her?" "I thought you could tell me. Or perhaps Mr. Surtaine." Remembering that encounter outside of the road house weeks before, Ellis experienced a throb of misgiving. "Why Mr. Surtaine?" he demanded. "Because he's her employer." Ellis gazed hard at the young minister. He met a straight and clear regard which reassured him. "He isn't, now," said he. "She's left?" "Yes." "That's bad," worried the clergyman, half to himself. "Bad for the paper. 'Kitty the Cutie' was a feature." "Why did she leave?" "Just quit. Sent in word about ten days ago that she was through. No explanation." "Mr. Ellis, I'm interested in Milly Neal," said the minister, after some hesitation. "She's helped me quite a bit with our club down here. There's a lot in that girl. But there's a queer, un-get-at-able streak, too. Do you know a man named Veltman?" "Max? Yes. He's foreman of our composing-room." "She's been with him a great deal lately." "Why not? They're old friends. No harm in Veltman." "He's a married man." "That so! I never knew that. Well, 'Kitty the Cutie' ought to be keen enough to take care of herself." "There's the difficulty. She doesn't seem to want to take care of herself. She's lost interest in the club. For a time she was drinking heavily at some of the all-night places. And this news of her quitting here is worst of all. She seemed so enthusiastic about the work." "Her job's open for her if she wants to come back." "Good! I'm glad to hear that. It gives me something to work on." "By the way," said McGuire Ellis, "how do you like the paper?" Sooner or later he put this question to every one with whom he came in contact. What he found out in this way helped to make him the journalistic expert he was. "Pretty well," hesitated the other. "What's wrong with it?" inquired Ellis. "Well, frankly, some of your advertising." "We're the most independent paper in this town on advertising," stated Ellis with conviction. "I know you dropped the Sewing Aid Society advertisement," admitted Hale. "But you've got others as bad. Yes, worse." "Show 'em to me." Leaning forward to the paper on Ellis's desk, the visitor indicated the "copy" of Relief Pills. Ellis's brow puckered. "You're the second man to kick on that," he said. "The other was a doctor." "It's a bad business, Mr. Ellis. It's the devil's own work. Isn't it hard enough for girls to keep straight, with all the temptations around them, without promising them immunity from the natural results of immorality?" "Those pills won't do the trick," blurted Ellis. "They won't?" cried the other in surprise. "So doctors tell me." "Then the promise is all the worse," said the clergyman hotly, "for being a lie." "Well, I have troubles enough over the news part of the paper, without censoring the ads. When an advertiser tries to control news or editorial policy, I step in. Otherwise, I keep out. There's my platform." Hale nodded. "Let me know how I can help on the epidemic matter," said he, and took his leave. "The trouble with really good people," mused McGuire Ellis, "is that they always expect other people to be as good as they are. And _that's_ expensive," sighed the philosopher, turning back to his desk. While Ellis and his specially detailed reporter were working out the story of the Rookeries epidemic in the light of Dr. Elliot's information, Hal Surtaine, floundering blindly, sought a solution to his problem, which was the problem of his newspaper. Indeed, it meant, as far as he could judge, the end of the "Clarion" in a few months, should he decide to defy Elias M. Pierce. Against the testimony of the injured nurse, he could scarcely hope to defend the libel suits successfully. Even though the assessed damages were not heavy enough to wreck him, the loss of prestige incident to defeat would be disastrous. Moreover, there was the chance of imprisonment or a heavy fine on the criminal charge. Furthermore, if he decided to print the account of the epidemic (always supposing that he could discover what it really was), practically every local advertiser would desert him in high dudgeon over the consequent ruin of the centennial celebration. Was it better to publish an honest paper for the few months and die fighting, or compromise for the sake of life, and do what good he might through the agency of a bound, controlled, and tremulous journalistic policy? For the first time, now that the crisis was upon him, he realized to the full how profoundly the "Clarion" had become part of his life. At the outset, only the tool of a casual though fascinating profession, later, the lever of an expanding and increasing power, the paper had insensibly intertwined with every fiber of his ambition. To a degree that startled him he had come to think, feel, and hope in terms of this thought-machine which he owned, which owned him. It had taken on for him a character; his own, yet more than his own and greater. For it spoke, not of his spirit alone, but with a composite voice; sometimes confused, inarticulate, only semi-expressive; again as with the tongues of prophecy. His ship was beginning to find herself; to evolve, from the anarchic clamor of loose effort, a harmony and a personality. With the thought came a warm glow of loyalty to his fellow workers; to the men who, knowing more than he knew, had yet accepted his ideals so eagerly and stood to them so loyally; to the spirit that had flashed to meet his own at that first "Talk-It-Over" breakfast, and had never since flagged; to Ellis, the harsh, dogged, uncouth evangel, preaching his strange mission of honor; to Wayne, patient, silent, laborious, dependable; to young Denton, a "gentleman unafraid," facing the threats of E.M. Pierce; even to portly Shearson, struggling against such dismal odds for _his_ poor little principle of journalism--to make the paper pay. How could he, their leader, recant his doctrine before these men? Yet--and the qualifying thought dashed cold upon his enthusiasm--what did the alternative imply for them? The almost certain loss of their places. To be thrown into the street, a whole officeful of them, seeking jobs which didn't exist, on the collapse of the "Clarion." Could he do that to them? Did he not, at least, owe them a living? Some had come to the "Clarion" from other papers, even from other cities, attracted by its enterprise, by its "ginger," by the rumor of a fresh and higher standard in journalism. What of them? For himself he had only reputation, ethical standard, the intangible matter of existence to consider. For them it might be hunger and want. Here, indeed, was a conflicting ideal. His mind reverted to the things he had been able to get done, in the few months of his editorial tenure; the success of some of his campaigns, the educational effect of them even where they had failed of their definite object, as had the fight for the Consumers' League. One article had put the chief gambler of the city on the defensive to an extent which seriously crippled his business. Another had killed forever the vilest den in town, a saloon back-room where vicious women gathered in young boys and taught them to snuff cocaine, and had led to an anti-cocaine ordinance, which the saloon element, who instinctively resented any species of "reform" as a threat against business, opposed. Whereupon, Hal, in an editorial on the prohibition movement, had tartly pointed out that where the saloons were openly vaunting themselves disdainful of public decency, the public was in immediate process of wiping out the saloons. Which citation of fact caused a cold chill to permeate the spines of the liquor interests, and led the large, sleek leader of that clan to make a surpassingly polite and friendly call upon Hal, who, rather to his surprise, found that he liked the man very much. They had parted, indeed, on hearty terms and the understanding that there would be no further objection to the "coke-law" from the saloon keepers. There wasn't. The liquor men kept faith. Though aiming at independence in politics, the "Clarion" had been drawn into a number of local political fights, and more than once had gone wrong in advocating an apparently useful measure only to find itself serving some hidden politician's selfish ends. These same politicians, Hal came in time to learn, were not all bad, even the worst of them. The toughest and crookedest of the grafting aldermen felt a genuine interest and pride in his vice-sodden ward, and when the "Clarion" had helped to abate a notorious nuisance there, dropped in to see the editor. "Mr. Surtaine," said he, chewing his cigar with some violence, "you and me ain't got much in common. You think I'm a grafter, and I think you're a lily-finger. But I came to thank you just the same for helping us out over there." "Glad to help you out when I can," said Hal, with his disarming smile: "or to fight you when I have to." "Shake," said the heeler. "I guess we'll average down into pretty good enemies. Lemme know whenever I can do you a turn." Then there was the electric light fight. Since the memory of man Worthington had paid the most exorbitant gas rate in the State. The "Clarion" set out to inquire why. So insistent was its thirst for information that the "Banner" and the "Telegram" took up the cudgels for the public-spirited corporation which paid ten per cent dividends by overcharging the local public. Thereupon the "Clarion" pointed out that the president of the gas company was the second largest stockholder in the "Telegram," and that the local editorial writer of the "Banner" derived, for some unexplained reason, a small but steady income in the form of salary, from the gas company. This exposure was regarded as distinctly "not clubby" by the newspaper fraternity in general: but the public rather enjoyed it, and made such a fuss over it that a legislative investigation was ordered. Meantime, by one of those curious by-products of the journalistic output, the local university preserved to itself the services of its popular professor of political economy, who was about to be discharged for _lèse majesté_, in that he had held up as an unsavory instance of corporate control, the Worthington Gas Company, several of whose considerable stockholders were members of the institution's board of trustees. The "Clarion" made loud and lamentable noises about this, and the board reconsidered hastily. Louder and much more lamentable were the noises made by the president of the university, the Reverend Dr. Knight, a little brother of one of the richest and greatest of the national corporations, in denunciation of the "Clarion": so much so, indeed, that they were published abroad, thereby giving the paper much extensive free advertising. Pleasant memories, these, to Hal. Not always pleasant, perhaps, but at least vividly interesting, the widely varying types with whom his profession had brought him into contact: McGuire Ellis, "Tip" O'Farrell, the Reverend Norman Hale, Dr. Merritt, Elias M.-- The mechanism of thought checked with a wrench. Pierce had it in his power to put an end to all this. He must purchase the right to continue, and at Pierce's own price. But was the price so severe? After all, he could contrive to do much; to carry on many of his causes; to help build up a better and cleaner Worthington; to preserve a moiety of his power, at the sacrifice of part of his independence; and at the same time his paper would make money, be successful, take its place among the recognized business enterprises of the town. As for the Rookeries epidemic upon which all this turned, what did he really know of it, anyway? Very likely it had been exaggerated. Probably it would die out of itself. If lives were endangered, that was the common chance of a slum. Then, of a sudden, memory struck at his heart with the thrust of a more vital, more personal, dread. For one day, wandering about in the stricken territory, he had seen Esmé Elliot entering a tenement doorway. CHAPTER XXIV A FAILURE IN TACTICS Miss Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot, home from her wanderings, stretched her hammock and herself in it between two trees in a rose-sweet nook at Greenvale, and gave herself up to a reckoning of assets and liabilities. Decidedly the balance was on the wrong side. Miss Esmé could not dodge the unseemly conclusion that she was far from pleased with herself. This was perhaps a salutary frame of mind, but not a pleasant one. If possible, she was even less pleased with the world in which she lived. And this was neither salutary nor pleasant. Furthermore, it was unique in her experience. Hitherto she had been accustomed to a universe made to her order and conducted on much the same principle. Now it no longer ran with oiled smoothness. Her trip on the Pierce yacht had been much less restful than she had anticipated. For this she blamed that sturdy knight of the law, Mr. William Douglas. Mr. Douglas's offense was that he had inveigled her into an engagement. (I am employing her own term descriptive of the transaction.) It was a crime of brief duration and swift penalty. The relation had endured just four weeks. Possibly its tenure of life might have been longer had not the young-middle-aged lawyer accepted, quite naturally, an invitation to join the cruise of the Pierce family and _his fiancée_. The lawyer's super-respectful attitude toward his principal client disgusted Esmé. She called it servile. For contrast she had the memory of another who had not been servile, even to his dearest hope. There were more personal contrasts of memory, too; subtler, more poignant, that flushed in her blood and made the mere presence of her lover repellent to her. The status became unbearable. Esmé ended it. In plain English, she jilted the highly eligible Mr. William Douglas. To herself she made the defense that he was not what she had thought, that he had changed. This was unjust. He had not changed in the least; he probably never would change from being the private-secretary type of lawyer. Toward her, in his time of trial, he behaved not ill. Justifiably, he protested against her decision. Finding her immovable, he accepted the prevailing Worthingtonian theory of Miss Elliot's royal prerogative as regards the male sex, and returned, miserably enough, to his home and his practice. Another difficulty had arisen to make distasteful the Pierce hospitality. Kathleen Pierce, in a fit of depression foreign to her usually blithe and easy-going nature, had become confidential and had blurted out certain truths which threw a new and, to Esmé, disconcerting light upon the episode of the motor accident. In her first appeal to Esmé, it now appeared, the girl had been decidedly less than frank. Therefore, in her own judgment of Hal and the "Clarion," Esmé had been decidedly less than just. In her resentment, Esmé had almost quarreled with her friend. Common honesty, she pointed out, required a statement to Harrington Surtaine upon the point. Would Kathleen write such a letter? No! Kathleen would not. In fact, Kathleen would be d-a-m-n-e-d, darned, if she would. Very well; then it remained only (this rather loftily) for Esmé herself to explain to Mr. Surtaine. Later, she decided to explain by word of mouth. This would involve her return to Worthington, which she had come to long for. She had become sensible of a species of homesickness. In some ill-defined way Harrington Surtaine was involved in that nostalgia. Not that she had any desire to see him! But she felt a certain justifiable curiosity--she was satisfied that it was justifiable--to know what he was doing with the "Clarion," since her established sphere of influence had ceased to be influential. Was he really as unyielding in other tests of principle as he had shown himself with her? Already she had altered her attitude to the extent of admitting that it _was_ principle, even though mistaken. Esmé had been subscribing to the "Clarion," and studying it; also she had written, withal rather guardedly, to sundry people who might throw light on the subject; to her uncle, to Dr. Hugh Merritt, her old and loyal friend largely by virtue of being one of the few young men of the place who never had been in love with her (he had other preoccupations), to young Denton the reporter, who was a sort of cousin, and to Mrs. Festus Willard, who, alone of the correspondents, suspected the underlying motive. From these sundry informants she garnered diverse opinions; the sum and substance of which was that, on the whole, Hal was fighting the good fight and with some success. Thereupon Esmé hated him harder than before--and with considerably more difficulty. On a late May day she had slipped quietly back into Worthington. That small portion of the populace which constituted Worthington society was ready to welcome her joyously. But she had no wish to be joyously welcomed. She didn't feel particularly joyous, herself. And society meant going to places where she would undoubtedly meet Will Douglas and would probably not meet Hal Surtaine. Esmé confessed to herself that Douglas was rather on her conscience, a fact which, in itself, marked some change of nature in the Great American Pumess. She decided that society was a bore. For refuge she turned to her interest in the slums, where the Reverend Norman Hale, for whom she had a healthy, honest respect and liking, was, so she learned, finding his hands rather more than full. Always an enthusiast in her pursuits, she now threw herself into this to the total exclusion of all other interests. To herself she explained this on the theory that she needed something to occupy her mind. Something _else_ she really meant, for Mr. Harrington Surtaine was now occupying it to an inexcusable extent. She wished very much to see Harrington Surtaine, and, for the first time in her life, she feared what she wished. What she had so loftily announced to Kathleen Pierce as her unalterable determination toward the editor of the "Clarion" wasn't as easy to perform as to promise. Yet, the explanation of the partial error, into which the self-excusatory Miss Pierce had led her, was certainly due him, according to her notions of fair play. If she sent for him to come, he would, she shrewdly judged, decline. The alternative was to beard him in his office. In the strengthening and self-revealing solitude of her garden, this glowing summer day, Esmé sat trying to make up her mind. A daring brown thrasher, his wings a fair match for the ruddy-golden glow in the girl's eyes, hopped into her haunt, and twittered his counsel of courage. "I'll do it NOW," said Esmé, and the bird, with a triumphant chirp of congratulation, swooped off to tell the news to the world of wings and flowers. To the consequent interview there was no witness. So it may best be chronicled in the report made by the interviewer to her friend Mrs. Festus Willard, who, in the cool seclusion of her sewing-room, was overwhelmed by a rush of Esmé to the heart, as she put it. Not having been apprised of Miss Elliot's conflicting emotions since her departure, Mrs. Willard's mind was as a page blank for impressions when her visitor burst in upon her, pirouetted around the room, appropriated the softest corner of the divan, and announced spiritedly: "You needn't ask me where I've been, for I won't tell you; or what I've been doing, for it's my own affair; anyway, you wouldn't be interested. And if you insist on knowing, I've been revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon--at three o'clock P.M." "What do you mean, moon?" inquired Mrs. Willard, unconsciously falling into a pit of slang. "The moon we all cry for and don't get. In this case a haughty young editor." "You've been to see Hal Surtaine," deduced Mrs. Willard. "You have guessed it--with considerable aid and assistance." "What for?" "On a matter of journalistic import," said Miss Elliot solemnly. "But you don't cry for Hal Surtaine," objected her friend, reverting to the lunar metaphor. "Don't I? I'd have cried--I'd have burst into a perfect storm of tears--for him--or you--or anybody who so much as pointed a finger at me, I was so scared." "Scared? You! I don't believe it." "I don't believe it myself--now," confessed Esmé, candidly. "But it felt most extremely like it at the time." "You know I don't at all approve of--" "Of me. I know you don't, Jinny. Neither does he." "What did you do to him?" "Me? I cooed at him like a dove of peace. "But he was very stiff and proud He said, 'You needn't talk so loud,'" chanted Miss Esmé mellifluously. "He didn't!" "Well, if he didn't, he meant it. He wanted to know what the big, big D-e-v, dev, I was doing there, anyway." "Norrie Elliot! Tell me the truth." "Very well," said Miss Elliot, aggrieved. "_You_ report the conversation, then, since you won't accept my version." "If you would give me a start--" "Just what he wouldn't do for me," interrupted Esmé. "I went in there to explain something and he pointed the finger of scorn at me and accused me of frequenting low and disreputable localities." "Norrie!" "Well," replied the girl brazenly, "he said he'd seen me about the Rookeries district; and if that isn't a low--" "Had he?" "Nothing more probable, though I didn't happen to see him there." "What were you doing there?" "Precisely what he wanted to know. He said it rather as if he owned the place. So I explained in words of one syllable that I went there to pick edelweiss from the fire escapes. Jinny, dear, you don't know how hard it is to crowd 'edelweiss' into one syllable until you've tried. It splutters." "So do you," said the indignant Mrs. Willard. "You do worse; you gibber. If you weren't just the prettiest thing that Heaven ever made, some one would have slain you long ago for your sins." "Pretty, yourself," retorted Esmé. "My real charm lies in my rigid adherence to the spirit of truth. Your young friend Mr. Surtaine scorned my floral jest. He indicated that I ought not to be about the tenements. He said there was a great deal of sickness there. That was why I was there, I explained politely. Then he said that the sickness might be contagious, and he muttered something about an epidemic and then looked as if he wished he hadn't." "I've heard some talk of sickness in the Rookeries. Ought you to be going there?" asked the other anxiously. "Mr. Surtaine thinks not. Quite severely. And in elderly tones. Naturally I asked him what kind of an epidemic it was. He said he didn't know, but he was sure the place was dangerous, and he was surprised that Uncle Guardy hadn't warned me. Uncle Guardy _had_, but I don't do everything I'm warned about. So then I asked young Mr. Editor why, as he knew there was a dangerous epidemic about, he should warn little me privately instead of warning the big public, publicly." "Meddlesome child! Can you never learn to keep your hands off?" "I was spurring him to his editorial duties. "But he was very proud and stiff ... He said that he would tell me, if--" lilted Miss Esmé, rising to do a _pas seul_ upon the Willards' priceless Anatolian rug. "Sit down," commanded her hostess. "If--what?" "If nothing. Just if. That's the end of the song. Don't you know your Lewis Carroll? "I sent a message to the fish, I told them, 'This is what I wish.' The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer--" "I don't want to know about the fish," disclaimed Mrs. Willard vehemently. "I want to know what happened between you and Hal Surtaine." "And you the Vice-President of the Poetry Club!" reproached Esmé. "Very well. He was very proud and--Oh, I said that before. But he really was, this time. He said, 'Our last discussion of the policy of the "Clarion" closed that topic between us.' Somebody called him away before I could think of anything mean and superior enough to answer, and when he came back--always supposing he isn't still hiding in the cellar--I was no longer present." "Then you didn't give him the message you went for." "No. Didn't I say I was scared?" Mrs. Willard excused herself, ostensibly to speak to a maid; in reality to speak to a telephone. On her return she made a frontal attack:-- "Norrie, what made you break your engagement to Will Douglas?" "Why? Don't you approve?" "Did you break it for the same reason that drove you into it?" "What reason do you think drove me into it?" "Hal Surtaine." "He didn't!" she denied furiously. "And you didn't break it because of him?" "No! I broke it because I don't want to get married," cried the girl in a rush of words. "Not to Will Douglas. Or to--to anybody. Why should I? I don't want to--I won't," she continued, half laughing, half sobbing, "go and have to bother about running a house and have a lot of babies and lose my pretty figure--and get fat--and dowdy--and slow-poky--and old. Look at Molly Vane: twins already. She's a horrible example. Why do people always have to have children--" She stopped, abruptly, herself stricken at the stricken look in the other's face. "Oh, Jinny, darling Jinny," she gasped; "I forgot! Your baby. Your little, dead baby! I'm a fool; a poor little silly fool, chattering of realities that I know nothing about." "You will know some day, my dear," said the other woman, smiling valiantly. "Don't deny the greatest reality of all, when it comes. Are you sure you're not denying it now?" The sunbeams crept and sparkled, like light upon ruffled waters, across Esmé's obstinately shaken head. "Perhaps you couldn't help hurting him. But be sure you aren't hurting yourself, too." "That's the worst of it," said the girl, with one of her sudden accesses of sweet candor. "I needn't have hurt him at all. I was stupid." She paused in her revelation. "But he was stupider," she declared vindictively; "so it serves him right." "How was he stupider?" "He thought," said Esmé with sorrowful solemnity, "that I was just as bad as I seemed. He ought to have known me better." The older woman bent and laid a cheek against the sunny hair. "And weren't you just as bad as you seemed?" "Worse! Anyway, I'm afraid so," said the confessional voice, rather muffled in tone. "But I--I just got led into it. Oh, Jinny, I'm not awfully happy." Mrs. Willard's head went up and she cocked an attentive ear, like an expectant robin. "Some one outside," said she. "I'll be back in a moment. You sit there and think it over." Esmé curled back on the divan. A minute later she heard the curtains part at the end of the dim room, and glanced up with a smile, to face, not Jeannette Willard, but Hal Surtaine. "You 'phoned for me, Lady Jinny," he began: and then, with a start, "Esmé! I--I didn't expect to find you here." "Nor I to see you," she said, with a calmness that belied her beating heart. "Sit down, please. I have something to tell you. It's what I really came to the office to say." "Yes?" "About Kathleen Pierce." Hal frowned. "Do you think there can be any use--" "Please," she begged, with uplifted eyes of entreaty. "She--she didn't tell me the truth about that interview with your reporter. It was true; but she made me think it wasn't. She confessed to me, and she feels very badly. So do I. I believed that you had deliberately made that up, about her saying that she didn't turn back because she wanted to catch a train. I believed, too, that the editorial was written after our--our talk. I'm sorry." Hal stood above her, looking rather stern, and a little old and worn, she thought. "If that is an apology, it is accepted," he said with surface politeness. To him she was, in that moment, a light-minded woman apologizing for the petty misdeed, and paying no heed to the graver wrong that she had done him. Jeannette Willard could have set him right in a word; could have shown him what the girl felt, unavowedly to herself but with underlying conviction, that for so great an offense no apology could suffice; nothing short of complete surrender. But Mrs. Willard was not there to help out. She was waiting hopefully, outside. "And that is all?" he said, after a pause, with just a shade of contempt in his voice. "All," she said lightly, "unless you choose to tell me how the 'Clarion' is getting on." "As well as could be expected. We pay high for our principles. But thus far we've held to them. You should read the paper." "I do." "To expect your approval would be too much, I suppose." "No. In many ways I like it. In fact, I think I'll renew my subscription." It was innocently said, without thought of the old playful bargain between them, which had terminated with the mailing of the withered arbutus. But to Hal it seemed merely a brazen essay in coquetry; an attempt to reconstitute the former relation, for her amusement. "The subscription lists are closed, on the old terms," he said crisply. "Oh, you couldn't have thought I meant that!" she whispered; but he was already halfway down the room, on the echo of his "Good-afternoon, Miss Elliot." As before, he turned at the door. And he carried with him, to muse over in the depths of his outraged heart once more, the mystery of that still and desperate smile. Any woman could have solved it for him. Any, except, possibly, Esmé Elliot. "It didn't come out as I hoped, Festus," said the sorrowful little Mrs. Willard to her husband that evening. "I don't know that Hal will ever believe in her again. How can he be so--so stupidly unforgiving!" "Always the man's fault, of course," said her big husband comfortably. "No. She's to blame. But it's the fault of men in general that Norrie is what she is; the men of this town, I mean. No man has ever been a man with Norrie Elliot." "What have they been?" "Mice. It's a tradition of the place. They lie down in rows for her to trample on. So of course she tramples on them." "Well, I never trampled on mice myself," observed Festus Willard. "It sounds like uncertain footing. But I'll bet you five pounds of your favorite candy against one of your very best kisses, that if she undertakes to make a footpath of Hal Surtaine she'll get her feet hurt." "Or her heart," said his wife. "And, oh, Festus dear, it's such a real, warm, dear heart, under all the spoiled-childness of her." CHAPTER XXV STERN LOGIC Between Dr. Surtaine and his son had risen a barrier built up of reticences. At the outset of their reunion, they had chattered like a pair of schoolboy friends, who, after long separation, must rehearse to each other the whole roster of experiences. The Doctor was an enthusiast of speech, glowingly loquacious above knife and fork, and the dinner hours were enlivened for his son by his fund of far-gathered business incidents and adventures, pointed with his crude but apt philosophy, and irradiated with his centripetal optimism. He possessed and was conscious of this prime virtue of talk, that he was never tiresome. Yet recently he had noted a restlessness verging to actual distaste on Hal's part, whenever he turned the conversation upon his favorite topic, the greatness of Certina and the commercial romance of the proprietary medicine business. In his one close fellowship, the old quack cultivated even the minor and finer virtues. With Hal he was scrupulously tactful. If the boy found _his_ business an irksome subject, he would talk about the boy's business. And he did, sounding the Pæan of Policy across the Surtaine mahogany in a hundred variations supported by a thousand instances. But here, also, Hal grew restive. He responded no more willingly to leads on journalism than to encomiums of Certina. Again the affectionate diplomat changed his ground. He dropped into the lighter personalities; chatted to Hal of his new friends, and was met halfway. But in secret he puzzled and grieved over the waning of frankness and freedom in their intercourse. Dinner, once eagerly looked forward to by both as the best hour of the day, was now something of an ordeal, a contact in which each must move warily, lest, all unknowing, he bruise the other. Of the underlying truth of the situation Dr. Surtaine had no inkling. Had any one told him that his son dared neither speak nor hear unreservedly, lest the gathering suspicions about his father, against which he was fighting while denying to himself their very existence, should take form and substance of unescapable facts, the Doctor would have failed utterly of comprehension. He ascribed Hal's unease and preoccupation to a more definite cause. Sedulous in everything which concerned his "Boyee," he had learned something of the affair with Esmé Elliot, and had surmised distressfully how hard the blow had been: but what worried him much more were rumors connecting Hal's name with Milly Neal. Several people had seen the two on the day of the road-house adventure. Milly, with her vivid femininity was a natural mark for gossip. The mere fact that she had been in Hal's runabout was enough to set tongues wagging. Then, sometime thereafter, she had resigned her position in the "Clarion" office without giving any reason, so Dr. Surtaine understood. The whole matter looked ugly. Not that the charlatan would have been particularly shocked had Hal exhibited a certain laxity of morals in the matter of women. For this sort of offense Dr. Surtaine had an easy toleration, so long as it was kept decently under cover. But that his son should become entangled with one of his--Dr. Surtaine's--employees, a woman under the protection of his roof, even though it were but the factory roof--that, indeed, would be a shock to his feudal conception of business honor. Such dismal considerations the Doctor had suppressed during an unusually uncomfortable dinner, on a hot and thunder-breeding evening when both of the Surtaines had painfully talked against time. Immediately after the meal, Hal, on pretext of beating the storm to the office, left. His father took his forebodings to the club and attempted to lose them along with several rubbers of absent-minded bridge. Meantime the woman for whom his loyalty was concerned as well as for his son, was stimulating a resolution with the slow poison of liquor around the corner from the "Clarion" office. Nine P.M. is slack tide in a morning newspaper office. The afternoon news is cleared up; the night wires have not yet begun to buzz with outer-world tidings of importance; the reporters are still afield on the evening's assignments. As the champion short-distance sleeper of his craft, which distinction he claimed for himself without fear of successful contradiction, McGuire Ellis was wont to devote half an hour or more, beginning on the ninth stroke of the clock, to the cultivation of Morpheus. Intruders were not popular at that hour. To respect for this habitude, Reginald Currier, known to mortals as Bim, Guardian of the Sacred Gates, had been rigorously educated. But Bim had a creed of his own which mollified the rigidity of specific standards, and one tenet thereof was the apothegm, "Once a 'Clarion' man, always a 'Clarion' man," the same applying to women. Therefore, when Milly Neal appeared at the gate at 9.05 in the evening, the Cerberus greeted her professionally with a "How goes it, Miss Cutie?" and passed her in without question. She went straight to the inner office. "Hoong!" grunted McGuire Ellis, rubbing his eyes in a desperate endeavor to disentangle dreams from actualities. "What are _you_ doing here?" "I want to see Mr. Surtaine." Something in the girl's aspect put Ellis on his guard. "What do you want to see him about?" he asked. "I don't see any Examination Bureau license pinned to you, Ellis," she retorted hardily. "The Boss is out." "I don't believe it." "All right," said McGuire Ellis equably. "I'm a liar." "Then you're the proper man for a 'Clarion' job," came the savage retort. "Come off, Kitty. Don't be young!" "I want to see Hal Surtaine," she said with sullen insistence. Shaking himself out of his chair, the associate editor started across the room to the telephone at Hal's desk, but halted sharply in front of the girl. "You've been drinking," he said. "What's it to you if I have?" The man's hand fell on her shoulder. There was no familiarity in the act; only comradeship. Comradeship in the voice, also, and concern, as he said, "Cut it, Neal, cut it. There's nothing in it. You're too good stuff to throw yourself away on that." "Don't you worry about me." She shook off his hand, and seated herself. "Still working at the Certina joint?" "No. I'm not working." "See here, Neal: what made you quit us?" The girl withheld speech back of tight-pressed lips. "Oh, well, never mind that. The point is, we miss you. We miss the 'Cutie' column. It was good stuff. We want you back." Still silence. "And I guess you miss us. You liked the job, didn't you?" The girl gazed past him with ashen eyes. "Oh, my God!" she said under her breath. "Your job back and no questions asked," pursued Ellis, with an outer cheerfulness which cost him no small effort in the face of his growing conviction of some tragic issue pending. Now she looked directly at him, and there was a flicker of flame in her regard. "Do you know what a Hardscrabbler is, Ellis?" she asked. The other rubbed his head in puzzlement. "I don't believe I do," he confessed. "Then you won't understand when I tell you that I'm one and that I'd see your 'Clarion' blazing in hell before I'd take another cent of your money." The fire died from her face, and in her former tone of dulled stolidity she repeated, "I want to see Mr. Surtaine." With every word uttered, McGuire Ellis's forebodings had grown darker. That Hal Surtaine, carried away by the girl's vividness and allure, might have involved himself in a _liaison_ with her was credible enough. He recalled the episode of the road-house, on that stormy spring day. That Hal would have deserted her afterward, Ellis could not believe. And yet--and yet--why otherwise should she come with the marks of fierce misery in her face, demanding an interview at this time? On one point Ellis's mind was swiftly made up: she should not see Hal. "Miss Neal," he said quietly, "you can sit there all night, but you can't see the Boss unless you tell me your errand." The girl rose, slowly. "Oh, I guess you all stand together here," she said. "Well, remember: I gave him his chance to square himself." When Hal came up from a visit to the new press half an hour later, Ellis had decided to say nothing of the call. Later, he must have it out with his employer, for the sake of both of them and of the "Clarion." But it was an ordeal which he was glad to postpone. Nothing more, he judged, was to be feared that night, from Milly Neal; he could safely sleep over the problem. Having a certain sufficient religion of his own, McGuire Ellis still believes that a merciful Heaven forgives us our sins; but, looking back on that evening's decision, he sometimes wonders whether it ever fully pardons our mistakes. While he sat reading proof on the status of a flickering foreign war, the Hardscrabbler's daughter, in a quiet back room farther down the block, slowly sipped more gin; and gin is fire and fury to the Hardscrabbler blood. At eleven o'clock that evening, Dr. Surtaine, returning to that massive hybrid of architecture which he called home, found Milly Neal waiting in his study. "Well, Milly: what's up?" he asked, cheerfully enough in tone, but with a sinking heart. "I want to know what you're going to do for me?" "Something wrong?" "You've got a right to know. I'm in trouble." "What kind of trouble?" "The kind you make money out of with your Relief Pills." "Milly! Milly!" cried the quack, in honest distress. "I wouldn't have believed it of you." "Yes: it's terrible, isn't it!" mocked the girl. "What are you going to do about it? It's up to you." "Up to me?" queried the Doctor, bracing himself for what was coming. "Don't you promise, with your Relief Pills to get women out of trouble?" Dr. Surtaine's breath came a little easier. Perhaps she was not going to force the issue upon him by mentioning Hal. If this were diplomacy, he would play the game. "Certainly not! Certainly not!" he protested with a scandalized air. "We've never made such a claim. It would be against the law." "Look at this." She held up in her left hand a clipping, showing a line-cut of a smiling woman, over the caption "A Happy Lady"; and announcing in wide print, "Every form of suppression relieved. The most obstinate cases yield at once. Thousands of once desperate women bless the name of Relief Pills." "I don't want to look at it," said the Doctor. "No, I guess you don't! It's from the 'Clarion,' that clipping. And the Neverfail Company that makes the fake abortion pills is _you_." "It doesn't mean--that. You've misread it." "It _does_ mean just that to every poor, silly fool of a girl that reads it. What else can it mean? 'The most obstinate cases'--" "Don't! Don't!" There was a pause, then: "Of course, you can't stay in the Certina factory after this." A bitter access of mirth seized the girl. The sound of it "rang cracked and thin, Like a fiend's laughter, heard in Hell, Far down." "Of course!" she mocked. "The pious and holy Dr. Surtaine couldn't have an employee who went wrong. Not even though it was his lies that helped tempt her." "Don't try to put it off on me. You are suffering for your own sin, my girl," accused the quack. "I'll stand my share of it; the suffering and the disgrace, if there is any. But you've got to stand your share. You promised to get me out of this and I believed you." "_I_! Promised to--" "In plain print." She tossed the clipping at him with her left hand. The other she held in her lap, under a light wrap which she carried. "And I believed you. I thought you were square. Then when the pills didn't help, I went to a doctor, and he laughed and said they were nothing but sugar and flavoring. He wouldn't help me. He said no decent doctor would. _You_ ain't a decent doctor. You're a lying devil. Are you going to help me out?" "If you had come in a proper spirit--" "That's enough. I've got my answer." She rose slowly to her feet. "After I found out what was wrong with me, I went home to my father. I didn't tell him about myself. But I told him I was quitting the Certina business. And he told me about my mother, how you sent her to her death. One word from me would have brought him here after you. _This_ time he wouldn't have missed you. Then they'd have hung him, I suppose. That's why I held my tongue. You killed my mother, you and your quack medicines; and now you've done this to me." Her hand jerked up out of the wrap. "I don't see where you come in to live any longer," said Milly Neal deliberately. Dr. Surtaine looked into the muzzle of a revolver. There was a step on the soft rug outside, the curtain of the door to Dr. Surtaine's right parted, and Hal appeared. He carried a light stick. "I thought I heard--" he began. Then, seeing the revolver, "What's this! Put that down!" "Don't move, either of you," warned the girl. "I haven't said my say out. You're a fine-matched pair, you two! Him with his sugar-pills and you, Hal Surtaine, with your lying promises." Lying promises! The phrase, thus used in the girl's mouth against the son, struck to the father's heart, confirming his dread. It _was_ Hal, then. For the moment he forgot his instant peril, in his sorrow and shame. "I don't know why I shouldn't kill you both," went on the half-crazed girl. "That'd even the score. Two Surtaines against two Neals, my mother and me." The light of slaying was in her eyes, as she stiffened her arm. Just a fraction of an inch the arm swerved, for a streak of light was darting toward her. Hal had taken the only chance. He had flung his cane, whirling, in the hope of diverting her aim, and had followed it at a leap. The two shots were almost instantaneous. At the second, the quack reeled back against the wall. The girl turned swiftly upon Hal, and as he seized her he felt the cold steel against his neck. The touch seemed to paralyze him. Strangely enough, the thought of death was summed up in a vast, regretful curiosity to know why all this was happening. Then the weapon fell. "I can't kill _you_!" cried the girl, in a bursting sob, and fell, face down, upon the floor. Hal, snatching up the revolver, ran to his father. "I'm all right," declared the quack. "Only the shoulder. Just winged. Get me a drink from that decanter." His son obeyed. With swift, careful hands he got the coat off the bulky-muscled arm, and saw, with a heart-lifting relief, that the bullet had hardly more than grazed the flesh. Meantime the girl had crawled, still sobbing, to a chair. "Did I kill him?" she asked, covering her eyes against what she might see. "No," said Hal. "Listen," commanded Dr. Surtaine. "Some one's coming. Keep quiet." He walked steadily to the door and called out, "It's nothing. Just experimenting with a new pistol. Go back to your bed." "Who was it?" asked Hal. "The housekeeper. There's just one thing to do for the sake of all of us. This has _got_ to be hushed up. I'm going out to telephone. Don't let her get away, Hal." "Get away! Oh, my God!" breathed the girl. Hal walked over to her, his heart wrung with pity. "Why did you come here to kill my father, Milly?" he asked. She stooped to pick up the "Happy Lady" clipping from the floor. "That's why," she said. "Good God!" said Hal. "Have you been taking that--those pills?" "Taking 'em? Yes, and believing in 'em, till I found out it was all damned lies. And your fine and noble and honest 'Clarion' advertises the lies just as your fine and noble and honest father makes the pills. They're no good. Do you get that? And when I came here and told your father he'd got to help me out of my trouble, what do you think he told me? That I'd lost my job at the factory!" "Who is the man, Milly?" "What business is that of yours?" "I'll go after him and see that he marries you if it takes--" "Oh, he'd be only too glad to marry me if he could. He can't. Poor Max has got a wife somewhere--" "Max? It's Veltman!" cried Hal. "The dirty scoundrel." "Oh, don't blame Max," said the girl wearily. "It isn't his fault. After you threw me down"--Hal winced--"I started to run wild. It's the Hardscrabbler in me. I took to drinking and running around, and Max pulled me out of it, and I went to live with him. I didn't care. Nothing mattered, anyway. And I wasn't afraid of anything like this happening, because I thought the pills made it all safe." Here Dr. Surtaine reappeared. "I've got a detective coming that I can trust." "A detective?" cried Hal. "Oh, Dad--" "You keep out of this," retorted his father, in a tone such as his son had never heard from him before. "I guess you've done enough. The question is"--he continued as regardless of Milly as if she had been deaf--"how to hush her up." "You've had your chance to hush me up," said the girl sullenly. "Any money within reason--" "I don't want your money." "Listen here, then. You tried to murder me. That's ten years in State's prison. Now, if ever I hear of you opening your mouth about this, I'll send you up. I guess that will keep you quiet. Now, then, what's your answer?" "Give me a glass of whiskey, and I'll tell you." Hal poured her out a glass. She passed a swift hand above it. "Here's peace and quiet in the proprietary medicine business," she said, and drank. "I guess that'll--make--some--stir," she added, with an effect of carefully timing her words. Her body lapsed quite gently back into the chair. The two men ran and bent over her as the glass tinkled and rolled on the floor. There was an acrid, bitter scent in the air. They lifted their heads, and their eyes met in a haggard realization. No longer was there any need of hushing up Milly Neal. CHAPTER XXVI THE PARTING The doorbell buzzed. "That's the detective," said Dr. Surtaine to Hal. "Stay here." He wormed himself painfully into an overcoat which concealed his scarified shoulder, and went out. In a few moments he and the officer reappeared. The latter glanced at the body. "Heart disease, you say?" he asked. "Yes: valvular lesion." "Better 'phone the coroner's office, eh?" "Not necessary. I can give a certificate. The coroner will be all right," said Dr. Surtaine, with an assurance derived from the fact that a year before he had given that functionary five hundred dollars for not finding morphine in the stomach of a baby who had been dosed to death on the "Sure Soother" powders. "That goes," agreed the detective. "What undertaker?" "Any. And, Murtha, while you're at the 'phone, call up the 'Clarion' office and tell McGuire Ellis to come up here on the jump, will you?" Left to themselves, with the body between them, father and son fell into a silence, instinct with the dread of estranging speech. Hal made the first effort. "Your shoulder?" he said. "Nothing," declared the Doctor. "Later on will do for that." He brooded for a time. "You can trust Ellis, can you?" "Absolutely." "It's the newspapers we have to look out for. Everything else is easy." He conducted the detective, who had finished telephoning, into the library, set out drinks and cigars for him and returned. Nothing further was said until Ellis arrived. The associate editor's face, as he looked from the dead girl to Hal, was both sorrowful and stern. But he was there to act; not to judge or comment. He consulted his watch. "Eleven forty-five," he said. "Better give out the story to-night." "Why not wait till to-morrow?" asked Dr. Surtaine. "The longer you wait, the more it will look like suppressing it." "But we _want_ to suppress it." "Certainly," agreed Ellis. "I'm telling you the best way. Fix the story up for the 'Clarion' and the other papers will follow our lead." "If we can arrange a story that they'll believe--" began Hal. "Oh, they won't believe it! Not the kind of story we want to print. They aren't fools. But that won't make any difference." "I should think it would be just the sort of possible scandal our enemies would catch at." "You've still got a lot to learn about the newspaper game," replied his subordinate contemptuously. "One newspaper doesn't print a scandal about the owner of another. It's an unwritten law. They'll publish just what we tell 'em to--as we would if it was their dis--I mean misfortune. Come, now," he added, in a hard, businesslike voice, "what are we going to call the cause of death?" "Miss Neal died of heart disease." "Call it heart disease," confirmed the other. "Circumstances?" This was a poser. Dr. Surtaine and Hal looked at each other and looked away again. "How would this do?" suggested Ellis briskly. "Miss Neal came here to consult Dr. Surtaine on an emergency in her department at the factory, was taken ill while waiting, and was dead when he--No; that don't fit. If she died without medical attendance, the coroner would have to give a permit for removal. Died shortly after Dr. Surtaine's arrival in spite of his efforts to revive her; that's it!" "Just about how it happened," said Dr. Surtaine gratefully. "For publication. Now give me the real facts--under that overcoat of yours." Dr. Surtaine started, and winced as the movement tweaked the raw nerves of his wound. "There's nothing else to tell," he said. "You brought me here to lie for you," said the journalist. "All right, I'm ready. But if I'm to lie and not get caught at it, I must know the truth. Now, when I see a man wearing an overcoat over a painful arm, and discover what looks like a new bullet hole in the wall of the room, I think a dead body may mean something more than heart disease." "I don't see--" began the charlatan. But Hal cut him short. "For God's sake," he cried in a voice which seemed to gouge its way through his straining throat, "let's have done with lies for once." And he blurted out the whole story, eking out what he lacked in detail, by insistent questioning of his father. When they came to the part about the Relief Pills, Ellis looked up with a bitter grin. "Works out quite logically, doesn't it?" he observed. Then, walking over to the body, he looked down into the face, with a changed expression. "Poor little girl!" he muttered. "Poor little Kitty!" He whirled swiftly upon the Surtaines. "By God, _I'd_ like to write her story!" he cried. The outburst was but momentary. Instantly he was his cool, capable self again. "You've had experience in this sort of thing before, I suppose?" he inquired of Dr. Surtaine. "Yes. No! Whaddye mean?" blustered the quack. "Only that you'll know how to fix the police and the coroner." "No call for any fixing." "So all that I have to do is to handle the newspapers," pursued the other imperturbably. "All right. There'll be no more than a paragraph in any paper to-morrow. 'Working-Girl Drops Dead,' or something like that. You can sleep easy, gentlemen." So obvious was the taunt that Hal stared at his friend, astounded. Upon the Doctor it made no impression. "Say, Ellis. Do something for me, will you?" he requested. "Wire to Belford Couch, the Willard, Washington, to come on here by first train." "Couch? Oh, that's Certina Charley, isn't it? Your professional fixer?" "Never mind what he is. You'll be sure to do it, won't you?" "No. Do it yourself," said Ellis curtly, and walked out without a good-night. "Well, whaddye think of that!" spluttered Dr. Surtaine. "That fellow's getting the big-head." Hal made no reply. He had dropped into a chair and now sat with his head between his hands. When he raised his face it was haggard as if with famine. "Dad, I'm going away." "Where?" demanded his father, startled. "Anywhere, away from this house." "No wonder you're shaken, Boyee," said the other soothingly. "We'll talk about it in the morning. After a night's rest--" "In this house? I couldn't close my eyes for fear of what I'd see!" "It's been a tough business. I'll give you a sleeping powder." "No; I've got to think this out: this whole business of the Relief Pills." Dr. Surtaine was instantly on the defensive. "Don't go getting any sentimental notions now, Hal. It's a perfectly legal business." "So much the worse for the law, then." "You talk like an anarchist!" returned his father, shocked. "Do you want to be better than the law?" "If the law permits murder--I do," said Hal, very low. Indignation rose up within Dr. Surtaine: not wholly unjustified, considering his belief that Hal was primarily responsible for the tragedy. "Are your hands so clean, then?" he asked significantly. "God knows, they're not!" cried the son, with passion. "I didn't know. I didn't realize." "Yet you turn on me--" "Oh, Dad, I don't want to quarrel with you. All I know is, I can't stay in this house any more." Dr. Surtaine pondered for a few minutes. Perhaps it was better that the boy should go for a time, until his conscience worked out a more satisfactory state of mind. His own conscience was clear. He was doing business within the limits set for him by the law and the Post Office authorities, which had once investigated the "Pills" and given them a clean bill. Milly Neal should not put the onus of her own recklessness and immorality upon him. Nevertheless, he was glad that Belford Couch was coming on; and, by the way, he must telephone a dispatch to him. Rising, he addressed his son. "Where shall you go?" "I don't know. Some hotel. The Dunstan." "Very well. I'll see you at the office soon, I suppose. Good-night." All Hal's world whirled about him as he saw his father leave the room. What seemed to him a monstrous manifestation of chance had overwhelmed and swept him from all moorings. But was it chance? Was it not, rather, as McGuire Ellis had suggested, the exemplification of an exact logic? The closing of the door behind his father sent a current of air across the room in which a bit of paper on the floor wavered and turned. Hal picked it up. It was the clipping from the "Clarion"--his newspaper--which Milly Neal had brought as her justification. One line of print stood out, writhing as if in an uncontrollable access of diabolic glee: "Only $1 A Box: Satisfaction Guaranteed"; and above it the face of the Happy Lady, distorted by the crumpling of the paper, smirked up at him with a taunt. He thought to interpret that taunt in the words which Veltman had used, aforetime:-- "What's _your_ percentage?" CHAPTER XXVII THE GREATER TEMPTING Journalistic Worthington ran true to type in the Milly Neal affair. No newspaper published more than a paragraph about the "sudden death." Suicide was not even hinted at in print. But newspaperdom had its own opinion, magnified and colored by the processes of gossip, over which professional courtesy exercised no control. That the girl had killed herself was generally understood: that there had been a shooting, previous to her death, was also current. Eager report recalled and exaggerated the fact that she had been seen with Hal Surtaine at a dubious road-house some months previous. The popular "inside knowledge" of the tragedy was that Milly had gone to the Surtaine mansion to force Hal's hand, failing in which she had shot him, inflicting an inconsiderable wound, and then killed herself; and that Dr. Surtaine had thereupon turned his son out of the house. Hal's removal to the hotel served to bear out this surmise, and the Doctor's strategic effort to cover the situation by giving it out that his son's part of the mansion was being remodeled--even going to the lengths of actually setting a force of men to work there--failed to convince the gossips. Between the two men, the situation was now most difficult. Quite instinctively Hal had fallen in with his father's theory that the primal necessity, after the tragedy, was to keep everything out of print. That by so doing he wholly subverted his own hard-won policy did not, in the stress of the crisis, occur to him. Later he realized it. Yet he could see no other course of action as having been possible to him. The mere plain facts of the case constituted an accusation against Dr. Surtaine, unthinkable for a son to publish against his father. And Hal still cozened himself into a belief in the quack's essential innocence, persuading his own reason that there was a blind side to the man which rendered it impossible for him to see through the legal into the ethical phases of the question. By this method he was saving his loyalty and affection. But so profound had been the shock that he could not, for a time, endure the constant companionship of former days. Consequently the frequent calls which Dr. Surtaine deemed it expedient to make for the sake of appearances, at Hal's hotel, resulted in painful, rambling, topic-shifting talks, devoid of any human touch other than the pitiful and thwarted affection of two personalities at hopeless odds. "Least said soonest mended" was a favorite aphorism of the experienced quack. But in this tangle it failed him. It was he who first touched on the poisoned theme. "Look here, Boy-ee," said he, a week after the burial. "We're both scared to death of what each of us is thinking. Let's agree to forget this until you are ready to talk it out with me." "What good will talk do?" said Hal drearily. "None at present." His father sighed. He had hoped for a clean breast of it, a confession of the intrigue that should leave the way open to a readjustment of relations. "So let's put the whole thing aside." "All right," agreed Hal listlessly. "I suppose you know," he added, "before we close the subject, that I've ordered the Relief Pills advertising out of the 'Clarion.'" "You needn't have bothered. It won't be offered again." Silence fell between them. "I've about decided to quit that line," the charlatan resumed with an obvious effort. "Not that it isn't strictly legal," he added, falling back upon his reserve defense. "But it's too troublesome. The copy is ticklish; I've had to write all those ads. myself. And, at that, there's some newspapers won't accept 'em and others that want to edit 'em. Belford Couch and I have been going over the whole matter. He's the diplomat of the concern. And we've about decided to sell out. Anyway," he added, brightening, "there ain't hardly money enough in a side-line like the Pills to pay for the trouble of running it separate." If Dr. Surtaine had looked for explicit approval of his virtuous resolution, he was disappointed. Yet Hal experienced, or tried to believe that he experienced, a certain factitious glow of satisfaction at this proof that his father was ready to give up an evil thing even without being fully convinced of its wrongfulness. This helped the son to feel that, at least, his sacrifice had been made for a worthy affection. Still, he had no word to say except that he must get to the office. The Doctor left with gloom upon his handsome face. With McGuire Ellis, Hal's association had become even more difficult than with the Doctor. Since his abrupt and unceremonious departure from the room of death, in the belief in Hal's guilt, Ellis had maintained a purely professional attitude toward his employer. For a time, in his wretchedness and turmoil of spirit, Hal had scarcely noticed Ellis's withdrawal of fellowship, vaguely attributing his silence to unexpressed sympathy. But later, when he broached the subject of Milly's death, he was met with a stony avoidance which inspired both astonishment and resentment. Sub-normal as he now was in nervous strength and tension, he shrank from having it out with Ellis. But he felt, for the first time in his life, forlorn and friendless. On his part McGuire Ellis brooded over a deep anger. He was not a man to yield lightly of his best; but he had given to Hal, first a fine loyalty, and later, as they grew into closer association, a warm if rather reticent affection. For the rough idealist had found in his employer an idealism not always as clear and intelligent as his own, yet often higher and finer; and along with the professional protectiveness which he had assumed over the younger man's inexperience had come an honest admiration and far-reaching hopes. Now he saw in his chief one who had betrayed his cause through a weak and selfish indulgence. The clear-sighted journalist knew that the newspaper owner with a shameful secret binds his own power in the coils of that secret. And fatally in error as he was as to the nature of the entanglement in which Hal was involved, he foresaw the inevitable effect of the situation upon the "Clarion." Moreover, he was bitterly disappointed in Hal as a man. Had his superior "gone on the loose" and contracted a _liaison_ with some woman of the outer world, Ellis would have passed over the abstract morality of the question. But to take advantage of a girl in his own employ, and then so cruelly to leave her to her fate,--there was rot at the heart of the man who could do that. The excision of the offending "Relief Pills" ad. after the culmination of the tragedy, was simply a sop to hypocrisy. Only once had Ellis made any reference to Milly's death. On the day of her funeral Max Veltman had disappeared, without notice. A week later he reported for duty, shaken and pallid. "Do you want to take him back?" Ellis inquired of Hal. Hal's first impulse was to say "No"; but he conquered it, remembering Milly Neal's pitiful generosity toward her lover. "Where has he been?" he asked. "Drunk, I guess." "What do you think?" "I think yes." "All right, if he's sobered up. Tell him it mustn't happen again." There was a gleam in McGuire Ellis's eye. "Suppose _you_ tell him that it mustn't happen again. It would come with more force from you." Hal whirled in his chair. "Mac, what's the matter with you?" "Nothing. I was just thinking of 'Kitty the Cutie.'" "What were you thinking of her?" "Only that Max Veltman would have gone through hell-fire for her. And, from his looks, he's been through and had the heart burned out of him." With that he resumed his proof-reading in a dogged silence. To Hal's great relief Veltman kept out of his way. The man seemed dazed with misery, but did his work well enough. Rumors reached the office that he was striving to gain a refuge from his sufferings by giving all his leisure hours to work in the Rookeries district, under the direction of the Reverend Norman Hale. Ellis was of the opinion that his mind was somewhat affected, and that he would bear watching a bit; and was the more disturbed in that Veltman shared the secret of the great epidemic "spread," now practically completed for the "Clarion's" publishing or suppressing. Ellis held the belief that, now, Hal would order it suppressed. The man who had shirked his responsibility to Milly Neal could hardly be relied on for the stamina necessary to such an exploitation. The time was at hand for the decision to be made. The two physicians, Elliot and Merritt, pressed for publication. Every day, they pointed out, not only meant a further risk of life, but also increased the impending danger of a general outburst which would find the city wholly unprepared. On the other hand, the journalists, Ellis and Wayne, held out for delay. They perceived the one weak point in their case, that neither a dead body nor a living patient had as yet come to the hands of the constituted authorities for diagnosis. The sole determination had been made on corpses carried across the line and now probably impossible of identification. The committee fund was doing its work of concealment effectually. But Fate tripped the strategy board at last, using the Reverend Norman Hale as its agent. Since Milly Neal's death, the Reverend Norman had tried to find time to call on Hal Surtaine, and had failed. He wished to talk with him about Veltman. Three days after the funeral he had hauled the "Clarion's" foreman out of the gutter, stood between him and suicide for one savage night of struggle, and listened to the remorse of a haunted soul. Being a man and a brother, the Reverend Norman forbore blame or admonition; being a physician of the inner being, he devised work for the wreck in his slums, and had driven him relentlessly that he might find peace in the service of others. Slowly the man won back to sanity. One obsession persisted, however, disturbing to the clergyman. Veltman was willing to do penance himself, in any possible way, but he insisted that, since the Surtaines shared his guilt, they, too, must make amends, before his dead mistress could rest in her grave. Apprised by Veltman of the whole wretched story, Hale secretly sympathized with this view of the Surtaines' responsibility. But he was concerned lest, in Veltman, it take some form of direct vengeance. When he learned that Veltman had returned to the "Clarion" composing-room to work, the minister, unable to spare time for a call from his almost sleepless activities, sent an urgent request to Hal to meet him at the Recreation Club. Hal being out, Ellis got the note, observed the "Immediate and Important" on the envelope, read the contents, and set out for the rendezvous. He never got there. For at the corner of Sperry Street he was met by a messenger who knew him. "The back room at McManey's," said the urchin. "He's in there, waitin'." Ellis entered the place. At a table sat the Reverend Norman Hale, with an expression of radiant happiness on his gaunt face. The barkeeper, who, on his own initiative, had just brought in a steaming hot drink, stood watching him with unfeigned concern. Hale welcomed Ellis warmly, and drew a chair close for him. "You sent for Mr. Surtaine," said Ellis. "Did I?" asked the other vaguely. "I forget. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters, now. Ellis, I've found out the secret." "What secret?" "The great secret. The solution," replied the young minister, buoyantly. "All that is necessary is to get the bodies." "Yes, of course," agreed the other, with rising uneasiness. "But they smuggle them out as fast--" "They won't when I've told them. McGuire Ellis,"--he gripped his companion suddenly with fingers that clamped like a burning vise,--"_I can bring the dead back to life_." "Tell me about it. But take a swallow of this first." Ellis pushed the hot drink toward him. "You're cold." "Nothing but excitement. The glory of it! All this suffering and grief and death--" "Wait a minute. I want a drink myself." He turned to the bartender. "Get an auto," he whispered. "Quick!" "There's a rig outside," said the man. "I seen he was sick when he came in, so I sent for it." "Good man!" said Ellis. "Telephone to Dr. Merritt at the Health Office to meet me instantly at the hospital. Tell him why. Now, Mr. Hale," he added, "come on. Let's get along. You can tell me on the way." Still rapt with his vision the minister rose, and permitted himself to be guided to the carriage. Once inside he fell into a semi-stupor. Only at the hospital, where Dr. Merritt was waiting to see him safe within the isolation ward, did he come to his rightful senses, cool, and, as ever, thoughtful of everything but himself. "You've got your chance for a diagnosis at last, Doctor," he whispered to the health officer. Half an hour later, Dr. Merritt came out to the waiting journalist. "Typhus," he said, with grievous exultation. "Unmistakably and officially typhus. We've got our case. Only, I wish to God it had been any of the rest of us." "Will he die?" queried Ellis. "God knows. I should say his chance was worse than even. He's worn out from overwork." For assurance, Dr. Elliot was sent for and added his diagnosis. Ellis got authoritative interviews with both men, and the "Clarion's" great, potential sensation was now fully ripe for print. Denton the reporter had done the previous work well. His "story," leaded out and with subheads, ran flush to two pages of the paper, and every paragraph of it struck fire. It would, as Ellis said, set off a ton of dynamite beneath sleepy Worthington. That night Veltman "pulled" a proof, and Ellis stayed far into the morning, pasting up a dummy of the article for Hal's inspection and final judgment. It was on Thursday that Norman Hale was taken to the hospital. Friday noon McGuire Ellis laid before his principal the carefully constructed dummy with the brief comment: "There's the epidemic story." Hal accepted and read it in silence. Once or twice he made a note. When he had finished, he turned to find Ellis's gaze fixed upon him. "We ought to run it Monday," said Ellis. "We can round it all up by then." Monday is the dead day of journalism, the day for which news articles which do not demand instant production are reserved, both to liven up a dull paper and because the sensation produced is greater. However, the sensation inevitable to the publishing of this article, as Hal instantly realized, would be enormous on any day. "It's big stuff," said he, with a long breath. Ellis nodded. "Shall I release it for Monday?" "N-n-no," came the dubious reply. "It's been held already for ten days." "Then what does it matter if we hold it a little longer?" "Human lives, maybe. Isn't that matter enough?" "That's only a guess. I've got to have time on this," insisted Hal. "It's the most vital question of policy that the paper has had to face." "Policy!" grunted Ellis savagely. "Besides, I've given my word to the Chamber of Commerce Committee that we wouldn't publish any epidemic news without due warning to them." "Then it's to be killed?" "'Wait for orders' proof," said Hal stonily. "I might have known," sneered Ellis, with an infinite depth of scorn, and went to bear the bitter message to Wayne. While the "Clarion" policy trembled in the balance, Dr. Surtaine's Committee on Suppression was facing a new crisis brought about by the striking down of Norman Hale, of which they received early information. Should he die, as was believed probable, the news, whether or not the full facts got into print, would surely become a focus for the propagation of alarmist rumors. In their distress, the patriots of commerce paid a hasty visit to their chief, craving counsel. Having foreseen the possibility of some such contingency, Dr. Surtaine was ready with a plan. The committee would enlarge itself, call a meeting of the representative men of the town, organize an Emergency Health Committee of One Hundred, and take the field against the onset of pernicious malaria. This show of fighting force would allay public alarm, a large fund would be raised, the newspapers would be kept in thorough subjection, and the disease could be wiped out without undue publicity or the imperiling of Old Home Week. "What about the 'Clarion'?" inquired Hollenbeck, of the committee. "They're still holding off." "Safe as your hat," Dr. Surtaine assured the questioner with a smile. "At the meeting you told us you couldn't answer for your son's paper," Stensland recalled. "I can now," said the confident quack. "Just you leave it to me." He went direct to the "Clarion" office, revolving in his mind the impending interview. For the first time since the tragedy he anticipated a meeting with his son without embarrassment, for now he had a definite topic to talk about, difficult though it might be. Finding Hal at the editorial desk he went direct to the point. "Boy-ee, the epidemic is spreading." "I know it." "I'm going to take hold of the matter personally, from now on." "In what way?" "By organizing a committee of one hundred to cover the city and make a scientific campaign." "Are you going to let people know that it's typhus?" "Sh-sh-sh! So you know, do you? Well, the important thing now is to see that others don't find out. Don't even whisper the word. Malaria's our cue; pernicious malaria. What's the use of scaring every one to death? We'll call a public meeting for next week--" "Publicity is the last thing you want, I should think." "Semi-public, I should have said. The epidemic has gone so far that people are beginning to take notice. We've got to reassure them and the right kind of an Emergency Health Committee is the way to do it, Belford Couch is working up the meeting now. I've kept him over on purpose for it. He's the best little diplomat in the proprietary business. And Yours Truly will be elected Chairman of the Committee. It'll cost us a ten-thousand-dollar donation to the fund, but it's worth it to the business." "To the business? I don't quite see how." "Simple as a pin! When it's all over and we're ready to let the account of it get into print, Dr. Surtaine, proprietor of Certina, will be the principal figure in the campaign. What's that worth in advertising to the year's business? Not that I'm doing it for that. I'm doing it to save Old Home Week." "With a little profit on the side." Dr. Surtaine deemed it politic to ignore the tone of the commentary. "Why not? Nobody's hurt by it. You'll be on the Central Committee, Boy-ee." "No; I don't think so." "Why not?" "I think I'd better keep out of the movement, Dad." "As you like. And you'll see that the 'Clarion' keeps out of it, too?" "So that's it." "Yes, Boy-ee: that's it. You can see, for yourself, that a newspaper sensation would ruin everything just now--and also ruin the paper that sprung it." "So I heard from Elias M. Pierce sometime since." "For once Pierce is right." "Are you asking me to suppress the epidemic story?" "To let us handle it our own way," substituted the Doctor. "We've got our campaign all figured out and ready to start. Do you know what the great danger is now?" "Letting the infection go on without taking open measures to stop it." "You're way wrong! Starting a panic that will scatter it all over the place is the real danger. Have you heard of a single case outside of the Rookeries district, so far?" Hal strove to recall the death-list on the proof. "No," he admitted. "You see! It's confined to one locality. Now, what happens if you turn loose a newspaper scare? Why, those poor, ignorant people will swarm out of the Rookeries and go anywhere to escape the quarantine that they know will come. You'll have an epidemic not localized, but general. The situation will be ten times as difficult and dangerous as it is now." Struck with the plausibility of this reasoning, Hal hesitated. "That's up to the authorities," he said. "The authorities!" cried the charlatan, in disdain. "What could they do? The damage would be done before they got ready to move. You see, we've got to handle this situation diplomatically. Look here, Boyee; what's the worst feature of an epidemic? Panic. You know the Bible parable. The seven plagues came to Egypt and ten thousand people died. The Grand Vizier said to the plagues, 'How many of my people have you slain?' The plagues said, 'A thousand.' 'What about the other nine thousand?' said the Grand Vizier. 'Not guilty!' said the plagues. 'They were slain by Fear.' Maybe it was in 'Paradise Lost' and not the Bible. But the lesson's the same. Panic is the killer." "But the disease is increasing all the time," objected Hal. "Are we to sit still and--" "Is it?" broke in the wily controversialist. "How do you account for this, then?" He drew from his pocket a printed leaflet. "Take a peek at those figures. Fewer deaths in the Rookeries this last week than in any week since March." This was true. Not infrequently there comes an inexplicable subsidence of mortality in mid-epidemic. No competent hygienist is deceived into mistaking this phenomenon for an indication of the end. Not being a hygienist Hal was again impressed. "The Health Bureau's own statistics," continued the argumentator, pushing his advantage. "With Dr. Merritt's signature at the bottom." "Dr. Merritt says that the epidemic is being fostered by secrecy, suppression, and lying." "All sentimentalism. Merritt would turn the city upside down if he had his way. Was it him that told you it was typhus?" "No. We've got a two-page story in proof now, giving the whole facts of the epidemic." "You can't publish it, Boy-ee," said his father firmly. "Can't? That sounds like an order." Adroitly Dr. Surtaine caught at the word. "An order drawn on your word of honor." "If there's any question of honor to the 'Clarion,' it's to tell the truth plainly and take the consequences." "Who said anything about the 'Clarion's honor? This is between you and me." "You'll have to speak more plainly," said Hal with a dawning dread. "Boyee, I hate to do this, but I've got to, to save the city. You gave me your word that the day you had to suppress news for your own sake, you'd quit this Don Quixotic business and treat others as decently and considerately as you treated yourself." "Go on," said Hal, in a half whisper. "Well--Milly Neal." Dr. Surtaine wet his lips nervously. "You saved yourself there by keeping the story out of the papers. Of course you were right. You were dead right. You'd have been a fool to do anything else. But there you are. And there's your promise." A nausea of the soul sickened Hal. That his father, whom he had so loved and honored, should make of the loyalty which had, at the cost of principle, protected the name of Surtaine against open disgrace, a tool wherewith to tear down his professional standards--it was like some incredible and malign jocosity of a devilish logic. Of what was going on in the quack's mind he had no inkling. He could not know that his father saw in the suppression of the suicide news, only a natural and successful effort on the part of Hal to conceal his own guilt in Milly's death. No more could Dr. Surtaine comprehend that it was the dreadful responsibility of the Surtaine quackery for which Hal had unhesitantly sacrificed the declared principle of the "Clarion." So they gazed darkly at each other across the chasm, each seeing his opponent in the blackest colors. "You hold me to that?" demanded Hal, half choked. "I have to, Boy-ee." To Dr. Surtaine the issue which he had raised was but the distasteful means to a necessary end. To Hal it meant the final capitulation to the forces against which he had been fighting since his first enlightenment. "I might as well sell the 'Clarion' now, and be done with it," he declared bitterly. "Nonsense! If you stuck to this foolishness you'd have to sell it or lose it. You'd be ruined, both in influence and in money. How would you feel when Mac Ellis, and Wayne, and all the fellows that stuck by you found themselves out of a job because of your pig-headedness? And what harm are you doing by dropping the story, anyway? We've got this thing beaten, right now. It isn't spreading. It's dropping off. What'll the 'Clarion' look like when its great sensation peters out into thin air? But by that time the harm'll be done and the whole country will think we're a plague-stricken city. Don't do all that damage and spoil everything just for a false delusion, Boyee." But Hal's mind was brooding on the fatal promise which he had so confidently made his father. One way out there was. "Since it's a question of my word to you," he said, "I could still publish the truth about Milly Neal." "No. You couldn't do that, Boyee," said his father in a tone, half sorrowful, half shamed. "No. You're right. I couldn't--God help me!" To proclaim his own father a moral criminal in his own paper was the one test which Hal lacked the power to meet. It was the world-old conflict between loyalty and principle--in which loyalty so often and so tragically wins the first combat. After all, Hal forced himself to consider, he was not serving his public ill by this particular sacrifice of principle. The official mortality figures helped him to persuade himself that the typhus was indeed ebbing. For himself, as the price of silence, there was easy sailing under the flag of local patriotism, and with every success in prospect. Yet it was with sunken eyes that he turned to the tempter. "All right," he said, with a half groan, "I give in. We won't print it." Dr. Surtaine heaved a great sigh of relief. "That's horse sense!" he cried jovially. "Now, you go ahead on those lines and you'll make the 'Clarion' the best-paying proposition in Worthington. I'll drop a few hints where they'll do the most good, and you'll see the advertisers breaking their necks to come in. Journalism is no different from any other business, Boy-ee. Live and let live. Bear and forbear. There's the rule for you. The trouble with you, Boy-ee, has been that you've been trying to run a business on pink-tea principles." "The trouble with me," said his son bitterly, "is that I've been trying to reform a city when I ought to have been reforming myself." "Oh, you're all right, Boy-ee," his affectionate and admiring father reassured him. "You're just finding yourself. As for this reform--" And he was launched upon the second measure of the Pæan of Policy when Hal cut him short by ringing a bell and ordering the boy to send McGuire Ellis to him. Ellis came up from the city room. "Kill the epidemic story, Mr. Ellis," he ordered. Red passion surged up into Ellis's face. "Kill--" he began, in a strangled voice. "Kill it. You understand?" The associate editor's color receded. He looked with slow contempt from father to son. "Oh, yes, I understand," he said. "Any other orders to-day?" Hal made no reply. His father, divining that this was no time for further speech, took his departure. McGuire Ellis went out with black despair at his heart, a soldier betrayed by his captain. And the proprietor of the "Clarion," his feet now set in the path of success and profit, turned back to his work in sodden disenchantment, sighing as youth alone sighs, and as youth sighs only when it foregoes the dream of ideals which is its immortal birthright. CHAPTER XXVIII "WHOSE BREAD I EAT" Having yielded, Hal proposed to take profit by his surrender. With a cynicism born of his bitter disappointment and self-contempt, he took a certain savage and painful satisfaction in stating the new policy editorially. "As the 'Clarion' is going to be a journalistic prostitute," said he to his father, across the luncheon table, where they were consulting on details of the new policy, "I'm going to go after the business on that basis." Dr. Surtaine was pained. Every effort of his own convenient logic he put forth to prove that, in this instance, the path of duty and of glory (financial) was one and the same. Hal refused the proffered gloss. "At least you and I can call things by their right names now," said he. But however Hal might talk, what he wrote met his elder's unqualified approval, as it appeared in the proof sent him by his son. It was a cunningly worded leading editorial, headed "Standards," and it dealt appreciatively, not to say reverently, with the commercial greatness of Worthington. Business, the editor stated, might have to adjust itself to new conditions and opinions in Worthington as elsewhere, but nobody who understood the character of the city's leading men could doubt their good purpose or ability to effect the change with the least damage to material prosperity. Meantime the fitting attitude for the public was one not of criticism but of forbearance and assistance. This was equally true of journalism. The "Clarion" admitted seeing a new light. Constructive rather than destructive effort was called for. And so forth, and so on. No intelligent reader could have failed, reading it, to understand that the "Clarion" had hauled down its flag. Yet the capitulation must not, for business reasons, be too obvious. Hal spent some toilful hours over the proof, inserting plausible phrases, covering his tracks with qualifying clauses, putting the best front on the shameful matter, with a sick but determined heart, and was about to send it up with the final "O.K." when he came out of his absorption to realize that some one was standing waiting, had been standing waiting, for some minutes at his elbow. He looked around and met the intent gaze of the foreman of the composing-room. "What is it, Veltman?" he asked sharply. "That epidemic story." "Well? What about it?" "Did you order it killed?" "Certainly. Haven't you thrown it down?" "No. It's still in type." "Throw it down at once." "Mr. Surtaine, have you thought what you are doing?" "It is no part of your job to catechize me, Veltman." "Between man and man." He stepped close to Hal, his face blazing with exaltation. "I must speak now or forever hold my peace." "Speak fast, then." "It's your last chance, this epidemic spread. Your last chance to save the 'Clarion' and yourself." "That will do, Velt--" "No, no! Listen to me. I didn't say a word when you kept Milly's suicide out of print." "I should think not, indeed!" retorted Hal angrily. "That's my shame. I ought to have seen that published if I had to set it up myself." "Perhaps you're not aware, Veltman, that I know your part in the Neal affair." "I'd have confessed to you, if you hadn't. But do you know your own? Yours and your father's?" "Keep my father out of this!" "Your own, then. Do you know that the money that bought this paper for you was coined out of the blood of deceived girls? Do you know that you and I are paid with the proceeds of the ad. that led Milly Neal to her death? Do you know that?" "And if I do, what then?" asked Hal, overborne by the man's conviction and vehemence. "Tell it!" cried the other, beating his fist upon the desk until the blood oozed from the knuckles. "Tell it in print. Confess, man, and warn others!" "Veltman, suppose we were to print that whole wretched story to-morrow, including the truth about your relations with her." "Do it! Do it!" cried the other, choked with eagerness. "I'd thank you on my knees. Penance! Give me my chance to do penance! I'll make my own confession in writing. I'll write it in my own blood if need be." "Steady, Veltman. Keep cool." "You think I'm crazy? Perhaps I am. There's a fire at my brain since she died. I loved her, Mr. Surtaine." "But you sacrificed her, Veltman," returned Hal in a gentler tone, for the man's face was livid with agony. "Don't I know it! My God, don't I know it! But _you_ can't escape the responsibility because of my sin. It was your paper that helped fool her. She believed in the paper, and in your father." "The Relief Pills advertising is out. That much I'll tell you." "Now that it's done its work. Not enough! You and I can't bring Milly back to life, Mr. Surtaine, but we can save other lives in peril. God has given you your chance, in this epidemic." "How do you know about the epidemic?" "Hasn't it taken Mr. Hale, the only friend I've got in the world? And won't it take its hundreds of other lives unless warning is given? Why doesn't the 'Clarion' speak out, Mr. Surtaine? _Why is that story ordered killed?_" "Consideration of policy which--" "Policy! Oh, my God! And the people dying! Harrington Surtaine,"--his eyes blazed into the other's with the flame of fanaticism,--"I tell you, if you don't accept this opportunity that the Lord gives you, you and your paper are damned. Do you know what it means to damn the soul of a paper? Why, man, there are people who believe in the 'Clarion' like gospel." Hal got to his feet. "Veltman, I dare say you mean well. But you don't understand this." "Don't I!" The face took on a sudden appalling savagery. "Don't I know you're bought and paid for! Sold out! That's what you've done. A bargain! A bargain! Pay my little price and I'll do your meanest bidding. I'd rather have hell burning at my heart as it burns now than what you've got rotting at yours, young Surtaine." The tensity of Hal's restraint broke. With one powerful effort he sent the foreman whirling through the open door into the hall, slammed the door after him, and stood shaking. He heard and felt the jar of Veltman's body as it struck the wall, and slumped to the floor; then the slow limp of his retreating footsteps. With a seething brain he returned to his proof--and shuddered away from it. There was blood spattered over the print. Hurriedly he thrust it aside and rang for a fresh galley. But the red spots rose between his eyes and the work, like an accusation, like a prophecy. Of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious manhood was to form and fulfill itself--he beheld this vast mechanism blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific genius, potent beyond the powers of humanity, working out the dire complications of men, and the tragic destruction of women. And he beheld himself, fast in its grip. He thrust the proof into the tube, scrawled the "O.K." order on it for the morrow, and hurried away from the office as from a place accursed. That night conscience struck at him once more, making a weapon of words from the book of a dead master. He had been reading "Beauchamp's Career"; and, seeking refuge from the torture of thought in its magic, he came upon the novelist-philosopher's damning indictment of modern journalism: _"And this Press, declaring itself independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest here, an interest there. It cannot have a conscience. It is a bad guide, a false guardian; its abject claim to be our national and popular interpreter--even that is hollow and a mockery. It is powerful only when subservient. An engine of money, appealing to the sensitiveness of money, it has no connection with the mind of the nation. And that it is not of, but apart from the people, may be seen when great crises come--in strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes like a pricked pigskin of a piper."_ Hal flung the book from him. But its accusations pursued him through the gates of sleep, and poisoned his rest. In the morning he had recovered his balance, and with it his dogged determination to see the matter through. He forced himself to read the leading editorial, finding spirit even to admire the dexterity with which he had held out the promise of good behavior to the business interests, whilst pretending to a sturdy independence. Shearson met him at the entrance to the building, beaming. "That'll bring business," said the advertising manager. "I've had half a dozen telephones already about it." "That's good," replied Hal half-heartedly. "Yes, _sir_," pursued the advertising manager: "I can smell money in the air to-day. And, by the way, I've got a tip that, for a little mild apology, E.M. Pierce will withdraw both his suits." "I'll think about it," promised Hal. He was rather surprised at the intensity of his own relief from the prospect of the court ordeal. At least, he was getting his price. McGuire Ellis was, for once, not asleep, though there was no work on his desk when Hal entered the sanctum. "Veltman's quit," was his greeting. "I'm not surprised," said Hal. "Then you've seen the editorial page this morning?" "Yes. But what has that to do with Veltman's resignation?" "Everything, I should think. Notice anything queer about the page?" "No." "Look it over again." Hal took up the paper and scrutinized the sheet. "I don't see a thing wrong," he said. "That lets me out," said Ellis grimly. "If you can't see it when you're told it's there, I guess I can't be blamed for not catching it in proof. Of course the last thing one notices is a stock line that's always been there unchanged. Look at the motto of the paper. Veltman must have chiseled out the old one, and set this in, himself, the last thing before we went to press. How do you like it? Looks to me to go pretty well with our leading editorial this morning." There between the triumphal cocks, where formerly had flaunted the braggart boast of the old "Clarion," and more latterly had appeared the gentle legend of the martyred President, was spread in letters of shame to the eyes of the "Clarion's" owner, the cynic profession of the led captain, of the prostituted pen, of all those who have or shall sell mind and soul and honor for hire;-- _"Whose Bread I Eat, his Song I Sing."_ CHAPTER XXIX CERTINA CHARLEY Mr. Belford Couch was a man of note. You might search vainly for the name among the massed thousands of "Who's Who in America," or even in those biographical compilations which embalm one's fame and picture for a ten-dollar consideration. Shout the cognomen the length of Fifth Avenue, bellow it up Walnut and down Chestnut Street, lend it vocal currency along the Lake Shore Drive, toss it to the winds that storm in from the Golden Gate to assault Nob Hill, and no answering echo would you awake. But give to its illustrious bearer his familiar title; speak but the words "Certina Charley" within the precincts of the nation's capital and the very asphalt would find a viscid voice wherewith to acclaim the joke, while Senate would answer House, and Department reply to Bureau with the curses of the stung ones. For Mr. Belford Couch was least loved where most laughed at. From the nature of his profession this arose. His was a singular career. He pursued the fleeting testimonial through the mazy symptoms of disease (largely imaginary) and cure (wholly mythical). To extract from the great and shining ones of political life commendations of Certina; to beguile statesmen who had never tasted that strange concoction into asseverating their faith in the nostrum's infallibility for any and all ailments; to persuade into fulsome print solemnly asinine Senators and unwarily flattered Congressmen--that was the touchstone of his living. Some the Demon Rum betrayed into his hands. Others he won by sheer personal persuasiveness, for he was a master of the suave plea. Again, political favors or "inside information" made those his debtors from whom he exacted and extracted the honor of their names for Dr. Surtaine's upholding. Blackmail, even, was hinted at. "What does it matter?" thought the deluded or oppressed victim. "Merely a line of meaningless indorsement to sign my name to." And within a fortnight advertising print, black and looming, would inform the reading populace of the whole country that "United States Senator Gull says of Certina: 'It is, in my opinion, unrivaled as a never-failing remedy for coughs and colds,'" with a picture, coarse-screen, libelously recognizable. Certina Charley was not a testimonial-chaser alone. Had he been, Dr. Surtaine would not have retained him at a generous salary, but would have paid him, as others of his strange species are paid, by the piece; one hundred dollars for a Representative, two hundred and fifty dollars for a Senator, and as high as five hundred for a hero conspicuous in the popular eye. The special employee of Certina was a person of diverse information and judicious counsel. His chief had not incorrectly described him as the diplomat of the trade. No small diplomacy had been required for the planning of the Emergency Committee scheme, the details of which Mr. Couch had worked out, himself. It was, as he boasted to Dr. Surtaine, "a clincher." "Look out for the medicos," he had said to Dr. Surtaine in outlining his great idea. "They're mean to handle. You can always buy or bluff a newspaper, but a doctor is different. Some of 'em you can grease, but they're the scrubs. The real fellers won't touch money, and the worst of 'em just seem to love trouble. Merritt's that kind. But we can fix Merritt by raising twenty or thirty thousand dollars and handing it over to him to organize his campaign against the epidemic. From all I can learn, Merritt has got the goods as a health officer. He knows his business. There's no man in town could handle the thing better, unless it's you, Chief, and you don't want to mix up in the active part of it. Merritt'll be crazy to do it, too. That's where we'll have him roped. You say to him, 'Take this money and do the work, but do it on the quiet. That's the condition. If you can't keep our secret, we'll have you fired and get some man that can.' The Mayor will chuck him if the committee says so. But it won't be necessary, if I've got Merritt sized up. He wants to get into this fight so bad that he'll agree to almost anything. His assistants we can square. "So much for the official end of it. But what about the run of the medical profession? If they go around diagnosing typhus, the news'll spread almost as fast as through the papers. So here's how we'll fix them. Recommend the City Council to pass an ordinance making it a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, and revocation of license to practice, for a physician to make a diagnosis of any case as a pestilential disease. The Council will do it on the committee's say-so." "Whew!" whistled the old charlatan. "That's going pretty strong, Bel. The doctors won't stand for that." "Believe me, they will. It's been tried and it worked fine, on the Coast, when they had the plague there. That's where I got the notion: but the revocation of the license is my own scheme. That'll scare 'em out of their wits. You'll find they don't dare peep about typhus. Especially as there aren't a dozen doctors in town that ever saw a case of it." "That's so," agreed his principal. "I guess you're right after all, Bel." "Sure, am I! You say you've got the newspapers fixed." "Sewed up tight." "Keno! Our programme's complete. You and Mr. Pierce and the Mayor see Merritt and get him. Call the meeting for next week. Make some good-natured, diplomatic feller chairman. Send out the call to about three hundred of your solidest men. Then we'll elect you permanent chairman, you can pick your Emergency Committee, put the resolution about pest-diagnosis up to the City Council--and there you are. My job's done. I shall _not_ be among those present." "Done, and mighty well done, Bel. You'll be going back to Washington?" "No, I guess I better stick around for a while--in case. Besides, I want a little rest." Like so many persons of the artistic temperament, Certina Charley was subject to periods of relaxation. With him these assumed the phase of strong drink, evenly and rather thickly spread over several days. On the afternoon before the carefully planned meeting, ten days after Norman Hale was taken to the hospital, the diplomat of quackery, his shoulders eased of all responsibility, sat lunching early at the Hotel Dunston. His repast consisted of a sandwich and a small bottle of well-frappéd champagne. To him, lunching, came a drummer of the patent medicine trade; a blatant and boastful fellow, from whose methods the diplomat in Mr. Belford Couch revolted. Nevertheless, the newcomer was a forceful person, and when, over two ponies of brandy ordered by the luncher in the way of inevitable hospitality, he launched upon a criticism of some of the recent Certina legislative strategy as lacking vigor (a reproach by no means to be laid to the speaker's language), Mr. Couch's tenderest feelings were lacerated. With considerable dignity for one in his condition, he bade his guest go farther and fare worse, and in mitigation of the latter's Parthian taunt, "Kid-glove fussing, 'bo," called Heaven and earth and the whole café to witness that, abhorrent though self-trumpeting was to him, no man had ever handled more delicately a prickly proposition than he had handled the Certina legislative interests. Gazing about him for sympathy he espied the son of his chief passing between the tables, and hailed him. Two casual meetings with Certina Charley had inspired in Hal a mildly amused curiosity. Therefore, he readily enough accepted an invitation to sit down, while declining a coincident one to have a drink, on the plea that he was going to work. "Say," appealed Charley, "did you hear that cough-lozenge-peddling boob trying to tell me where to get off, in the proprietary game? Me!" "Perhaps he didn't know who you are," suggested Hal tactfully. "Perhaps he don't know the way from his hand to his face with a glass of booze, either," retorted the offended one, with elaborate sarcasm. "Everybody in the trade knows me. Sure you won't have a drink?" "No, thank you." "Don't drink much myself," announced the testimonial-chaser. "Just once in a while. Weak kidneys." "That's a poor tribute from a Certina man." "Oh, Certina's all right--for those that want it. The best doctor is none too good for me when I'm off my feed." "Well, they call Certina 'the People's Doctor,'" said Hal, quoting an argument his father had employed. "One of the Chief's catchwords. And ain't it a corker! He's the best old boy in the business, on the bunk." "Just what do you mean by that?" asked Hal coldly. But Certina Charley was in an expansive mood. It never occurred to him that the heir of the Certina millions was not in the Certina secrets: that he did not wholly understand the nature of his father's trade, and view it with the same jovial cynicism that inspired the old quack. "Who's to match him?" he challenged argumentatively. "I tell you, they all go to school to him. There ain't one of our advertising tricks, from Old Lame-Boy down to the money-back guarantee, that the others haven't crabbed. Take that 'People's Doctor' racket. Schwarzman copied it for his Marovian Mixture. Vollmer ran his 'Poor Man's Physician' copy six months, on Marsh-Weed. 'Poor Man's Doctor'! It's pretty dear treatment, I tell you." "Surely not," said Hal. "Sure _is_ it! What's a doctor's fee? Three dollars, probably." "And Certina is a dollar a bottle. If one bottle cures--" "Does _what_? Quit your jollying," laughed Certina Charley unsteadily. "Cures the disease," said Hal, his suspicions beginning to congeal into a cold dread that the revelation which he had been unconfessedly avoiding for weeks past was about to be made. "If it did, we'd go broke. Do you know how many bottles must be sold to any one patron before the profits begin to come in? Six! Count them, six." "Nonsense! It can't cost so much to make as--" "Make? Of course it don't. But what does it cost to advertise? You think I'm a little drink-taken, but I ain't. I'm giving you the straight figures. It costs just the return on six bottles to get Certina into Mr. E.Z. Mark's hands, and until he's paid his seventh dollar for his seventh bottle our profits don't come in. Advertising is expensive, these days." "How many bottles does it take to cure?" asked Hal, clinging desperately to the word. "Nix on the cure thing, 'bo. You don't have to put up any bluff with me. I'm on the inside, right down to the bottom." "Very well. Maybe you know more than I do, then," said Hal, with a grim determination, now that matters had gone thus far, to accept this opportunity of knowledge, at whatever cost of disillusionment. "Go ahead. Open up." "A real cure couldn't make office-rent," declared the expert with conviction. "What you want in the proprietary game is a jollier. Certina's that. The booze does it. You ought to see the farmers in a no-license district lick it up. Three or four bottles will give a guy a pretty strong hunch for it. And after the sixth bottle it's all velvet to us, except the nine cents for manufacture and delivery." "But it must be some good or people wouldn't keep on buying it," pursued Hal desperately. "You've got all the old stuff, haven't you! The good ol' stock arguments," said Certina Charley, giggling. "The Chief has taught you the lesson all right. Must be studyin' up to go before a legislative committee. Well, here's the straight of it. Folks keep on buying Certina for the kick there is in it. It's a bracer. And it's a repeater, the best repeater in the trade." "But it must cure lots of them. Look at the testimonials. Surely they're genuine." "So's a rhinestone genuine--as a rhinestone. The testimonials that ain't bought, or given as a favor, are from rubes who want to see their names in print." "At least I suppose it isn't harmful," said Hal desperately. "No more than any other good ol' booze. It won't hurt a well man. I used to soak up quite a bit of it myself till my doc gave me an option on dyin' of Bright's disease or quittin'." "Bright's disease!" exclaimed Hal. "Oh, yes, I know: we cure Bright's disease, don't we? Well, if there's anything worse for old George W. Bright's favorite ailment than raw alcohol, then my high-priced physizzian don't know his business." "Let me get this straight," said Hal with a white face. "Do I understand that Certina--" "Say, wassa matter?" broke in Certina Charley, in concern; "you look sick." "Never mind me. You go on and tell me the truth about this thing." "I guess I been talkin' too much," muttered Certina Charley, dismayed. He gulped down the last of his champagne with a tremulous hand. "This's my second bottle," he explained. "An' brandy in between. Say, I thought you knew all about the business." "I know enough about it now so that I've got to know the rest." "You--you won't gimme away to the Chief? I didn't mean to show up his game. I'm--I'm pretty strong for the old boy, myself." "I won't give you away. Go on." "Whaddye want to know, else?" "Is there _anything_ that Certina is good for?" "Sure! Didn't I tell you? It's the finest bracer--" "As a cure?" "It's just as good as any other prup-proprietary." "That isn't the question. You say it is harmful in Bright's disease." "Why, looka here, Mr. Surtaine, you know yourself that booze is poison to any feller with kidney trouble. Rheumatism, too, for that matter. But they get the brace, and they think they're better, and that helps push the trade, too." "And that's where my money came from," said Hal, half to himself. "It's all in the trade," cried Certina Charley, summoning his powers to a defense. "There's lots that's worse. There's the cocaine dopes for catarrh; they'll send a well man straight to hell in six months. There's the baby dopes; and the G-U cures that keep the disease going when right treatment could cure it; and the methylene blue--" "Stop it! Stop it!" cried Hal. "I've heard enough." Alcohol, the juggler with men's thoughts, abruptly pressed upon a new center of ideation in Certina Charley's brain. "D'you think I like it?" he sniveled, with lachrymose sentimentality. "I gotta make a living, haven't I? Here's you and me, two pretty decent young fellers, having to live on a fake. Well," he added with solacing philosophy, "if we didn't get it, somebody else would." "Tell me one thing," said Hal, getting to his feet. "Does my father know all this that you've been telling me?" "Does the Chief _know_ it? _Does_ he? Why, say, my boy, Ol' Doc Surtaine, he _wrote_ the proprietary medicine business!" Misgivings beset the optimistic soul of Certina Charley as his guest faded from his vision; faded and vanished without so much as a word of excuse or farewell. For once Hal had been forgetful of courtesy. Gazing after him his host addressed the hovering waiter:-- "Say, Bill, I guess I been talkin' too much with my face. Bring's another of those li'l bo'ls." CHAPTER XXX ILLUMINATION Certina Charley, plus an indeterminate quantity of alcohol, had acted upon Hal's mind as a chemical precipitant. All the young man's hitherto suppressed or unacknowledged doubts of the Certina trade and its head were now violently crystallized. Hal hurried out of the hotel, the wrath in his heart for the deception so long wrought upon him chilled by a profounder feeling, a feeling of irreparable loss. He thought in that moment that his love for his father was dead. It was not. It was only his trust that was dying, and dying hard. Since that day of his first visit to the Certina factory, Hal's standards had undergone an intrinsic but unconscious alteration. Brought up to the patent medicine trade, though at a distance, he thought of it, by habit, as on a par with other big businesses. One whose childhood is spent in a glue factory is not prone to be supersensitive to odors. So, to Harrington Surtaine, those ethical and moral difficulties which would have bulked huge to one of a different training, were merely inherent phases of a profitable business. Misgivings had indeed stirred, at first. For these he had chided himself, as for an over-polite revulsion from the necessary blatancy of a broadly advertised enterprise. More searching questions, as they arose within him, he had met with the counter-evidence of the internal humanism and fair-dealing of the Certina shop, and of the position of its beloved chief in the commercial world. In the face of the Relief Pills exposure, Hal could no longer excuse his father on the ground that Dr. Surtaine honestly credited his medicines with impossible efficacies. Still, he had reasoned, the Doctor had been willing instantly to abandon this nostrum when the harm done by it was concretely brought home to him. Though this argument had fallen far short of reconciling Hal to the Surtaine standards, nevertheless it had served as a makeshift to justify in part his abandonment of the hard-won principles of the "Clarion," a surrender necessary for the saving of a loved and honored father in whose essential goodness he had still believed. Now the edifice of his faith was in ruins. If Certina itself, if the tutelary genius of the House of Surtaine, were indeed but a monstrous quackery cynically accepted as such by those in the secret, what shred of defense remained to him who had so prospered by it? Through the wreckage of his pride, his loyalty, his affection, Hal saw, in place of the glowing and benign face of Dr. Surtaine, the simulacrum of Fraud, sleek and crafty, bloated fat with the blood of tragically hopeful dupes. One great lesson of labor Hal had already learned, that work is an anodyne. From his interview with Certina Charley he made straight for the "Clarion" office. As he hurried up the stairs, the door of Shearson's room opened upon him, and there emerged therefrom a brick-red, agile man who greeted him with a hard cordiality. "Your paper certainly turned the trick. I gotta hand it to you!" "What trick?" asked Hal, not recognizing the stranger. "Selling my stock. Streaky Mountain Copper Company. Don't you remember?" Hal did remember now. It was L.P. McQuiggan. "More of the same for me, _if_ you please," continued the visitor. "I've just made the deal with Shearson. He's stuck me up on rates a little. That's all right, though. The 'Clarion' fetches the dough. I want to start the new campaign with an interview on our prospects. Is it O.K.?" "Come up and see Mr. Ellis," said Hal. Having led him to the editorial office, Hal sat down to work, but found no escape from his thoughts. There was but one thing to do: he must have it out at once with Dr. Surtaine. He telephoned the factory for an appointment. Sharp-eared McQuiggan caught the call. "That my old pal, Andy?" said he. "Gimme a shot at him while you've got him on the wire, will you?" Cheery, not to say chirpy, was the mining promoter's greeting projected into the transmitter which Hal turned over to him. Straightway, however, a change came o'er his blithe spirit. "Something's biting the old geezer," he informed Hal and Ellis. "Seems to have a grouch. Says he's coming over, pronto--right quick." Five minutes later, while Mr. McQuiggan was running over some proofs which he had brought with him, Dr. Surtaine walked into the office. There was about him a formidable smoothness, as of polished metal. He greeted his old friend with a nod and a cool "Back again, I see, Elpy." "And doing business at the old stand," rejoined his friend. "Worthington's the place where the dollars grow, all right." "Grow, _and_ stay," said Dr. Surtaine. "Meaning?" inquired McQuiggan solicitously. "That you've over-medicated this field." "Have I got any dollars away from you, Andy?" "No. But you have from my people." "Well, their money's as good to buy booze with as anybody else's, I reckon." Dr. Surtaine had sat down, directly opposite the visitor, fronting him eye-to-eye. Nothing loath, McQuiggan accepted the challenge. His hard, brisk voice, with a sub-tone of the snarl, crossed the Doctor's strong, heavy utterance like a rapier engaging a battle-axe. Both assumed a suavity of manner felt to be just at the breaking point. The two spectators sat, surprised and expectant. "I don't suppose," said Dr. Surtaine, after a pause, "there's any use trying to get you to refund." "Still sticking out for the money-back-if-not-satisfied racket--in the other fellow's business, eh, Andy? Better practice it in your own." "Hal,"--Dr. Surtaine turned to his son,--"has McQuiggan brought in a new batch of copy?" "So I understand." "The 'Clarion' mustn't run it." "The hell it mustn't!" said McQuiggan. "It's crooked," said the quack bluntly. The promoter laughed. "A hot one, you are, to talk about crookedness." "He's paying his advertising bills out of my people's pay envelopes!" accused Dr. Surtaine. "How's that, Doc?" asked Ellis. "Why, when he was here before, he spent some time around the Certina plant and got acquainted with the department managers and a lot of the others, and damn me!" cried Dr. Surtaine, grinning in spite of his wrath, "if he didn't sting 'em all for stock." "How do you know they're stung?" inquired Ellis. "From an expert on the ground. I got anxious when I found my own people were in it, and had a man go out there from Phoenix. He reports that the Streaky Mountain hasn't got a thing but expectations and hardly that." "Well, you didn't say there was anything more, did you?" inquired the bland McQuiggan. "I? I didn't say?" "Yes, _you_. You got up the ads." "Well--well--well, of all the nerve!" cried Dr. Surtaine, grievously appealing to the universe at large. "I got 'em up! You gave me the material, didn't you?" "Sure, did I. Hot stuff it was, too." "Hot bunk! And to flim-flam my own people with it, too!" "Anybody that works in your joint ought to be wise to the bunk game," suggested McQuiggan. "I'll tell you one thing: you don't run any more of it in this town." "Maybe I don't and then again maybe I do. It won't be as good as your copy, p'r'aps. But it'll get _some_ coin, I reckon. Take a look," he taunted, and tossed his proofs to the other. The quack broke forth at the first glance. "Look here! You claim fifty thousand tons of copper in sight." "So there is." "With a telescope, I suppose." "Well, telescope's sight, ain't it? You wouldn't try to hear through one, would you?" "And $200,000.00 worth, ready for milling," continued the critic. "Printer's error in the decimal point," returned the other, with airy impudence. "Move it two to the left. Keno! There you have it: $2000.00." "Very ingenious, Mr. McQuiggan," said Hal. "But you're practically admitting that your ads. are faked." "Admittin' nothin'! I offer you the ads. and I've got the ready stuff to pay for 'em." "And you think that is all that's necessary?" "Sure do I!" "Mr. McQuiggan," remarked Ellis, "has probably been reading our able editorial on the reformed and chastened policy of the 'Clarion.'" Hal turned an angry red. "That doesn't commit us to accepting swindles." "Don't it?" queried McQuiggan. "Since when did you get so pick-an'-choosy?" "Straight advertising," announced Dr. Surtaine, "has been the unvarying policy of this paper since my son took it over." "Straight!" vociferated McQuiggan. "_Straight?_ Ladies and gents: the well-known Surtaine Family will now put on their screamin' farce entitled 'Honesty is the Best Policy.'" "When you're through playing the clown--" began Hal. "Straight advertising," pursued the other. "Did I really hear them sweet words in Andy Certain's voice? No! Say, somebody ring an alarm-clock on me. I can't wake up." "I think we've heard enough from you, McQuiggan," warned Hal. "Do you!" The promoter sprang from his chair and all the latent venom of his temper fumed and stung in the words he poured out. "Well, take another think. I've got some things to tell you, young feller. Don't you come the high-and-holy on me. You and your smooth, big, phony stuffed-shirt of a father." "Here, you!" shouted the leading citizen thus injuriously designated, but the other's voice slashed through his protest like a blade through pulp. "Certina! Ho-oh! Warranted to cure consumption, warts, heart-disease, softening of the brain, and the bloody pip! And what is it? Morphine and booze." "You're a liar," thundered the outraged proprietor: "Ten thousand dollars to any one who can show a grain of morphine in it." "Changed the formula, have you? Pure Food Law scared you out of the dope, eh? Well, even at that it's the same old bunk. What about your testimonials? Fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and blackmail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pious plate-pusher stuff about being straight. Oh, my Gawd! It'd make a straddle-bug spit at the sun, to hear you. Why, I'm no saint, but the medical line was too strong for my stomach. I got out of it." "Yes, you did, you dirty little dollar-snatcher! You got put of it into jail for peddling raw gin--." "Don't you go raking up old muck with me, you rotten big poisoner!" roared McQuiggan: "or you'll get the hot end of it. How about that girl that went batty after taking Cert--" "Wait a moment! Father! Please!" Hal broke in, aghast at this display. "We're not discussing the medical business. We're talking advertising. McQuiggan, yours is refused. We don't run that class of matter in the 'Clarion.'" "No? Since when? You'd better consult an oculist, young Surtaine." "If ever this paper carried such a glaring fake as your Streaky Mountain--" "Stop right there! Stop! look! and listen!" He caught up the day's issue from the floor and flaunted it, riddling the flimsy surface with the stiffened finger of indictment. "Look at it! Look at this ad.--and this--and this." The paper was rent with the vehemence of his indication. "Put my copy next to that, and it'd come to life and squirm to get away." "Nothing there but what every paper takes," defended Ellis. "Every paper'd be glad to take my stuff, too. Why, Streaky Mountain copy is the Holy Bible compared to what you've got here. Take a slant at this: 'Consumption Cured in Three Months.'--'Cancer Cured or your Money Back.'--Catarrh dopes, headache cures, germ-killers, baby-soothers, nerve-builders,--the whole stinkin' lot. Don't I know 'em! Either sugar pills that couldn't cure a belly-ache, or hell's-brew of morphine and booze. Certina ain't the worst of 'em, any more than it's the best. I may squeeze a few dollars out of easy boobs, but you, Andy Certain, you and your young whelp here, you're playin' the poor suckers for their lives. And then you're too lily-fingered to touch a mining proposition because there's a gamble in it!" He crumpled the paper in his sinewy hands, hurled it to the floor, kicked it high over Dr. Surtaine's head, and stalking across to Hal's desk, slapped down his proofs on it with a violence that jarred the whole structure. "You run that," he snarled, "or I'll hire the biggest hall in Worthington and tell the whole town what I've just been telling you." His face, furrowed and threatening, was thrust down close to Hal's. Thus lowered, the eyes came level with a strip of print, pasted across the inner angle of the desk. "'Whose Bread I Eat, his Song I Sing,'" he read. "What's that?" "A motto," said McGuire Ellis. "The complete guide to correct journalistic conduct. Put there, lest we forget." "H'm!" said McQuiggan, puzzled. "It's in the right place, all right, all right. Well, does my ad. go?" "No," said Hal. "But I'm much obliged to you, McQuiggan." "You go to hell. What're you obliged to me for?" said the visitor suspiciously. "For the truth. I think you've told it to me. Anyway you've made me tell it to myself." "I guess I ain't told you much you don't know about your snide business." "You have, though. Go ahead and hire your hall. But--take a look at to-morrow's 'Clarion' before you make your speech. Now, good-day to you." McQuiggan, wondering and a little subdued by a certain quiet resolution in Hal's speech, went, beckoning Ellis after him for explication. Hal turned to his father. "I don't suppose," he began haltingly, "that you could have told me all this yourself." "What?" asked Dr. Surtaine, consciously on the defensive. "About the medical ads." "McQuiggan's a sore-head"--began the Doctor. "But you might have told me about Certina, as I've been living on Certina money." "There's nothing to tell." All the self-assurance had gone out of the quack's voice. "Father, does Certina cure Bright's disease?" "Cure? Why, Boyee, what _is_ a cure?" "Does it cure it?" insisted Hal. "Sit down and cool off. You've let that skunk, McQuiggan, get you all excited." "This began before McQuiggan." "Then you've been talking to some jealous doctor-crank." "For God's sake, Father, answer my plain question." "Why, there's no such thing as an actual cure for Bright's disease." "Don't you say in the advertisements that Certina will cure it?" "Oh, advertisements!" returned the quack with an uneasy smile. "Nobody takes an advertisement for gospel." "I'm answered. Will it cure diabetes?" "No medicine will. No doctor can. They're incurable diseases. Certina will do as much--" "Is it true that alcohol simply hastens the course of the disease?" "Authorities differ," said the quack warily. "But as the disease is incurable--" "Then it's all lies! Lies and murder!" "You're excited, Boy-ee," said the charlatan with haggard forbearance. "Let me explain for a moment." "Isn't it pretty late for explanations between you and me?" "This is the gist of the proprietary trade," said the Doctor, picking his words carefully. "Most diseases cure themselves. Medicine isn't much good. Doctors don't know a great deal. Now, if a patent medicine braces a patient up and gives him courage, it does all that can be done. Then, the advertising inspires confidence in the cure and that's half the battle. There's a lot in Christian Science, and a lot in common between Christian Science and the proprietary business. Both work on the mind and help it to cure the body. But the proprietary trade throws in a few drugs to brace up the system, allay symptoms, and push along the good work. There you have Certina." Hal shook his head in dogged misery. "It can't cure. You admit it can't cure. And it may kill, in the very cases where it promises to cure. How could you take money made that way?" A flash of cynicism hardened the handsome old face. "Somebody's going to make a living off the great American sucker. If it wasn't us, it'd be somebody else." He paused, sighed, and in a phrase summed up and crystallized the whole philosophy of the medical quack: "Life's a cut-throat game, anyway." "And we're living on the blood," said Hal. "It's a good thing," he added slowly, "that I didn't know you as you are before Milly Neal's death." "Why so?" "Because," cried the son fiercely, "I'd have published the whole truth of how she died and why, in the 'Clarion.'" "It isn't too late yet," retorted Dr. Surtaine with pained dignity, "if you wish to strike at the father who hasn't been such a bad father to you. But would you have told the truth of your part in it?" "My part in it?" repeated Hal, in dull puzzlement. "You mean the ad?" "You know well enough what I mean. Boy-ee, Boy-ee,"--there was an edge of genuine agony in the sonorous voice,--"we've drawn far apart, you and I. Is all the wrong on my side? Can you judge me so harshly, with your own conscience to answer?" "What I've got on my conscience you've put there. You've made me turn back on every principle I have. I've dishonored myself and my office for you. You've cost me the respect of the men I work with, and the faith of the best friend I've got in the world." "The _best_ friend, Boy-ee?" questioned the Doctor gently. "The best friend: McGuire Ellis." Hal's gaze met his father's. And what he saw there all but unmanned him. From the liquid depths of the old quack's eyes, big and soft like an animal's, there welled two great tears, to trickle slowly down the set face. Hal turned and stumbled from the office. Hardly knowing whither he went, he turned in at the first open door, which chanced to be Shearson's. There he sat until his self-control returned. As the aftermath of his anger there remained with him a grim determination. It was implicit in his voice, as he addressed Shearson, who walked in upon him. "Cut out every line of medical from the paper." "When?" gasped Shearson. "Now. For to-morrow's paper." "But, Mr. Surtaine--" "Every--damned--line. And if any of it ever gets back, the man responsible loses his job." "Yes, sir," said the cowed and amazed Shearson. Hal returned to his sanctum, to find Ellis in his own place and Dr. Surtaine gone. "Ellis, you put that motto on my desk." "Yes." "What for?" "Lest we forget," repeated Ellis. "Not much danger of that," replied his employer bitterly. "Now, I want you to take it down." "Is that an order?" "Would you obey it if it were?" "No." "You'd resign first?" "Yes." "Then I'll take it down myself." With his letter-opener he pried the offensive strip loose, tore it across thrice, and scattered the pieces on the floor. "Mr. Ellis," said he formally, "hereafter no medical advertising will be accepted for or published in the 'Clarion.' The same rule applies to fraudulent advertising of any kind. I wish you and the other members of the staff to act as censors for the advertising." "Yes, sir," said McGuire Ellis. He turned back to his desk, and sprawled his elbows on it. His head lapsed lower and lower until it attained the familiar posture of rest. But McGuire Ellis was not sleeping. He was thinking. CHAPTER XXXI THE VOICE OF THE PROPHET Two hundred and fifty representative citizens, mostly of the business type, with a sprinkling of other occupations not including physicians, sat fanning themselves into a perspiration in the Chamber of Commerce assembly rooms, and wondering what on earth an Emergency Health Meeting might be. Congressman Brett Harkins, a respectable nonentity, who was presiding, had refrained from telling them: deliberately, it would appear, as his speech had dealt vaguely with the greatness of Worthington's material prosperity, now threatened--if one might credit his theory--by a combination of senseless panic and reckless tongues; and had concluded by stating that Mr. William Douglas, one of the leaders of our bar, as all the chairman's hearers well knew, would explain the situation and formulate a plan for the meeting's consideration. Explanation, however, did not prove to be Mr. William Douglas's forte. Coached by that practiced diplomat, Certina Charley, he made a speech memorable chiefly for what it did not say. The one bright, definite gleam, amidst rolling columns of oratory, was the proposal that an Emergency Committee of One Hundred be appointed to cope with the situation, that the initial sum of twenty-five thousand dollars be pledged by subscription, and that their distinguished fellow citizen, Dr. L. André Surtaine, be permanent chairman of said committee, with power to appoint. Dr. Surtaine had generously offered to subscribe ten thousand dollars to the fund. (Loud and prolonged applause; the word "thousand" preceding the word "dollars" and itself preceded by any numeral from one to one million, inclusive, being invariably provocative of acclaim in a subscription meeting of representative citizens.) Mr. Douglas took pride in nominating that Midas of Medicine, Dr. Surtaine. (More and louder applause.) The Reverend Dr. Wales, of Dr. Surtaine's church, sonorously seconded the nomination. So did Hollis Myers, of the Security Power Products Company. So, a trifle grumpily, did Elias M. Pierce. Also Col. Parker, editor of the "Telegram," Aaron Scheffler, of Scheffler and Mintz, and Councilman Carlin. The presiding officer inquired with the bland indifference of the assured whether there were any further nominations. There were not. But turning in his second-row seat, Festus Willard, who was too important a figure commercially to leave out, though Dr. Surtaine had entertained doubts of his "soundness," demanded of McGuire Ellis, seated just behind him, what it was all about. "Ask the chairman," suggested Ellis. "I will," said Willard. He got up and did. The Honorable Brett Harkins looked uncomfortable. He didn't really know what it was all about. Moreover, it had been intimated to him that he'd perhaps better not know. He cast an appealing glance at Douglas. "That is not exactly the question before the meeting," began Douglas hastily. "It is the question I asked," persisted Willard. "Before we elect Dr. Surtaine or any one else chairman of a committee with a fund to spend, I want to know what the committee is for." "To cope with the health situation of the city." "Very well. Now we're getting somewhere. Where's Dr. Merritt? I think we ought to hear from him on that point." Murmurs of assent were heard about the room. Dr. Surtaine rose to his feet. "If I may be pardoned for speaking to a motion of which I am a part," he said in his profound and mellow voice. "I think I can throw light upon the situation. Quite a number of us have observed with uneasiness the increase of sickness in Worthington. Sensationalists have gone so far as to whisper that there is an epidemic. I have myself made a rigid investigation. More than this, my son, Mr. Harrington Surtaine, has placed the resources of the 'Clarion' staff at our disposal, and on the strength of both inquiries, I am prepared to assure this gathering that nothing like an epidemic exists." "Well, I _am_ damned!" was McGuire Ellis's astounded and none too low-voiced comment upon this bold perversion of the "Clarion" enterprise. Stretching upward from his seat he looked about for Hal. The young editor sat in a far corner, his regard somberly intent upon the speaker. "Alarm there has undoubtedly been, and is," pursued Dr. Surtaine. "To find means to allay it is the purpose of the meeting. We must remove the cause. Both our morbidity and our mortality rate, though now retrograding, have been excessive for several weeks, especially in the Rookeries district. There has been a prevalence of malaria of a severe type, which, following last winter's epidemic of grip, has proven unusually fatal. Dr. Merritt believes that he can wipe out the disease quietly if a sufficient sum is put at his disposal." This was not authoritative. Merritt had declined to commit himself, but Dr. Surtaine was making facts of his hopes. "In this gathering it is hardly necessary for me to refer to the municipal importance of Old Home Week and to the damage to its prospects which would be occasioned by any suspicion of epidemic," continued the speaker. "Whatever may be the division of opinion as to methods, we are surely unanimous in wishing to protect the interests of the centennial celebration. And this can best be done through a committee of representative men, backing the constituted health authorities, without commotion or disturbance. Have I answered your doubts, Mr. Willard?" he concluded, turning a brow of benign inquiry upon that gentleman. "Not wholly," said Festus Willard. "I've heard it stated on medical authority that there is some sort of plague in the Rookeries." A murmur of inquiry rose. "Plague? What kind of plague?"--"Who says so?"--"Does he mean bubonic?"--"No doctor that knows his business--"--"They say doctors are shut out of the Rookeries."--"Order! Order!" Through the confusion cleaved the edged voice of E.M. Pierce, directed to the chairman: "Shut that off." A score took the cue. "Question! Question!" they cried. "Do I get an answer to my question?" persisted Willard. "What is your question?" asked the harassed chairman. "Is there a pestilence in the Rookeries? If so, what is its nature?" "There is not," stated Dr. Surtaine from his seat. "Who ever says there is, is an enemy to our fair and healthy city." This noble sentiment, delivered with all the impressiveness of which the old charlatan was master, roused a burst of applause. To its rhythm there stalked down the side aisle and out upon the rostrum the gaunt figure of the Reverend Norman Hale. "Mr. Chairman," he said. "How did that fellow get here?" Dr. Surtaine asked of Douglas. "We invited all the ministers," was the low response. "I understood he was seriously ill." "He is a trouble-maker. Tell Harkins not to let him talk." Douglas spoke a word in the chairman's ear. "There's a motion before the house--I mean the meeting," began Congressman Harkins, when the voice behind him cut in again, hollow and resonant: "Mr. Chairman." "Do you wish to speak to the question?" asked the chairman uncertainly. "I do." "No, no!" called Douglas. "Out of order. Question!" Voices from the seats below supported him. But there were other calls for a hearing for the newcomer. Curiosity was his ally. The meeting anticipated a sensation. The chairman, lacking a gavel, hammered on the stand with a tumbler, and presently produced a modified silence, through which the voice of the Reverend Norman Hale could be heard saying that he wished but three minutes. He stepped to the edge of the platform, and the men below noticed for the first time that he carried in his right hand a wreath of metal-mounted, withered flowers. There was no mistaking the nature of the wreath. It was such as is left lying above the dead for wind and rain to dissipate. Hale raised it slowly above his head. The silence in the hall became absolute. "I brought these flowers from a girl's grave," said the Reverend Norman Hale. "The girl had sinned. Death was the wage of her sin. She died by her own hand. So her offense is punished. That account is closed." "What has all this to do--" began the chairman; but he stopped, checked by a wave of sibilant remonstrance from the audience. The speaker went on, with relentless simplicity, still holding the mortuary symbol aloft:-- "But there is another account not yet closed. The girl was deceived. Not by the father of her unborn child. That is a different guilt, to be reckoned with in God's own time. The deception for which she has paid with her life was not the deception of hot passion, but of cold greed. A man betrayed her, as he has betrayed thousands of other unfortunates, to put money into his own pockets. He promised her immunity. He said to her and to all women, in print, that she need not fear motherhood if she would buy his medicine. She believed the promise. She paid her dollar. And she found, too late, that it was a lie. "So she went to the man. She knew him. And she determined either that he should help her or that she would be revenged on him. All this she told me in a note, to be opened in case of her death. He must have refused to help. He had not the criminal courage to produce the abortion which he falsely promised in his advertisements. What passed between them I do not know. But I believe that she attempted to kill him and failed. She attempted to kill herself and succeeded. The blood of Camilla Neal is on every cent of Dr. Surtaine's ten-thousand-dollar subscription." He tossed the wreath aside. It rolled, clattering and clinking, and settled down at the feet of the Midas of Medicine who stared at it with a contorted face. The meeting sat stricken into immovability. It seemed incredible that the tensity of the silence should not snap. Yet it held. "I shall vote 'No' on the motion," said the Reverend Norman Hale, still with that quiet and appalling simplicity. "I came here from a hand-to-hand struggle with death to vote 'No.' I have strength for only a word more. The city is stricken with typhus. It is no time for concealment or evasion. We are at death-grips with a very dreadful plague. It has broken out of the Rookeries district. There are half a dozen new foci of infection. In the face of this, silence is deadly. If you elect Dr. Surtaine and adopt his plan, you commit yourself to an alliance with fraud and death. You deceive and betray the people who look to you for leadership. And there will be a terrible price to pay in human lives. I thank you for hearing me patiently." No man spoke for long seconds after the young minister sat down, wavering a little as he walked to a chair at the rear. But through the representative citizenship of Worthington, in that place gathered, passed a quiver of sound, indeterminate, obscure, yet having all the passion of a quelled sob. Eyes furtively sought the face of Dr. Surtaine. But the master-quack remained frozen by the same bewilderment as his fellows. Perhaps alone in that crowd, Elias M. Pierce remained untouched emotionally. He rose, and his square granite face was cold as abstract reason. There was not even feeling enough in his voice to give the semblance of a sneer to his words as he said: "All this is very well in its place, and doubtless does credit to the sentimental qualities of the speaker. But it is not evidence. It is an unsupported statement, part of which is admittedly conjecture. Allowing the alleged facts to be true, are we to hold a citizen of Dr. Surtaine's standing and repute responsible for the death of a woman caused by her own immorality? The woman whose death Mr. Hale has turned to such oratorical account was, I take it, a prostitute--" "That is a damned lie!" Hal Surtaine came down the aisle in long strides, speaking as he came. "Milly Neal was my employee and my father's employee. If she went astray once, who are you to judge her? Who are any of us to judge her? I took part of that blood-money. The advertisement was in my paper, paid for with Surtaine money. What Mr. Hale says is the living truth. No man shall foul her memory in my hearing." "And what was she to you? You haven't told us that yet?" There was a rancid sneer in Pierce's insinuation. Hal turned from the aisle and went straight for him. A little man rose in his way. It was Mintz, who had given him the heartening word after the committee meeting. In his blind fury Hal struck him a staggering blow. But the little Jew was plucky. He closed with the younger man, and clinging to him panted out his good advice. "Don'd fighd 'im, nod here. It's no good. Go to the pladform an' say your say. We'll hear you." But it was impossible to hear any one now. Uproar broke loose. Men shouted, stormed, cursed; the meeting was become a rabble. Above the din could be distinguished at intervals the voice of the Honorable Brett Harkins, who, in frantic but not illogical reversion to the idea of a political convention, squalled for the services of the sergeant-at-arms. There was no sergeant-at-arms. Mintz's pudgy but clogging arms could restrain an athlete of Hal's power only a brief moment; but in that moment sanity returned to the fury-heated brain. "I beg your pardon, Mintz," he said; "you're quite right. I thank you for stopping me." He returned to the aisle, pressing forward, with what purpose he could hardly have said, when he felt the sinewy grasp of McGuire Ellis on his shoulder. "Tell 'em the whole thing," fiercely urged Ellis. "Be a man. Own up to the whole business, between you and the girl." "I don't know what you mean!" cried Hal. "Don't be young," groaned Ellis; "you've gone halfway. Clean it up. Then we can face the situation with the 'Clarion.' Tell 'em you were her lover." "Milly's? I wasn't. It was Veltman." "Good God of Mercy!" "Did you think--" "Yes;--Lord forgive me! Why didn't you tell me?" "How could I tell you suspected--" "All right! I know. We'll talk it out later. The big thing now is, what's the paper going to do about this meeting?" "Print it." Into Ellis's face flashed the fervor of the warrior who sees victory loom through the clouds of hopeless defeat. "You mean that?" "Every word of it. And run the epidemic spread--" Before he could finish, Ellis was fighting his way to a telephone. Hal met his father's eyes, and turned away with a heartsick sense that, in the one glance, had passed indictment, conviction, a hopeless acquiescence, and the dumb reproach of the trapped criminal against avenging justice. He turned and made for the nearest exit, conscious of only two emotions, a burning desire to be away from that place and a profound gladness that, without definite expression of the change, the bitter alienation of McGuire Ellis was past. As Hal left, there arose, out of the turmoil, one clear voice of reason: the thundering baritone of Festus Willard moving an adjournment. It passed, and the gathering slowly dispersed. Avoiding the offered companionship of Congressman Harkins and Douglas, Dr. Surtaine took himself off by a side passage. At the end of it, alone, stood the Reverend Norman Hale, leaning against the sill of an open window. The old quack rushed upon him. "Keep off!" warned the young minister, throwing himself into an attitude of defense. "No, no," protested Dr. Surtaine: "don't think I meant _that_. I--I want to thank you." "Thank _me_?" The minister put his hand to his head. "I don't understand." "For leaving my boy out of it." "Oh! That. I didn't see the necessity of dragging him in." "That was kind. You handled me pretty rough. Well, I'm used to rough work. But the boy--look here, you knew all about this Milly Neal business, didn't you?" "Yes." "Maybe you could tell me," went on the old quack miserably. "I can understand Hal's getting into a--an affair with the girl--being kinda carried away and losing his head. What I can't get is his--his quittin' her when she was in trouble." "I still don't understand," protested the minister. "My head isn't very good. I've been ill, you know." "You let him off without telling his name to-night. And that made me think maybe he wasn't in wrong so far as I thought. Maybe there were--what-ye-call-'em?--mitigating circumstances. Were there?" A light broke in upon the Reverend Norman Hale. "Did you think your son was Milly Neal's lover? He wasn't." "Are you sure?" gasped the father. "As sure as of my faith in Heaven." The old man straightened up, drawing a breath so profound that it seemed to raise his stature. "I wouldn't take a million dollars for that word," he declared. "But your own part in this?" queried the other in wonderment. "I hated to have to say--" "What does it matter?" "You have no concern for yourself?" puzzled the minister. "Oh, I'll come out on top. I always come out on top. What got to my heart was my boy. I thought he'd gone wrong. And now I know he hasn't." The old charlatan's strong hand fell on his assailant's shoulder, then slipped down supportingly under his arm. "You look pretty shaky," said he with winning solicitude. "Let me take you home in my car. It's waiting outside." The Reverend Norman Hale accepted, marveling greatly over the complex miracle of the soul of man--who is formed in the image of his Maker. CHAPTER XXXII THE WARNING Tradition of the "Clarion" office embalms "the evening the typhus story broke" as a nightmare out of which was born history. Chronologically, according to the veracious records of Bim the Guardian of Portals, the tumult began at exactly 10.47, with the arrival of Mr. McGuire Ellis, traveling up the staircase five steps at a jump and calling in a strangled voice for Wayne. That usually controlled journalist rushed out of an inner room in alarm, demanding to know whether New York City had been whelmed with a tidal wave or the King of England murdered in his bed, and in an instant was struggling in the grasp of his fellow editor. "What's left of the epidemic spread?" demanded the new arrival breathlessly. "The killed story?" "What's left of it?" clamored Ellis, dancing all over his colleague's feet. "Can you find the copy? Notes? Anything?" "Proofs," said Wayne. "I saved a set." Ellis sat down in a chair and regarded his underling with an expression of stupefied benevolence. "Wayne," he said, "you're a genius. You're the fine flower and perfect blossom of American journalism. I love you, Wayne. With passionate fervor, I love you. Now, _gitta move on_!!!" His voice soared and exploded. "We're going to run it to-morrow!" "To-morrow? How? It isn't up to date. Nobody's touched it since--" "Bring it up to date! Fire every man in the office out on it. Tear the hide off the old paper and smear the story all over the front page. Haul in your eyes and _start_!" The whirl of what ensued swamped even Bim's cynic and philosophic calm. Amidst a buzz of telephones and a mighty scurrying of messengers the staff of the "Clarion" was gathered into the fold, on a "drop-everything" emergency call, and instantly dispersed again to the hospitals, the homes of the health officials, the undertakers' establishments, the cemeteries, and all other possible sources of information. The composing-room seethed and clanged. Copy-readers yelled frantically through tubes, and received columns of proofs which, under the ruthless slaughter of their blue pencils, returned as "stickfuls," that room might be made for the great story. Cable news was slashed right and left. Telegraph "skeletons" waited in vain for their bones to be clothed with the flesh of print. The Home Advice Department sank with all on board, and the most popular sensational preacher in town, who had that evening made a stirring anti-suffrage speech full of the most unfailing jokes, fell out of the paper and broke his heart. The carnage in news was general and frightful. Two pages plus of a story that "breaks" after 10 P.M. calls for heroic measures. At 10.53 Mr. Harrington Surtaine arrived, hardly less tempestuously than his predecessor. He did not even greet Bim as he passed through the gate, which was unusual; but went direct to Ellis. "Can we do it, Mac?" "The epidemic story? Yes. There was a proof saved." "Good. Can you do the story of the meeting?" Ellis hesitated. "All of it?" "Every bit. Leave out nothing." "Hadn't you better think it over?" "I've thought." "It'll hit the old--your father pretty hard." "I can't help it." A surge of human pity overswept Ellis's stimulated journalistic keenness. "You don't _have_ to do this, Hal," he suggested. "No other paper--" "I do have to do it," retorted the other. "And worse." Ellis stared. "I've got to print the story of Milly's death: the facts just as they happened. And I've got to write it myself." The professional zest surged up again in McGuire Ellis. "My Lord!" he exclaimed. "_What a paper to-morrow's 'Clarion' will be!_ But why? Why? Why the Neal story--now?" "Because I can't print the epidemic spread unless I print the other. I've given my word. I told my father if ever I suppressed news for my own protection, I'd give up the fight and play the game like all the other papers. I've tried it. Mac, it isn't my game." "No," replied his subordinate in a curious tone, "it isn't your game." "You'll write the meeting?" "Yes." "Save out a column for my story." Ellis returned to Wayne at the news desk. "Hell's broke loose at the Emergency Health meeting," he remarked, employing the conventional phrasing of his craft. And Wayne, in the same language, inquired: "How much?" "Two columns. And a column from the Boss on another story." "Whew!" whistled Wayne. "We _shall_ have some paper." From midnight until 2.30 in the morning the reporters on the great story dribbled in. Each, as he arrived, said a brief word to Wayne, got a curt direction, slumped into his seat, and silently wrote. It was all very methodical and quiet and orderly. A really big news event always is after the first disturbance of adjustment. Newspaper offices work smoothest when the tension is highest. At 12.03 A.M. Bim received two flurried Aldermen and the head of a city department. At 12.35 he held spirited debate with the Deputy Commissioner of Health. Just as the clock struck one, two advertising managers, arriving neck and neck, merged their appeals in an ineffectual attempt to obtain information from the youthful Cerberus, which he loftily declined to furnish, as to the whereabouts of anyone with power to ban or bind, on the "Clarion." At 1.30 the Guardian of the Gate had the honor and pleasure of meeting, for the first time, his Honor the Mayor of the City. Finally, at 1.59 he "took a chance," as he would have put it, and, misliking the autocratic deportment of a messenger from E.M. Pierce, told that emissary that he could tell Mr. Pierce exactly where to go to--and go there himself. All the while, unmoved amidst protestation, appeal, and threat, the steady news-machine went on grinding out unsuppressible history for itself and its city. Sharp to the regular hour, the presses clanged, and the building thrilled through its every joint to the pulse of print. Hal Surtaine rose from his desk and walked to the window. McGuire Ellis also rose, walked over and stood near him. "Three pretty big beats to-morrow," he said awkwardly, at length. "The Milly Neal story won't be a beat," replied Hal. "No? How's that?" "I've sent our proofs to all the other papers." "Well, I'm--What's the idea? "We lied to them about the story in the first instance. They played fair, according to the rules, and took our lie. We can't beat 'em on our own story, now." "Right you are. Bet none of 'em prints it, though." Wherein he was a true prophet. There was a long, uneasy pause. "Hal," said Ellis hesitantly. "Well?" "I'm a fool." The white weariness of Hal's face lit up with a smile. "Why, Mac--" he began. "A pin-head," persisted the other stubbornly. "A block of solid ivory from the collar up. I'm--I'm _young_ in the head," he concluded, with supreme effort of self-condemnation. "It's all right," said his chief, perfectly knowing what Ellis meant. "Have I said enough?" "Plenty." "You didn't put Veltman in your story?" "No. What was the good?" "That's right, too." "Good-night, Mac, I'm for the hotel." "Good-night, Hal. See you in the morning." "Yes. I'll be around early." Ellis's eyes followed his chief out through the door. He returned to his desk and sat thinking. He saw, with pitiless clearness, the storm gathering over the "Clarion": the outburst of public hostility, the depletion of advertisers and subscribers, the official opposition closing avenues of information, the disastrous probabilities of the Pierce libel suits, now soon to be pushed; and his undaunted spirit of a crusader rose and lusted for the battle. "They may lick us," he said to his paste-pot, the recipient of many a bitter confidence and thwarted hope in the past; "but we'll show 'em what a real newspaper is, for once. And"--his eyes sought the door through which Hal Surtaine had passed--"I've got this much out of it, anyway: I've helped a boy make himself a Man." Ten thousand extra copies sped from the new and wonder-working press of the "Clarion" that night, to be absorbed, swallowed, engulfed by a mazed populace. In all the city there was perhaps not a man, woman, or child who, by the following evening, had not read or heard of the "Clarion's" exposure of the epidemic--except one. Max Veltman lay, senseless to all this, between stupor and a fevered delirium in which the spirit of Milly Neal called on him for delayed vengeance. CHAPTER XXXIII THE GOOD FIGHT Earthquake or armed invasion could scarce have shocked staid Worthington more profoundly than did the "Clarion's" exposure. Of the facts there could be no reasonable doubt. The newspaper's figures were specific, and its map of infection showed no locality exempt. The city had wakened from an untroubled sleep to find itself poisoned. As an immediate result of the journalistic tocsin, the forebodings of Dr. Surtaine and his associates as to the effects of publicity bade fair to be justified. Undeniably there was danger of the disease scattering, through the medium of runaways from the stricken houses. But the "Clarion" had its retort pat for the tribe of "I-told-you-so," admitting the prospect of some primary harm to save a great disaster later. More than one hundred lives, it pointed out, giving names and dates, had already been sacrificed to the shibboleth of secrecy; the whole city had been imperiled; the disease had set up its foci of infection in a score of places, and there were some three hundred cases, in all, known or suspected. One method only could cope with the situation: the fullest public information followed by radical hygienic measures. Of information there was no lack. So tremendous a news feature could not be kept out of print by the other dailies, all of whom now admitted the presence of the pestilence, while insisting that its scope had been greatly exaggerated, and piously deprecating the "sensationalism" of their contemporary. Thus the city administration was forced to action. An appropriation was voted to the Health Bureau. Dr. Merritt, seizing his opportunity, organized a quarantine army, established a detention camp and isolation hospital, and descended upon the tenement districts, as terrible (to the imagination of the frantic inhabitants) as a malevolent god. The Emergency Health Committee, meantime, died and was forgotten overnight. Something not unlike panic swept the Rookeries. Wild rumors passed from mouth to mouth, growing as they went. A military cordon, it was said, was to be cast about the whole ward and the people pent up inside to die. Refugees were to be shot on sight. The infected buildings were to be burned to the ground, and the tenants left homeless. The water-supply was to be poisoned, to get rid of the exposed--had already been poisoned, some said, and cited sudden mysterious deaths. Such savage imaginings of suspicion as could spring only from the ignorant fears of a populace beset by a secret and deadly pest, roused the district to a rat-like defiance. Such of the residents as were not home-bound by the authorities, growled in saloon back rooms and muttered in the streets. Hatred of the "Clarion" was the burden of their bitterness. Two of its reporters were mobbed in the hard-hit ward, the day after the publication of the first article. Nor was the paper much better liked elsewhere. It was held responsible for all the troubles. Though the actuality of the quarantine fell far short of the expectant fears, still there was a mighty turmoil. Families were separated, fugitives were chased down and arrested, and close upon the heels of the primary harassment came the threat of economic complications, as factories and stores all over the city, for their own protection, dismissed employees known to live within the near range of the pestilence. In the minds of the sufferers from these measures and of their friends, the "Clarion" was an enemy to the public. But it was read with avid impatience, for Wayne, working on the principle that "it is news and not evil that stirs men," contrived to find some new sensational development for every issue. Do what the rival papers might, the "Clarion" had and held the windward course. Representative Business, that Great Mogul of Worthington, was, of course, outraged by the publication. Hal Surtaine was an ill bird who had fouled his own nest. The wires had carried the epidemic news to every paper in the country, and Worthington was proclaimed "unclean" to the ears of all. The Old Home Week Committee on Arrangements held a hasty meeting to decide whether the celebration should be abandoned or postponed, but could come to no conclusion. Denunciation of the "Clarion" for its course was the sole point upon which all the speakers agreed. Also there was considerable incidental criticism of its editor, as an ingrate, for publishing the article on Milly Neal's death which reflected so severely upon Dr. Surtaine. As the paper had been bought with Dr. Surtaine's hard cash, the least Hal could have done, in decency, was to refrain from "roasting" the source of the money. Such was the general opinion. The representative business intellect of Worthington failed to consider that the article had been confined rigidly to a statement of facts, and that any moral or ethical inference must be purely a derivative of those facts as interpreted by the reader. Several of those present at the meeting declared vehemently that they would never again either advertise in or read the "Clarion." There was even talk of a boycott. One member was so incautious as to condole with Dr. Surtaine upon his son's disloyalty. The old quack's regard fell upon his tactless comforter, dull and heavy as lead. "My son is my son," said he; "and what's between us is our own business. Now, as to Old Home Week, it'll be time enough to give up when we're licked." And, adroit opportunist that he was, he urged upon the meeting that they support the Health Bureau as the best hope of clearing up the situation. Amongst the panic-stricken, meanwhile, moved and worked the volunteer forces of hygiene, led by the Reverend Norman Hale. Weakened and unfit though he was, he could not be kept from the battle-ground, notwithstanding that Dr. Merritt, fearing for his life, had threatened him with kidnaping and imprisonment in the hospital. At Hale's right hand were Esmé Elliot and Kathleen Pierce. There had been one scene at Greenvale approaching violence on Dr. Elliot's part and defiance on that of his niece when her guardian had flatly forbidden the continuance of her slum work. It had ended when the girl, creeping up under the guns of his angry eyes, had dropped her head on his shoulder, and said in unsteady tones:-- "I--I'm not a very happy Esmé, Uncle Guardy. If I don't have something to do--something real--I'll--I'll c-c-cry and get my pretty nose all red." "Quit it!" cried the gruff doctor desperately. "What d'ye mean by acting that way! Go on. Do as you like. But if Merritt lets anything happen to you--" "Nothing will happen, Guardy. I'll be careful," promised the girl. "Well, I don't know whatever's come over you, lately," retorted her uncle, troubled. "Neither do I," said Esmé. She went forth and enlisted Kathleen Pierce, whose energetic and restless mind was ensnared at once by what she regarded as the romantic possibilities of the work, and the two gathered unto themselves half a dozen of the young males of the species, who readily volunteered, partly for love and loyalty to the chieftainesses of their clan, partly out of the blithe and adventurous spirit of youth, and of them formed an automobile corps, for scouting, messenger service, and emergency transportation, as auxiliary to Hale and Merritt; an enterprise which subsequently did yeoman work and taught several of the gilded youth something about the responsibilities of citizenship which they would never have learned in any other school. Tip O'Farrell was another invaluable aide. He had one brief encounter, on enlistment, with the health officer. "You ought to be in jail," said Dr. Merritt. "What fer?" demanded O'Farrell. "Smuggling out bodies without a permit." "Ferget it," advised the politician. "I tried my way, an' it wasn't good enough. Now I'll try yours. You can't afford to jug me." "Why can't I?" "I'm too much use to you." "So far you've been just the other thing." "Ain't I tellin' you I'm through with that game? On the level! Doc, these poor boobs down here _know_ me. They'll do as I tell 'em. Gimme a chance." So O'Farrell, making his chance, did his work faithfully and well through the dismal weeks to follow. It takes all kinds of soldiers to fight an epidemic. Those two sturdy volunteers, Miss Elliot and Miss Pierce, were driving slowly along the fringe of the Rookeries,--yes, slowly, notwithstanding that Kathleen Pierce was acting as her own chauffeur,--having just delivered a consignment of emergency nurses from a neighboring city to Dr. Merritt, when the car slowed down. "Did you see that?" inquired Miss Pierce, indicating, with a jerk of her head, the general topography off to starboard. "See what?" inquired her companion. "I didn't notice anything except a hokey-pokey seller, adding his mite to the infant mortality of the district." "Esmé, you talk like nothing human lately!" accused her friend. "You're a--a--regular health leaflet! I meant that man going into the corner tenement. I believe it was Hal Surtaine." "Was it?" "And you needn't say, 'Was it?' in that lofty, superior tone, like an angel with a new halo, either," pursued her aggrieved friend. "You know it was. What do you suppose he's doing down here?" "The epidemic is the 'Clarion's special news. He spends quite a little time in this district, I believe." "Oh, you believe! Then you've seen him lately?" "Yes." Miss Pierce stared rigidly in front of her and made a detour of magnificent distance to avoid a push-cart which wasn't in her way anyhow. "Esmé," she said. "Yes?" "Did you give me away to him?" "No. He didn't give me an opportunity." "Oh!" There was more silence. Then, "Esmé, I was pretty rotten about that, wasn't I?" "Why, Kathie, I think you ought to have written to him." "I meant to write and own up, no matter if I did tell you I wouldn't. But I kept putting it off. Esmé, did you notice how thin and worn he looks?" The other winced. "He's had a great deal to worry him." "Well, he hasn't got our lawsuit to worry him any more. That's off." "Off?" A light flashed into Esmé's face. "Your father has dropped it?" "Yes. He had to. I told him the accident was my fault, and if I was put on the stand I'd say so. I'm not so popular with Pop as I might be, just now. But, Esmé, I _didn't_ mean to run away and leave her in the gutter. I got rattled, and Brother was crying and I lost my head." "That will save the 'Clarion,'" said Esmé, with a deep breath. Kathleen looked at her curiously, and then made a singular remark. "Yes; that's what I did it for." "But what interest have you in saving the 'Clarion'?" demanded Esmé, bewildered. "The failure of the 'Clarion' would be a disaster to the city," observed Miss Pierce in copy-book style. "Kathie! You should make two jabs in the air with your forefinger when you quote. Otherwise you're a plagiarist. Let me see." Esmé pondered. "Hugh Merritt," she decided. Kathleen kept her eyes steady ahead, but a flood of color rose in her face. "I had an awful fight over it with him before--before I gave in," she said. "Are you going to marry Hugh?" demanded Esmé bluntly. The color deepened until even the velvety eyes seemed tinged with it. "I don't know. _He_ isn't exactly popular with Pop, either." Esmé reached over and gave her friend a surreptitious little hug, which might have cost a crossing pedestrian his life if he hadn't been a brisk dodger. "Hugh Merritt is a _man_," said she in a low voice: "He's brave and he's straight and he's fine. And oh, Kathie, dearest, if a man of that kind loves you, don't you ever, ever let anything come between you." "Hello!" said Kathleen in surprise. "That don't sound much like the Great American Man-eating Pumess of yore. There's been a big change in you since you sidetracked Will Douglas, Esmé. Did you really care? No, of course, you didn't," she answered herself. "He's a nice chap, but he isn't particularly brave or fine, I guess." A light broke in upon her: "Esmé! Is it, after all--" "No, no, no, no, NO!" cried the victim of this highly feminine deduction, in panic. "It isn't any one." "No, of course it isn't, dear. I didn't mean to tease you. Hello! what have we here?" The car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the quarantined section. Seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the stiffened form of a young child. The boy's teeth were clenched and his face darkly suffused. "Convulsions," said Esmé. The two girls were out of the car simultaneously. The agonized mother, an Italian, was deaf to Esmé's persuasions that the child be turned over to them. "What shall we do?" she asked, turning to Kathleen in dismay. "I think he's dying, and I can't make the woman listen." Something of her father's stern decisiveness of character was in Kathleen Pierce. "Don't be a fool!" she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the child away from her. "Start the car, Esmé." The woman began to shriek. A crowd gathered. O'Farrell providentially appeared from around a corner. "Grab her, you," she directed O'Farrell. The politician hesitated. "What's the game?" he began. Then he caught sight of Esmé. "Oh, it's you, Miss Elliot. Sure. Hi! Can it!" he shouted, fending off the distracted mother. "They'll take the kid to the hospital. See? You go along quiet, now." Speeding beyond all laws, but under protection of their red cross, they all but ran down Dr. Merritt and stopped to take him in. He confirmed Esmé's diagnosis. "It'll be touch and go whether we save him," said he. Esmé carried the stricken child into the hospital ward. The two volunteers waited outside for word. In an hour it came. The boy would probably live, thanks to their promptitude. "But you ought not to be picking up chance infants around the district," he protested. "It isn't safe." "Oh, we belong to the St. Bernard tribe," retorted Miss Pierce. "We take 'em as we find 'em. Hugh, come and lunch with us." The grayish young man looked at her wistfully. "Haven't time," he said. "No: I didn't suppose you'd step aside from the thorny path, even to eat," she retorted; and Esmé, hearing the new tone under the flippant words, knew that all was well with the girl, and envied her with a great and gentle envy. CHAPTER XXXIV VOX POPULI These were the days when Hal Surtaine worked with a sense of wild freedom from all personal bonds. He had definitely broken with his father. He had challenged every interest in Worthington from which there was anything to expect commercially. He had peremptorily banished Esmé Elliot from his heart and his hopes, though she still forced entrance to his thoughts and would not be denied, there, the precarious rights of an undesired guest. He was now simply and solely a journalist with a mind single to his purpose, to go down fighting the best fight there was in him. Defeat, he believed, was practically certain. He would make it a defeat of which no man need be ashamed. The handling of the epidemic news, Hal left to his colleagues, devoting his own pen to a vigorous defense of the "Clarion's" position and assertion of its policy, in the editorial columns. Concealment and suppression, he pointed out, had been the chief factor in the disastrous spread of the contagion. Early recognition of the danger and a frank fighting policy would have saved most of the sacrificed lives. The blame lay, not with those who had disclosed the peril, but with those who had fostered it by secrecy; probing deeper into it, with those who had blocked such reform of housing and sanitation as would have checked a filth disease like typhus. In time this would be indicated more specifically. Tenements which netted twelve per cent to their owners and bred plagues, the "Clarion" observed editorially, were good private but poor public investments. Whereupon a number of highly regarded Christian citizens began to refer to the editor as an anarchist. The "Clarion" principle of ascertaining "the facts behind the news" had led naturally to an inquiry into ownership of the Rookeries. Wayne had this specifically in charge and reported sensational results from the first. "It'll be a corking follow-up feature," he said. "Later we can hitch it up to the Housing Reform Bill." "Make a fifth page full spread of it for Monday." "With pictures of the owners," suggested Wayne. "Why not this way? Make a triple lay-out for each one. First, a picture of the tenement with the number of deaths and cases underneath. Then the half-tone of the owner. And, beyond, the picture of the house he lives in. That'll give contrast." "Good!" said Wayne. "Fine and yellow." By Sunday, four days after the opening story, all the material for the second big spread was ready except for one complication. Some involution of trusteeship in the case of two freeholds in Sadler's Shacks, at the heart of the Rookeries, had delayed access to the records. These two were Number 3 and Number 9 Sperry Street, the latter dubbed "the Pest-Egg" by the "Clarion," as being the tenement in which the pestilence was supposed to have originated. These two last clues, Wayne was sure, would be run down before evening. Already the net of publicity had dragged in, among other owners of the dangerous property, a high city official, an important merchant, a lady much given to blatant platform philanthropies, and the Reverend Dr. Wales's fashionable church. It was, indeed, a noble company of which the "Clarion" proposed to make martyrs on the morrow. One man quite unconnected with any twelve per cent ownership, however, had sworn within his ravaged soul that there should be no morrow's "Clarion." Max Veltman, four days previously, had crawled home to his apartment after a visit to the drug store where he had purchased certain acids. With these he worked cunningly and with complete absorption in his pursuit, neither stirring out of his own place nor communicating with any fellow being. Consequently he knew nothing of the sensation which had convulsed Worthington, nor of the "Clarion's" change of policy. To his inflamed mind the Surtaine organ was a noxious thing, and Harrington Surtaine the guilty partner in the profits of Milly's death who had rejected the one chance to make amends. Carrying a carefully wrapped bundle, he went forth into the streets on Sunday evening, and wandered into the Rookeries district. A red-necked man, standing on a barrel, was making a speech to a big crowd gathered at one of the corners. Dimly-heard, the word "Clarion" came to Veltman's ears. "What's he saying?" he asked a neighbor. "He's roastin' the ---- ---- 'Clarion,'" replied the man. "We ought to go up there an' tear the buildin' down." To Veltman it seemed quite natural that popular rage should be directed toward the object of his hatred. He sat down weakly upon the curb and waited to see what would happen. Another chance auditor of that speech did not wait. McGuire Ellis stayed just long enough to scent danger, and hurried back to the office. "Trouble brewing down in the Rookeries," he told Hal. "More than usual?" "Different from the usual. There's a mob considering paying us a visit." "The new press!" exclaimed Hal. "Just what I was thinking. A rock or a bullet in its pretty little insides would cost money." "We'd better notify Police Headquarters." "I have. They gave me the laugh. Told me it was a pipe-dream. They're sore on us because of our attack on the department for dodging saloon law enforcement." "I don't like this, Mac," said Hal. "What a fool I was to put the press in the most exposed place." "Fortify it." "With what?" "The rolls." Print-paper comes from the pulp-mills in huge cylinders, seven feet long by four in diameter. The highest-powered small arm could not send a bullet through the close-wrapped fabric. Ellis's plan offered perfect protection if there was enough material to build the fortification. The entire pressroom force was at once set to work, and in half an hour the delicate and costly mechanism was protected behind an impenetrable barrier which shut it off from view except at the south end. The supply of rolls had fallen a little short. "Let 'em smash the window if they like," said Ellis. "Plate-glass insurance covers that. I wish we had something for that corner." "With a couple of revolvers we could guard it from these windows," said Hal. "But where are we to get revolvers on a Sunday night?" "Leave that to me," said Ellis, and went out. Hal, standing at the open second-story window, surveyed the strategic possibilities of the situation. His outer office jutting out into a narrow L overlooked, from a broad window, the empty space of the street. From the front he could just see the press, behind its plate-glass. This was set back some ten feet from the sidewalk line proper, and marking the outer boundary stood a row of iron posts of old and dubious origin, formerly connected by chains. Hal had a wish that they were still so joined. They would have served, at least, as a hypothetical guard-line. The flagged and slightly depressed space between these and the front of the building, while actually of private ownership, had long been regarded as part of the thoroughfare. Overlooking it from the north end, opposite Hal's office, was another window, in the reference room. Any kind of gunnery from those vantage-spots would guard the press. But would the mere threat of firing suffice? That is what Hal wished to know. He had no desire to pump bullets into a close-packed crowd. On the other hand, he did not propose to let any mob ruin his property without a fight. His military reverie was interrupted by the entrance of Bim Currier, followed by Dr. Elliot. "Why the fortification?" asked the latter. "We've heard rumors of a mob attack." "So've I. That's why I'm here. Want any help?" "Why, you're very kind," began Hal dubiously; "but--" "Rope off that space," cut in the brisk doctor, seizing, with a practiced eye, upon the natural advantage of the sentinel posts. "Got any rope?" "Yes. There's some in the pressroom. It isn't very strong." "No matter. Moral effect. Mobs always stop to think, at a line. I know. I've fought 'em before." "This is very good of you, to come--" "Not a bit of it. I noticed what the 'Clarion' did to its medical advertisers. I like your nerve. And I like a fight, in a good cause. Have 'em paint up some signs to put along the ropes. 'Danger.'--'Keep Out.'--'Trespassers Enter Here at their Peril'; and that sort of thing." "I'll do it," said Hal, going to the telephone to give the orders. While he was thus engaged, McGuire Ellis entered. "Hello!" the physician greeted him. "What have you got there? Revolvers?" "Count 'em; two," answered Ellis. "Gimme one," said the visitor, helping himself to a long-barreled .45. "Here! That's for Hal Surtaine," protested Ellis. "Not by a jug-ful! He's too hot-headed. Besides, can he afford to be in it if there _should_ be any serious trouble? Think of the paper!" "You're right there," agreed Ellis, struck by the keen sense of this view. "If they could lay a killing at his door, even in self-defense--" "Pree-cisely! Whereas, I don't intend to shoot unless I have to, and probably not then." They explained the wisdom of this procedure to Hal, who reluctantly admitted it, agreeing to leave the weapons in the hands of Dr. Elliot and McGuire Ellis. "Put Ellis here in this window. I'll hold the fort yonder." He pointed across the space to the reference room in the opposite L. "Nine times out of ten a mob don't really--" He stopped abruptly, his face stiffening with surprise, and some other emotion, which Hal for the moment failed to interpret. Following the direction of his glance, the two other men turned. Dr. Surtaine, suave and smiling, was advancing across the floor. "Ellis, how are you? Good-evening, Dr. Elliot. Ah! Pistols?" "Yes. Have one?" invited Ellis smoothly. "I brought one with me." He tugged at his pocket, whence emerged a cheap and shiny weapon. Hal shuddered, recognizing it. It was the revolver which Milly Neal had carried. "So you've heard?" asked Ellis. "Ten minutes ago. I haven't any idea it will amount to much, but I thought I ought to be here in case of danger." Dr. Elliot grunted. Ellis, suggesting that they take a look at the other defense, tactfully led him away, leaving father and son together. They had not seen each other since the Emergency Health Committee meeting. Something of the quack's glossy jauntiness faded out of his bearing as he turned to Hal. "Boy-ee," he began diffidently, "there's been a pretty bad mistake." "There's been worse than that," said Hal sadly. "About Milly Neal. I thought--I thought it was you that got her into trouble." "Why? For God's sake, why?" "Don't be too hard on me," pleaded the other. "I'd heard about the road-house. And then, what she said to you. It all fitted in. Hale put me right. Boy-ee, I can sleep again, now that I know it wasn't you." The implication caught at Hal's throat. "Why, Dad," he said lamely, "if you'd only come to me and asked--" "Somehow I couldn't. I was waiting for you to tell me." He slid his big hand over Hal's shoulder, and clutched him in a sudden, jerky squeeze, his face averted. "Now, that's off our minds," he said, in a loud and hearty voice. "We can--" "Wait a minute. Father, you saw the story in the 'Clarion,'--the story of Milly's death?" "Yes, I saw that." "Well?" "I suppose you did what you thought was right, Boy-ee." "I did what I had to do. I hated it." "I'm glad to know that much, anyway." "But I'd do it again, exactly the same." The Doctor turned troubled eyes on his son. "Hasn't there been enough judging of each other between you and me, Boy-ee?" he asked sorrowfully. In wretched uncertainty how to meet this appeal, Hal hesitated. He was saved from decision by the return of McGuire Ellis. "No movement yet from the enemy's camp," he reported. "I just had a telephone from Hale's club." "Perhaps they won't come, after all," surmised Hal. "There's pretty hot talk going. Somebody's been helping along by serving free drinks." "Now who could that be, I wonder?" "Maybe some of our tenement-owning politician friends who aren't keen about having to-morrow's 'Clarion' appear." "We ought to have a reporter down there, Mac." "Denton's there. Well, as there's nothing doing, I'll tackle a little work." And seating himself at his desk beside the broad window Ellis proceeded to annihilate some telegraph copy, fresh off the wire. With the big tenement story spread, the morrow's paper would be straitened for space. Excusing himself to his father, Hal stepped into his private office--and recoiled in uttermost amazement. There, standing in the further doorway, lovely, palpitant, with the color flushing in her cheeks and the breath fluttering in her throat, stood Esmé Elliot. "Oh!" she gasped, stretching out her hands to him. "I've tried so to get you by 'phone. There's a mob coming--" "Yes, I know," said Hal gently. He led her to a chair. "We're ready for them." "Are you? I'm so glad. I was afraid you wouldn't know in time." "How did you find out?" "I've been working with Mr. Hale down in the district. I heard rumors of it. Then I listened to what the people said, and I hurried here in my car to warn you. They're drunk, and mean trouble." "That was good of you! I appreciate it." "No. It was a debt. I owed it to the 'Clarion.' You've been--splendid about the typhus." "Worthington doesn't look at it that way," returned Hal, with a rather grim smile. "When they understand, they will." "Perhaps. But, see here, you can't stay. There may be danger. It's awfully good of you to come. But you must get away." She looked at him sidelong. In her coming she had been the new Esmé, the Esmé who was Norman Hale's most unselfish and unsparing worker, the Esmé who thought for others, all womanly. But, now that the strain had relaxed, she reverted, just a little, to her other self. It was, for the moment, the Great American Pumess who spoke:-- "Won't you even say you're glad to see me?" "Glad!" The echo leaped to his lips and the fire to his eyes as the old unconquered longing and passion surged over him. "I don't think I've known what gladness is since that night at your house." Her eyes faltered away from his. "I don't think I quite understand," she said weakly; then, with a change to quick resolution:-- "There is something I must tell you. You have a right to know it. It's about the paper. Will you come to see me to-morrow?" "Yes. But go now. No! Wait!" From without sounded a dull murmur pierced through with an occasional whoop, jubilant rather than threatening. "Too late," said Hal quietly. "They're coming." "I'm not afraid." "But I am--for you. Stay in this room. If they should break into the building, go up those stairs and get to the roof. They won't come there." He went into the outer room, closing the door behind him. From both directions and down a side street as well the dwellers in the slums straggled into the open space in front of the "Clarion" office. To Hal they seemed casual, purposeless; rather prankish, too, like a lot of urchins out on a lark. Several bore improvised signs, uncomplimentary to the "Clarion." They seemed surprised when they encountered the rope barrier with its warning placards. There were mutterings and queries. "No serious harm in them," opined Dr. Elliot, to whom Hal had gone to see whether he wanted anything. "Just mischief. A few rocks maybe, and then they'll go home. Look at old Mac." Opposite them, at his brilliantly lighted window desk, sat McGuire Ellis, in full view of the crowd below, conscientiously blue-penciling telegraph copy. "Hey, Mac!" yelled an acquaintance in the street. "Come down and have a drink." The associate editor lifted his head. "Don't be young," he retorted. "Go home and sleep it off." And reverted to his task. "What are we doin' here, anyway?" roared some thirster for information. Nobody answered. But, thus recalled to a purpose, the mob pressed against the ropes. "Ladies _and_ gentlemen!" A great, rounded voice boomed out above them, drawing every eye to the farthermost window where stood Dr. Surtaine, his chest swelling with ready oratory. "Hooray!" yelled the crowd. "Good Old Doc!"--"He pays the freight."--"Speech!" "Say, Doc," bawled a waggish soul, "I gotta corn, marchin' up here. Will Certina cure it?" And another burst into the final lines of a song then popular; in which he was joined by several of his fellows: "Father, he drinks Seltzer. Redoes, like hell! (_Crescendo_.) He drinks Cer-tee-nah!" "Ladies _and_ gentlemen," boomed the wily charlatan. "Unaccustomed as I am to _extempore_ speaking, I cannot let pass this opportunity to welcome you. We appreciate this testimonial of your regard for the 'Clarion.' We appreciate, also, that it is a warm night and a thirsty one. Therefore, I suggest that we all adjourn back to the Old Twelfth Ward, where, if the authorities will kindly look the other way, I shall be delighted to provide liquid refreshments for one and all in which to drink to the health and prosperity of an enlightened free press." The crowd rose to him with laughter. "Good old Sport!"--"Mine's Certina."--"Come down and make good."--"Free booze, free speech, free press!"--"You're on, Doc! You're on." "He's turned the trick," growled Dr. Elliot to Hal. "He's a smooth one!" Indeed, the crowd wavered, with that peculiar swaying which presages a general movement. At the south end there was a particularly dense gathering, and there some minor struggle seemed to be in progress. Cries rose: "Let him through."--"What's he want?" "It's Max Veltman," said Hal, catching sight of a wild, strained face. "What is he up to?" The former "Clarion" man squirmed through the front rank and crawled slowly under the ropes. Above the murmur of confused tones, a voice of terror shrilled out: "He's got a bomb." The mass surged back from the spot. Veltman, moving forward upon the unprotected south end of the press, was fumbling at his pocket. "I'll fix your free and enlightened press," he screamed. Dr. Elliot turned on Hal with an imperative question. "Is it true, do you think? Will he do it? Quick!" "Crazy," said Hal. "God forgive me!" prayed the ex-navy man as his arm whipped up. There were two quick reports. At the second, Veltman stopped, half turned, threw his arms widely outward, and vanished in a blinding glare, accompanied by a gigantic _snap!_ as if a mountain of rock had been riven in twain. To Hal it seemed that the universe had disintegrated in that concussion. Blackness surrounded him. He was on the floor, half crouching, and, to his surprise, unhurt. Groping his way to the window he leaned out above an appalling silence. It endured only a moment. Then rose the terrible clamor of a mob in panic-stricken flight, above an insistent undertone of groans, sobs, and prayers. "I had to kill him," muttered Dr. Elliot's shaking voice at Hal's ear. "There was just the one chance before he could throw his bomb." Every light in the building had gone out. Guiding himself by the light of matches, Hal hurried across to his den. He heard Esmé's voice before he could make her out, standing near the door. "Is any one hurt?" Hal breathed a great sigh. "You're all right, then! We don't know how bad it is." "An explosion?" "Veltman threw a bomb. He's killed." "Boy-ee!" called Dr. Surtaine. "Here, Dad. You're safe?" "Yes." "Thank God! Careful with that match! The place is strewn with papers." Men from below came hurrying in with candles, which are part of every newspaper's emergency equipment. They reported no serious injuries to the staff or the equipment. Although the plate-glass window had been shattered into a million fragments and the inner fortification toppled over, the precious press had miraculously escaped injury. But in a strewn circle, outside, lay rent corpses, and the wounded pitifully striving to crawl from that shambles. With the steadiness which comes to nerves racked to the point of collapse, Hal made the rounds of the building. Two men in the pressroom were slightly hurt. Their fellows would look after them. Wayne, with his men, was already in the street, combining professional duty with first aid. The scattered and stricken mob had begun to sift back, only a subdued and curious crowd now. Then came the ambulances and the belated police, systematizing the work. Quarter of an hour had passed when Dr. Surtaine, Esmé Elliot, her uncle--much surprised at finding her there--and Hal stood in the editorial office, hardly able yet to get their bearings. "I shall give myself up to the authorities," decided Dr. Elliot. He was deadly pale, but of unshaken nerve. "Why?" cried Hal. "It was no fault of yours." "Rules of the game. Well, young man, you have a paper to get out for to-morrow, though the heavens fall. Good-night." Hal gripped at his hand. "I don't know how to thank you--" he began. "Don't try, then," was the gruff retort. "Where's Mac?" He turned to McGuire Ellis's desk to bid that sturdy toiler good-night. There, dimly seen through the flickering candlelight, the undisputed Short-Distance Slumber Champion of the World sat, his head on his arms, in his familiar and favorite attitude of snatching a few moments' respite from a laborious existence. "Will you _look_ at _that!_" cried the physician in utmost amazement. At the sight a wild surge of mirth overwhelmed Hal's hair-trigger nerves. He began to laugh, with strange, quick catchings of the breath: to laugh tumultuously, rackingly, unendurably. "Stop it!" shouted Dr. Elliot, and smote him a sledge-blow between the shoulders. For the moment the hysteria was jarred out of Hal. He gasped, gurgled, and took a step toward his assistant. "Hey, Mac! Wake up! You've spilled your ink." [Illustration: "DON'T GO NEAR HIM. DON'T LOOK"] Before he could speak or move further, Esmé Elliot's arms were about him. Her face was close to his. He could feel the strong pressure of her breast against him as she forced him back. "No, no!" she was pleading, in a swift half-whisper. "Don't go near him. Don't look. _Please_ don't. Come away." He set her aside. A candlelight flared high. From Ellis's desk trickled a little stream. Dr. Elliot was already bending over the slackened form. "So it wasn't ink," said Hal slowly. "Is he dead, Dr. Elliot?" "No," snapped the other. "Esmé, bandages! Quick! Your petticoat! That'll do. Get another candle. Dr. Surtaine, help me lift him. There! Surtaine, bring water. _Do you hear?_ Hurry!" When Hal returned, uncle and niece were working with silent deftness over Ellis, who lay on the floor. The wounded man opened his eyes upon his employer's agonized face. "Did he get the press?" he gasped. "Keep quiet," ordered the Doctor. "Don't speak." "Did he get the press?" insisted Ellis obstinately. "Mac! Mac!" half sobbed Hal, bending over him. "I thought you were dead." And his tears fell on the blood-streaked face. "Don't be young," growled Ellis faintly. "Did--he--get--the--press?" "No." The wounded man's eyes closed. "All right," he murmured. Up to the time that the ambulance surgeons came to carry Ellis away, Dr. Elliot was too busy with him even to be questioned. Only after the still burden had passed through the door did he turn to Hal. "A piece of metal carried away half the back of his neck," he said. "And we let him sit there, bleeding his life away!" "Is there any chance?" demanded Hal. "I doubt if they'll get him to the hospital alive." "The best man in Worthington!" said Hal passionately. "Oh!" He shook his clenched fists at the outer darkness. "I'll make somebody pay for this." Esmé's hand fell upon his arm. "Do you want me to stay?" she asked. "No. You must go home. It's been a terrible thing for you." "I'll go to the hospital," she said, "and I'll 'phone you as soon as there is any news." "Better come home with me, Hal," said his father gently. The younger man turned with an involuntary motion toward the desk, still wet with his friend's blood. "I'll stay on the job," he said. Understanding, the father nodded his sympathy. "Yes; I guess that would have been Mac's way," said he. Work pressing upon the editor from all sides came as a boon. The paper had to be made over for the catastrophe which, momentarily, overshadowed the typhus epidemic in importance. In hasty consultation, it was decided that the "special" on the ownership of the infected tenements should be set aside for a day, to make space. Hal had to make his own statement, not alone for the "Clarion," but for the other newspapers, whose representatives came seeking news and also--what both surprised and touched him--bearing messages of sympathy and congratulation, and offers of any help which they could extend from men to pressroom accommodations. Not until nearly two o'clock in the morning did Hal find time to draw breath over an early proof, which stated the casualties as seven killed outright, including Veltman who was literally torn to pieces, and twenty-two seriously wounded. From his reading Hal was called to the 'phone. Esmé's voice came to him with a note of hope and happiness. "Oh, Hal, they say there's a chance! Even a good chance! They've operated, and it isn't as bad as it looked at first. I'm so glad for you." "Thank you," said Hal huskily. "And--bless you! You've been an angel to-night." There was a pause: then, "You'll come to see me--when you can?" "To-morrow," said he. "No--to-day. I forgot." They both laughed uncertainly, and bade each other good-night. Hal stayed through until the last proof. In the hallway a heavy figure lifted itself from a chair in a corner as he came out. "Dad!" exclaimed Hal. "I thought I'd wait," said the charlatan wistfully. No other word was necessary. "I'll be glad to be home again," said Hal. "You can lend me some pajamas?" "They're laid out on your bed. Every night." The two men passed down the stairs, arm in arm. At the door they paused. Through the building ran a low tremor, waxing to a steady thrill. The presses were throwing out to the world once again their irrevocable message of fact and fate. CHAPTER XXXV TEMPERED METAL Monday's newspapers startled Hal Surtaine. Despite the sympathetic attitude expressed after the riot by the other newspaper men, he had not counted upon the unanimous vigor with which the local press took up the cudgels for the "Clarion." That potent and profound guild-fellowship of newspaperdom, which, when once aroused, overrides all individual rivalry and jealousy, had never before come into the young editor's experience. To his fellow editors the issue was quite clear. Here was an attack, not upon one newspaper alone, but upon the principle of journalistic independence. Little as the "Banner," the "Press," the "Telegram," and their like had practiced independence of thought or writing, they could both admire and uphold it in another. Their support was as genuine as it was generous. The police department, and, indeed, the whole city administration of Worthington, came in for scathing and universal denunciation, in that they had failed to protect the "Clarion" against the mob's advance. The evening papers got out special bulletins on McGuire Ellis. None too hopeful they were, for the fighting journalist, after a brief rally, had sunk into a condition where life was the merest flicker. Always a picturesque and well-liked personality, Ellis now became a species of popular hero. Sympathy centralized on him, and through him attached temporarily to the "Clarion" itself, which he now typified in the public imagination. His condition, indeed, was just so much sentimental capital to the paper, as the Honorable E.M. Pierce savagely put it to William Douglas. Nevertheless, the two called at the hospital to make polite inquiries, as did scores of their fellow leading citizens. Ellis, stricken down, was serving his employer well. Not that Hal knew this, nor, had he known it, would have cared. Sick at heart, he waited about the hospital reception room for such meager hopes as the surgeons could give him, until an urgent summons compelled him to go to the office. Wayne had telephoned for him half a dozen times, finally leaving a message that he must see him on a point in the tenement-ownership story, to be run on the morrow. Wayne, at the moment of Hal's arrival, was outside the rail talking to a visitor. On the copy-book beside his desk was stuck an illustration proof, inverted. Idly Hal turned it, and stood facing his final and worst ordeal of principle. The half-tone picture, lovely, suave, alluring, smiled up into his eyes from above its caption:-- "_Miss Esmé Elliot, Society Belle and Owner of No. 9 Sadler's Shacks, Known as the Pest-Egg."_ "You've seen it," said Wayne's voice at his elbow. "Yes." "Well; it was that I wanted to ask you about." "Ask it," said Hal, dry-lipped. "I knew you were a--a friend of Miss Elliot's. We can kill it out yet. It--it isn't absolutely necessary to the story," he added, pityingly. He turned and looked away from a face that had grown swiftly old under his eyes. In Hal's heart there was a choking rush of memories: the conquering loveliness of Esmé; her sweet and loyal womanliness and comradeship of the night before; the half-promise in her tones as she had bid him come to her; the warm pressure of her arms fending him from the sight of his friend's blood; and, far back, her voice saying so confidently, "I'd trust you," in answer to her own supposititious test as to what he would do if a news issue came up, involving her happiness. Blotting these out came another picture, a swathed head, quiet upon a pillow. In that moment Hal knew that he was forever done with suppressions and evasions. Nevertheless, he intended to be as fair to Esmé as he would have been to any other person under attack. "You're sure of the facts?" he asked Wayne. "Certain." "How long has she owned it?" "Oh, years. It's one of those complicated trusteeships." Hope sprang up in Hal's soul. "Perhaps she doesn't know about it." "Isn't she morally bound to know? We've assumed moral responsibility in the other trusteeships. Of course, if you want to make a difference--" Wayne, again wholly the journalist, jealous for the standards of his craft, awaited his chief's decision. "No. Have you sent a man to see her?" "Yes. She's away." "Away? Impossible!" "That's what they said at the house. The reporter got the notion that there was something queer about her going. Scared out, perhaps." Hal thought of the proud, frank eyes, and dismissed that hypothesis. Whatever Esmé's responsibility, he did not believe that she would shirk the onus of it. "Dr. Elliot?" he enquired. "Refused all information and told the reporter to go to the devil." Hal sighed. "Run the story," he said. "And the picture?" "And the picture." Going out he left directions with the telephone girl to try to get Miss Elliot and tell her that it would be impossible for him to call that day. "She will understand when she sees the paper in the morning," he thought. "Or think she understands," he amended ruefully. The telephone girl did not get Miss Elliot, for good and sufficient reasons, but succeeded in extracting a promise from the maiden cousin at Greenvale that the message would be transmitted. Through the day and far into the night Hal worked unsparingly, finding time somehow to visit or call up the hospital every hour. At midnight they told him that Ellis was barely holding his own. Hal put the "Clarion" to bed that night, before going to the Surtaine mansion, hopeless of sleep, yet, nevertheless, so worn out that he sank into instant slumber as soon as he had drawn the sheets over him. On his way to the office in the morning, he ran full upon Dr. Elliot. For a moment Hal thought that the ex-officer meant to strike him with the cane which he raised. It sank. "You miserable hound!" said Dr. Elliot. Hal stood, silent. "What have you to say for yourself?" "Nothing." "My niece came to your office to save your rag of a sheet. I shot down a poor crazy devil in your defense. And this is how you repay us." Hal faced him, steadfast, wretched, determined upon only one thing: to endure whatever he might say or do. "Do you know who's really responsible for that tenement? Answer me!" "No." "I! I! I!" shouted the infuriated man. "You? The records show--" "Damn the records, sir! The property was trusteed years ago. I should have looked after it, but I never even thought of its being what it is. And my niece didn't know till this morning that she owned it." "Why didn't you say so to our reporter, then?" cried Hal eagerly. "Let us print a statement from you, from her--" "In your sheet? If you so much as publish her name again--By Heavens, I wish it were the old days, I'd call you out and kill you." "Dr. Elliot," said Hal quietly, "did you think I wanted to print that about Esmé?" "Wanted to? Of course you wanted to. You didn't have to, did you?" "Yes." "What compelled you?" demanded the other. "You won't understand, but I'll tell you. The 'Clarion' compelled me. It was news." "News! To blackguard a young girl, ignorant of the very thing you've held her up to shame for! The power of the press! A power to smirch the names of decent people. And do you know where my girl is now, on this day when your sheet is smearing her name all over the town?" demanded the physician, his voice shaking with wrath and grief. "Do you know that--you who know everybody's business?" Chill fear took hold upon Hal. "No," he said. "In quarantine for typhus. Here! Keep off me!" For Hal, stricken with his first experience of that black, descending mist which is just short of unconsciousness, had clutched at the other's shoulder to steady himself. "Where?" he gasped. "I won't tell you," retorted the Doctor viciously. "You might make another article out of that, of the kind you enjoy so much." But this was too ghastly a joke. Hal straightened, and lifted his head to an eye-level with his denouncer. "Enjoy!" he said, in a low tone. "You may guess how much when I tell you that I've loved Esmé with every drop of my blood since the first time I ever spoke with her." The Doctor's grim regard softened a little. "If I tell you, you won't publish it? Or give it away? Or try to communicate with her? I won't have her pestered." "My word of honor." "She's at the typhus hospital." "And she's got typhus?" groaned Hal. "No. Who said she had it? She's been exposed to it." Hardly was the last word out of his mouth when he was alone. Hal had made a dash for a taxi. "Health Bureau," he cried. By good fortune he found Dr. Merritt in. "You've got Esmé Elliot at the typhus hospital," he said breathlessly. "Yes. In the isolation ward." "Why?" "She's been exposed. She carried a child, in convulsions, into the hospital. The child developed typhus late Saturday night; must have been infected at the time. As soon as I knew, I sent for her, and she came like the brave girl she is, yesterday morning." "Will she get the fever?" "God forbid! Every precaution has been taken." "Merritt, that's an awful place for a girl like Miss Elliot. Get her out." "Don't ask me! I've got to treat all exposed cases alike." "But, Merritt," pleaded Hal, "in this case an exception can't injure any one. She can be completely quarantined at home. You told Wayne you owed the 'Clarion' and me a big debt. I wouldn't ask it if it were anything else; but--" "Would you do it yourself?" said the young health officer steadily. "Have you done it in your paper?" "But this may be her life," argued the advocate desperately. "Think! If it were your sister, or--or the woman you cared for." Dr. Merritt's fine mouth quivered and set. "Kathleen Pierce is quarantined with Esmé," he said quietly. The pair looked each other through the eyes into the soul and knew one another for men. "You're right, Merritt," said Hal. "I'm sorry I asked." "I'll keep you posted," said the official, as his visitor turned away. Meantime, Esmé had volunteered as an emergency nurse, and been gladly accepted. In the intervals of her new duties she had received from her distracted cousin, who had been calling up every half-hour to find out whether she "had it yet," Hal's message that he would not be able to see her that day, and, not having seen the "Clarion," was at a loss to understand it. Chance, by all the truly romantic, is supposed to be a sort of matrimonial agency, concerned chiefly in bringing lovers together. In the rougher realm of actuality it operates quite as often, perhaps, to keep them apart. Certainly it was no friend to Esmé Elliot on this day. For when later she learned from her guardian of his attack upon Hal (though he took the liberty of editing out the _finale_ of the encounter as he related it), she tried five separate times to reach Hal by 'phone, and each time Chance, the Frustrator, saw to it that Hal was engaged. The inference, to Esmé's perturbed heart, was obvious; he did not wish to speak to her. And to a woman of her spirit there was but one course. She would dismiss him from her mind. Which she did, every night, conscientiously, for many weary days. CHAPTER XXXVI THE VICTORY Nation-wide sped the news, branding Worthington as a pest-ridden city. Every newspaper in the country had a conspicuous dispatch about it. The bulletin of the United States Public Health Service, as in duty bound, gave official and statistical currency to the town's misfortune. Other cities in the State threatened a quarantine against Worthington. Commercial travelers and buyers postponed their local visits. The hotel registers thinned out notably. Business drooped. For all of which the "Clarion" was vehemently blamed by those most concerned. Conversely, the paper should have received part credit for the extremely vigorous campaign which the health authorities, under Dr. Merritt, set on foot at once. Using the "Clarion" exposure as a lever, the health officer pried open the Council-guarded city tills for an initial appropriation of ten thousand dollars, got a hasty ordinance passed penalizing, not the diagnosing of typhus, but failure to diagnose and report it,--not a man from the Surtaine army of suppression had the temerity to oppose the measure,--organized a medical inspection and detection corps, threw a contagion-proof quarantine about every infected building, hunted down and isolated the fugitives from the danger-points who had scattered at the first alarm, inspired the county medical society to an enthusiastic support, bullied the police into a state of reasonable efficiency, and with a combined volunteer and regular force faced the epidemic in military form. Not least conspicuous among the volunteers were Miss Esmé Elliot and Miss Kathleen Pierce, who had been released from quarantine quite as early as the law allowed, because of the need for them at the front. "We could never have done our job without you," said Dr. Merritt to Hal, meeting him by chance one morning ten days after the publication of the "spread." "If the city is saved from a regular pestilence, it'll be the Clarion's doing." "That doesn't seem to be the opinion of the business men of the place," said Hal, with a rather dreary smile. He had just been going over with the lugubrious Shearson a batch of advertising cancellations. "Oh, don't look for any credit from this town," retorted the health officer. "I'm practically ostracized, already, for my share in it." "But are you beating it out?" "God knows," answered the other. "I thought we'd traced all the foci of infection. But two new localities broke out to-day. That's the way an epidemic goes." And that is the way the Worthington typhus went for more than a month. Throughout that month the "Clarion" was carrying on an anti-epidemic campaign of its own, with the slogan "Don't Give up Old Home Week." Wise strategy this, in a double sense. It rallied public effort for victory by a definite date, for the Committee on Arrangements, despite the arguments of the weak-kneed among its number, and largely by virtue of the militant optimism of its chairman, had decided to go on with the centennial celebration if the city could show a clean bill of health by August 30, thus giving six weeks' leeway. Furthermore, it put the "Clarion" in the position of champion of the city's commercial interests and daily bade defiance to those who declared the paper an enemy and a traitor to business. In editorials, in interviews, in educational articles on hygiene and sanitation, in a course of free lectures covering the whole city and financed by the paper itself, the "Clarion" carried on the fight with unflagging zeal. Slowly it began to win back general confidence and much of the popularity which it had lost. One of its reporters in the course of his work contracted the fever and barely pulled through alive, thereby lending a flavor of possible martyrdom to the cause. McGuire Ellis's desperate fight for life also added to the romantic element which is so potent an asset with the sentimental American public. Business, however, still sulked. The defiance to its principles was too flagrant to be passed over. If the "Clarion" pulled through, the press would lose respect for the best interests and the vested privileges of commercial Worthington. Indeed, others of the papers, since the "Clarion's" declaration of independence, had exhibited a deplorable tendency to disregard hints hitherto having the authority of absolutism over them. In withholding advertising patronage from the Surtaine daily, the business men were not only seeking reprisals, but also following a sound business principle. For according to information sedulously spread abroad, it was doubtful whether the "Clarion" would long survive. Elias M. Pierce's boast that he would put it out of business gained literal interpretation, as he had intended that it should. Contrary to his accustomed habit of reticence, he had sought occasion to inform his friends that he expected verdicts against the libeler of his daughter which would throw the concern into bankruptcy, and, perhaps, its proprietor into jail. No advertiser cares to put money into a publication which may fail next week. Hence, though the circulation of the "Clarion" went up pretty steadily, the advertising patronage did not keep pace. Hal found himself hard put to it, at times, to cling to his dogged hopes. But it was worth while fighting it out to the last dollar. So much he was assured of by the messages of praise and support which began to come in to him, not from "representative citizens," but from the earnest, thoughtful, and often obscure toilers and thinkers of the city: clergymen, physicians, laboring-men, working-women, sociological workers--his peers. Then, too, there was the profound satisfaction of promised victory over the pest. For at the end of six weeks the battle was practically won; by what heroisms, at the cost of what sacrifices, through what disappointments, reversals, and set-backs, against the subtleties of what underground opposition of political influence and twelve per cent finance, is not to be set down here. The government publications tell, in their brief and pregnant records, this story of one of the most complete and brilliant victories in the history of American hygiene. My concern is with the story, not of the typhus epidemic, but of a man who fought for and surrendered and finally retrieved his own manhood and the honor of the paper which was his honor. His share, no small one, in the wiping-out of the pestilence was, to him, but part of the war for which he had enlisted. But though the newspapers, with one joyous voice, were able to announce early in August, on the authority of the federal reports, "No new case in a week," the success of Old Home Week still swayed in the balance. Outside newspapers, which had not forgotten the scandal of the smallpox suppression years before, hinted that the record might not be as clear as it appeared. The President of the United States, they pointed out, who was to be the guest of honor and the chief feature of the celebration, would not be justified in going to a city over which any suspicion of pestilence still hovered. In fact, the success or failure of the event practically hung upon the Chief Executive's action. If, now, he decided to withdraw his acceptance, on whatever ground, the country would impute it to a justified caution, and would maintain against the city that intangible moral quarantine which is so disastrous to its victim. Throughout, Hal Surtaine in his editorial columns had vigorously maintained that the President would come. It was mostly "bluff." He had nothing but hope to build on. Two more "clean" weeks passed. At the close of the second, Hal stopped one day at the hospital to see McGuire Ellis, who was finally convalescent and was to be discharged on the following week. At the door of Ellis's room he met Dr. Elliot. Somewhat embarrassed, he stepped aside. The physician stopped. "Er--Surtaine," he said hesitantly. "Well?" "I've had time to think things over. And I've had some talks with Mac. I--I guess I was wrong." "You were right enough from your point of view." "Think so?" said the other, surprised. "Yes. And I know I was right, from mine." "Humph!" There was an uncomfortable pause. Then: "I called names. I apologize." "That's all right, then," returned Hal heartily. "Woof!" exhaled the physician. "That's off my chest. Now, I've got an item for you." "For the 'Clarion'?" "Yep. The President's coming." "Coming? To Old Home Week?" "To Old Home Week." "An item! Great Cæsar! A spread! A splurge!! A blurb!!! Where did you get it?" "From Washington. Just been there." "Tell me all of it." "Know Redding? He and I saw some tough service together in the old M.H.S. That's the United States Public Health Service now. Redding's the head of it; Surgeon-General. First-class man, every way. So I went to see him and told him we had to have the President, and why. He saw it in a minute. Knew all about the 'Clarion's fight, too. He went to the White House and explained the whole business. The President said that a clean bill of health from the Service was good enough for him, and he'd come, sure. Here's his letter to the Surgeon-General. It goes out for publication to-morrow. There's a line in it speaking of the 'Clarion's good work." "Great Cæsar!" said Hal again, rather weakly. "Does that square accounts between us?" "More! A hundred times more! That's the biggest indorsement any paper in this town ever had. Old Home Week's safe. Did you tell Mac?" "Yes. He's up there cursing now because they won't let him go to the office to plan out the article." To the "Clarion," the presidential encomium was a tremendous boom professionally. Financially, however, it was of no immediate avail. It did not bring local advertising, and advertising was what the paper sorely needed. Still, it did call attention to the paper from outside. A few good contracts for "foreign" advertising, a department which had fallen off to almost nothing when Hal discarded all medical "copy," came in. With these, and a reasonable increase in local support which could be counted upon, now that commercial bitterness against the paper was somewhat mollified, Hal reckoned that he could pull through--if it were not for the Pierce suits. There was the crux of the situation. Nothing was being done about them. They had been postponed more than once, on motion of Pierce's counsel. Now they hung over Hal's head in a suspense fast becoming unbearable. At length he decided that, in fairness to his staff, he should warn them of the situation. He chose, for the explanation, one of the Talk-It-Over Breakfasts, the first one which McGuire Ellis, released temporarily from the hospital for the occasion, had attended since his wound. He sat at Hal's right, still pale and thin, but with his look of bulldog obstinacy undiminished; enhanced, rather, by the fact that one ear had been sharpened to a canine pointedness by the missile which had so narrowly grazed his life. Ellis had been goaded to a pitch of high exasperation by the solicitude and attentions of his fellows. It was his emphatically expressed opinion that the whole gathering lay under a blight of superlative youthfulness. In his mind he exempted Hal, over whose silence and distraction he was secretly worried. The cause was explained when the chairman rose to close the meeting. "There is something I have to say," he said. "I've put it off longer than I should. I may have to give up the 'Clarion.' It depends upon the outcome of the libel suits brought by E.M. Pierce. If, as we fear, Miss Cleary, the nurse who was run over, testifies for the prosecution, we can't win. Then it's only a question of the size of the damages. A big verdict would mean the ruin of the paper, I'm telling you this so that you may have time to look for new jobs." There was a long silence. Then a melancholy, musing voice said: "Gee! That's tough! Just as the paper pulled off the Home Week stunt, too." "How much of a verdict would bust us?" asked another. "Twenty-five thousand dollars," said Hal, "together with lawyers' fees. I couldn't go on." "Say, I know that old hen of a nurse," said one of the sporting writers, with entire seriousness. "Wonder if it'd do any good to marry her?" A roar went up from the table at this, somewhat relieving the tension of the atmosphere. Shearson, the advertising manager, lolling deep in his chair, spoke up diffidently, as soon as he could be heard: "I ain't rich. But I've put a little wad aside. I could chip in three thou' if that'd help." "I've got five hundred that isn't doing a stitch of work," declared Wainwright. "Some of my relations have wads of money," suggested young Denton. "I wouldn't wonder if--" "No, no, no!" cried Hal, in a shaken voice. "I know how well you fellows mean it. But--" "As a loan," said Wainwright hopefully. "The paper's good enough security." "_Not_ good enough," replied Hal firmly. "I can't take it, boys. You--you're a mighty good lot, to offer. Now, about looking for other places--" "All those that want to quit the 'Clarion,' stand up," shouted McGuire Ellis. Not a man moved. "Unanimous," observed the convalescent. "I thought nobody'd rise to that. If anybody had," he added, "I'd have punched him in the eye." The gathering adjourned in gloom. "All this only makes it harder, Mac," said Hal to his right-hand man afterward. "They can't afford to stick till we sink." "If a sailor can do it, I guess a newspaper man can," retorted the other resentfully. "I wish I could poison Pierce." At dinner that night Hal found his father distrait. Since the younger man's return, the old relations had been resumed, though there were still, of necessity, difficult restraints and reservations in their talk. The "Clarion," however, had ceased to be one of the tabooed subjects. Since the publication of the President's letter and the saving of Old Home Week, Dr. Surtaine had become an avowed Clarionite. Also he kept in personal touch with the office. This evening, however, it was with an obvious effort that he asked how affairs were going. Hal answered listlessly that matters were going well enough. "No, they aren't, Boy-ee. I heard about your talk to-day." "Did you? I'm sorry. I don't want to worry you." "Boy-ee, let me back you." "I can't, Dad." "Because of that old agreement?" "Partly." "Call it a loan, then. I can't stand by and see the paper licked by Pierce. Fifty thousand won't touch me. And it'll save you." "Please, Dad, I can't do it." "Is it because it's Certina money?" Hal turned miserable eyes on his father. "Hadn't we better keep away from that?" "I don't get you at all on that," cried the charlatan. "Why, it's business. It's legal. If I didn't sell 'em the stuff, somebody else would. Why shouldn't I take the money, when it's there?" "There's no use in my trying to argue it with you, Dad. We're miles apart." "That's just it," sighed the older man. "Oh, well! You couldn't help my paying the damages if Pierce wins," he suggested hopefully. "Yes. I could even do that." "What do you want me to do, Boy-ee?" cried his father, in desperation. "Give up a business worth half a million a year, net?" "I'm not asking anything, sir. Only let me do the best I can, in the way that looks right to me. I've got to go back to the office now. Good-night, Dad." The arch-quack looked after his son's retreating figure, and his big, animal-like eyes were very tender. "I don't know," he said to himself uncertainly,--"I don't know but what he's worth it." CHAPTER XXXVII McGUIRE ELLIS WAKES UP On implication of the Highest Authority we have it that the leopard cannot change his spots. The Great American Pumess is a feline of another stripe. Stress of experience and emotion has been known to modify sensibly her predatory characteristics. In the very beautiful specimen of the genus which, from time to time, we have had occasion to study in these pages, there had taken place, in a few short months, an alteration so considerable as to be almost revolutionary. Many factors had contributed to the result. No woman of inherent fineness can live close to human suffering, as Esmé had lived in her slum work, without losing something of that centripetal self-concern which is the blemish of the present-day American girl. Constant association with such men as Hugh Merritt and Norman Hale, men who saw in her not a beautiful and worshipful maiden, but a useful agency in the work which made up their lives, gave her a new angle from which to consider herself. Then, too, her brief engagement to Will Douglas had sobered her. For Douglas, whatever his lack of independence and manliness in his professional relations, had endured the jilting with quiet dignity. But he had suffered sharply, for he had been genuinely in love with Esmé. She felt his pain the more in that there was the same tooth gnawing at her own heart, though she would not acknowledge it to herself. And this taught her humility and consideration. The Pumess was not become a Saint, by any means. She still walked, a lovely peril to every susceptible male heart. But she no longer thirsted with unquenchable ardor for conquests. Meek though a reformed pumess may be, there are limits to meekness. When Miss Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot woke up to find herself pilloried as an enemy to society, in the very paper which she had tried to save, she experienced mingled emotions shot through with fiery streaks of wrath. Presently these simmered down to a residue of angry amazement and curiosity. If you have been accustomed all your life to regard yourself as an empress of absolute dominance over slavish masculinity, and are suddenly subjected to a violent slap across the face from the hand of the most highly favored slave, some allowance is due you of outraged sensibilities. Chiefly, however Esmé wondered WHY. WHY, in large capitals, and with an intensely ascendant inflection. Her first impulse had been to telephone Hal a withering message. More deliberate thought suggested the wisdom of making sure of her ground, first. The result was a shock. From her still infuriated guardian she had learned that, technically, she was the owner, with full moral responsibility for the "Pest-Egg." The information came like a dash of extremely cold water, which no pumess, reformed or otherwise, likes. Miss Elliot sat her down to a thoughtful consideration of the "Clarion." She found she was in good company. Several other bright and shining lights of the local firmament, social, financial, and commercial, shared the photographic notoriety. Slowly it was borne in upon her open mind that she had not been singled out for reprehension; that she was simply a part of the news, as Hal regarded news--no, as the "Clarion" regarded news. That Hal would deliberately have let this happen, she declined to believe. Unconsciously she clung to her belief in the natural inviolability of her privilege. It must have been a mistake. Hal would tell her so when he saw her. Yet if that were so, why had he sent word, the day after, that he couldn't keep his appointment? Would he come at all, now? Doubt upon this point was ended when Dr. Elliot, admitted on the strength of his profession to the typhus ward, and still exhibiting mottlings of wrath on his square face, had repeated his somewhat censored account of his encounter with "that puppy." Esmé haughtily advised her dear Uncle Guardy that the "puppy" was her friend. Uncle Guardy acidulously counseled his beloved Esmé not to be every species of a mildly qualified idiot at one and the same time. Esmé elevated her nose in the air and marched out of the room to telephone Hal Surtaine forthwith. What she intended to telephone him (very distantly, of course) was that her uncle had no authority to speak for her, that she was quite capable of speaking for herself, and that she was ready to hear any explanation tending to mitigate his crime--not in those words precisely, but in a tone perfectly indicative of her meaning. Furthermore, that the matter on which she had wished to speak to him was a business matter, and that she would expect him to keep the broken appointment later. None of which was ever transmitted. Fate, playing the rôle of Miching Mallecho, prevented once again. Hal was out. In the course of time, Esmé's quarantine (a little accelerated, though not at any risk of public safety) was lifted and she returned to the world. The battle of hygiene _vs_. infection was now at its height. Esmé threw herself into the work, heart and soul. For weeks she did not set eyes on Hal Surtaine, except as they might pass on the street. Twice she narrowly missed him at the hospital where she found time to make an occasional visit to Ellis. A quick and lively friendship had sprung up between the spoiled beauty and the old soldier of the print-columns, and from him, as soon as he was convalescent, she learned something of the deeper meanings of the "Clarion" fight and of the higher standards which had cost its owner so dear. "I suppose," he said, "the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life was to print your picture." "Did he _have_ to print it?" "Didn't he? It was news." "And that's your god, isn't it, Mr. Mac?" said his visitor, smiling. "It's only a small name for Truth. Good men have died for that." "Or killed others for their ideal of it." "Miss Esmé," said the invalid, "Hal Surtaine has had to face two tests. He had to show up his own father in his paper." "Yes. I read it. But I've only begun to understand it since our talks." "And he had to print that about you. Wayne told me he almost killed the story himself to save Hal. 'I couldn't bear to look at the boy's face when he told me to run it,' Wayne said. And he's no sentimentalist. Newspapermen generally ain't." "_Aren't_ you?" said Esmé, with a catch in her breath. "I should think you were, pretty much, at the 'Clarion' office." From that day she knew that she must talk it out with Hal. Yet at every thought of that encounter, her maidenhood shrank, affrighted, with a sweet and tremulous fear. Inevitable as was the end, it might have been long postponed had it not been for a word that Ellis let drop the day when he left the hospital. Mrs. Festus Willard, out of friendship for Hal, had insisted that the convalescent should come to her house until his strength was quite returned, instead of returning to his small and stuffy hotel quarters, and Esmé had come in her car to transfer him. It was the day after the Talk-It-Over Breakfast at which Hal had announced the prospective fall of the "Clarion." "I'll be glad to get back to the office," said Ellis to Esmé. "They certainly need me." "You aren't fit yet," protested the girl. "Fitter than the Boss. He's worrying himself sick." "Isn't everything all right?" "All wrong! It's this cussed Pierce libel case that's taking the heart out of him." "Oh!" cried Esmé, on a note of utter dismay. "Why didn't you tell me, Mr. Mac?" "Tell you? What do you know about it?" "Lots! Everything." She fell into silent thoughtfulness. "I supposed that you had heard from Mr. Pierce, or his lawyer, at the office. I _must_ see Hal--Mr. Surtaine--now. Does he still come to see you?" "Everyday." "Send word to him to be at the Willards' at two to-morrow. And--and, please, Mr. Mac, don't tell him why." "Now, what kind of a little game is this?" began Ellis, teasingly. "Am I an amateur Cupid, or what's my cue?" He looked into the girl's face and saw tears in the great brown eyes. "Hello!" he said with a change of voice. "What's wrong, Esmé? I'm sorry." "Oh, _I'm_ wrong!" she cried. "I ought to have spoken long ago. No, no! I'm all right now!" She smiled gloriously through her tears. "Here we are. You'll be sure that he's there?" "Fear not, but lean on Dollinger And he will fetch you through"-- quoted the other in oratorical assurance, and turned to Mrs. Willard's greeting. At one-thirty on the following day, Mr. McGuire Ellis was where he shouldn't have been, asleep in a curtained alcove window-seat of the big Willard library. At one minute past two he was where he should have been still less; that is, in the same place and condition. Now Mr. Ellis is not only the readiest hair-trigger sleeper known to history, but he is also one of the most profound and persistent. Entrances and exits disturb him not, nor does the human voice penetrate to the region of his dreams. To everything short of earthquake, explosion, or physical contact, his slumber is immune. Therefore he took no note when Miss Esmé Elliot came in, nor when, a moment later, Mr. Harrington Surtaine arrived, unannounced. Nor, since he was thoroughly shut in by the draperies, was either of them aware of his presence. Esmé rose slowly to her feet as Hal entered. She had planned a leading-up to her subject, but at sight of him she was startled out of any greeting, even. "Oh, how thin you look, and tired!" she exclaimed. "Strenuous days, these," he answered. "I didn't expect to see you here. Where's Ellis?" "Upstairs. Don't go. I want to speak to you. Sit down there." At her direction Hal drew up a chair. She took the corner of the lounge near by and regarded him silently from under puckered brows. "Is it about Ellis?" said Hal, alarmed at her hesitation. "No. It is about Mr. Pierce. There won't be any libel suit." "What!" "No." She shook her head in reassurance of his evident incredulity. "You've nothing to worry about, there." "How can you know?" "From Kathie." "Did her father tell her?" "She told her father. There's a dreadful quarrel." "I don't understand at all." "Kathie absolutely refuses to testify for her father. She says that the accident was her own fault, and if there's a trial she will tell the truth." Before she had finished, Hal was on his feet. Her heart smote her as she saw the gray worry pass from his face and his shoulders square as from the relief of a burden lifted, "Has it lain so heavy on your mind?" she asked pitifully. "If you knew!" He walked half the length of the long room, then turned abruptly. "You did that," he said. "You persuaded her." "No. I didn't, indeed." The eager light faded in his face. "Of course not. Why should you after--Do you mind telling me how it happened?" "It isn't my secret. But--but she has come to care very much for some one, and it is his influence." "Wonderful!" He laughed boyishly. "I want to go out and run around and howl. Would you mind joining me in the college yell? Does Mac know?" "Nobody knows but you." "That's why Pierce kept postponing. And I, living under the shadow of this! How can I thank you!" "Don't thank me," she said with an effort. "I--I've known it for weeks. I meant to tell you long ago, but I thought you'd have learned it before now--and--and it was made hard for me." "Was that what you had to tell me about the paper, when you asked me to come to see you?" She nodded. "But how could I come?" he burst out. "I suppose there's no use--I must go and tell Mac about this." "Wait," she said. He stopped, gazing at her doubtfully. "I'm tearing down the tenement at Number 9." "Tearing it down?" "As a confession that--that you were right. But I didn't know I owned it. Truly I didn't. You'll believe that, won't you?" "Of course," he cried eagerly. "I did know it, but too late." "If you'd known in time would you have--" "Left that out of the paper?" he finished, all the life gone from his voice. "No, Esmé. I couldn't have done that. But I could have said in the paper that you didn't know." "I thought so," she said very quietly. He misinterpreted this. "I can't lie to you, Esmé," he said with a sad sincerity. "I've lived with lies too long. I can't do it, not for any hope of happiness. Do I seem false and disloyal to you? Sometimes I do to myself. I can't help it. All a man can do is to follow his own light. Or a woman either, I suppose. And your light and mine are worlds apart." Again, with a stab of memory, he saw that desperate smile on her lips. Then she spoke with the clear courage of her new-found womanliness. "There is no light for me where you are not." He took a swift step toward her. And at the call, sweetly and straightly, she came to meet his arms and lips. "Poor boy!" she said, a few minutes later, pushing a lock of hair from his forehead. "I've let you carry that burden when a word from me would have lifted it." "Has there ever been such a thing as unhappiness in the world, sweetheart?" he said. "I can't remember it. So I don't believe it." "I'm afraid I've cost you more than I can ever repay you for," she said. "Hal, tell me I've been a little beast!--Oh, no! That's no way to tell it. Aren't you sorry, sir, that you ever saw this room?" "Finest example of interior architecture I know of. Exact replica of the plumb center of Paradise." "It's where all your troubles began. You first met me here in this very room." "Oh, no! My troubles began from the minute I set eyes on you, that day at the station." "Don't contradict me." She laid an admonitory finger on his lips, then, catching at his hand, gently drew him with her. "Right in that very window-seat there--" She whisked the hangings aside, and brushed McGuire Ellis's nose in so doing. "Hoong!" snorted McGuire Ellis. "Oh!" cried Esmé. "Were you there all the time? We--I--didn't know--Have you been asleep?" "I have been just that," replied the dormant one, yawning. "I hope we haven't disturbed--" began Esmé in the same breath with Hal's awkward "Sorry we waked you up, Mac." "Don't be--" Ellis checked his familiar growl, looked with growing suspicion from Esmé's flushed loveliness to Hal's self conscious confusion, leaped to his feet, gathered the pair into a sudden, violent, impartial embrace, and roared out:-- "Go ahead! _Be_ young! You can only be it once in a lifetime." XXXVIII THE CONVERT Old Home Week passed in a burst of glory and profit. True to its troublous type, the "Clarion" had interfered with the profit, in two brief, lively, and effective campaigns. It had published a roster of hotels which, after agreeing not to raise rates for the week, had reverted to the old, tried and true principle of "all the traffic can bear," with comparative tables, thereby causing great distress of mind and pocket among the piratical. Backed by the Consumers' League, it had again taken up the cudgels for the store employees, demanding that they receive pay for overtime during the celebration and winning a partial victory. No little rancor was, of course, stirred up among the advertisers. The usual threats were made. But the business interests of Worthington had begun to learn that threatening the "Clarion" was a futile procedure, while advertisers were coming to a realization of the fact that they couldn't afford to stay out of so strong a medium, even at increased rates. The raise in the advertising schedule had been partly Esmé Elliot's doing. As a condition of her engagement to Hal, she demanded a resumption of the old partnership. Entered into lightly, it soon became of serious moment, for the girl had a natural gift for affairs. When she learned that on the basis of circulation the "Clarion" would be justified in increasing its advertising card by forty per cent, but dared not do so because of the narrow margin upon which it was working, she insisted upon the measure, supporting her argument with a considerable sum of money of her own. Hal revolted at this, but she pleaded so sweetly that he finally consented to regard it as a reserve fund. It was never called for. The turn of the tide had come for the paper. It lost few old advertisers and put on new ones. It was a success. No one was more delighted than Dr. Surtaine. Forgetting his own prophecies of disaster he exalted Hal to the skies as a chip of the old block, an inheritor of his own genius for business. "Knew all along he had the stuff in him," he would declare buoyantly. "Look at the 'Clarion' now! Most independent, you-be-damned sheet in the country. And what about the chaps that were going to put it out of business? Eating out of its hand!" Of Esmé the old quack was quite as proud as of Hal. To him she embodied and typified, in its extreme form, those things which all his money could not buy. That she disliked the Certina business and made no secret of the fact did not in the least interfere with a genuine liking between herself and its proprietor. Dr. Surtaine could not discuss Certina with Hal: there were too many wounds still open between them. But with Esmé he could, and often did. Her attitude struck him as nicely philosophic and impersonal, if a bit disdainful. And in these days he had to talk to some one, for he was swollen with a great and glorious purpose. He announced it one resplendent fall day, having gone out to Greenvale with that particular object in view, at an hour when he was sure that Hal would be at the office. "Esmé, I'm going to make you a wedding present of Certina," he said. "Never take it, Doctor," she replied, smiling up at him in friendly recognition of what had come to be a subject of stock joke between them. "I'm serious. I'm going to make you a wedding present of the Certina business. I guess there aren't many brides get a gift of half a million a year. Too bad I can't give it out to the newspapers, but it wouldn't do." "What on earth do you mean?" cried the astonished girl. "I couldn't take it. Hal wouldn't let me." "I'm going to give it up, for you. You think it ain't genteel and high-toned, don't you?" "I think it isn't honest." "Not discussing business principles, to-day," retorted the Doctor good-humoredly. "It's a question of taste now. You're ashamed of the proprietary medicine game, aren't you, my dear?" Esmé laughed. Embarrassment with Dr. Surtaine was impossible. He was too childlike. "A little," she confessed. "You'd be glad if I quit it." "Of course I would. I suppose you can afford it." As if responding to the touch of a concealed spring, the Surtaine chest protruded. "You find me something I can't afford, and I'll buy it!" he declared. "But this won't even cost me anything in the long run. Esmé, did I ever tell you my creed?" "'Certina Cures,'" suggested the girl mischievously. "That's for business. I mean for everyday life. My creed is to let Providence take care of folks in general while I look after me and mine." "It's practical, at least, if not altruistic." "Me, and mine," repeated the charlatan. "Do you get that 'and mine'? That means the employees of the Certina factory. Now, if I quit making Certina, what about them? Shall I turn them out on the street?" "I hadn't thought of that," admitted the girl blankly. "Business can be altruistic as well as practical, you see," he observed. "Well, I've worked out a scheme to take care of that. Been working on it for months. Certina is going to die painlessly. And I'm going to preach its funeral oration at the factory on Monday. Will you come, and make Hal come, too?" In vain did Esmé employ her most winning arts of persuasion to get more from the wily charlatan. He enjoyed being teased, but he was obdurate. Accordingly she promised for herself and Hal. But Hal was not as easily persuaded. He shrank from the thought of ever again setting foot in the Certina premises. Only Esmé's most artful pleading that he should not so sorely disappoint his father finally won him over. At the Certina "shop," on the appointed day, the fiancés were ushered in with unaccustomed formality. They found gathered in the magnificent executive offices all the heads of departments of the vast concern, a quiet, expectant crowd. There were no outsiders other than Hal and Esmé. Dr. Surtaine, glossy, grave, a figure to fill the eye roundly, sat at his glass-topped table facing his audience. Above him hung Old Lame-Boy, eternally hobbling amidst his fervid implications. Waving the newcomers to seats directly in front of him, the presiding genius lifted a benign hand for silence. "My friends," he said, in his unctuous, rolling voice, "I have an important announcement to make. The Certina business is finished." There was a silence of stunned surprise as the speaker paused to enjoy his effect. "Certina," he pursued, "has been the great triumph of my career. I might almost say it has been my career. But it has not been my life, my friends. The whole is greater than the part: the creator is greater than the thing he creates. They say, 'Surtaine of Certina.' It should be, 'Certina of Surtaine.' There's more to come of Surtaine." His voice dropped to the old, pleading, confidential tone of the itinerant; as if he were beguiling them now to accept the philosophy which he was to set forth. "What is life, my dear friends? Life is a paper-chase. We rush from one thing to another, Little Daisy Happiness just one jump ahead of us and Old Man Death grabbing at our coat-tails. Well, before he catches hold of mine,"--the splendid bulk and vitality of the man gave refutation to the hint of pathos in the voice,--"I want to run my race out so that my children and my children's children can point to me and say, 'One crowded hour of glorious life is worth a cycle of Cathay.'" With a superb gesture he indicated Hal and Esmé, who, he observed with gratification, seemed quite overcome with emotion. "That is why, my friends, I am withdrawing certina, and turning to fresh fields; if I may say so, fields of more genteel endeavor. Certina has made millions. It could still make millions. I could sell out for millions to-day. But, in the words of the sweet singer, I come to bury it, not to praise it. Certina has done its grand work. The day of medicine is almost over. Interfering laws are being passed. The public is getting suspicious of drugs. Whether this is just or unjust is not the question which I am considering. I've always wanted my business to be high-class. You can't run a high-class business when the public is on to you. "Don't think, any of you, that I'm going to retire and leave you in the lurch. No. I'm looking ahead, for you as well as for me. What's the newest thing in science? Foods! Specific foods, to build up the system. That's the big thing of the future here in America. We're a tired nation, a nerve-wracked nation, a brain-fagged nation. Suppose a man could say to the public, 'Get as tired as you like. Work to your limit. Play to your limit. Go the pace. When you're worn out, come to us and we'll repair the waste for a few dollars. We've got a food--no drugs, no medicines--that builds up brain and nerve as good as new. The greatest authorities in the world agree on it.' Is there any limit to the business that food could do? "Well, I've got it! And I've got the backing for it. Mr. Belford Couch will tell you of our testimonials. Tell 'em the whole thing, Bel: we're all one family here." "I've been huntin' in Europe," said Certina Charley, rising, in accents of pardonable pride: "and I've got the hottest bunch of signed stuff ever. You all know how hard it is to get any medical testimonials here. They're all afraid, except a few down-and-outers. Well, there's none of that in Europe. They'll stand for any kind of advertising, so long as it's published only in the United States--provided they get their price. And it ain't such an awful price either. _I got the Emperor's own physician for one thousand five hundred dollars cash_. And a line of court doctors and swell university professors anywhere from one thousand dollars way down to one hundred. It's the biggest testimonial stunt ever pulled." "And every mother's son of 'em," put in Dr. Surtaine, "staking a high-toned scientific reputation that the one sure, unfailing, reliable upbuilder for brain-workers, nervous folks, tired-out, or broken-down folks of any kind at all is"--here Dr. Surtaine paused, looked about his entranced audience, and delivered himself of his climax in a voice of thunder: "CEREBREAD!" The word passed from mouth to mouth, in accents of experimentation, admiration, and acceptance. "Cere, from cerebellum, the brain, and bread the universal food. I doped it out myself, and as soon as I hit on it I shipped Belford Couch straight to Europe to get the backing. I wouldn't take a million for that name, to-day. "See what you can do with a proposition of that sort! It hasn't got any drugs in it, so we won't have to label it under the law. It ain't medical; so the most particular newspaper and magazines won't kick on the advertising. Yet, with the copy I'm getting up on it, we can put it over to cure more troubles than Certina ever thought of curing. Only we won't use the word 'cure,' of course. All we have to do is to ram it into the public that all its troubles are nervous and brain troubles. 'Cerebread' restores the brain and rebuilds the nerves, and there you are, as good as new. Is that some plan? Or isn't it!" There was a ripple of applausive comment. "What's in it?" inquired Lauder, the factory superintendent. "Millions in it, my boy," cried the other jubilantly. "We'll be manufacturing by New Year's." "That's the point. _What'll_ we be manufacturing?" "By crikey! That reminds me. Haven't settled that yet. Might as well do it right now," said the presiding genius of the place with Olympian decision. "Dr. De Vito, what's the newest wrinkle in brain-food?" "Brain-food?" hesitated the little physician. "Something new?" "Yes, yes!" cried the charlatan impatiently. "What's the fad now? It used to be phosphorus." "Ye-es. Phosphorus, maybe. Maybe some kind of hypophosphite, eh?" "Sounds all right. Could you get up a preparation of it that looks tasty and tastes good?" "Sure. Easy." "Fine! I'll send you down the advertising copy, so you'll have that to go by. And now, gentlemen, we're the Cerebread factory from now on. Keep all your help; we'll need 'em. Go on with Certina till we're sold out; but no more advertising on it. And, all of you, from now on, think, dream, and _live_ Cerebread. Meeting's adjourned." The staff filed out, chattering excitedly. "He'll put it over."--"You can't beat the Chief."--"Is'n't he a wonder!"--"Cerebread; it's a great name to advertise."--"No come-back to it, either. Nobody can kick on a _food_."--"It's a sure-enough classy proposition, with those swell European names to it!"--"Wish he'd let us in on the stock." Success was in the air. It centered in and beamed from the happy eyes of the reformed enthusiast, as, crossing over the room with hands extended to Esmé and Hal, he cried in a burst of generous emotion: "It was you two that converted me." THE END